The Rhetoric Of The Conscience In Donne Herbert And Vaughan

Author : Ceri Sullivan
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2008-09-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780191563287

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The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan by Ceri Sullivan Pdf

There is a kind of conscience some men keepe, Is like a Member that's benumb'd with sleepe; Which, as it gathers Blood, and wakes agen, It shoots, and pricks, and feeles as bigg as ten Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan see the conscience as only partly theirs, only partly under their control. Of course, as theologians said, it ought to be a simple syllogism, comparing actions to God's law, and giving judgement, in a joint procedure of the soul and its maker. Inevitably, though, there are problems. Hearts refuse to confess, or forget the rules, or jumble them up, or refuse to come to the point when delivering a verdict. The three poets are beady-eyed experts on failure. After all, where subjects can only discover their authentic nature in relation to the divine it matters whether the conversation works. Remarkably, each poet - despite their very different devotional backgrounds - uses similar sets of tropes to investigate problems: enigma, aposiopesis (breaking off), chiasmus, subjectio (asking then answering a question), and antanaclasis (repetition with a difference). Structured like a language, the conscience is tortured, rewritten, read, and broken up to engineer a proper response. Considering the faculty as an uncomfortable extrusion of the divine into the everyday, the rhetoric of the conscience transforms Protestant into prosthetic poetics. It moves between early modern theology, rhetoric, and aesthetic theory to give original, scholarly, and committed readings of the great metaphysical poets. Topics covered include boredom, torture, graffiti, tattoos, anthologizing, resentment, tears, dust, casuistry, and opportunism.

Author : Ceri Sullivan
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2008-09-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780199547845

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The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan by Ceri Sullivan Pdf

In the first book for over a decade to deal with the issue of conscience in metaphysical poetry, Ceri Sullivan draws on theology, poetics, and rhetoric in detailed readings of the works of Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan. She shows that these poets see the conscience as part theirs, part God's, and respond uncomfortably to failures in its workings.

Author : Daniel Derrin
Publisher : Fairleigh Dickinson
Page : 211 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2013-03-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781611476040

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Rhetoric and the Familiar in Francis Bacon and John Donne by Daniel Derrin Pdf

Rhetoric and the Familiar examines the writing and oratory of Francis Bacon and John Donne from the perspective of the faculty psychology they both inherited. Both writers inherited the resources of the classical rhetorical tradition through their university education. The book traces, from within that tradition, the sources of Bacon and Donne’s ideas about the processes of mental image making, reasoning, and passionate feeling. It analyzes how knowledge about those mental processes underlies the rhetorical planning of texts by Bacon, such as New Atlantis, Essayes or Counsels, Novum Organum, and the parliamentary speeches, and of texts by Donne such as the Verse Letters, Essayes in Divinity, Holy Sonnets, and the sermons. The book argues that their rhetorical practices reflect a common appropriation of ideas about mental process from faculty psychology, and that they deploy it in divergent ways depending on their rhetorical contexts. It demonstrates the vital importance, in early modern thinking about rhetoric, of considering what familiar remembered material will occur to a given audience, how that differs according to context, as well as the problems the familiar entails.

Author : Giuseppina Iacono Lobo
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2017-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781487501204

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Writing Conscience and the Nation in Revolutionary England by Giuseppina Iacono Lobo Pdf

Cover -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Revolutions of Conscience -- 1 Charles I, Eikon Basilike, and the Pulpit-Work of the King's Conscience -- 2 Oliver Cromwell and the Duties of Conscience -- 3 Early Quaker Writing and the Unifying Light of Conscience -- 4 Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and the Civilizing Force of Conscience -- 5 Lucy Hutchinson's Revisions of Conscience -- 6 Milton's Nation of Conscience -- Afterword -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Author : Joshua R. Held
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2023-06-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780817361112

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Bold Conscience by Joshua R. Held Pdf

"'Bold Conscience' chronicles the shifting conception of conscience in early modern England, as it evolved from a faculty of restraint--what the author labels "cowardly conscience"--to one of bold and forthright self-assertion. Caught at the vortex of public and private concerns, the concept of the conscience played an important role in post-Reformation England, from clerical leaders on down to laymen, not least because of its central place in determining loyalties during the English Civil War and the consequent regicide of King Charles I. Yet within this mix of perspectives, the most sinuous, complex, and ultimately lasting perspectives on bold conscience emerge from deliberately literary, rhetorically artistic voices--Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton. Joshua Held argues that literary texts by these authors, in re-casting the idea of conscience as a private, interior, shameful state to one of boldness fit for the public realm, parallel a historical development in which the conscience becomes a platform both for royal power and for common dissent in post-Reformation England. With the 1649 regicide of King Charles I as a fulcrum that unites both literary and historical timelines, Held tracks the increasing power of the conscience from William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Henry VIII to John Donne's court sermons, and finally to Milton's Areopagitica and Charles's defense of his kingship, Eikon Basilike. In a direct attack on Eikon Basilike, Milton destroys the prerogative of the royal conscience in Eikonoklastes, and later in Paradise Lost proposes an alternative basis for inner confidence, rooting it not in divine right but in the 'paradise within,' a metonym for conscience. Applying a fine-grain literary analysis to literary England from about 1601 to 1667, this study looks backward as well to the theological foundations of the concept in Luther of the 1520s and forward to its transformation by Locke into the term 'consciousness' in 1689. Ultimately, Held's study shows how the idea of a conscience in early modern England, long central to the private self and linked to the will, memory, and mind-emerges as a nexus between the private self and the realm of public action, a bulwark against absolute sovereignty, and its attenuation as a means of more limited, personal certainty. Whether in Milton's struggle against King Charles or Hamlet's against King Claudius, the conscience born of the Reformation becomes less a state of inner critique and more a form of outward expression fit for the communal life and commitments demanded by the early modern era"--

Author : Dr Frances Cruickshank
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2013-04-28
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781409476153

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Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne by Dr Frances Cruickshank Pdf

Innovative and highly readable, this study traces George Herbert's and John Donne's development of a distinct poetics through close readings of their poems, references to their letters, sermons, and prose treatises, and to other contemporary poets and theorists. In demonstrating a relationship between poetics and religious consciousness in Donne's and Herbert's verse, Frances Cruickshank explores their attitudes to the cultural, theological, and aesthetic enterprise of writing and reading verse. Cruickshank shows that Donne and Herbert regarded poetry as a mode not determined by its social and political contexts, but as operating in and on them with its own distinct set of aesthetic and intellectual values, and that ultimately, verse mattered as a privileged mode of religious discourse. This book is an important contribution to the ongoing scholarly dialogue about the nature of literary and cultural study of early modern England, and about the relationship between the writer and the world. Cruickshank confirms Donne's reputation as a fascinating and brilliant poetic figure while simultaneously rousing interest in Herbert by noting his unique merging of rusticity and urbanity and tranquility and uncertainty, allowing the reader to enter into these poets' imaginative worlds and to understand the literary genre they embraced and then transformed.

Author : Frances Cruickshank
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 146 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2016-02-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317002444

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Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne by Frances Cruickshank Pdf

Innovative and highly readable, this study traces George Herbert's and John Donne's development of a distinct poetics through close readings of their poems, references to their letters, sermons, and prose treatises, and to other contemporary poets and theorists. In demonstrating a relationship between poetics and religious consciousness in Donne's and Herbert's verse, Frances Cruickshank explores their attitudes to the cultural, theological, and aesthetic enterprise of writing and reading verse. Cruickshank shows that Donne and Herbert regarded poetry as a mode not determined by its social and political contexts, but as operating in and on them with its own distinct set of aesthetic and intellectual values, and that ultimately, verse mattered as a privileged mode of religious discourse. This book is an important contribution to the ongoing scholarly dialogue about the nature of literary and cultural study of early modern England, and about the relationship between the writer and the world. Cruickshank confirms Donne's reputation as a fascinating and brilliant poetic figure while simultaneously rousing interest in Herbert by noting his unique merging of rusticity and urbanity and tranquility and uncertainty, allowing the reader to enter into these poets' imaginative worlds and to understand the literary genre they embraced and then transformed.

Author : Achsah Guibbory
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2015-02-28
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781409468806

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Returning to John Donne by Achsah Guibbory Pdf

Collected in this volume are Achsah Guibbory’s most important and frequently cited essays on Donne, which, taken together, present her distinctive and evolving vision of the poet. The book includes an original, substantive introduction as well as new essays on the Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, the Songs and Sonnets, and the subject of Donne and toleration. Over the course of her career, Guibbory has asked different questions about Donne but has always been concerned with recovering multiple historical and cultural contexts and locating Donne’s writing in relation to them. In the essays here, she reads Donne within various contexts: the early modern thinking about time and history; religious attitudes towards sexuality; the politics of early modern England; religious conflicts within the church. While her approach has always been historicist, she has also foregrounded Donne’s distinctiveness, showing how (and why) he continues to speak powerfully to us now. Presented together here, with reflections on the trajectory of her engagement with Donne, Achsah Guibbory illuminates Donne’s understanding that erotic, spiritual, and political issues are often intertwined, and reveals how this understanding resonates in our own times.

Author : Abraham Stoll
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2017-10-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781108418737

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Conscience in Early Modern English Literature by Abraham Stoll Pdf

This is an examination of how early modern poets attempt to capture the experience of being in the grip of conscience.

Author : Ceri Sullivan
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2024-04-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780198906827

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George Herbert and the Business of Practical Piety by Ceri Sullivan Pdf

Contemporary nudge theory points out that people make good choices over issues where they have had past experience of similar circumstances, where there is reliable, substantial, and relevant information about the situation, and where they will get prompt feedback about the effect of their decision. Yet none of these conditions apply to the most vital choice of action facing early modern Protestants: how can they be saved? In George Herbert and the Business of Practical Piety, Ceri Sullivan uses nudge theory to show how practical divinity disregards the doleful conclusions of predestination--that salvation cannot be earned--to supply readers with suggestions on how to prepare to act, regardless of their final destiny. Such texts create cognitive niches to support cheerful, godly thought and action, in a way which is far from being despairing or compulsive. Their nudges were repeatedly put into practice by Herbert's friends, the Ferrars, who tried to form an ideal religious community at Little Gidding. These prescriptions and examples illustrate how George Herbert's The Temple (1633) is a compendium of the techniques of choice architecture. Herbert's poems are full of the humour emerging from a life of faith which is willing to guard high ideals by low cunning, stooping to use the least little things to change a self. George Herbert and the Business of Practical Piety initially calls on theories of the extended mind to ask what sort of minor physical and social structures scaffold decisions, then examines a selection of nudges used by Herbert: contracts with the self, building a mind, cleaning a heart, conversing with God, making to-do lists, and working on working well.

Author : Katrin Ettenhuber
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2011-07-07
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780191619359

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Donne's Augustine by Katrin Ettenhuber Pdf

The poet and preacher John Donne (1572-1631) was one of the most influential authors of early modern England. Donne's Augustine examines his response to an iconic figure in the history of Western religious thought: Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Katrin Ettenhuber argues that Renaissance culture saw not only a revival of the classics, but was equally indebted to the intellectual and literary legacy of the Church Fathers. The study recovers an Augustinian tradition of interpretation which permeated the religious world of the period, but which has until now been largely overlooked. She presents a comprehensive re-evaluation of Donne's writings, ranging from the poems to less familiar prose works, situates him carefully in the poetic, intellectual, and political contexts which frame his works, and engages with recent developments in both literary and historical studies. Donne's Augustine is the first sustained study of Donne's reading practices, and of the theological sources which shaped his thought. It discovers a range of medieval and early modern texts which transformed the imagination of literary writers in the period but which have been neglected so far: devotional manuals, Scripture commentaries, and religious commonplace books (often in Latin). The study pays close attention to the intellectual and political conditions which informed the reception of Augustine's works, and offers detailed readings of Donne's texts which illuminate the literary aspects of his patristic heritage. Donne's Augustine makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the larger reading and writing culture of Renaissance England, and of the religious debates and controversies in the decades leading up to the Civil War.

Author : John Donne
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 579 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Sermons, English
ISBN : 9780199565481

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The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne by John Donne Pdf

Author : Adele Davidson
Publisher : Gale, Cengage Learning
Page : 11 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2024-06-01
Category : Study Aids
ISBN : 9781535851558

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Gale Researcher Guide for: George Herbert: Simplicity and Sacred Love by Adele Davidson Pdf

Gale Researcher Guide for: George Herbert: Simplicity and Sacred Love is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

Author : Francesca Cioni,Training and Projects Cataloguer Francesca Cioni
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2024-01-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780198874409

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Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert by Francesca Cioni,Training and Projects Cataloguer Francesca Cioni Pdf

This book uses textual and material evidence -- in poetry, prayers, physiologies, sermons, church buildings and monuments, manuscript diaries and notebooks -- to explore how material things held spiritual meaning in George Herbert's poetry, and to reflect on scholarly approaches to matter and form in devotional poetry.

Author : Jonathan Willis
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2016-03-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317054931

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Sin and Salvation in Reformation England by Jonathan Willis Pdf

Notions of which behaviours comprised sin, and what actions might lead to salvation, sat at the heart of Christian belief and practice in early modern England, but both of these vitally important concepts were fundamentally reconfigured by the reformation. Remarkably little work has been undertaken exploring the ways in which these essential ideas were transformed by the religious changes of the sixteenth-century. In the field of reformation studies, revisionist scholarship has underlined the vitality of late-medieval English Christianity and the degree to which people remained committed to the practices of the Catholic Church up to the eve of the reformation, including those dealing with the mortification of sin and the promise of salvation. Such popular commitment to late-medieval lay piety has in turn raised questions about how the reformation itself was able to take root. Whilst post-revisionist scholars have explored a wide range of religious beliefs and practices - such as death, providence, angels, and music - there has been a surprising lack of engagement with the two central religious preoccupations of the vast majority of people. To address this omission, this collection focusses upon the history and theology of sin and salvation in reformation and post-reformation England. Exploring their complex social and cultural constructions, it underlines how sin and salvation were not only great religious constants, but also constantly evolving in order to survive in the rapidly transforming religious landscape of the reformation. Drawing upon a range of disciplinary perspectives - historical, theological, literary, and material/art-historical - to both reveal and explain the complexity of the concepts of sin and salvation, the volume further illuminates a subject central to the nature and success of the Reformation itself. Divided into four sections, Part I explores reformers’ attempts to define and re-define the theological concepts of sin and salvation, while Part II looks at some of the ways in which sin and salvation were contested: through confessional conflict, polemic, poetry and martyrology. Part III focuses on the practical attempts of English divines to reform sin with respect to key religious practices, while Part IV explores the significance of sin and salvation in the lived experience of both clergy and laity. Evenly balancing contributions by established academics in the field with cutting-edge contributions from junior researchers, this collection breaks new ground, in what one historian of the period has referred to as the ‘social history of theology’.