Rituals of Spontaneity: Sentiment and Secularism from Free Prayer to Wordsworth

ISBN-13: 9781602583429 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 362 str.

Lori Branch

Opis

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a new-found love of spontaneity transformed Christian worship and revolutionized the Enlightenment's "culture of sensibility." Rituals of Spontaneity tells the story of how and why spontaneity came to be so revered. Using archival material and works of Bunyan, Shaftesbury, Goldsmith, Smart and Wordsworth, Branch shows that the rise of spontaneity was intimately connected to the forces of commerce and science at the dawn of the Enlightenment. By focusing on the language in which spontaneity was defended and on its psychological repercussions, Rituals of Spontaneity challenges previous understanding of secularization and demonstrates the deep, often troubling connections between religion and secularism in modernity.Winner of the Book of the Year Award for the Conference on Christianity and Literature.

Spis treści

• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Rejection of Liturgy, the Rise of Free Prayer, and Modern Religious Subjectivity
• 2 ""As Blood Is Forced out of Flesh"": Spontaneity and the Wounds of Exchange in Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim's Progress
• 3 ""True Enthusiasm"": Moral Sense Philosophy and Fissures of the Secular Self in Shaftesbury' Private Writings
• Coda to Chapter 3: ""Divide Youself, Be Two""-Images of the Modern Subject
• 4 At the Sign of the Bible and Sun: John Newbery, The Vicar of Wakefield, and the Ghost of Christopher Smart
• 5 Wordsworth's ""Spontaneous Overflow"" and the ""High Service Within"": From Lyrical Ballads to Ecclesiastical Sonnets
• Conclusion: On the Religiousness of Criticism
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index