New Books in Critical Theory Kevin Hart, "Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Feb 5, 2026
Kevin Hart, Jo Rae Wright University Distinguished Professor at Duke Divinity School and author of Lands of Likeness, explores a hermeneutic of contemplation rooted in theology, poetry, and philosophy. He traces contemplative reading from Augustine and the Romantics to Husserl and modern poets. The conversation highlights contemplation versus suspicion, phenomenology, poetic attention, and the discipline of slow, attentive reading.
01:17:43
Poetry As A Land Of Likeness
- Contemplation connects philosophy, theology, and poetry through shared modes of attention and comparison.
- Poems are literal "lands of likeness" because they compose meaning by saying X is Y or X is like Y.
Gifford Invitation In The Morning
- Hart recalls checking the Gifford Lectures invitation on his phone early in the morning and then going back to sleep.
- He then worried about fitting natural theology into his work and chose contemplation as the connecting theme.
Hermeneutic Of Contemplation
- Hart proposes a "hermeneutic of contemplation" as an alternative to the academy's hermeneutic of suspicion.
- Contemplative reading opens to a poem's possibilities instead of always looking for hidden oppressive meanings.
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Intro
00:00 • 31sec
Gifford Lectures and Choosing Contemplation
00:31 • 3min
Meaning of 'Lands of Likeness' and Poetics
03:03 • 2min
Hermeneutics of Contemplation vs. Suspicion
05:15 • 4min
Contemplation, Fascination, and Freedom
09:18 • 4min
Consideration: A Modest Poetic Mode
13:11 • 1min
Natural Contemplation in Modern Poetry
14:16 • 7min
Poetry, Phenomenology, and Husserl
21:40 • 2min
Epoché, Reduction, and the Phenomenological Attitude
23:34 • 6min
Jesus, Reduction, and the Kingdom
29:16 • 3min
Poems Reconducting Us to the Given
32:35 • 2min
Contemplative Discipline and Asceticism
34:42 • 55sec
Contemplation vs. Apologetics and Proof
35:38 • 4min
Ad break
40:00 • 35sec
The Theoretical Life and Mixed Vocation
40:35 • 4min
Neoplatonism, Ascent, and Return
44:17 • 3min
Geoffrey Hill and the Radical Soul
46:58 • 5min
Poems as Events and Slow Reading
51:41 • 4min
Ad break
55:50 • 1min
Templum, Augury, and the Poem's Structure
57:14 • 3min
Augustine's Evening and Morning Knowledge
01:00:36 • 3min
Atheist Thinkers, Fascination, and Nihilism
01:03:54 • 4min
Contemplation, Sacraments, and Church Wariness
01:07:26 • 7min
Outro
01:14:39 • 2min
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In Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation (U Chicago Press, 2023), Kevin Hart develops a new hermeneutics of contemplation through a meditation on Christian thought and secular philosophy. Drawing on Kant, Schopenhauer, Coleridge, and Husserl, Hart first charts the emergence of contemplation in and beyond the Romantic era. Next, Hart shows this hermeneutic at work in poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, and others. Delivered in its original form as the prestigious Gifford Lectures, Lands of Likeness is a revelatory meditation on contemplation for the modern world.
Kevin Hart is Jo Rae Wright University Distinguished Professor at the Duke Divinity School.
Nathan H. Phillips is an independent scholar working out of South Bend, Indiana.
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