Awakening verse : the poetics of early American evangelicalism / Wendy Raphael Roberts.

9780197510308 (electronic book)

New York : Oxford University Press, 2020.

English

1 online resource (296 pages).

PS310.R4 R63 2020

811.009382

Beginning with Watts's Horae Lyricae (1706) and concluding with the burgeoning poetic print culture of the early 19th century, Awakening Verse unfolds how evangelical ministers, itinerants, and laypeople in colonial British North America capaciously engaged prevailing ideas about literary taste and created a distinct transatlantic poetics grounded in Watts's notion of the "plainest capacity." Awakening Verse shows that regularly excluding so many years of verse impoverishes the understanding of early evangelicalism and American poetry. Taking revival poets and their verse as seriously as they and their contemporaries did provides an entirely new understanding of 18th-century evangelical and literary culture, one in which poetry serves as one of the primary actors in the creation, maintenance, and adaptation of evangelical culture and religious enthusiasm animates American poetics.

Beginning with Watts's Horae Lyricae (1706) and concluding with the burgeoning poetic print culture of the early 19th century, Awakening Verse unfolds how evangelical ministers, itinerants, and laypeople in colonial British North America capaciously engaged prevailing ideas about literary taste and created a distinct transatlantic poetics grounded in Watts's notion of the "plainest capacity." Awakening Verse shows that regularly excluding so many years of verse impoverishes the understanding of early evangelicalism and American poetry. Taking revival poets and their verse as seriously as they and their contemporaries did provides an entirely new understanding of 18th-century evangelical and literary culture, one in which poetry serves as one of the primary actors in the creation, maintenance, and adaptation of evangelical culture and religious enthusiasm animates American poetics.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on June 4, 2020).

Oxford scholarship online.

Print version: 9780197510278

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