Tractarian Poetry: Introduction

Abstract

In Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau defines belief, as object of believing (a dogma, a program, etc.) but as subject's investment in a proposition, act of saying it and considering it as true-in other words, a modality of assertion and not its (1) We might consider field of Tractarian poetics in light of such a statement, one in which catholic Anglicans sought to propose and enact their belief in manner they knew would have greatest impact: by writing poetry. While content was far from secondary, since Tractarian poetry was reliant on aesthetic expression and exegesis of doctrinal law, its form loudly announced belief-system in whose service it had been composed. This system was primarily outlined in a series of ninety pamphlets written between 1833 and 1841 and published under collective title Tracts for Times. (2) John Keble, John Henry Newman, Isaac Williams, J. A. Froude, and E. B. Pusey were amongst various contributors, many of them poets as well as intellectual clergy concerned with reviving use of traditional catholic doctrines within Church of England. Tractarians, or Movement, as group became known, sought to reintroduce to Anglican worship centrality of Eucharist, daily prayers, feasts and fasts, Apostolic succession, confession, sisterhoods, and also ritual as it was performed through use of candles, crucifixes, high altars, and incense. Moreover, movement placed a significant emphasis upon private devotion, personal holiness, and disciplined, restrained way in which such faith might be practiced and communicated. best, most oblique and sacred manner of expression available to believer, according to its adherents, was poetry. Poetry and religion had long been interconnected, but eighteenth century in particular had witnessed a surge of interest in their relations, notably through popularity of Methodist hymn and biblical paraphrase and also due to Robert Lowth's Oxford Lectures on Sacred Poetry of Hebrews (1753). Lowth argued that poetry proceeds from divine inspiration, able to communicate virtue and piety through its rhythm, modulation, and meter. The language of he claimed, is the effect of mental emotion, vehement and temperate alike and able to invoke passionate belief while disciplining experience such faith delivers: It is office of poetry to incite, to direct, to temper passions, and not to extinguish them, Lowth declared. (3) John Keble's own Oxford Lectures on Poetry (1832-41) echo Lowth's focus on emotional impact religious poetry can effect on believing reader, underlining supernatural, sacramental element within poetry as a spontaneous overflow of spiritual feeling. mode in which such an overflow aesthetically communicated beliefs of Oxford Movement was a subject with which Keble became preoccupied in his critical prose and volume of poetry, Christian Year (1827). That these preoccupations resulted in a movement we might now label Tractarian poetics is significant not only for immense popularity poetry written in this mode secured in Victorian period but also for equally profound distaste of later scholars for its lyrical Christian content. This distaste meant that G. B. Tennyson's Victorian Devotional Poetry: Tractarian Mode was a landmark publication for modern critics searching for a balanced, insightful commentary on Tractarian poetics when it appeared twenty-five years ago in 1981. (4) Certainly striking critical renaissance of recent scholarship addressing Victorian religion and poetry owes a considerable debt to Tennyson. recent flurry of work on women's poetry, poetic theory, affect, and belief has clearly been encouraged by his important book. Victorian studies has always recognized influence of Tractarianism on Tennyson, Arnold, Clough, Christina Rossetti, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, but few critics (the rare exceptions being Rodney Stenning Edgecombe and Margaret Johnson) have sought to unpack carefully extent to which Tractarian ideas of poetics addressed contemporary concerns. …