As more and more people in North America and Europe have
distanced themselves from mainstream religious traditions
over the past centuries, a “crisis of faith” has emerged
and garnered much attention. But Glenn Hughes, author of
A More Beautiful Question: The Spiritual in Poetry and
Art, contends that despite the withering popularity of
faith-based worldviews, our times do not evince a decline
in spirituality. One need only consider the search for
“alternative” religious symbolisms, as well as the growth
of groups espousing fundamentalist religious viewpoints, to
recognize that spiritual concerns remain a vibrant part of
life in Western culture.
Hughes offers the idea that the modern “crisis of faith” is
not a matter of vanishing spiritual concerns and energy but
rather of their disorientation, even as they remain
pervasive forces in human affairs. And because art is the
most effective medium for spiritually evocation, it is our
most significant touchstone for examining this spiritual
disorientation, just as it remains a primary source of
inspiration for spiritual experience.
A More Beautiful Question is concerned with how art,
and especially poetry, functions as a vehicle of spiritual
expression in today’s modern cultures. The book considers
the meeting points of art, poetry, religion, and
philosophy, in part through examining the treatments of
consciousness, transcendence, and art in the writings of
twentieth-century philosophers Eric Voegelin and Bernard
Lonergan. A major portion of A More Beautiful
Question is devoted to detailed “case studies” of three
influential modern poets: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily
Dickinson, and T. S. Eliot. In these and its other
chapters, the book examines the human need for artistic
symbols that evoke the mystery of transcendence, the ways
in which poetry and art illuminate the spiritual meanings
of freedom, and the benefits of an individual’s loving
study of great literature and art.
A More Beautiful Question has a distinctive aim—to
clarify the spiritual functions of art and poetry in
relation to contemporary confusion about transcendent
reality—and it meets that goal in a manner accessible by
the layperson as well as the scholar. By examining how the
best art and poetry address our need for spiritual
orientation, this book makes a valuable contribution to the
philosophies of art, literature, and religion, and brings
deserved attention to the significance of the “spiritual”
in the study of these disciplines.