David Jones: A Christian Modernist? is a major reassessment of the work of the poet, artist and essayist David Jones (1895-1974) in light of the complex, ambiguous idea of a ‘Christian modernism’. His richly experimental and palimpsestic poetry, art and thought drew extensively on Christian tradition and symbolism as a key to the future: rejecting a technocratic and utilitarian modernity in favour of a revitalised culture of sign and sacrament. This volume examines historical influences on Jones’s development, his impassioned engagement with the idea of modernity and with modernist literature and art, the theological sources and resonances of his work, and contemporary or late-modern perspectives on his achievement.

David Jones – author of In Parenthesis, the great poem of World War I – is increasingly recognized as a major voice in the first generation of British modernist writers. Acclaimed by the likes of T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and W.H. Auden, his writing was deeply informed by his Catholic faith and Welsh blood. This book makes available for the first time a number of previously unpublished statements by Jones that open new perspectives on his own work and the religious, political, and cultural engagements of British modernism more broadly. Annotated throughout, with detailed commentaries exploring the historical context of each document, the volume presents the restored text of Jones's essay on Hitler and includes a letter to Neville Chamberlain, an unfinished essay on Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the transcript of an interview with Jones a year before his death. These reveal an unknown side of Jones and give fresh insight into the influences and assumptions of 20th-century British literary culture.

Introduction:'at the turn of time' --Part I. David Jones and empire --Introduction to Part I:The political formation of the Roman analogy --Shaping Rome through 'contactual' experience: war and post-war disillusionment --British imperial rhetoric: subverting the Roman analogy of empire --Expanding the Roman imperial analogy: fascism, communism, and the co-agency of empires --Part II. David Jones and cyclical historyIntroduction to Part II:The Roman precedent for the decline of western civilisation --Cyclical history and Roman decline: a theoretical foundation for the Roman fragments --The forms of the late civilisational phase: charting the decline of the West from Roman precedents --The antithesis of culture and civilisation: examining Spenglerian principles in Roman poetry --Part III. David Jones and culture --Introduction to Part III: Recovering Rome in the pursuit of Western unity and continuity --Investigating cultural decline: the Classical and Christian traditions --Reconnecting with Rome: the fight for the unity and continuity of Western culture --Jones's cultural theory: re-establishing the bridge in response to the break --Part IV. David Jones and Wales --Introduction to Part IV:The Roman foundation of the Welsh nation --Reimagining cultural decline: the fight for Wales as Britain s last link to Rome --Rewriting Welsh history: establishing Wales as a Roman nation --Cultural dynamics: the place of Rome in the bridge --Conclusion:'down the history maze'.

This is an imaginative exploration of the art of David Jones which addresses Christian teaching through engagement with selected artistic works: a poem, a painted inscription and a wood engraving. Elizabeth R. Powell's study does not just enable readers to understand Jones but also to use his kind of loving attention in their own lives – which, Jones would argue, is theology's most important task. Through close readings of material objects, Powell draws the reader into the participatory, performative and dialogical possibilities of the craft of theology. She frames an older style of theology in a distinctive and modern way, as a graced human practice and a place of transforming relation with the divine. Powell argues that Jones's art works offer places of beauty in which to 'become beauty' along the way. Located at the cross-section of theology, literature and the arts, this volume shows that being interdisciplinary is nothing less than finding ways for theology and humanity to be more richly itself.

Drawing on new archival discoveries, this book presents an authoritative reconstruction of David Jones's The Grail Mass, the unfinished and unpublished project from which came both his masterpiece The Anathemata – a work described by W.H. Auden as 'one of the most important poems of our times' – and The Sleeping Lord and other fragments, his final collection. With detailed commentary on the development and reconstruction of the text, this edition provides a full picture of Jones's literary endeavours over the second half of his life and further establishes his status as a major figure in the first wave of British modernist writers alongside T.S. Eliot and James Joyce. In addition to the text of The Grail Mass, this edition includes a number of unpublished fragments by Jones that emerged from this larger project, complete with textual commentaries.

In this 2000 collection, an international team of contributors examine relationships between modernist poetry and place.