Publisher's Synopsis
Offers a learned and yet playful post-modern re-appropriation and reanimation of two central Christian themes: Christ's descent into hell and the resurrection of the dead. The move from a theological to a theo-poetical perspective reveals the pervasive archetypal anxieties and hopes that underlie the traditional dogmas and enables us to recognise how central these same motifs are in Greek mythology and in some of the most powerful twentieth-century poetry. We may be amazed to discover how these seemingly obsolete notions, if understood metaphorically rather than literally, can illuminate and deepen our own experiences of despair and of living with "ghosts" from our past that seemingly will not let us go.
