Tracing Modernism's Secret Theological Pre-history: Ian Cooper's <em>The Near and Distant God</em>

Abstract

Ian Cooper’s The Near and Distant God: Poetry, Idealism and Religious Thought from Holderlin to Eliot traces a genealogy of the poetic response to philosophy, beginning with Holderlin’s navigation of Kant’s aftermath, culminating with the post-Nietzschean modernisms of Rilke and T.S. Eliot. Cooper begins with a thorough analysis of Holderlin’s work, reinstating the often-overlooked theological element of his poetry. Expanding on a similar project originally undertaken by Erich Heller, Cooper includes the philosophy of the British idealists and the work of Eduard Morike and Gerard Manley Hopkins in his literary lineage, attempting to establish their importance as links in the theological pre-history of high modernism.