Böcker av Gavin Hopps

At the end of 'Ode to a Nightingale', Keats's speaker famously asks of the foregoing reverie: 'Was it a vision, or a waking dream?' This book is concerned with such 'enchanted' imaginings and the intimations of transcendence they convey, along with the suspicions they reflexively engender and the uncertainties with which they invite us to dwell.The book argues that it is necessary to think anew about the Romantics' 'imaginative metaphysics' on account of recent theoretical developments -- to do with such things as affect theory, eco-theology, new materialism and the re-enchantment of the West -- but also due to a lingering allergy to ideas of transcendence, which can be traced back to the 'demystifying' materialist approaches to Romanticism that dominated post-1960s criticism.It is further suggested that under the gaze of these critical approaches, Romantic literature has been consciously cut off from the life of the reader and its affective, epiphanic and utopian dimensions have been neglected. What The Enchanted Moment proposes instead is a 'post-secular' approach that seeks to preserve the ontological hospitality of Romantic literature, whilst also endorsing a more participatory engagement with the text, in which the act of reading is allowed to become an existentially relevant exploration of the possible, which can transfigure our vision and open up new ways of being in the world.Although in one sense the study is a work of 'meta-criticism', which seeks to recover excluded possibilities and facets of Romanticism that have been discredited by some of its most influential critics, its contentions are illustrated and their cogency explored by way of provocatively new close readings of works by Barbauld, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Radcliffe, P.B. Shelley, Wollstonecraft and Wordsworth.

This book explores the ways in which music can engender religious experience, by virtue of its ability to evoke the ineffable and affect how the world is open to us.

In Christian faith, the present is continuously re-shaped by ventures of hopeful and expectant living. In art, the poetic interplay between past, present and future takes specific concrete forms, furnishing vital resources for sustaining an imaginative ecology of hope. This volume attends to the contributions that architecture, drama.

The relationship between literature and religion is one of the most challenging areas of Romantic studies. This book explores subjects such as Romantic attitudes towards creativity and its relation to suffering and religious apprehension; the allure of the 'veiled' and the figure of the monk in Gothic and Romantic writing; and more.

A study of Morrissey's career - as a writer, performer, and troublemaker. It examines the work of this compelling performer, whose intelligence, humour, suffering and awkwardness have fascinated audiences around the world. It traces the trajectory of Morrissey's career and outlines the contours and contradictions of the singer's elusive persona.

Morrissey is the greatest disturbance popular music has ever known. This book examines the work of this performer, whose intelligence, humour, suffering and awkwardness have fascinated audiences. It traces the trajectory of Morrissey's career - from its beginning in the early 80s to the release of his album, "Ringleader of the Tormentors".