1st Edition

Disciplinary Measures from the Metrical Psalms to Milton

By Kenneth J.E. Graham Copyright 2016
206 Pages
by Routledge

222 Pages
by Routledge

220 Pages
by Routledge

Disciplinary Measures from the Metrical Psalms to Milton studies the relationship between English poetry and church discipline in four carefully chosen bodies of poetry written between the Reformation and the death of John Milton. Its primary goal is to fill a gap in the field of Protestant poetics, which has never produced a study focused on the way in which poetry participates in and reflects on... Read more
Table of Contents to come

Biography

Kenneth J.E. Graham is Professor of English at the University of Waterloo, Canada

"Kenneth J. E. Graham's careful expansion of the meaning and forms of ecclesiastical discipline is in itself extremely useful to scholars of early modern religion. So, too, is his observation that coercive discipline is not the sole province of the Calvinist branch of the English Church." -- Beth Quitslund, Ohio University, Modern Philology

"Graham has written a fine book, with an unprecedented approach through church discipline to two major poets of the seventeenth century ... This book clearly proves that church discipline was a "vital concern" (38) for Herbert and Milton, and valuable for understanding their poetry." -- Daniel W. Doerksen, University of New Brunswick

"I find Graham’s book largely persuasive. It draws welcome attention to an unfairly maligned, but utterly crucial aspect of post-Reformation religious culture, and it does so in a way that acknowledges the heft of New Historicist suspicion about discipline. Its careful nuance on this point makes it a salutary addition to the growing body of work on the ‘return to religion’ in early modern studies…. [S]cholars of Herbert, Milton, or post-Reformation English ecclesiology will find Disciplinary Measures well worth reading." -- Milton Quarterl

"The literary readings in Disciplinary Measures are sensitive and nuanced, and Graham’s …. careful expansion of the meaning and forms of ecclesiastical discipline is in itself extremely useful for scholars of early modern religion." -- Modern Philology

"[T]his engaging book … does for church discipline what the New Historicism did for the historical record…. [T]his book should change the way we think about the relationship of Protestant interpretations of church discipline to the early modern literary imagination." -- Renaissance Quarterly