"What has Jesus Christ to do with English literature?" ask David Lyle Jeffrey and Gregory Maillet in this insightful survey. First and foremost, they reply, many of the world's best authors of literature in English were formed--for better or worse--by the Christian tradition. Then too, many of the most recognized aesthetic literary forms derive from biblical exemplars. And finally, many great works of literature demand of readers evaluative judgments of the good, the true and the beautiful that can only rightly be understood within a Christian worldview. In this book Jeffrey and Maillet offer a feast of theoretical and practical discernment. After an examination of literature and truth, theological aesthetics, and the literary character of the Bible, they turn to a brief survey of literature from medieval times to the present, highlighting distinctively Christian themes and judgments. In a concluding chapter they suggest a path for budding literary critics through the...

This second collection of poems by David Lyle Jeffrey has two parts. In the first the primary imaginative world is biblical. How might those who witnessed the judgment of God or the miracles of Jesus first-hand have reacted to what they saw and heard? The Bible itself is typically terse, leaving gaps--but also hints--that prompt wonder. In the second part, a gathering of miscellaneous poems, are personal reflections, sometimes whimsical, on special gifts of grace received in the twilight of life.