\u201c<\/em>In a series of dazzling essays taking Dante as their starting point, William Franke finds the trace of religious meaning throughout different forms of modern poetry, whose gaps and discontinuities he claims point to the ineffable beyond language. The book will prove an immense provocation and stimulus to all those who thought they had sorted out the relation of theology to modern poetry.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Jeremy Tambling, University of Manchester<\/p>\n \u201cIn twenty-five years of teaching a \u2018great books\u2019 curriculum, I have rarely read a study so finely attuned to the spiritual resonances of classic texts. I will be consulting William Franke\u2019s Secular Scriptures<\/em> for as long as I continue teaching and writing about the religious dimension of literature, and its enduring relevance to our \u2018secular age.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Paul J. Contino, Pepperdine University<\/p>\n \u201cIn Secular Scriptures<\/em>, William Franke rejects the received wisdom that sacred and secular are essentially opposed to one another. He does this by asking us to think about where these alleged oppositions in fact converge\u2014in a venerable Western literary tradition. Surveying a broad spectrum of works written \u2018in the wake of Dante,\u2019 he argues that \u2018self reflexivity,\u2019 subjective human experience and reflection, has become for modern poets the locus of revelation, a form of scripture. Building on his extensive previous explorations of ineffability, \u2018on what cannot be said,\u2019 he uncovers the richness\u2014both literary and philosophical \u2014of inventive language that speaks in order to reveal \u2018the spiritual mysteries of the letter,\u2019 to gain access to what ultimately lies beyond the reach of words.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Peter Hawkins, Yale Divinity School<\/p>\n \u201cI read Secular Scriptures<\/em> almost without putting the work down. Readers in fields from fin-de-si\u00e8cle<\/em> decadence to \u2018post-postmodernism\u2019 in poetry, especially those with interest in religion and literature studies, will be delighted by the way Dante is recast here to preface twentieth- and twenty-first-century developments. Franke\u2019s way of thinking backwards from recent postsecular theory is beguiling and transformative; the movement forward in the final chapter, via Dante\u2019s emerging again at the end as at the beginning, is really rather beautiful.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Romana Huk, University of Notre Dame<\/p>\n \u201cWilliam Franke has written, in a luminous prose, an enthralling book about a pivotal issue in literary studies: the esthetics of visionary literature.\u00a0The questions Franke raises\u2014philosophy of language, the nature of mystical insights, their modes of representation, and the revelations of poetic knowledge\u2014find in Dante, in the Romantic poets of Europe, and in the radical philosophical speculations of the twentieth century a fascinating articulation through which the reader can experience the depths of the high culture of the West.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University<\/p>\n Authorial Intentions: Interview with Chris Benda<\/a><\/p>\n Podcast Interview with Chris Benda on Secular Scriptures (with participation of Chance Woods)<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n REVIEWS <\/a><\/p>\n Chad Schrock in Literature and Theology<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Katherine Eggert, Studies in English Literature: <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWilliam Franke is similarly concerned with the status of the materiality of the image. As part of his argument in Secular Scriptures: Modern Theological Poetics in the Wake of Dante<\/em>, Franke argues that Milton\u2019s religious commitments lead him to reclassify poetic imagery as \u201cnonsacramental.\u201d . . .\u00a0 his comments on Paradise Lost<\/em>\u2019s substitution of poetic evocativeness for poetic transcendence are key to his book\u2019s thoughtful series of essays, which stretch all the way from Dante to W. B. Yeats.\u201d\u00a0 — Katherine Eggert, \u00a0SEL <\/em>57\/1 (Winter 2017): 189-91<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Secular Scriptures flyer<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn-dev.vanderbilt.edu\/t2-my-dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/470\/2014\/03\/secular-scriptures-again.1-434x650.png\")
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