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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... 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 Tradition ...
... 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 research ...
... music books, showed the influence of Handel on hymn music. In 1745 John Wesley met J. F. Lampe, a bassoon player at Covent Garden, and a year later the converted Lampe edited the music of Hymns for the Greater Festivals, which ...
... hymns shows the most “literary” reading of the texts, declares with little explanation that Blake cannot stand comparison with Wesley as a religious poet.6 This critical failure is especially obvious to one accustomed to a more ...
... hymns as integral to the age in which their authors lived. A yet more subtle threat to the careful placement of hymns in ... Wesley, with the Romantics, rejected the artificiality, the aloofness, the autocracy of diction which dominated ...
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 |