| Description |
1 online resource (262 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Intro -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Dedication page -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Note on Capitalization -- Introduction: The Presence of the Eucharist in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Poetry -- The Presence of the Eucharist in English Poetry -- Eucharistic Presence -- Incarnation and Excarnation -- The Eucharist by Many Other Names -- 1. Medieval Sacraments: Immanence and Transcendence in the Pearl-poet and Chaucer -- Immanence and Transcendence in Late Medieval Theology -- Pearl and Sacramental Subjectivity -- Chaucer's Eucharistic Jokes -- Eucharistic Models of Meaning -- 2. Southwell's Mass: Sacrament and Self -- Southwell's Influence -- Sacramental Representation -- Transubstantiating Poetry -- Magdalene, Peter, Self -- Southwell for Protestants -- 3. Herbert's Eucharist: Sacrifices of Thanksgiving -- Human and Divine Agency in 'The Holdfast' -- Thanks Giving More -- Experiential Multiplicity -- Material Supplementation and Eucharistic Sweetness -- Eucharistic Sacrifice from 'The Altar' to 'Love (III)' -- 4. Donne's Communions -- Sex as Sacrament -- Body as Sacrament -- Poet and Text -- Distinguish'd and Undistinct -- 5. Communion in Two Kinds: Milton's Bread and Crashaw's Wine -- Wine and Bread in the History of the Eucharist -- Crashaw's Wine and Milton's Food -- Crashaw's Wine -- Milton's Food -- Sindigestion -- Digesting Milton, Drinking Crashaw -- Conclusion: The Future of Presence -- Thinking Eucharistically -- Select Bibliography -- Index |
| Summary |
"The Eucharist, Poetics, and Secularization from the Middle Ages to Milton explains the astonishing centrality of the eucharist to poets with a variety of denominational affiliations, writing on a range of subjects, across an extended period in literary history. Whether they are praying, thinking about politics, lamenting unrequited love, or telling fart jokes, late medieval and early modern English poets return again and again to the eucharist as a way of working out literary problems. Tracing this connection from the fourteenth through the seventeenth century, this book shows how controversies surrounding the nature of signification in the sacrament informed poetry. Connecting medieval to early modern England, it presents a history of 'eucharistic poetics' in the work of seven key poets: the Pearl-poet, Chaucer, Robert Southwell, John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, and John Milton. Reassessing this range of poetic voices, The Eucharist, Poetics, and Secularization overturns an oft-repeated argument that early modern poetry's fascination with the eucharist resulted from the Protestant rejection of transubstantiation and its supposedly enchanted worldview. Instead of this tired secularization story, it fleshes out a more capacious conception of eucharistic presence, showing that what interested poets about the eucharist was its insistence that the mechanics of representation are always entangled with the self's relation to the body and to others. The book thus forwards a new historical account of eucharistic poetics, placing this literary phenomenon within a longstanding negotiation between embodiment and disembodiment in Western religious and cultural history"--Publisher's description |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed on March 14, 2024) |
| Subject |
English poetry -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- History and criticism
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English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism
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Lord's Supper in literature.
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English poetry -- Early modern
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English poetry -- Middle English
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Lord's Supper in literature
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Literature: history & criticism.
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Literature.
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| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780192872890 |
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0192872893 |
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9780191975905 |
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0191975907 |
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9780192872883 |
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0192872885 |
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