"This book addresses three key areas of intellectual enquiry: literary criticism, cultural critique, and philosophical theology. Once closely related, especially in the Catholic tradition, they often appear to be separate and unconnected domains in the modern university. The work of Nicholas Boyle is one of the most significant recent attempts to reconnect them. Responding to that initiative, The Present Word challenges this fragmentation of knowledge. Several of the essays reflect a major change of emphasis in literary studies over the last two decades: the reconnection of an idea of literary criticism closely related to the experience of reading, and the wider societal and political concerns addressed by Cultural Studies. Contributors also debate, from both perspectives, whether theological concepts can illuminate the secular culture in which literature is written and read. John Walker is Senior Lecturer in German at Birkbeck College, London, where he served as Head of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture from 2006-2009."

John Walker

Introduction Part I: Literature and Criticism 1. The Human Epiphany: Reflections on Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris and Shakespeare's the Winter's Tale 2. Cognitive Mapping: Adam, Venus, and Faust 3. Goethe as Secular Icon 4. A Poem by August Wilhelm Schlegel: Zueignung des Trauerspiels Romeo und Julia' 5. Mignon and the Idea of the Secret 6. Goethe and Mörike: 'Urworte. Orphisch' and 'Besuch in Urach' 7. Short of History': Les Murray and the Communion of Saints 8. Ways of Knowing: Blaise Pascal, Angelus Silesius and Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg 9. Enlightened Mythology: Thomas Mann and Myth 10. Goethe's Faust, Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus and the Site of Literature Part II: Philosophy, Theology and the University 11. Goethe and Machiavelli 12. Just one damned thing after another'? Some Reflections on the Philosophy of History 13. Seven Types of Forgetting 14. Seamus Heaney and Catholicism 15. Christian Humanism and Higher Education 16. Postscript