Tears in Heaven: Tracing the Contours of a Pan-European Transconfessional Genre

This article explores the genesis, proliferation, and readership of an understudied genre of religious poetry in early modern Europe. The weeping poem—a devotional literary genre combining elements of epic narrative and Petrarchan lyric that focused specifically on the religious grief of biblical figures—swept across Europe in the forty years around the turn of the seventeenth century. Although this genre was instigated by the Italian Luigi Tansillo’s 1560 Le Lagrime di San Pietro and has often been read as exhibiting a distinctively Counter-Reformation spirituality, our survey of weeping poems uncovers the surprising reach of this genre across multiple languages and even into Protestant England. The range and popularity of this specific kind of weeping poetry across early modern national, linguistic, and confessional lines shows how this constellation of texts transmitted a new form of devotional affect founded on imaginative identification with weeping biblical narrators. In other words, these poems demonstrate how interiority, rather than factional political or theological difference, could be the basis for new emotional communities of worship. Moreover, the relative obscurity of this genre to scholars prompts new questions around the viability of continuing to explore early modern European literary traditions from the perspective of nationalist/linguistic/confessional frameworks.

Staropolska poezja religijna w zreformowanej szkole ponadpodstawowej

The connection between literature and religion can be observed in the writing of every literary period. Old Polish religious poetry has an established position within this field of research – it constitutes a huge part of the literary works of the Middle Ages, the Reneissance and Baroque. Therefore, it is not surprising that this kind of literature appeared in the core curricula, syllabuses and textbooks for cultural and literary education of secondary school students even before the latest reform of the educational system, as well as after it. The crucial factor in the consideration of the role of Old Polish religious poetry in schools, is the opinion of Polish teachers, who base it on their experience in teaching it. The empirical research conducted on a group of Polish teachers prove that despite various difficulties faced while teaching Old Polish religious poetry, they see a great value in this type of literature in the overall process of education as well as in young adults’ personal life. Old Polish religious poetry introduces students to symbols crucial for our cultural circle. The last but not the least, it may help to fully understand and experience oneself/other people in the face of the sacred.

Некоторые религиозные термины, хадисы и аяты в башкирских мунаджатах

Introduction. In the oral popular art and written literary monuments of the Bashkir people, there is a special musical-poetic genre of the lyric-epic and religious character, which is called munajat. This article aims to analyze some of the ayats, hadiths, and religious terms used in the Bashkir munajats. Materials and methods. Samples of religious poetry borrowed from a thematic volume of the Bashkir folk art compendium were used as the main source of the research data. Over 1,500 examples have been identified, some of which are used in this article. A systematic and comparative analysis and a historical-typological research method were employed for the analysis of the material. Results. Many Bashkir scholars were among the students of the munajats. In their works, they often focused on the main features of the genre, such as religious motifs, plots, and appeals to Allah that they contain. Since early 1990s, the munajats have been experiencing a rebirth: old versions have returned to become popular again; also, new types, composed by our contemporaries, have emerged, and spread in various regions. The study resulted in identifying over one and a half thousand examples containing Muslim terms, ayats, and hadiths; some of them have been included in this article. Conclusions. The present study shows the peculiarities of the use of religious subjects, terms, and motifs in the Bashkir munajats. Some words and phrases were changed to adapt to the popular usage, while preserving the Arabic cliché. In its turn, the use of religious vocabulary enriched the Bashkir language and literature.

A Comparative Perspective on Kabir and George Herbert's Poetry

The Bhakti movement in India attempted reforms by fighting caste rigidities and superstitions. Almost around the same time the Cambridge reformers were attempting to reform the Catholic Church and propagating Protestant ideas. This paper attempts a comparative perspective on George Herbert’s poetry in relation to some aspects of Bhakti poetry in India, especially with reference to Kabir. George Herbert who was a Metaphysical poet is classified as a devotional poet for the corpus of religious poetry he wrote. The approach of this Metaphysical poet and poets like Kabir from the Bhakti movement has certain points of comparison. Certain similarities in the discourse of the disciple as slave to his Lord; as the lover in search of a union etc. finds place in this discussion. This paper engages in a close study of the religious poetry of George Herbert and that of Kabir in relation to the trends of the Bhakti movement. The language used by most Bhakti poets is simple and words from the vernacular languages of India find a presence in pure or mixed form. Kabir uses the ‘sadhukkadi’ or ‘khichdi’ language. Though Herbert wrote in the English language the world-view of both the poets is quite similar. Some of the images and the philosophy that manifests itself in the two poets are examined through this comparative study.

Exploring the Lyric-Dramatic Interaction in the Work of T.S. Eliot

<p>T. S. Eliot's fascination with the interaction between the lyric and the dramatic is evident from the fact that his poetry was often dramatic even before he began to write verse drama. Part of the reason for this interaction in Eliot was a kind of radical modernism that ensured a return to a primitivism where there was little distinction between the lyric and the dramatic. In this thesis I argue that this interaction is central to the nature of Eliot's creative work. The need for an interaction between the lyric and dramatic meant that The Waste Land (1922) possessed several dramatic qualities making it a precursor to Eliot's entry into the realm of poetic drama with the play, Sweeney Agonistes (1932). As part of my thesis, I conducted theatre workshops of the first two parts of The Waste Land in order to discover what dramatic elements emerged from the text and how their presence affected the lyric-dramatic interaction in the work, something which can surface only through performance. I argue that The Waste Land and Sweeney Agonistes occupy critical spaces in the mapping of the lyric-dramatic interaction in Eliot's creative oeuvre. The intensity of the lyric-dramatic interaction in Eliot's poetry builds up to a moment where he comes extremely close to drama in The Waste Land moving him to ultimately write his first play, Sweeney Agonistes. While Eliot's works after these two texts continue to exhibit characteristics of this lyric-dramatic interaction, the nature of this interaction undergoes a transformation after Eliot's conversion, manifesting itself in his religious poetry and drama which turns out to be a cul-de-sac in his experimentations. The intensity of this interaction in his work then gradually reduces to a point where the lyric and the dramatic no longer overlap especially after Eliot's first commercially successful play, The Cocktail Party (1949). By examining the reasons for the slow disassociation of these two crucial elements in Eliot's later work, I aim to stress the centrality of The Waste Land and Sweeney Agonistes to the lyric-dramatic trajectory in his work.</p>

Exploring the Lyric-Dramatic Interaction in the Work of T.S. Eliot

<p>T. S. Eliot's fascination with the interaction between the lyric and the dramatic is evident from the fact that his poetry was often dramatic even before he began to write verse drama. Part of the reason for this interaction in Eliot was a kind of radical modernism that ensured a return to a primitivism where there was little distinction between the lyric and the dramatic. In this thesis I argue that this interaction is central to the nature of Eliot's creative work. The need for an interaction between the lyric and dramatic meant that The Waste Land (1922) possessed several dramatic qualities making it a precursor to Eliot's entry into the realm of poetic drama with the play, Sweeney Agonistes (1932). As part of my thesis, I conducted theatre workshops of the first two parts of The Waste Land in order to discover what dramatic elements emerged from the text and how their presence affected the lyric-dramatic interaction in the work, something which can surface only through performance. I argue that The Waste Land and Sweeney Agonistes occupy critical spaces in the mapping of the lyric-dramatic interaction in Eliot's creative oeuvre. The intensity of the lyric-dramatic interaction in Eliot's poetry builds up to a moment where he comes extremely close to drama in The Waste Land moving him to ultimately write his first play, Sweeney Agonistes. While Eliot's works after these two texts continue to exhibit characteristics of this lyric-dramatic interaction, the nature of this interaction undergoes a transformation after Eliot's conversion, manifesting itself in his religious poetry and drama which turns out to be a cul-de-sac in his experimentations. The intensity of this interaction in his work then gradually reduces to a point where the lyric and the dramatic no longer overlap especially after Eliot's first commercially successful play, The Cocktail Party (1949). By examining the reasons for the slow disassociation of these two crucial elements in Eliot's later work, I aim to stress the centrality of The Waste Land and Sweeney Agonistes to the lyric-dramatic trajectory in his work.</p>

Seerat-ul-Nabi ﷺ in the light of “Buqqa-e-Anwaar”

“Buqqa e Anwaar” is a long Poem written by Shamim Yazdani. This Poem is a Long Poem consisiting a complete book. So it is called one book poem. There is an ancient tradition of writing long poems consisting complete book. It’s a religious poetry about the life and seerah of our beloved Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. In this poem the poet talks about the Holy prophet PBUH Seerat and sunnat. Before Islam, the Arabs were plunged into the darkness of ignorance. They worshiped idols. After the arrival of our prophet enlightened the world. This poem shows Shamim Yazdani’s love, affection and respect for the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

Poems by Polish Female Poets and the Burning Issue of Religion

The aim of this paper is to show the presence of religion and the particular evolution of lyrical matrixes connected to religion in the Polish poems of female poets. There is a particular presence of women in the roots of the Polish literary and lyrical traditions. For centuries, the image of a woman with a pen in her hand was one of the most important imponderabilia. Until the 19th century, Polish female poets continued to be rare. Where female poets do appear in the historical record, they are linked to institutions such as monasteries, where female intellectuals were able to find relative liberty and a refuge. Many of the poetic forms they used in the 16th, late 17th, and 18th centuries were typically male in origin and followed established models. In the 19th century, the specific image of the mother as a link to the religious portrait of the Madonna and the Mother of God (the first Polish poem presents Bogurodzica, the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus) reinforces women’s new presence. From Adam Mickiewicz’s poem Do matki Polki (To Polish Mother), the term “Polish mother” becomes a separate literary, epistemological, and sociological category. Throughout the 20th century (with some exceptions), the impact of Romanticism and its poetical and religious models remained alive, even if they underwent some modifications. The period of communism, as during the Period of Partitions and the Second World War, privileged established models of lyric, where the image of women reproduced Romantic schema in poetics from the 19th-century canons, which are linked to religion. Religious poetry is the domain of few female author-poets who look for inner freedom and religious engagement (Anna Kamieńska) or for whom religion becomes a form of therapy in a bodily illness (Joanna Pollakówna). This, however, does not constitute an otherness or specificity of the “feminine” in relation to male models. Poets not interested in reproducing the established roles reach for the second type of lyrical expression: replacing the “mother” with the “lover” and “the priestess of love” (the Sappho model) present in the poetry of Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska. In the 20th century, the “religion” of love in women’s work distances them from the problems of the poetry engaged in social and religious disputes and constitutes a return to pagan rituals (Hymn idolatrous of Halina Poświatowska) or to the carnality of the body, not necessarily overcoming previous aesthetic ideals (Anna Świrszczyńska). It is only since the 21st century that the lyrical forms of Polish female poets have significantly changed. They are linked to the new place of the Catholic Church in Poland and the new roles of Polish women in society. Four particular models are analysed in this study, which are shown through examples of the poetry of Genowefa Jakubowska-Fijałkowska, Justyna Bargielska, Anna Augustyniak, and Malina Prześluga with the Witches’ Choir.

НЕГОВАЊЕ КУЛТА СВЕТЕ ПЕТКЕ У РЕЛИГИОЗНОЈ ПОЕЗИЈИ СРПСКЕ ПЕСНИКИЊЕ ДАНИЦЕ ЗОРКЕ РАШКОВИЋ

The subject matter of this paper is the work of the first romantic poetess Danica Zorka Rašković (1849–1910) from Belgrade, which is observed in the context of searching for common elements in Serbian and Romanian culture. Her work has remained unknown to a wider readership, and this time the focus will be on a lyric poem about Serbian-Romanian saint (Saint Petka). As a very young poetess, Danica Zorka Rašković published four poem collections in Belgrade: Slavopoj (two collections, 1866 and 1867), Milosplet (1868), Tugospev (1868). Literary critique had no positive reaction to the poetic texts by the young poetess (S. Novaković, V. Jagić). The collection of religious poetry Milosplet (1868) contains lyric and epic poems, and among the lyric texts there is a poem Saint Petka, which speaks about this uniquely revered Serbian-Romanian saint. The cult of Saint PetkaParaskevahas been nurtured since the 15th century, owing to Princess Milica and a poetess Jefimija. Saint Petka Paraskeva is a patron saint of the Rašković family, which had special privileges in the region of Stari Vlah in western Serbia during the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages. The Rašković family gave a great number of warriors and elders in the Serbian uprisings, as well as a great number of cultural intellectuals.