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Dissenting from Edward Young's Night Thoughts : Christian Time and Poetic Metre in Anne Steele's Graveyard Poems
Author(s) -
Stenke Katarina
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/1754-0208.12534
Subject(s) - poetry , dissenting opinion , literature , poetics , period (music) , art , philosophy , history , aesthetics , law , political science
Although the Particular Baptist poet Anne Steele (1718‐1778) is little known today, this article argues that her poems on time and death offer valuable insights into wider religio‐poetical representations of time in the mid‐eighteenth century. Her verse both responds to and departs from the conventions of graveyard poetry as exemplified by Edward Young's Night Thoughts (1742‐6), demonstrating close engagement with this popular subgenre as well as an intelligent critique of its devotional poetics. As such, Steele's writing foregrounds yet also problematises emerging distinctions between writing and religion, and thus argues for new methodologies in religious and literary history.