Theopoetics: si(g)ns of copulation.

Theopoetics: si(g)ns of copulation. What theology needs is more copulation. And postmodern theopoeticsmay well provide it. The word copulation, of course, denotes coupling: the bringingtogether and/or union of two things. The related words"copula" and "copulative" are grammatical terms,used to describe the linking of elements in a sentence. How unfortunate,then, that the fertile term copulation has been reduced in meaning,often with the limited connotation of animal(istic) sex. In the sixteenth century, however, copulation was still robust, theword used not only for sex and grammar, but also for theology. The OEDexemplifies the word's breadth with an illustration from 1548:"The wonderful copulation of the sayed nature vnto ours by hisincarnation." The dictionary's example from 1623 implies thatthe copulation of divine and human in the Christ-event elicitscopulation on the part of Christ's followers: "The copulationof a living faith and obedience together." In this essay, I will argue that theopoetics, if truly postmodern,returns us to the copulation of living faith and obedience--if even indifferent terms than dreamt of in the philosophy of 1623, a yeartremendously significant to any authentic lover of poetics. For 1623 isthe publication date of the First Folio of Shakespeare's works. My allusion to this definitive text of Western poetics, whereinappears "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Thanare dreamt of in your philosophy," has a purpose. There is, as itwere, method to my madness. For by aligning the "authentic"with the First Folio, I intentionally signal a failure of copulation. Ihave overpowered theology with a narrow definition of poetics, assumingthat knowledge of practitioners in my discipline, literary studies,instantiates authenticity. Something similar tempts theologians drawn to theopoetics: byignoring the copulation signaled by the term theopoetics--the couplingof Greek roots for god and to make--some reduce theology to poeticalpractices. In contrast, I will encourage the copulation inherent topostmodern theopoetics, distinguishing it from the onanism oftheopoetics in a modernist style. I will then illustrate postmoderntheopoetics with the creativity of Dorothy L. Sayers, a theopoet aheadof her time. Modernist versus postmodern poetic practices My distinction between modernist and postmodern theopoeticsparallels the difference between high modernist and postmodern attitudesabout poetry. Central to the distinction is the concept of autonomy.High modernism was spawned by the copulation of Cartesian rationalismand Lockean empiricism in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who definedenlightenment as "the courage to use your own intelligence."As Stanley Grenz once put it, Kant "believed that the burden ofdiscovering truth is ultimately a private matter, that the knowingprocess is fundamentally a relationship between the autonomous knowingself and the world waiting to be known." (1) While Kant privileged reason as the engine driving the autonomousknowing self, the 19th century Romantic poets elevated imagination asthe primary power energizing the autonomous perceiver. By the 20thcentury, autonomy was associated with the poetic artifact itself. In the1950s, novelist E. M. Forster asserted that a true poem "points tonothing but itself," while literary critic Northrop Fry proclaimedthe importance "of producing a structure of words for its ownsake," calling such a structure "autonomous." (2) Even poetic style was meant to be autonomous, as implied by the20th century neologism "free verse." Entering the Englishlanguage in 1908, free verse was a translation of the French vers libre,first used in 1902 (OED). Modernist advocates of free verse eschewedconventional forms like the sonnet or the sestina, refusing to followany rhyme scheme or pre-established rhythm whatsoever. Ezra Pound, whose1914 anthology Des Imagistes became the cynosure of the new poetics,preached a principle that became the creed of high modernism: "MakeIt New!" By celebrating free verse as free from the prejudice oftraditional styles, Pound illustrates Gadamer's famous aphorismabout modernism: "the prejudice against prejudice." Dominatingpoetics for much of the twentieth century, "Make It New"became the modernist tradition against tradition. Postmodernism, of course, problematized this tradition.Establishing that all practices--whether poetic, scientific, historical,political, or theological--are embedded in and molded by the prejudicesof discourse, postmodern theorists subverted the autonomy ofmake-it-newism with language about deconstruction (Derrida), power(Foucault), metanarratives (Lyotard), the law of the father (Lacan),rhizomes (Deleuze and Guattari), hybridity (Bhaba), performativity(Butler), and the contingency of our vocabularies (Rorty). Developing alongside these postmodern paradigms was a literarymovement called "The New formalism": a movement that returnedpoetics to tradition. In 1968, the year that Roland Barthes published"The Death of the Author" and Foucault published "What Isan Author?"--both of which challenged the modernist mystificationof autonomy--poet Lewis Turco published The Book of Forms: A Handbook ofPoetics. Generating as much disgust among modernists as did Barthes andFoucault, Turco resurrected rhyme and meter as well as traditionalpoetic forms like the highly complex villanelle and sestina. Modernist versus postmodern theopoetics The division within 20th century poetics between modernist autonomyand postmodern embeddedness is mirrored in 21st century theopoetics.Some practitioners, manifesting a prejudice against prejudice,perpetuate the tradition against tradition as they seek to Make God New.For them, any poem, song, or dance becomes theological if it is freshlycreated--or received--with spiritual intent and/or openness to mystery.Like free verse, theopoetics thus becomes an autonomous work oftheology. Significantly high modernists sanctified free verse as havingdivine status, as when E. M. Forster proclaimed "A poem isabsolute. ... it is eternal and indestructible." Literary critic I.A. Richards went so far as to say that poetry is "capable of savingus; it is a perfectly possible means of overcoming chaos":theopoetics in a modernist key. (3) In contrast, theopoetics fully informed by postmodern theoryrefuses to mystify the making-new--just as it refuses to mystify theancient-made. Recognizing that no human has unmediated access toabsolute truth, genuinely postmodern theopoets--similar to NewFormalists--embrace tradition, accepting their indebtedness to ancientforms even as they work to re-form them. Rather than the arrogant (andnaive) autonomy of the make-it-new creed, postmodern theopoeticscelebrates the copulation of past and present, tradition and change,theo and poetics. Postmodern copulation: Richard Rorty and tradition(ing) The postmodern theopoet incarnates what Richard Rorty calls"the vanguard of the species": the "strong poet."(4) In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Rorty argues for discursivedeterminism, wherein a society's perceptions and practices areregulated by the language its members speak--a vocabulary that isentirely arbitrary, without any grounding in or direct access to truth.Strong poets, however, recognizing the contingency of theirsociety's vocabulary, work to ironize it, drawing attention to itsinsufficiencies and its regulatory powers by creating metaphors thatcapture human experience in new ways. Copulating linguistic determinismwith free will, then, strong poets squeeze the language constitutive oftheir own knowledge into unusual molds, creating forms that reflect oldand new at once. Church historian Dale T. Irvin illustrated the strong poet when hecoined the term "traditioning," squeezing a staticnoun--tradition--into the mold of a dynamic gerund: traditioning. Bysignaling a "dialogical relationship between present andpast," the coinage avoids mystifying either tradition oranti-tradition: "Both those who hold to the detraditionalizationthesis and those who support the notion of traditions being unchangingand unchangeably given, fail to recognize the dynamic process ofrejuvenation and re-creation that has taken place across the centuriesand continues today to give traditions ongoing life." (5)Copulating past and present, stasis and change, Irvin's theopoeticinvention challenges fundamentalists on both the right and left: fromtraditionalists who revile change to modernists who revile tradition. Like postmodern theopoetics, traditioning is a "constructiveactivity," expressing ancient truths in new ways, making themrelevant to and for contemporary culture.(6) However, as with anychange, there is always a risk to traditioning, as indicated by theetymology of the word. Coming from the Latin traditio, the wordtradition means "the 'handing over'" and containsconnotations of betrayal, as in the related words "traitor"and "traduce." When one generation "hands over" atradition to another, the earlier group no longer has control of it,allowing for the possibility of change to and hence betrayal of ancientinterpretations. The Greek word for "handing over"--paradidomi--is used inthe Christian Scriptures to signal radically different events. Notsurprisingly, it describes the actions of Judas and Pilate as they handover Jesus to his murderers. But, as Irvin notes, "the same verb(or its cognates) names the process of passing on authentic memory ofJesus Christ, and hence of Christian identity from one group of personsor one generation to another." (7) These two senses come togetherin one of the most familiar passages in the New Testament. Providinginstructions for the Lord's Supper, Paul writes to the Corinthians,"For I received from the Lord what I also handed on [paredoka] toyou, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed [paredideto]took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it andsaid, 'This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance ofme'" (I Cor 11: 23-24). Paul's pun, whether intentionalor not, implies that the tradition he is handing over is meaningful notin spite of but because of what happened after the supper in the upperroom: Jesus was handed over to his enemies. The etymological connection between tradition and betrayal leadsIrvin to an interesting conclusion: In every act of authentic traditioning there remains something of an act of treason, otherwise it would not be an authentic act of handing over, of change. Without a bit of treason performed in the act of handing over, the tradition remains inseparably bound to the world in which it was formed, hence not only irrelevant but incomprehensible. (8) Christian playwright Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) provides aperfect illustration of Irvin's point: in 1941 she was quiteliterally accused of treason for her theopoetic efforts. (9) The treason of Dorothy L. Sayers In 1940, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) askedSayers--by then a famous detective fiction novelist--to write a seriesof twelve radio plays about the life of Jesus. Quite earnest in hercommitment to both theo and poetics, Sayers agreed to the project,deciding to "hand over"--in both senses--the ancient story ofChrist's bodily resurrection. In December of 1941, the BBC held apress conference in which Sayers read passages from her finished work.Journalists pounced on her abnormal language, embellishing the fact thatSayers put slang--worse, American slang (!)--into disciples'mouths. As one headline put it, "BBC Life of Christ Play in U.S.Slang." In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty distinguishes between"abnormal" and "normal" language, explaining thatthe abnormal occurs when someone sets aside "an agreed-upon set ofconventions."(10) So when Sayers set aside the normal"stained-glass-window decorum with which the tale [of Jesus] isusually presented to us," as she puts it in her introduction to theprinted play-cycle, (11) she fulfilled Rorty's sense of the strongpoet: "The line between weakness and strength is ... the linebetween using language which is familiar and universal and producinglanguage which, though initially unfamiliar and idiosyncratic, somehowmakes tangible the blind impress all one's behavings bear."(12) Unfortunately, when it comes to religion and politics, many people,on both the right and the left, are blind to the impress of discourse ontheir behavior. They can assess someone's correctness--whetherpolitical or religious--only by hearing "language which isfamiliar." Sayers's abnormal language therefore created anational scandal. Organizations like The Protestant Truth Society andThe Lord's Day Observance Society mounted a letter-writingcampaign, petitioning Winston Churchill and the Archbishop of Canterburyto ban the broadcasts. In the protesters' minds, Sayers'stheopoetic re-scripting of the Bible was a betrayal of the"Authorized Version" of truth. One critic went so far as toalign Sayers's "handing over" with current events ofWorld War II. Suggesting that Singapore fell to the Axis powers becauseof the BBC broadcast, he demanded that the plays be taken off the air"before a like fate came to Australia." (13) Sayers'spoetic rendering of the biblical text was, for him, treasonous. Herfertile "copulation of a living faith and obedience together"was adulterous. Fortunately, the BBC resisted tremendous pressure to cancel theradio productions--and certainly benefited from the free advertising.Sayers's plays were broadcast as scheduled, thousands of peopletuning in precisely because of the scandal. What they got wastheopoetics. Though Sayers received numerous "abusive anonymousletters"--one addressing her "You nasty oldsour-puss"(14)--she also heard from scores of listeners whotestified that, for the first time in their lives, the Bible made senseto them, that they finally understood how following Jesus could berelevant to regular slang-slinging, working-class individuals likethemselves. (15) The handing over of Judas Accusations of treason generated by Sayers's radio plays wereanticipated, ironically enough, by one of her cycle's keycharacters. In the eighth play, Sayers establishes that the fatal flawof Judas was his insensitivity to theopoetics. As she notes in theintroduction to the published cycle, "simple-minded people"who regard Judas as a "creeping, crawling, patently worthlessvillain," end up "cast[ing] too grave a slur upon the brainsor the character of Jesus." (16) In other words, radicalvilification of Judas implies that Jesus was either too naive torecognize his follower's evil intentions, or else too manipulative(using an evil man to achieve his purposes) to warrant our respect. Sayers therefore makes Judas "the most intelligent of all thedisciples," fully understanding and intensely devoted to hisLord's sacrificial mission. (17) Grasping the significance of Jesusbetter than any other disciple, Judas's strength, however, becomeshis greatest weakness: his passionate commitment to Christ turns intocertitude about his ability to understand the word of God. He becomes socommitted to his own interpretation of sacred truth that he accusesJesus of treason when the latter acts differently than Judasanticipated. Sayers's Judas loses confidence in Jesus during the TriumphalEntry. Seeing jubilant crowds wave palm branches and shout"Hosanna" as Jesus rides an ass into Jerusalem, Judas comes tothe conclusion that his one-time Lord has "sold himself" to apolitical revolution. Out of commitment to "the truth," then,Judas willingly betrays his leader, telling Caiaphas, "Jesus iscorrupt to the bone. [ ... ]I believed in his pretensions. I supportedhis claim. [ ... ]I sincerely thought he had sufficient character toresist temptation. I suppose I was a fool to trust him." (18) Ironically, the actions that Judas regarded as signs of corruptionactually prove the purity of Christ's purposes. In Sayers'sfictionalized scenario, Judas does not know that, earlier in the day,Jesus had received a note from "Baruch the Zealot," stating. In the stable of Zimri, at the going-up into the City, is a war-horse saddled and ready. Set yourself upon him, and you shall ride into Jerusalem with a thousand spears behind you. But if you refuse, then take the ass's colt that is tied at the vineyard door, and Baruch will bide his time till a bolder Messiah come. (203) By choosing the ass's colt, then, Jesus was refusing toinstigate a political revolution. His decision to follow a God of peacerather than a lord of war leads to the cross rather than a coup, toresurrection rather than insurrection. In her theopoetic reconstruction of biblical events, then, Sayershonors tradition even while establishing that arrogant certitude abouttruth betrays Jesus. Confident that he understood the will of God, Judasrejected the copulation of theo and poetics in Christ. Copulating Marys Sayers makes such copulation explicit in her treatment of theiconic figure who, within the Roman Catholic tradition, resists allcopulation: the Virgin Mary. As though alluding to the OED's 1548example--"The wonderful copulation of the sayed nature vnto ours byhis incarnation"--Sayers calls Mary "fact" and God"truth," asserting that literal body (fact) and figurativemeaning (truth) were united through the incarnation. In the eleventhradio-play, the Virgin states, "I, Mary, am the fact; God is thetruth; but Jesus is fact and truth--he is reality. You cannot see theimmortal truth till it is born in the flesh of the fact" (289).This last sentence provides a motivation for theopoetic copulation:immortal truth, like the transcendental signified, is always alreadyinaccessible to mortal flesh. Truth, conceived through tradition, mustbe born in the flesh--either through praxis or poetics: the practice oflove or the making of beauty. And Sayers implies that the copulation oftruth and fact in the Virgin's womb created both. Witnessing theharrowing events on the Via Dolorosa, the Virgin moans, "This isthe worst thing; to conceive beauty in your heart and bring it forthinto the world, and then to stand by helpless and watch it suffer"as it embodies an act of love (289). Furthermore, Sayers establishes that the Virgin can reach the siteof that act--the cross--only by way of beauty. When Roman soldiersprevent the Madonna, John, and Mary Magdalen from approaching the dyingJesus, the character traditionally aligned with sexual copulationcreates art. (19) Removing her veil and unpinning her red hair, Magdalaseeks access to Christ by singing and dancing for soldiers she had onceentertained more salaciously: "By the feet that danced for you, bythe voice that sang for you, by the beauty that delightedyou--Marcellus, let me pass!" Resisting her overtures, Marcellusdismisses any connection between beauty and Jesus: "Beauty!that's for living men. What is this dying gallows bird toyou?" (298). Magdala, however, had already provided an answer inthe previous scene. Seeing Jesus bloodied by torture, she describes himin terms of beauty: "O swift feet! O strong hands! O face that wasthe beauty of Israel! Where are the lips that laughed away our sorrow?Where is the voice that called back Lazarus from the grave?"(291-2). The erotic tinge of Magdala's words reflects Sayers'spoint: that Magdala renounces a life of superficial sexual copulation inrecognition of the far more provocative beauty of copulation in Christ:"the copulation of a living faith and obedience together."Moved by this beauty, Magdala continues performing for Roman soldiers,until the beauty of her art opens a passageway to Jesus--not only forherself but also for those accompanying her. So also the beauty of Sayers's art created a passageway toJesus for hundreds of BBC listeners who had once regarded Christiantradition with indifference if not disdain. They clearly valuedSayers's imaginative reconstruction of the Christ-event, hercopulation of theo and poetics, of truth and fact. As Sayers puts it ina 1942 lecture, the "function of imaginative speech is not toprove, but to create--to discover new similarities and to arrange themto form new unities."(20) Those traditionalists who reviled her imaginative speech thereforemimicked her Caiaphas, who, in the eleventh play, states, "It isthe duty of statesmen to destroy the madness which we call imagination.It is dangerous. It breeds dissension. Peace, order, security--that isRome's offer--at Rome's price" (296-97). The theopoet, incontrast, refuses hegemonic offers of order and security, of certitudeand stability. Significantly, Sayers aligns Caiaphas with the hegemonic forces ofher own day. In her introduction to the published version of the plays,The Man Born to Be King, Sayers writes, "Caiaphas was theecclesiastical politician, appointed, like one of Hitler's bishops,by a heathen government, expressly that he might collaborate with theNew Order and see that the Church toed the line drawn by the State; wehave seen something of Caiaphas lately" (7). Sayers'sreference to the New Order suggests her own suspicions about modernistmake-it-newism, Hitler providing an extreme example. Aware of the manwho coined "Make It New" (the love of her life was publishedin Des Imagistes), Sayers would not have been surprised to discover thatEzra Pound became an emphatic supporter of Mussolini. In contrast, Sayers so renounced certitude that she turned down anhonorary doctorate in divinity with the words, "I am never quitesure whether I really am [a Christian], or whether I have only fallen inlove with an intellectual pattern." (21) Ironically somebiographers suggest that Sayers turned down the honor because of si(g)nsof copulation in her body. In 1924, as the result of an extra-maritalaffair, Sayers gave birth to a son, whom she supported her entire lifebut whose existence she hid from all friends and family except thecousin who raised the boy for her. Her illicit copulation, biographersargue, made Sayers feel unworthy of a doctorate in divinity. (22) I, however, believe that copulation of another sort engenderedSaycrs's resistance to the doctorate. Like another prophet oftheopoetics, Sayers had suspicions about the copula. Copulating Dorothy Sayers and Jacques Derrida Born just as Sayers was achieving financial independence as abest-selling author, Jacques Derrida, that pre-eminent prophet ofpostmodern theopoetics, also combated certitude through copulation. Hedid so by questioning copulative grammar, problematizing the copula--theto-be verb--itself. By putting an X over the copula "is" insome of his early writings, Derrida subverted the universalizingcertitude of the to-be verb as it couples a subject with a predicate.(23) For example, if I were to proclaim "killing is wrong,"someone might protest, "Well, it depends on the context. What aboutkilling perpetrators of genocide? What about killing in self-defense?What about killing chickens for food? What about killing a news storythat has proven inaccurate?" Such questions demonstrate that my"is," the copula of my sentence, does not capture the completetruth. Indeed, the word "killing," as Saussure has taught us,is inevitably embedded in larger systems of signification. In responseto these protests, then, I could follow the lead of Derrida by puttingan "X" over my "to be" verb: Killing is wrong By doing so, I put my copula "under erasure."(24) Inother words, I do not suddenly reverse myself by saying "Killing isnot wrong." Instead, I hold onto my belief--killing is wrong--evenas I signal, with an X, that changes in context qualify my belief. And,of course, changes in culture over time count as changes in context. Thus, just as Sayers qualified her Christianity by proclaiming"I am never quite sure whether I really am one," Derridaqualified his atheism by proclaiming "I rightly pass for anatheist." (25) Rather than stating "I am an atheist," heavoids the "to be" verb altogether. By using the word"pass" rather than a copula, Derrida implies that signs ofatheism in his life are only on the surface--as when a light-skinnedAfrican-American "passes" as a Caucasian. However, at the sametime, his word "rightly" implies that his signs of atheism maybe accurate. Derrida thus asserts his inclination toward atheism whilealso putting it under erasure, indicating that he is open to somethingatheists consider impossible: God. (26) Putting the copula under erasure signals "openness toward theother": the fundamental ethic of postmodernism and hence ofpostmodern theopoetics. (27) Unfortunately many of Derrida'sfollowers practiced theopoetics of the modernist kind. As postmoderntheologian Mark C. Taylor notes in his obituary, "Betraying Mr.Derrida's insights by creating a culture of political correctness,his self-styled supporters fueled the culture wars that have been ragingfor more than two decades and continue to frame political debate."In contrast, Derrida argued that "it is necessary to recognize theunavoidable limitations and inherent contradictions in the ideas andnorms that guide our actions, and do so in a way that keeps them open toconstant questioning and continual revision. (28) For Dorothy Sayers, Church dogma offers the ideas and norms thatguide Christian actions--ideas and norms that she questioned and revisedthrough the poetics of theater. As she emphatically asserted in heressay "The Dogma Is the Drama," Let us, in Heaven's name, drag out the Divine Drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction. If the pious are the first to be shocked, so much the worse for the pious--others will enter the Kingdom of Heaven before them. (29) Sayers recognized that dogma, like drama, becomes rote whenparticipants reiterate their scripts to the point of unthinkingreiteration of diction and unreflective miming of gestures. Groupsolidarity can solidify dogma into dogmatism, such that protecting thescript becomes an end in itself. Sayers advocated, instead, "creative mind," going so faras to argue that humans are most godlike when they create. Inspired bythe tradition of the imago Dei, Sayers wrote The Mind of the Maker in1940 as an exploration of what it means to be created in the image ofGod (Genesis 1:27). She quotes from Nicholas Berdyaev's The Destinyof Man (1931) to summarize her views: God created man in his own image and likeness, i.e., made him. a creator too, calling him to free spontaneous activity and not to formal obedience to His power. Free creativeness is the creature's answer to the great call of its creator. (30) Berdyaev's words, once rid of gender exclusivity, might helptheorize a postmodern theopoetic, in which the "creative act,"as Sayers puts it, offers "a kind of illumination upon the varietyand inconclusiveness of the world about us." (31) It is because of this inconclusiveness that Sayers saw the need tocopulate theo, as conceptualized in traditional dogma, with poetics:"Poets create, we may say, by building up new images, newintellectual concepts, new worlds, if you like, to form new consistentwholes, new unities out of diversity."(32) Practicing what shepreaches, Sayers rewrote that familiar statement of Jesus, "In myfather's house are many mansions" (John 14:2), to emphasizethe "building up" of new images. In Man Born to Be King, shehas Jesus tell his disciples, "There are many inns on the road tomy Father's house. I am going ahead to prepare the lodgings foryou. You will always find me there to welcome you, so that at each stagewe shall be together." (33) Theopoets, then, might beconceptualized as architects and carpenters constructing the many innson the road to God. Like Rorty's strong poet, theopoets develop new metaphors whenthe old ones become (to quote from the First Folio) "stale, flat,and unprofitable." Significantly, the character who mouthed thesewords, Hamlet, famously struggled with copulation, from exhorting hismother to stop copulating with King Claudius to asking that importantquestion: "To be or not to be." Sayers, from the right, like Derrida from the left, might answer"the question" by substituting and for Hamlet's or, thuscopulating to be and not to be. Putting the copula under erasure in thisway, they would unite "is" with "is not"--as when wecopulate the everlasting "is" of theo with the reconstructive"is not" of poetics. Notes (1.) Immanuel Kant, "What Is Enlightenment?" in ThePhilosophy of Kant, ed. Karl J. Friedrich (New York: Modern Library,1993), p. 145. Stanley Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids,MI: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 80. (2.) E. M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy (New York: Harcourt,1951), p. 82; Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: hour Essays(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 74. (3.) Forster, p. 82; I. A. Richards, Science and Poetry (New York:Norton, 1921), p. 95. (4.) Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 20, 53. Rorty borrows the term"strong poet" from literary critic Harold Bloom. (5.) Dale T. Irvin, Christian Histories, Christian Traditioning:Rendering Accounts (Maryknool, NY: Orbis, 1998), pp. 14, 9. (6.) Ibid., p. 29. (7.) Ibid., p. 40. Irvin refers his readers to Matt 26:25, Mark14:21, Luke 22:21. Acts 3:13 and 6:14, and 2 Peter 2:21 for cognates ofparadidomi. (8.) Ibid., p. 41. (9.) For an extended discussion of Sayers's traditioning, seemy book Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L. Sayers (New York:Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), especially Chapter Five. I insert severalsentences from my book in what follows. (10.) Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature(Princeton, Nj: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 320. (11.) Dorothy I. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King: A Play-Cycle onthe life of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, MI:Eerdmans, 1979), p. 6. (12.) Rorty, Contingency, pp. 28-29. (13.) James W. Welch, "Forward," The Man Born to Be King,by Dorothy L. Sayers (London: Gollancz, 1946), p. 15. (14.) The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, '1937 to 1943: FromNovelist to Playwright, ed. Barbara Reynolds (New York: St. Martins,1997), pp. 375, 377. (15.) Listeners also benefited from the professionalism of theproduction, As I note elsewhere, "the producer was the brilliantVal Gielgud, brother of the famous actor Sir John Gielgud; Mary Magdalenwas played by a young Hermione Gingold, perhaps best known for hersuperb role as the priggish mayor's wife in the classic film TheMusic Man (1962); and the music was composed by Benjamin Britten (whomSayers called an "ASS"--but that is a different story)."See Crystal Downing, "The Bible as Babel: The Suspicions of DorothyL, Sayers," in From Around the Globe: Secular Authors and BiblicalPerspectives, ed. Seodial Frank H. Deena and Karoline Szatek (New York:University Press of America, 2007), p. 13. (16.) Sayers, Man Born to Be King, p. 15. (17.) Ibid., p. 52. (18.) Ibid., p. 220. (19.) In her introduction to the published cycle, Sayers explainsthat she coalesces Mary Magdalen with Mary of Bethany art the sinner ofLuke 7. She justifies the gesture by copulating tradition with the needsof art: "This identification is, of course, traditional, and issanctioned by the authority of St. Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregorythe Great. ... The number of persons who flit, unheralded and unpursued,through the pages of the Gospel is enormous; and every legitimateopportunity was taken of tightening up the dramatic constructionavoiding the unnecessary multiplication of characters." Man Bom, p.16. (20.) Dorothy L. Sayers, "Creative Mind," The WhimsicalChristian: 18 Essays by Dorothy L. Sayers (New York; Macmillan, 1978),p. 109. (21.) The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, p. 429. (22.) This is most especially pronounced in James Brabazon, DorothyL. Sayers: A Biography (New York: Scribner's, 1981). For adiscussion of the post-structuralist implications of this, and other,biographies about Sayers, see chapter one of my Writing Performances. (23.) Following the practice of Heidegger, Derrida put the copulaunder erasure to indicate the inability of any language to fully capturetruth, to deliver a "metaphysics of presence." For an exampleof "X-ing" out the copula, see Jacques Derrida, OfGrammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1974), p. 44. Derrida grapples withphilosophical implications of the copula in his 1971 essay "TheSupplement of Copula: Philosophy before Linguistics," republishedin Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 175-205. (24.) Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 60. (25.) Jacques Derrida, "Circumfession," in JacquesDerrida, ed. Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 155. (26.) For a helpful discussion of the theological implications ofDerrida's "impossible," see Richard Kearney,"Deconstruction, God, and the Possible," in Derrida andReligion: Other Testaments, ed. Yvonne Sherwood and Kevin Hart (NewYork: Routledge, 2005), pp. 297-307. (27.) Qtd. in "Dialogue with Jacques Derrida," inDialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The PhenomenologicalHeritage, ed. Richard Kearney (Manchester, UK: Manchester UniversityPress, 1984), 124. (28.) Mark C. Taylor, "What Derrida Really Meant," NYTimes, 14 October 2004, A29. (29.) Sayers, "The Dogma Is the Drama," in Creed orChaos? (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute, 1974), p. 24. (30.) Qtd. in Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1941), p. 61. (31.) Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, p. 52. (32.) Sayers, "Creative Mind," p. 99. (33.) Sayers, Man Born to Be King, p. 241.