J.L. Chretien is a French public intellectual, philosopher and poet, widely published and revered in his home country and in academic circles worldwide. This translation makes his work available to an English-language audience for the first time and a crucial contribution to our understanding of the phenomenology of religious experience.

• Spacious Joy
  • Contents
  • Translator’s Note
  • Introduction: Spaciousness, Joy, and the Legacy of the Word “Dilation”
  • 1 Saint Augustine and the Wide Offshore of Desire
  • 2 Saint Gregory the Great: Amplitude within a Narrow Confinement
  • 3 The Dilated Runners of Psalm 118, from Henri Michaux to Saint Teresa
  • 4 Mystical Dilations
  • 5 Bossuet on the Open Roads
  • 6 Amiel and the Pathology of Dilation
  • 7 Return to Eden with Thomas Traherne
  • 8 Whitman, Voyager without Limits
  • 9 Paul Claudel’s Cosmic Respiration
  • Further Reading
  • Index
  • About the Author and Translator