What is the role of spiritual experience in poetry? What are the marks of a religious imagination? How close can the secular and the religious be brought together? How do poetic imagination and religious beliefs interact? Exploring such questions through the concept of the religious imagination, this book integrates interdisciplinary research in the area of poetry on the one hand, and theology, philosophy and Christian spirituality on the other. Established theologians, philosophers, literary critics and creative writers explain, by way of contemporary and historical examples, the primary role of the religious imagination in the writing as well as in the reading of poetry.

Francesca Bugliani Knox graduated in 1976 from Pisa University (Dott. Lett.) and was senior lecturer in the English Department of the Università IULM, Milan, from 1986 to 2002. In 2009 she was awarded a PhD by Heythrop College, University of London. She is now Research Associate at Heythrop College and Teaching Fellow at UCL. Her publications include translations into Italian as well as several books and articles on various aspects of English and Italian literature from the Renaissance to the present. Since early on her research interest has focused on the relationship between literature and Christian spirituality. Together with Luca Panieri she edited Poesia e comunicazione (Lint 2001). Her recent book, The Eye of the Eagle: John Donne and the Legacy of Ignatius Loyola (Peter Lang 2011) was reviewed favourably in the TLS, Essays in Criticism, Renaissance Quarterly, Church History and Religious Culture and The Heythrop Journal. At present she is editing a collection of essays on Mgr Ronald Knox for PIMS and writing John Donne’s Itinerary for Open Book Publishers Cambridge. David Lonsdale taught courses in Christian Spirituality and Pastoral Theology at postgraduate level at Heythrop College, University of London for more than 25 years before retiring in 2012. He was also joint editor of The Way, and The Way Supplement, international journals of Christian spirituality from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. His published books, Eyes to See, Ears to Hear: An Introduction to Ignatian Spirituality (1990, revised edition 2000) and Dance to the Music of the Spirit (1992) have been much used in formation and education and translated into several languages. The places where literature, theology, spirituality and life meet have long been among his research and teaching interests and he has recently published several articles in this area.