Synopsis: |
The present volume is one of a series of poetic journals, kept by the author since 1980. It covers the period 1984-1988, in which year Dr James Hogg published the English verse written up till then (the Welsh was handled separately, in Wales). Being based in Salzburg, he inserted the verse written in the Carthusian period (1976-1984) in the Analecta Cartusiana collection, edited in that city, and that written in the Trappist period (1984-1986) in the Salzburg Studies in English and American Literature series. This would explain how the attention of one of his most promising students was drawn to the recent publications in the late eighties. Eva Morwald decided to concentrate on this work for the purpose of her doctoral thesis, which she successfully completed, defended and published at Salzburg University, under the guidance of Dr Hogg. She travelled to Wales to pursue the subject in greater depth and to situate it in its cultural context. The result was an impressive work of scholarship, which might bear reprinting, as it handles many issues, both literary and spiritual, with great competence.The current volume covers the period of Cistercian life and the short period of searching in Wales and England that followed. It is hoped to reprint shortly the volume that takes up where this leaves off, and which leads back to a Celtic context, in Wales and Ireland, whither he was sent by his good spiritual father, the late Dr John Ryan, OMI, a scholar of Welsh and Irish spirituality, whose chalice was passed onto him after his death. |