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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... spiritual states that hymns were designed to treat. say, for example, that a hymn is “sung praise” is as inaccurate as calling a sonnet the expression of love for a woman. Too many important items in the tradition become exceptions to ...
... spiritually edifying. A congregation of worshipers may be asked to sing only an expression of proper and devout religious ... spiritual response at a particular time within a given Protestant tradition, yielding a great quantity of ...
... spiritual content, the diction, figurative language, and verbal design of the hymns are human creations dependent on the literary tradition within which the poet is working. (A modern inversion of Benson's hesitation would seem to ...
... spiritual states was very old indeed: “It is easy therefore for every man to finde out in the Psalmes, the motion and state of his owne soule, and by that meanes, his own figure and proper erudition.” Individual psalm prescriptions ...
... were escaping. Tate and Brady made one of many attempts at modernization. The prescribed uses of the psalms show further that the psalms were accepted as both Christian and expressive of common spiritual states of the believer. The.
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 |