| Death Be Not Proud: The Art of Holy Attention Contributor(s): Marno, David (Author) |
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ISBN: 022641597X ISBN-13: 9780226415970 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $40.85 Product Type: Hardcover Published: December 2016 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Christian Living - Prayer - Poetry | European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh - Religion | Philosophy |
| Dewey: 821.3 |
| LCCN: 2016014272 |
| Series: Class 200: New Studies in Religion |
| Physical Information: 1" H x 6.3" W x 9.1" (1.35 lbs) 384 pages |
| Themes: - Religious Orientation - Christian - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The seventeenth-century French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche thought that philosophy could learn a valuable lesson from prayer, which teaches us how to attend, wait, and be open for what might happen next. Death Be Not Proud explores the precedents of Malebranche's advice by reading John Donne's poetic prayers in the context of what David Marno calls the "art of holy attention." If, in Malebranche's view, attention is a hidden bond between religion and philosophy, devotional poetry is the area where this bond becomes visible. Marno shows that in works like "Death be not proud," Donne's most triumphant poem about the resurrection, the goal is to allow the poem's speaker to experience a given doctrine as his own thought, as an idea occurring to him. But while the thought must feel like an unexpected event for the speaker, the poem itself is a careful preparation for it. And the key to this preparation is attention, the only state in which the speaker can perceive the doctrine as a cognitive gift. Along the way, Marno illuminates why attention is required in Christian devotion in the first place and uncovers a tradition of battling distraction that spans from ascetic thinkers and Church Fathers to Catholic spiritual exercises and Protestant prayer manuals. |
Contributor Bio(s): Marno, David: - David Marno is assistant professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. |
