John Henry Newman and the Imagination

For John Henry Newman, religion is animated by an imaginative 'master vision' which 'supplies the mind with spiritual life and peace'. All his life, Newman reflected on this 'master vision'. His reflections on the moral imagination developed out of his understanding of practical wisdom, as characterized by Aristotle – the wisdom that 'the good man' has in living a good life. For Newman, the vision at the core of religion completes and perfects the intuitions of the conscience. John Henry Newman and the Imagination looks at how Newman's understanding of the moral and visionary imagination developed over the course of his life; and it relates his ideas about the imagination to his portrayals of religious experience, and vision, in his novels and poetry.

Table of Contents:
Part I: PERSONAL VISIONS: THE 1830sChapter 1: Faith, 'Practical Perception' and Phronesis Chapter 2: Conscience and 'the Love of the Beautiful' Part II: THE VISION OF THE CHURCH: THE 1830s AND 1840s Chapter 3: 'A Work to Do in England' Chapter 4: The 'Impression' of Christ Chapter 5: The Pursuit of Truth Part III: THE VIRTUE OF FAITH AND THE VIRTUES OF CIVILIZATION: THE 1840s AND 1850s Chapter 6: The Virtue of Faith Chapter 7: Faith and Civilization Part IV: REAL VISIONS: THE 1860s AND 1870s Chapter 8: The Imagination and the 'Metropolitan Intellect' Chapter 9: Ex Umbris et Imaginibus in Veritatem

About the Author :
Bernard Dive is a freelance editor and writer; he edited Through the Year with Newman, an anthology of Newman's writings. He has degrees in English and Theology and a Ph.D in English from the University of Cambridge.

Review :
Dive's interdisciplinary dialogue succeeds in presenting a cumulative picture of the English cardinal on the imagination. The work includes splendid vignettes on poetical vision … Each section is richly informative … Dive raises important questions for the contemporary discourse on the Catholic imagination, drawing attention to the practical import and the spirituality of image. Bernard Dive has written a clear, perceptive, valuable, and timely guide to the intersection of expanding fields of contemporary research and wider public interest: the subtle insights of Bl. John Henry Newman, and the philosophies of metaphor and the imagination. This superb book catalyses new understanding for scholarship and personal growth. This is a rich, illuminating, and supremely well-informed study of Newman's imaginative mind. It is, moreover, the finest book on Blessed John Henry I have read. Newman's mind was one of the most extraordinary of the European nineteenth century. This book examines in close detail the development of his ideas, philosophical, theological and psychological – the strands never separate – from his first book and the sermons of his youth as an Anglican priest to the complexities of A Grammar of Assent, the masterpiece of his Catholic maturity. Bernard Dive sheds most welcome light on the creative originality of Newman's writing, and in particular on his use of the key terms, of which 'imagination' is only one, with which he lived and thought for decades. Those interested in, and perhaps puzzled by, Newman will find their understanding much enriched by Dr Dive's work.