| Description |
1 online resource (vii, 242 pages) |
| Contents |
Cover -- Poetic Priesthood in the Seventeenth Century: Reformed Ministry and Radical Verse -- Copyright -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Introduction "Power beside the office of a pulpit": Reformed Ministry, Radical Verse -- Reformed Ministry -- The Ministry of the Word -- Radical Verse -- Poetic Priesthood -- 1: "Numbred, and measured, and weighed": John Donne and the Meaning of Metaphor -- Metaphor and Mis-devotion -- Poetry in the Pulpit -- Reading between the Arrows -- 2: "O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part": Communal Music in George Herbert's The Temple |
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"A mark to aim at": Ministry and Music -- "The best sort of melody and music": Antiphonal Verse -- "Three parts vied": Musical Union -- 3: "One friendly flood": Richard Crashaw's Baptismal Poetics -- "Baptism blends them all": Line and Image -- "Ling'ring fair": For Irresolution and Delay? -- "An eye, but not a weeping one": New Perspectives -- "Charged to look on": The Woman's Place -- 4: "Separate to God": Self-Centered Syntax in John Milton's Samson Agonistes -- "Separate to God": Samson's Solipsism -- "I this pomp have brought to Dagon": Confessional Conflict |
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"I mean to show you of my strength": Monstrous Ministry -- Coda: "A Pulpit in my Mind: "Thomas Traherne's Silent Ministry -- I. -- II. -- III. -- Works Cited -- Index |
| Summary |
"Poetic Priesthood reads seventeenth-century devotional verse as staging a surprising competition between poetry and the established church. The work of John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, John Milton, and Thomas Traherne suggests that the demands of faith are better understood by poets than by priests—even while four of these authors were also ordained. While recent scholarship has tended to emphasize the shaping influence of the liturgy on the verse of this period, this book argues that verse instead presents readers with a mode of articulating piety that relies on formal experimentation, and that varies from the forms of the church rather than straightforwardly reproducing them. In offering their readers this poetic aid to devotion, these authors shape an alternative and even more ample form of ministry than in their ecclesiastical activities. While they do not often theorize their verse practice explicitly in these terms, that practice is continuous with their definitions of ministerial behavior both in their verse and in the other writings this book considers, including sermons, prose treatises, and polemical pamphlets. In a historical moment when some literary writing began to define itself as a discursive arena separate from theological or doctrinal considerations, these authors complicate that picture: they claim the work of priesthood for poetry—but they do so by critically interrogating the forms of the church, through the unique formal affordances of verse"--Publisher's description |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed on August 24, 2023) |
| Subject |
Christian poetry, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism
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Devotional poetry, English -- History and criticism
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Faith in literature.
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Christian poetry, English -- Early modern
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Devotional poetry, English
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Faith in literature
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780191947902 |
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0191947903 |
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9780192671332 |
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0192671332 |
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9780192671325 |
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0192671324 |
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