KADOC Studies on Religion, Culture and Society, 7


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Overview
	The Maritain Factor Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism
	KADOC-Studies on Religion, Culture and Society 7
	Rajesh Heynickx & Jan De Maeyer eds.
	During the 1920s and 1930s many European modernist artists and intellectuals were seeking a primordial finality in Catholicism. In order to distil the eternal from the transitory, they became fascinated by a thought frame promoted by the French philosopher Jacques Maritain: neo-Thomism, a revival of the study of the principles and methodology of the thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas. The French poet and surrealist filmmaker Jean Cocteau converted to Catholicism under the influence of Maritain. For the painters Gino Severini, a pioneer of futurism, and Otto van Rees, one of the first Dadaists, Maritain played the role of spiritual counsellor. And when the promotor of abstract art Michel Seuphor embraced Catholic faith in the 1930s, he too had extensive contact with Maritain. For all of them, the dictum of the Irish poet Brian Coffey, once a doctoral student under Maritain, applied: modern art needs a Thomistic conceptual framework. However, the contributions in The Maritain Factor show that Maritain's theories also provoked some irritation, and not just admiration, Walter Benjamin, for example, could only look at Maritain as a charlatan who was out to place modern art under the bell-jar of Catholicism. Studies on interwar modernist aesthetics have been insensitive to traditional refrence frames for too long. The Maritain Factor argues that we should not restrict our gaze to a rigid opposition between modern developments and long-established, inherited ways of thinking. It is necessary to extend our horizon to the adaptability within modernism. Moreover, by studying the reception and perception of Maritain this volume demonstrates that Catholic thought was not just one aspect of the manifold varieties of discourses and practices that modernism consisted of. It often offered a basis to 'organise' or 'structure' this multiplicity and thus constitued interwar modernism in many ways.
	Engelse abstract
	On the Road with Maritain. European Modernist Art Circles and Neo-Thomism during the Interwar Rajesh Heynickx PROFILING MARITAIN The Rise of a Mystic Modernism. Maritain and the Sacrificed Generation of the Twenties Stephen Schloesser Circles and Institutions. The Neo-Thomistic Infrastructure Philippe Chenaux GRANDES AMITIES Similarity and Incompatibility. The Aesthetics of Michel Seuphor and Jacques Maritain Rajesh Heynickx Towards a Modern Religious Art. The Case of Albert Servaes Jan De Maeyer Maritain in the Netherlands Pieter van der Meer de Walcheren and the Cult of Youth Mathijs Sanders Codifying Literature? Maritain and the Catholic Writers of Francophone Belgium Cécile Vanderpelen-Diagre Gino Severini, a Classicist Futurist Zoë Marie Jones CONFRONTATIONS Same City, Another Universe. On Jacques Maritain and Walter Benjamin Stéphane Symons Brian Coffey, Jacques Maritain and the Recovery of the "Thing" James Matthew Wilson Debating Literary Autonomy. Jacques Maritain versus André Gide Michael Einfalt Mystic Modernism and Politics. Jacques Maritain, Joseph Roth and Anton van Duinkeren Ewoud Kieft "The Just Impartiality of a Christian Philosopher". Jacques Maritain and T.S. Eliot Jason Harding Bibliography Index Contributors Colophon
	Size: 212 pages Format: 23,5 x 17,5 cm Price: € 32,50 ISBN 978 90 5867 714 3

On the Road with Maritain. European Modernist Art Circles and Neo-Thomism during the Interwar Rajesh Heynickx

PROFILING MARITAIN

GRANDES AMITIES

CONFRONTATIONS

Bibliography

Index

Contributors

Colophon

On the Road with Maritain. European Modernist Art Circles and Neo-Thomism during the Interwar
Rajesh Heynickx