Front cover image for Rituals of spontaneity : sentiment and secularism from free prayer to Wordsworth

Rituals of spontaneity : sentiment and secularism from free prayer to Wordsworth

"In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a newfound 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, Lori 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 understandings of secularization and demonstrates the deep, often troubling connections between religion and secularism in modernity."--BOOK JACKET
Print Book, English, ©2006
Baylor University Press, Waco, Tex., ©2006
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xiii, 348 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9781932792119, 1932792112
69791974
The rejection of liturgy, the rise of free prayer, and modern religious subjectivity
"As blood is forced out of flesh" : spontaneity and the wounds of exchange in Grace abounding and The pilgrim's progress
"True enthusiasm" : moral sense philosophy and fissures of the secular self in Shaftesbury's private writings ; Coda: "Divide yourself, be two" : images of the modern subject
At the Sign of the Bible and Sun : John Newbery, The vicar of Wakefield, and the ghost of Christopher Smart
Wordsworth's "spontaneous overflow" and the "high service within" : from Lyrical ballads to Ecclesiastical sonnets