Catholic Religious Poets

From Southwell to Crawshaw

Anthony D. Cousins

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 1991
• Print ISBN:
  9780722015704
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441195609
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Literature & the Arts in Christianity

While so much has been written about the English Protestant religious poets of the late 16th and earlier 17th centuries, there is relatively little study on the Catholic religious poets. Cousins fills this gap with his critical history of the Catholic religious poets major phase in the English Renaissance.

In studying the Catholic religious poets from Southwell to Crashaw, this book focuses on the interplay in their verse between natively English and Counter-Reformation devotional literary traditions. Cousins puts forward particularly two arguments: that most of the more important Catholic poets write verse which expresses a Christ-centred vision of reality; that the divine agape receives almost as much attention in the Catholic poets' verse as does devout eros.

In The Catholic Religious Poets Cousins defends the work of the Catholic religious poets arguing that this literary tradition deserves closer examination and higher valuation than it has usually been given.

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER ONE: English and Counter-Reformation Traditions
• CHAPTER TWO: St Robert Southwell
• CHAPTER THREE: Henry Constable and William Alabaster
• CHAPTER FOUR: Sir John Beaumont, William Habington, and Some Others
• CHAPTER FIVE: Richard Crashaw
• APPENDIX: Ralegh's Ocean to Scinthia
• NOTES
• INDEX OF NAMES