Review: Helen Boyles, Romanticism and Methodism: The Problem of Religious Enthusiasm

Mark Burden

Research output: Contribution to journalBook/Film/Article review (Academic Journal)peer-review

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Abstract

The issue of the relationship between English literary Romanticism and evangelical culture is highly contentious; some scholars deny that it is possible to find meaningful connections between these two movements, while others insist
on direct and measurable cross-pollination. In her new study, Romanticism and Methodism, Helen Boyles has contributed to this debate by providing some enjoyable close readings of key Romantic works. Boyles explores the
potentially ‘enthusiastic’ elements of these texts, while maintaining a firm faith in the unconscious sublimation of evangelical discourse in the expression of the passions and the language of the common people. Boyles presents her work as a development of Frederick Gill’s The Romantic Movement and Methodism (1937), in which Gill posited a connection between the religion of the heart and the Romantic imagination, and Richard Brantley’s study of Wordsworth’s Natural Methodism (1975), which identified stylistic similarities between the poet’s work and evangelical discourse.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)73-76
JournalThe Hazlitt Review
Volume10
Issue number2017
Publication statusPublished - 2017

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