In this online webinar, John Pfordresher discussed Robert Browning’s religiously explorative poem Christmas Eve and Easter Day (1850). The talk began 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 then explored how Browning uses the grotesque realism of orthodox Christianity to create a mid-Victorian vision with relevance for the contemporary Christian imagination. Michael Scott, director of the Future of the Humanities Project, provided opening and closing remarks and Rev. Joseph Simmons, S.J. moderated a Q&A following Pfordresher's paper presentation.
This event was sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project, the Georgetown Humanities Initiative, the Georgetown Master’s Program in the Engaged and Public Humanities, Campion Hall (Oxford), and the Las Casas Institute (Blackfriars Hall, Oxford). It is part of a two-year-long series on the Christian Literary Imagination.
Featured
John Pfordresher, currently Emeritus Professor of English at Georgetown University, taught at the Hilltop from August 1973 until June 2020. For many years he offered courses in The Catholic Imagination for undergraduates, and in 2008 published his book Jesus and the Emergence of a Catholic Imagination: An Illustrated History with Paulist Press.
Rev. Joseph Simmons, S.J., (moderator) is an American Catholic priest currently writing his doctoral thesis at Campion Hall, Oxford under the supervision of Professor Graham Ward. He is exploring the Christian imagination and the fertile place where belief and unbelief touch in the fiction of Virginia Woolf and Marilynne Robinson. Simmons previously studied theology at Boston College and the Harvard Divinity School. His Licentiate in Sacred Theology thesis, “Via Literaria: Marilynne Robinson's Theology Through a Literary Imagination,” explored the convergence of literary and Christian imaginations.
Professor Michael Scott (moderator) is Senior Dean, Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford college adviser for postgraduate students, and a Member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior adviser to the president at Georgetown University. Scott was on the editorial board which relaunched Critical Survey from Oxford University Press. Scott previously served as the pro vice chancellor at De Montfort University and founding vice chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University.
