Knepper Edits Volume on Desmond
Col. Steven Knepper, professor and the Bruce C. Gottwald Jr. 鈥�81 Chair for Academic Excellence in the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies at 麻豆传媒入口, has edited a wide-ranging series of essays on the philosophy of William Desmond titled, 鈥淭he Intimate Strangeness of Poetry: William Desmond and Literature.鈥�
Desmond is a contemporary Irish philosopher who has taught at Villanova University in Pennsylvania for many years. His books include 鈥淧hilosophy and Its Others: Ways of Being and Mind,鈥� 鈥淓thics and the Between,鈥� and 鈥淎rt, Origins, Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art.鈥�
According to Knepper, Desmond is well known as a metaphysician and philosopher of religion.聽
鈥淏ut Desmond鈥檚 first love was poetry, and he frequently writes about literature, art, and aesthetics.聽I published a book in 2022 titled,聽鈥榃onder Strikes: Approaching Aesthetics and Literature with William Desmond,鈥檛o explore and develop this dimension of his thought. Since then, I鈥檝e corresponded with other scholars who are interested in Desmond and literary studies, so I decided to further the conversation by editing a collection of their essays.聽There are chapters by Cyril O鈥橰egan and Caitlin Smith Gilson that explore how, for Desmond, philosophers need a poetic register to convey the richness of experience and of being.聽There is a chapter by Takeshi Morisato that brings Desmond into conversation with the Japanese philosophers of the Kyoto School on aesthetic matters.聽And there are several chapters that use Desmond鈥檚 philosophical ideas to approach classic works of literature.聽For instance, Erik van Versendaal writes about forgiveness in Shakespeare, while Dwight Lindley writes about redemptive humor in Dickens.聽Desmond provides the final essay in the volume, which is about the equivocal place of religion in the poetry of Seamus Heaney and Thomas Kinsella.鈥�
The book, published by Wipf and Stock Publishers, may be purchased through their .
