Funeral Sermons and Graveyard Poetry: The Ecstasy of Death and Bodily Resurrection

This article argues that Anglo‐American graveyard poetry is a form of religious poetry closely connected to the eighteenth‐century funeral sermon tradition. An analysis of graveyard poetry in the context of the funeral sermon reveals that the poems explore Christian themes of faith, doubt and the afterlife, in which death, the grave and its paraphernalia are not objects of fear and horror but objects of desire. Such an analysis also reveals that the authors of funeral sermons employed many similar poetic techniques when addressing their congregations, showing that sermons can be fruitfully approached as literary as well as religious texts.