R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God: Meaning and Mediation in the Poetry of R.S. Thomas (Princeton Theological Monograph). This item is unavailable.R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God: Meaning and Mediation in the Poetry of R.S. Thomas (Princeton Theological Monograph)

This book is one philosopher's response to the poetry of R. S. Thomas. It examines the poet's struggle with the possibilities of sense in religion: R. S. Thomas has described his poetry as an obsession with the possibility of having 'conversations or linguistic confrontations with ultimate reality'. Some attempts at giving meaning to religious belief cannot withstand the assaults of criticism. In R. S. Thomas's verse, however, there emerges a hard-won celebration of the worship of a hidden God; a rare achievement in contemporary poetry. In plotting the course of the development of the poetry, the book brings out its many similarities with the thrusts and counter-thrusts of argument in the philosophy of religion in the second half of the twentieth century. The book should be of interest not only to admirers of R. S. Thomas, but to philosophers, theologians, students of literature, and to anyone concerned with questions concerning the sense or senselessness of religious belief.

D. Z. Phillips (d: 2006) was Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at CGU and Rush Rhees Research Professor at the University of Wales, Swansea. His main research interests included philosophy of religion, ethics, philosophy and literature, and Wittgenstein. His latest books were From Fantasy to Faith; Interventions in Ethics; Wittgenstein and Religion; Introducing Philosophy; Philosophy's Cool Place; Recovering Religious Concepts; and Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation.