Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel

Essays on the Lily Discourses

The first book in any language that collects scholarly essays on Kierkegaard’s beautiful and vital Lily Discourses.

Long branded as “merely” devotional writings, Kierkegaard’s texts dealing with the lilies and birds spoken of in Matthew’s gospel are rich with poetic nuance and philosophical significance. In Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel, a diverse group of emerging and established interpreters addresses the religious, literary and dramatic aspirations of the philosopher in these discourses. Kierkegaard employs the figures of the lily and the bird to convey both suffering and pleasure, the fleeting nature of experience and the search to endow this very transience with enduring significance. In the process, they identify and develop a philosophy of language—and of exemplarity—crucial to all of Kierkegaard’s writings. To ask what the lily and bird teach is also to ask what it means, or could mean, to be human. This collection of essays is pivotal in registering, clarifying and celebrating Kierkegaard’s own response to that question suspended at the heart of his Lily Discourses.

The range of perspectives and approaches represented in this volume testifies to the wide appeal of this new and exciting area of Kierkegaard research, from analytic aesthetics to eco-theology. Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel is the go-to text for anyone looking to teach or write about the Lily Discourses across the disciplines of philosophy, literary studies and religion.

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