Rhetoric, Persuasion, and Teaching the Emotions in the Early Modern English Sermon, 1600-1642
By (author) Jennifer Clement
This book explores how early 17th-century English sermons-the most popular print genre of the time-aimed to shape Christian emotion.
The early seventeenth-century English sermon was the bestselling print genre of its time, and church preaching was more widely attended than any play. Jennifer Clement argues here that a major aim of these sermons was to teach people how to feel the right emotions – or, as preachers would have said at the time, the passions or affections – to lead a good Christian life. In the process, preachers took a primarily rhetorical approach to the emotions; that is, they used their sermons to define emotions and to encourage their listeners and readers actively to cultivate and shape their emotions in line with Scripture. This study offers an overview of five key emotions – love, fear, anger, grief, and joy – in the sermons of key preachers such as John Donne, Richard Sibbes, Joseph Hall, Launcelot Andrewes, and others. It shows how these preachers engaged with contemporary treatises on the emotions as well as treatises on preaching to highlight the importance of the rhetorical, as opposed to the humoral, approach to understanding the emotions in a religious context. In addition, Clement reads sermons next to early seventeenth-century religious poetry by writers such as Donne, George Herbert, Amelia Lanyer, and Henry Vaughan to show how the emotional concerns of the sermons also appear in the poetry, reverberating beyond the pulpit. Bringing together rhetorical theory, sermon studies, and the history of the emotions, Clement shows how the early seventeenth-century English sermon needs to inform our thinking about literature and its engagement with emotion in this period.
- By (author) Jennifer Clement
Other Titles in this Series
Communicating the Passion
The Socio-Religious Function of an Emotional Narrative (1250-1530)
Volume 21
Inter-Ethnic Relations and the Functioning of Multi-Ethnic Societies
Cohesion in Multi-Ethnic Societies in Europe from c. 1000 to the Present, II
Volume 18
Legal Norms and Political Action in Multi-Ethnic Societies
Cohesion in Multi-Ethnic Societies in Europe from c. 1000 to the Present, III
Volume 20
Republicanism, Sinophilia, and Historical Writing
Thomas Gordon (c.1691-1750) and his 'History of England'
Volume 4
Memories in Multi-Ethnic Societies
Cohesion in Multi-Ethnic Societies in Europe from c. 1000 to the Present, I
Volume 15
Historiography and the Shaping of Regional Identity in Europe
Regions in Clio's Looking Glass
Volume 16
Sociability and its Discontents
Civil Society, Social Capital, and their Alternatives in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Volume 1
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