Description
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a new-found 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, 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 understanding of secularization and demonstrates the deep, often troubling connections between religion and secularism in modernity.
Winner of the Book of the Year Award for the Conference on Christianity and Literature.
Author: Lori Branch
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Published: 11/01/2010
Pages: 362
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.19lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.82d
ISBN13: 9781602583429
ISBN10: 1602583420
BISAC Categories:
- Religion | Christianity | History
- Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- Religion | History
About the Author
Lori Branch (Ph. D. Indiana University) is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa.