Drawing on archival research and a new attention to literary form, Sion’s Muse argues that the religious poetry of the English Reformation decisively constituted new modes of devotional affect for laypeople. At the beginning of the English Reformation, the psalm translator Miles Coverdale wrote, “Would God that our minstrels had none other thing to play upon, neither our carters and plowmen other thing to whistle upon, save psalms, hymns, and such godly songs.” He imagined that religious poetry incorporated into the everyday lives of laypeople would best teach them how to desire God in new modes of Protestant devotion. This dissertation shows how this happened throughout the long English Reformation. Whereas a key question in the historiography of the Reformation is how quickly it spread, and with how much grassroots (as opposed to official) support, this dissertation excavates the vast and understudied archive of popular religious poetry in order to show that Protestant verse seeped into every aspect of lay life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From verse paraphrases of the Ten Commandments set to music and included in a popular songbook to a manuscript collection including both pornographic poetry and a versified Lamentations, these texts extended their readers the opportunity to learn Protestant modes of desire and devotion through everyday practices.

Creator

• Boemler, Anne

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-nsmp-tj75

Subject

• English literature

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:14778
• etdadmin_upload_681409

Keyword

• devotional poetry
• English Reformation
• British literature

Date created

• 2019-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright