Imagining Christianity: Robert Browning’s Christmas Eve and Easter Day

The Christian Literary Imagination Series

Continuing from the previous academic year, over the course of the 2021-22 academic year the Future of the Humanities Project is sponsoring a series of webinars on the Christian literary imagination in collaboration with Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. The ‘Christian Literary Imagination Series’ will explore the role and function of the arts and humanities in the development of the individual and society.

The hour-long virtual events will be followed by a Q & As chaired by Professor Michael Scott and Rev. Joseph Simmons, S.J.. These events are free and hosted on Zoom by Georgetown University.

In this online webinar, John Pfordresher will discuss Robert Browning’s religiously explorative poem “Christmas Eve and Easter Day” (1850). The talk will begin with the poem’s personal sources in the death of his beloved mother and the impact of his wife, the poet and intellectual Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on his religious beliefs. Pfordresher will then explore how Browning uses the grotesque realism of orthodox Christianity to create a mid-Victorian vision with relevance for the contemporary Christian imagination.

 

Upcoming events:

23^rd November
Charles Tung – HG Wells and the Apocalypse

9^th December
Julia Lamm – Julian of Norwich

 

Hilary Term

18^th January
Barbara Mujica – Teresa d’ Avila

1^st February
Mark Bosco – Graham Greene

15^th February
Hester Jones – TBC

1^st March
Mike Collins – Two Welsh Poets: R S Thomas and John Ormond

15^th March
Bridget Keegan – Jane Barker + Elizabeth Inchbald: Overt and Covert Catholicism

Contact:
Las Casas Institute with Georgetown University
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk