ABSTRACT
This essay offers an introduction to the volume as a whole by exploring a selected range of perspectives on the relationship between poetry and prophecy so as to highlight significant similarities and differences. This approach to prophecy begins with Walter Brueggemann’s understanding of the key elements of prophetic speech and action, both in their original biblical contexts and as applied in the contemporary world. It then moves on to a short account of ‘poets aspiring to be prophets’, the prophetic aspirations of English Romantic poets William Blake, William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley. This provides a background to an exposition and discussion of selected twentieth-century perspectives on relations between poetry and prophecy. The first of these is the perceived ambivalence about the relative value of prophecy and non-religious poetry in the text of the Bible and among biblical scholars and interpreters. The second is Jacques Maritain’s philosophical account of the nature and value of poetry and its relation to religion and prophecy. A third perspective consists of British theologian Austin Farrer’s theory that poetic inspiration and composition provide a key, by analogy, to understanding God’s self-revelation and its reception in human minds. Finally, Seamus Heaney’s account of writing poetry in the midst of extreme sectarian violence during ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and his understanding of the ‘redress’ offered by poetry conclude this main part of the essay. The essay concludes with reflections on aspects of this material that identify questions for further consideration and research.
