Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel: Essays on the Lily Discourses: Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy and Poetry Rick Anthony Furtak Bloomsbury Academic

Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel

Essays on the Lily Discourses

Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel

Essays on the Lily Discourses

Description

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.

Preface, Frances Maughan-Brown (College of the Holy Cross, USA) and Rick Anthony Furtak (Colorado College, USA)

Part I: The Lily and the Bird
1. The Remains: Let it be Lily, Frances Maughan-Brown (College of the Holy Cross, USA)
2. Considering the Birds of the Air: Winged Creatures of Uncertainty and Belief, Rick Anthony Furtak (Colorado College, USA)
Part II: On Reading
3. On Beginning and Listening in Kierkegaard's The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air, Iben Damgaard (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
4. The Temptation of Ambiguity, Elizabeth X. Li (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
5. Prudence and Openness in Kierkegaard's Lilies and Birds, Erin Plunkett (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
6. The Music of the Poet and the Sounds of the Lily and the Bird, Elisabete M. de Sousa (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Part III: Either/Or Again
7. Repeating Either/Or?, George Pattison (University of Glasgow, UK)
8. From “the Starry Heavens Above” to “the Lily of the Field”, Marcia Robinson (Syracuse University, USA)
9. Taming the Troll: Kierkegaard on Self-Torment, Aestheticism, and Faith, Genia Schönbaumsfeld (University of Southampton, UK)
10. Kierkegaard on Natural and Artistic Beauty, Antony Aumann (University of Northern Michigan, USA)
Part IV: Between Two Virtues
11. Contentment and Discontentment with Being Human, Adam Buben (Leiden University, the Netherlands)
12. Creaturely Agency: Clarifying Kierkegaard's Notion of Contentment, Dante J. Clementi (University of Saint Andrews, UK)
13. The Unconditioned Obedience of the Lily and Bird, Sergia Hay (Pacific Lutheran University, USA)
14. Kierkegaard's Charitable Misanthropy, Ulrika Carlsson (Independent Scholar, USA)
Part V: The Imperative
15. The Inversion of Human Exceptionalism: Kierkegaard's Imago Dei Read Ecologically, Hjördis Becker-Lindenthal (University of Cambridge, UK)
16. On Becoming a Humus Being, Jason A. Mahn (Augustana College, USA)
17. Taking Care: Of Kierkegaard's Incomparable Lily Discourses, Kevin Newmark (Boston College, USA)
Index

Product details

Published	16 Oct 2025
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	304
ISBN	9781350476523
Imprint	Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations	10 bw illus
Dimensions	234 x 156 mm
Series	Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy and Poetry
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

This is a deeply peaceful book, inviting us to contemplate the lilies and the birds with Kierkegaard. The reader experiences the constancy and quiet joy of these beings through essays that range across Kierkegaard's writings.

Eleanor Helms, Professor of Philosophy at California Polytechnic State University, USA
Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel: Essays on the Lily Discourses offers a timely, cross-disciplinary study of our ambiguous relations with ourselves, each other, and our planet. The editors have gathered diverse voices and approaches from around the globe in an unprecedented compilation of nuanced study and insight. The Kierkegaardian oeuvre, the Lily Discourses, and biblical hermeneutics (concerning a famous passage from the Sermon on the Mount) all receive new life in this magnificent volume – both for the seasoned Kierkegaard scholar and those new to his work.

Anna L Söderquist, Associate Professor of Philosophy; Curator of the Hong Kierkegaard Library, St. Olaf College, Minnesota, USA
Frances Maughan-Brown and Rick Anthony Furtak have convened a diverse group of international contributors who together explore the many discourses Kierkegaard composed at the provocation of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount's exhortation to consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air as models for human living. Maughan-Brown's influence in particular is everywhere in evidence in these chapters; the contributors are all building upon her pioneering study of writings from different works and years in Kierkegaard's career. The lily discourses are treated here with the care and thoughtfulness that they merit: The contributors develop the lyrical, musical, ecological, symbolic, aesthetic, ethical and even mystical aspects of these complex and challenging texts. Kierkegaard's meditations on the lily and the bird could not be more relevant or timely. In an age of anxiety and crisis, this volume proves that Kierkegaard's stern and soothing, difficult and beautiful words on living like the lily and the bird-free of care and fully present in the moment-speak more urgently to us today than ever.

Jeffrey A. Hanson, Harvard University, USA