All was well, meanwhile, with other literature in England. Drama had been coming into its own since Elizabethan times and the English novel was growing "quietly to its full stature" (Sampson 1970:418). The eighteenth century also marks the emergence of historians, such as David Hume (1711-1776), and Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), an Oxford man who became a Catholic in 1753 and consequently "flew headlong on the road to social perdition" (Sampson 1970:453). The best-known Catholic poet of his era, Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who was likewise discriminated against on account of his religion, did not seek to exacerbate the evils of his situation by drawing attention to his religious affiliation in his poetry. He no more than any other Catholic of the era contributed to the corpus of Marian poetry representing the eighteenth century.
At this time, the Anglican Church was experiencing a decline in fervour. To counteract this situation, the Methodist revival was started by John Wesley (1703-1791) and his brother Charles (1707-1788). The latter led a group of young men who fasted, gave alms, engaged in prayer and received Holy Communion weekly. Other religions which arose as the period progressed include the Congregationalists, Nonconformists and Unitarians. Of the Roman Catholics little or nothing was heard while
the Anglican public schools and universities continued their
ancient routine; the modernist dissenting academies
gradually dwindled into decay. They had no root of
authority, civil or religious.
(Sampson 1970-461).
By the time the nineteenth century came to England, the English Church had reached a point where a spiritual revival had become necessary. The stage had been set for the so-called Oxford Movement which was to "shake the whole Church of England and change the very nature of its being" (Sampson 1970:555)
and lead to the resuscitation of Marian poetry in English.
In conclusion, it is interesting to note that although very little Marian poetry survives from the sixteenth century, probably because only little may have been written for fear of political recriminations, the Marian contributions of Southwell and one sonnet from the pen of Henry Constable appear to have been mainly responsible for saving the genre from total destruction during the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth.
Southwell particularly, however, made so great a contribution to Marian poetry that his efforts compensated for much of the barrenness the genre was exposed to during the era.
The situation was considerably improved in the seventeenth century, due mainly to contributions from members of the metaphysical poetic fraternity. Since from the extant Marian poetry available it appears that contributions to this genre were spearheaded in the sixteenth century by Southwell and in the seventeenth by Crashaw, it appears that it was mainly Catholics who refused to surrender this devotion during these centuries.
This state of affairs was about to change. Writers of the negligible quantity of Marian poetry that survives from the eighteenth century, such as Nahum Tate (1652-1715), do not appear to have been Catholics, and while many of the Romantic poets seem to have made at least one venture into the corridors of Marian poetry, they appear to have been either unbelievers or Christians belonging to different denominations of Christianity.
For our purposes, the poems of the Romantic poets, most of whom lived well into the nineteenth century, will be dealt with in the section pertaining to this era.
Dr Luky Whittle
Edited by Catherine Nicolette
With thanks to the Wall Artist, Photograph of Wall Art by Catherine Nicolette
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