A01=Robert Leigh Davis
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american literature
Author_Robert Leigh Davis
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DS
Category=HR
Category=QR
Category=QRV
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Dickinson
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
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Gilead
holy play
improvisation
Language_English
literature and faith
Ludic faith
modern piety
nimble believing
PA=Available
play
playful wisdom
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
religion and literature
softlaunch
spirituality
Walden
Product details
- ISBN 9781793626301
- Weight: 376g
- Dimensions: 152 x 230mm
- Publication Date: 24 Aug 2022
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Playful Wisdom examines how Henry David Thoreau’s thinking about religious “play” created a theological legacy in American literature—one that includes Emily Dickinson, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Merton, Annie Dillard, and Marilynne Robinson. Although these writers differ in many ways, they share with Thoreau an improvisational “looseness” or “mobility” in their thinking about the sacred, a sense that religious experience unsettles fixed belief and alters the very shape of the perceiving self. From this perspective, Robert Leigh Davis argues, unswerving orthodoxy is not as crucial to a life of faith as a light-handed responsiveness of spirit that constantly revises fixed assumptions in light of new experiences. Dickinson describes this responsiveness as “nimble believing” and Thoreau calls it “holy play.” Scholars of literature, religion, and philosophy will find this book particularly useful.
Robert Leigh Davis is professor emeritus of English at Wittenberg University.
