374 - Transfiguration: Poetic Metaphor and the Languages of Religious Belief Chapel Hill

Transfiguration:
Poetic Metaphor and the Languages
of Religious Belief
By Frank Burch Brown
Chapel Hill, Univ. North Carolina Press, 1983. 230 pp. $25.00.

This is a substantial essay on the interrelation of the languages of poetry, theology, and religious belief. It concentrates on poetic metaphor, which expresses that kind of transfiguration of meaning which brings it closest to the most characteristic language of religion. The claim is not made that the language of poetry and the language of theology should be the same. What is argued is that faith is dialogical, moving between what the author calls metaphoric and conceptual thinking, using concepts to interpret metaphors but also, and importantly, using metaphors to interpret concepts.

The main part of the book is in three well-defined sections, with an introduction and conclusion of a more general character which bear some of the marks of having been written originally for another purpose. The first main section is a detailed exposition and evaluation of Philip Wheelwright's defense of poetic language as revealing and expressing aspects of reality which elude other forms of linguistic expression. especially what he calls the steno-language of "plain sense." The second and largest section is an analysis of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets as an exemplification of the successful use of metaphoric language in achieving transfiguration, with special reference to "Burnt Norton" and "East Coker." The third is a discussion of Alfred North Whitehead's views on the nature of metaphysical thinking, in which it is argued that there is some affinity between his position and that of Wheelwright.

Much the liveliest and most readable part of the book, in which Brown is obviously most at home, is that which deals with the Four Quartets. Some of the rest, especially the discussion of Whitehead, does not seem particularly germane. It gives the impression that it is included to meet the preconceptions of the Divinity School at the University, of Chicago, by which Brown is obviously much influenced. With the advantage of having metaphoric language in action before him in Eliot's poems. he manages to make very clear how "poetic transfiguration of language and experience can generate insights of intrinsic worth to formal religion and metaphysical reflection." He is especially illuminating in his discussion of the image of the Rose which recurs throughout the poems and also in his defense of the much criticized reflective passages.

The distinctions he makes between the differing functions of theological and poetic language in order to underline how they can best serve each other are valuable. The most glaring omission, which may indicate the deficiencies of a too narrowly academic approach both to theology and to poetry is the lack of any reference to preaching. According to many Christian theologians, theology exists to serve faithful proclamation, and it is, surely, in the act of preaching that the language of theology and that of transfiguring poetic metaphor are at their closest.

There are other bewildering omissions. We are given eighteen pages of impressive bibliography but no reference to Coleridge and the many discussions of his view of the imagination which are related to Brown's theme for example, John Coulson's recent Religion and Imagination which deals with Newman and Eliot on this very matter of metaphor. Nevertheless, this is a good book to add to the growing number of those that show how the language of poetry can help vivify the language of theology.

Daniel Jenkins
London, England.