English Congregational Hymns in the Eighteenth CenturyHistorians of the English congregational hymn, focusing on its literary or theological aspects, have usually found the genre out of step with the rationalist era that produced it. This book takes a more balanced approach to the work of four writers and concludes that only eighteenth-century Britain, with its understanding of public verse, common truth, and the utility of poetry, could have invented the English hymn as we know it. The early hymns sought to inspire, teach, stir, and entertain congregations. The essential purpose shifted slightly in line with each poet's setting and in accord with the poetic thought of his day. For Isaac Watts's Independents, powerful traditional imagery was appropriate. Charles Wesley's enthusiasm proceeded from and served the spirit of the revival. John Newton's prophetic vision particularly suited the impoverished community at Olney. William Cowper's masterful handling of formal conventions and his idiosyncratic personal hymns reflect his poetic, rather than clerical, vocation. Despite such temporal variations, the great poetry by each man displays themes of general Christian relevance, suggesting common experience, showing normative features of the genre, and bearing a complex and intriguing relationship to secular literature. |
From inside the book
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... certainly remain poetry, which takes the expression of private or collective feeling as only one of its purposes. It is not accidental that the rise of the English hymn coincides with the great era of didactic literature in England and ...
... practically the invention of the Methodists, leaving Dean Swift certainly among the many unredeemed: “Scores of Swift's poems could hardly have been written by a man of religious nature, while none of them reveals the slightest trace of a.
... ignores Steele, much of Pope and Swift, and certainly Richardson: “Charles Wesley, with the Romantics, rejected the artificiality, the aloofness, the autocracy of diction which dominated eighteenth century English poetry; in.
... certainly not relevant to the study of eighteenth-century hymns, which were bookbound literature composed by a literary elite and published under the watchful eyes of sectarian leaders. On the other hand, the popularity of hymns is ...
... Certainly religious experience has always been subjective, and we cannot automatically link Wesleyan excesses to either the cult of sensibility or romanticism. The prominent place accorded general education by the Methodists becomes ...
Contents
Self Sense the Revival | |
John Newton Olney Prophet | |
Exemplary Tradition the Loss of Control | |
Conclusion | |
Notes | |
Other editions - View all
English Congregational Hymns in the Eighteenth Century Madeleine Forell Marshall,Janet Todd Limited preview - 1982 |
English Congregational Hymns in the Eighteenth Century Madeleine Forrell Marshall,Janet M. Todd No preview available - 2014 |