Divine Folds: Baroque Revelations and Crashaw's Radical Devotion

• In Event: Transcendence, Figuration, Modernity: On Theology and the Arts in the Renaissance II

Abstract

After decades of neglect and derision, Richard Crashaw's contribution to devotional poetry is being positively reevaluated in the wake of new editions and theoretical and theological treatments of his poetry. Considering "The Flaming Heart," "The Hymn to Saint Teresa" and "The Hymn of Saint Thomas," this paper argues that Crashaw, whose life straddled both English Protestant and Continental Catholic theologies, forges an ultimately transcendent and transnational theo-poetics in his baroque treatment of the saints, of divine revelation, and of poetry's ability to manifest theological insight. Turning to the modern reassessment of the Baroque in the wake of Gilles Deleuze, I argue that the Baroque as an "operatory function"--to use Deleuze's term--of folding and re-folding can help understand the irenic and oscillating transnational devotional verse he produced.

Author

• Timothy John Duffy, New York University