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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... Charles Wesley: Self, Sense, & the Revival Conversion & Sensibility Feeling & the Exemplary Method Hymns for Preachers IV. John Newton, Olney Prophet Newton at Olney History & Prophecy Of Things to Come V. William Cowper: Exemplary ...
... Charles Wesley's hymns. John Newton and William Cowper demonstrate the adaptation of the hymn to the changing view of both poetry and the human situation that characterized the second half of the eighteenth century. Finally, hymn ...
... Charles Wesley. Loyalty to a Protestant tradition often seems to inspire hymnological undertakings and to undermine their avowed critical purpose. With little explanation Bernard Lord Manning claimed that the Hymns for People Called ...
... Charles did not dissect, analyse, and weigh truth; he did not relate it to this or that philosophical system; he was not a theological botanist. His hymns are not museum pieces; they are flowers in a flower garden; his doctrines are ...
... which 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.
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 |