Drama and Doctrine in Gods Determinations

Abstract

C RITICAL OPINION has tended to link Edward Taylor with the Umorality tradition on the basis of patent similarities between medieval drama and Gods Determinations Touching His Elect.' Nathalia Wright has accordingly interpreted the poem as a recast morality play, but more recently Norman Grabo has noted Taylor's de-emphasis of drama and suggested that the poetic sequence may represent an effort at literary meditation.2 This alternative reading points to the possibility that the poem may derive, not from the morality tradition itself, but from its antecedent-the homiletic tradition of the Middle Ages. Prior to the emergence of the drama, the pulpit made dynamic use of allegorical themes which were later incorporated into miracle and morality plays and have thus become associated with the medieval stage. One such feature was the antic Devil, who enlivened countless sermons long before he became a dramatis persona. And, as the persistence of satanic imagery indicates, the homiletic tradition died hard.3 Those modes of expression used by Taylor to portray man's Fall and Redemption have precedents in the writings of sixteenthand seventeenth-century clergymen who, even in that age of nascent rationalism, still drew on their medieval heritage in an appeal to popular taste. At the same time that Gods Determinations reflects the influence of Du Bartas and Spenser and his early imitators, it bears a closer resemblance to the literature of religious instruction in the method and language of its doctrinal presentation. As Grabo points out, dialogue was a device common to devotional manuals designed for the layman. Inevitably, then, the homiletic and morality traditions