The Lyric Voice in English Theology

Elizabeth S. Dodd explores how the lyric voice in English theology has spoken to, within and between church, self and society. By examining a number of texts by authors such as Lancelot Andrewes, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as T. S. Elliot and Geoffrey Hill, Dodd concludes that lyric is a vehicle for the imagination
which is the engine of theological thought, but it also has practical, ethical and public implications.

In contemporary discussions of genre in theological aesthetics, as in the work of Charles Taylor, David Ford, Ben Quash, Kevin Vanhoozer and Sam Wells, lyric is the poor relation to narrative and drama. Lyric is the voice of soliloquy, the language of emotion and spiritual experience, and is quickly identified with the solipsism and egoism of the modern individual. However, lyric has been a strong voice within English theology, and not only in a navel-gazing fostering of private spirituality.

Through a comparative analysis of these lyric movements within English theology, this book reassesses the role of lyric in theological language, and suggests that it take its place alongside narrative and drama.