The Rhetoric of Supplication: Prayer Theory in Seventeenth-Century England

1993 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Devotional Literature ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Private Devotion ◽  
Private Prayer

Although Manuals Offering detailed instructions in private prayer are both a distinctive and highly popular form of post-Reformation English literature, relatively little critical attention has been paid to these texts, either by literary critics or historians of religion. Surveys of English devotional literature, such as Helen White's Tudor Books of Private Devotion and English Devotional Literature 1600-1640 and C.J. Stranks's Anglican Devotion, describe the more prominent of these prayer manuals, but no critical study of this large body of literature yet exists. The reasons for this critical neglect are several. As Sam D. Gill's essay on prayer in the recently published Encyclopedia of Religion suggests, the study of prayer itself is still “undeveloped and naive” (2.489).

Lutherans and the Suffering of Christ

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Heal
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Devotional Literature ◽  
Physical Pain ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Mining Region

Chapter 5 focuses on one particular type of Lutheran devotional image: the crucifix. It examines transformations in Lutheran Passion piety from the early Reformation to the era of Paul Gerhardt (1607–76), using this to illustrate the increasing significance accorded to images. Luther himself had condemned the excesses of late-medieval Passion piety, with its emphasis on compassion for Christ and the Virgin Mary, on physical pain and on tears. From the later sixteenth century onwards, however, Lutheran sermons, devotional literature, prayers and poetry described Christ’s suffering in increasingly graphic terms. Alongside this, late-medieval images of the Passion were restored and new images were produced. Drawing on case studies from the Erzgebirge, a prosperous mining region in southern Saxony, and Upper Lusatia, the chapter investigates the ways in which images of the Passion were used in Lutheran communities during the seventeenth century.

Dreams in Seventeenth-Century English Literature

1972 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 265
Author(s):  
Roger Sharrock ◽  
Manfred Weidhorn
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
English Literature

Christian Devotional Poetry and Sanskrit Hermeneutics

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-90
Author(s):  
Namrata Chaturvedi
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Interfaith Dialogue ◽  
Devotional Literature ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Devotional Poetry ◽  
Indian Christianity

This paper focuses on exploring dhvani as a hermeneutical tool for reading Christian devotional literature. Dhvani is a theory of poetic suggestion proposed by Ānandavardhana in the eighth century and elaborated upon by Abhinavagupta in the eleventh century that posits layers of semantics in poetic language. By focusing on the devotional poetry of the seventeenth-century religious poets of England, this paper argues for Ānandavardhana’s proposed poetics of suggestion as an enabling way of reading and cognizing devotion as a psycho emotive process. In the context of Indian Christianity, dhvani has been suggested by certain scholars as also enriching the possibilities of interfaith dialogue. This paper argues for incorporating poetic frameworks like dhvani as modes of interfaith dialogue, especially when reading Christian texts in India.

Seventeenth-Century English Literature

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 274
Author(s):  
David Hopkins ◽  
Bruce King
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
English Literature

The Muhammad Avatāra

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayesha A. Irani
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Salvation History ◽  
First Time ◽  
Islamic Literature

The Muhammad Avatāra: Salvation History, Translation, and the Making of Bengali Islam reveals the powerful role of vernacular translation in the Islamization of Bengal. Its focus is on the magnificent seventeenth-century Nabīvaṃśa of Saiyad Sultān, who lived in Arakanese-controlled Chittagong. Drawing upon the Arabo-Persian Tales of the Prophets genre, the Nabīvaṃśa (“Lineage of the Prophet”) retells the life of the Prophet Muhammad for the first time to Bengalis in their mother-tongue. This book delineates the challenges faced by the author in articulating the pre-eminence of Islam and its Arabian prophet in a land where multiple religious affiliations were common, and when Gauṛīya Vaiṣṇava missionary activity was at its zenith. Sultān played a pioneering role in setting into motion various lexical, literary, performative, theological, and, ultimately, ideological processes that led to the establishment of a distinctively Bengali Islam in east Bengal. At the heart of this transformation lay the persuasiveness of translation on a new Islamic frontier. The Nabīvaṃśa not only kindled a veritable translation movement of Arabo-Persian Islamic literature into Bangla, but established the grammar of creative translation that was to become canonical for this regional tradition. This text-critical study lays bare the sophisticated strategies of translation used by a prominent early modern Muslim Bengali intellectual to invite others to his faith.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Ceri Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
History Plays ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Prayer

Fiction is good at registering how speakers approach God in ways that are specific to their time and place. Literary critics have studied the dramatic qualities in the public prayer of the early modern liturgy; religious historians have taken a lead from lyric poetry when discussing the language of private prayer. This chapter crosses these lines of research to show how private prayer at the turn of the seventeenth century is explicitly dramatic. Shakespeare scholars focus on his plays’ oaths, prophecies, and curses. Yet private prayers in the folio versions of the history plays go beyond these genres, to structure the action on stage. They are, moreover, greater in number and substance than in the quarto versions, and are original, rather than being sourced from the liturgy, Bible, or chronicles.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document