What happens when poetry deals explicitly with a serious theological issue? In Poetry Does Theology, Jim Rhodes seeks one answer to that question by analyzing the symbiotic relationship that existed between theology and poetry in fourteenth-century England. He pays special attention to the narrative poems of Chaucer, Grosseteste, the Pearl-poet, the author of Saint Erkenwald, and Langland.

Rhodes shows that Chaucer and his contemporaries wrote at the end of a linguistic and theological revolution--a time when revised perspectives on the creation and incarnation gave rise to a new humanistic spirit that transformed late medieval theological culture and spurred the development of vernacular theology and poetry. Rhodesâ₀™ careful analysis describes how the relationship between theology and poetry underwent a radical transformation as the latter half of the fourteenth century progressed.

JIM RHODES is professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University.

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Poetry Does Theology is beautifully written and all of its analyses are interesting. It is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of Middle English writing and theology.â₀? â₀”Nicholas Watson, professor of English, Harvard University

â₀œPoetry Does Theology succeeds admirably in viewing the literature of late-medieval England in its relation to important theological concerns of the time. The originality of Rhodesâ₀™ study is that it presents a broad synthesis of scholarship on trends in late-medieval theology and shows how these trends find their reflection and elaboration in some major poems of the latter half of the fourteenth century.â₀? â₀”Richard Neuse, professor of English, University of Rhode Island

â₀œRhodes has produced an elegant and comprehensive assessment of the symbiotic relationship between poetry and theology in the late 14th century.â₀? â₀”Choice,

â₀œJim Rhodes, professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University, studies the symbiotic relationship between the poetry of 14th-century England and theology. He does this by a careful analysis of Robert Grossetesteâ₀™s Le chateau dâ₀™amour (The Castle of Love); Langland and the Four Daughters of God; the Pearl-Poet; the author of Saint Erkenwald; and four tales of Chaucer: the Prioress, the Second Nun, The Reeve, and the Pardoner.â₀? â₀”Theology Digest,

â₀œâ₀Â&brkbar; Rhodesâ₀™ book is an affirmation of the role that poets played in religious transformations of the late medieval period and a readable series of essays, each chapter acting as a fairly self-contained reading of one or two textsâ₀Â&brkbar;. The text also contains several analytical gems relating the poetry to detailed readings of Hebrew Scripture, demonstrating the authorâ₀™s exegetical talent. Of most interest to the literary scholar of late medieval poetry, it should also prove interesting to serious students of pre-Reformation English Christian thought.â₀? â₀”Religious Studies Review,

â₀œRhodes emerges as a reader to whom fictive persons matter, regardless of the century they inhabit, because they and their lives speak about usâ₀”not as subjectivities but as souls. His book deserves credit for treating both medieval religion and medieval poetry seriously as liberating elements in human life.â₀? â₀”Speculum