The Psalms and the Speaking World: Art, Anthropocene, Enchantment.

In this essay, I take up the question of the speech of the natural world in the Psalms. In dialogue with philosopher Baptiste Morizot's account of animal tracking and Jane Bennett's articulation of enchantment, I argue that a robust sense of the world's liveliness is a characteristic feature of bibl...

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Published in:Catholic Biblical Quarterly Vol. 87; no. 4; pp. 610 - 631
Main Author: JAMES, ELAINE T.
Format: Article
Published: Catholic Biblical Association of America Oct2025
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        au: JAMES, ELAINE T.
      su:
        Morizot, Baptiste
        Psalms (Musical form)
        Poetry in the Bible
        Anthropomorphism
        Materialism
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          Morizot, Baptiste
          Psalms (Musical form)
          Poetry in the Bible
          Anthropomorphism
          Materialism
      keyword:
        "Nature"
        animacy
        anthropocene
        enchantment
        grizzly bears
        materialisms
        metaphor
        psalms
        voice
      ab: In this essay, I take up the question of the speech of the natural world in the Psalms. In dialogue with philosopher Baptiste Morizot's account of animal tracking and Jane Bennett's articulation of enchantment, I argue that a robust sense of the world's liveliness is a characteristic feature of biblical poetry. Scholarly disagreement about how to account for this "speech" points to an underlying uncertainty about how we relate to the world. Morizot's treatment of the metaphorical imagination of animal tracking helps to explain why the domains of poetry and liveliness overlap: poetic art is a site for reflecting on the world's liveliness precisely because literary strategies such as metaphor, voice, and anthropomorphism negotiate and cultivate the uncanny sense of human enmeshment in the more-than-human world. Beginning with a personal reflection on animal tracking, and engaging thinkers working on issues of animation, vitality, and material vibrancy, I argue that a tempered sense of "enchantment" reclaims the psalms as art for the anthropocene.
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    language: English
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      custom: Copyright of Catholic Biblical Quarterly is the property of Catholic Biblical Association of America and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
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