The language of nineteenth-century women hymn-writers: intercultural Insights

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the imagery and metaphorical language used by women hymn writers in nineteenth-century Britain and America in order to shed light on the important role of such writers on the one hand and the enduring popularity of their work on the other. Until quite recently very little attention had been given to the important social, moral and spiritual role of female hymn writers especially on this side of the Atlantic. Interest in hymns was almost exclusively limited to hymn singing and musical accompaniment rather than the actual social background of the hymns and their literary value. At the most, people were aware of the religious purpose of each individual hymn but very little was actually known about the authors and their social purpose. Interest in hymn writing began to surface in the 1990s with particular attention to female authors in Britain and America from the turn of the century (Moody 1999). As noted by Watson (2003), there is, in effect, a fundamental difference between the early acceptance of hymn singing in nineteenth-century America and the later start in Britain. While America “was marked by a strong hymnody almost from the beginning” (Watson 2003: 358), nineteenth-century Britain had a much slower start. Hymn-singing had become extremely popular in Methodist and other nonconformist meetings on a par with American camp-meeting spirituals in frontier areas, but it was still not allowed in Anglican services as late as the 1820s due to the general belief within the established church that “only metrical psalms had scriptural and legal authority” (Sadie 2001, vol. 12: 32). In the 1840s and 1850s, hymn-books began to appear for those who wished to include hymns in services but it was only in 1861 that Hymns Ancient and Modern was published and that hymn-writing really began to flourish (cf. Watson 2003: 288). Once hymns had been accepted as a form of worship in the Church of England, however, the second half of the nineteenth century saw such an increase in hymn-writing