New miracle plays

I note with interest a series of contemporary interpretations of the themes of the medieval miracle plays, all this week on Radio 3. Last night it was on the Creation; still to come, the Flood, the Exodus, David and Goliath and Samson and Delilah.

The Rainbow

I note an interesting essay by Rachel Cusk on D.H. Lawrence's Women and Love and The Rainbow, around the same time as the BBC were screening an adaptation of the two novels. I'm fairly sure that religious historians are not at all finished with Lawrence's curious religion of the sensual, and his treatment of 'religious' characters.

What good are the arts ?

I note an interesting debate on Radio 3's Night Waves on the history of understandings of what the arts are capable of achieving; a debate that can't entirely avoid the religious nature of that claim until at least the nineteenth century, and arguably beyond. Participants included John Carey, Edith Hall and Jude Kelly. It's available on the iPlayer service.