This is the first book-length study to examine the interface between literary and theological modernisms. It provides a comprehensive account of literary responses to the modernist crisis in Christian theology from a transnational and interdenominational perspective. It offers a cultural history of the period, considering a wide range of literary and historical sources, including novels, drama, poetry, literary criticism, encyclicals, theological and philosophical treatises, periodical publications, and wartime propaganda. By contextualising literary modernism within the cultural, religious, and political landscape, the book reveals fundamental yet largely forgotten connections between literary and theological modernisms. It shows that early-twentieth-century authors, poets, and critics, including Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Czeslaw Milosz, actively engaged with the debates between modernist and neo-scholastic theologians raging across Europe. These debates contributed to developing new ways of thinking about the relationship between religion and literature, and informed contemporary critical writings on aesthetics and poetics.
"Rzepa's study excels in its use of archival sources, its attention to local contexts, and its overview of European currents of ideas; she conclusively demonstrates the religious sources of cultural modernism on a transnational scale. ... Rzepa's wealth of historical detail brings out, particularly in her authorial studies, a struggle to find 'a middle way', the possibility of a 'dynamic tension' between inner experience and dogma." (Henry Mead, Modernist Cultures, Vol. 18 (1), February, 2023)
"Modernism and Theology: Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Czeslaw Milosz is an extraordinarily rich contribution to the discussion that has emerged on the relation between literary modernism and Christianity, or religion in general. It is a vast compendium of information ... . The author's narrative flair ensures that the book is highly readable ... . The study is extremely well documented, thorough and immensely detailed in its presentation of all its major aspects ... ." (Jean Ward, KONTEKSTY KULTURY, Vol. 19 (3), 2022)
"Modernism and Theology: Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Czeslaw Milosz is an extraordinarily rich contribution to the discussion that has emerged on the relation between literary modernism and Christianity, or religion in general. It is a vast compendium of information ... . The author's narrative flair ensures that the book is highly readable ... . The study is extremely well documented, thorough and immensely detailed in its presentation of all its major aspects ... ." (Jean Ward, KONTEKSTY KULTURY, Vol. 19 (3), 2022)