The Religious Sublime: Christian Poetry and Critical Tradition in 18th-Century England - Paperback

by David B. Morris (Author)

This perceptive, carefully documented study challenges the traditional assumption that the supernatural virtually disappeared from eighteenth-century poetry as a result of the growing rationalistic temper of the late seventeenth century. Mr. Morris shows that the religious poetry of eighteenth-century England, while not equaling the brilliant work of seventeenth-century and Romantic writers, does reveal a vital and serious effort to create a new kind of sacred poetry which would rival the sublimity of Milton and of the Bible itself.

Tracing the major varieties of religious poetry written throughout the century--by major figures and by their now vanished contemporaries--the author explains how later poets and critics made significant departures from the established norms. These changes in religious poetry thus become a valuable means of understanding the shift from a neoclassical to a Romantic theory of literature.

Author Biography

David B. Morris is an associate professor in the Department of Literature at American University.