'Varieties of Dissenting Expression': a one-day conference

Yesterday, I attended the one-day 'Varieties of Dissenting Expression' conference at Dr Williams's Library in London! I had the pleasure of spending the day there with one of my Ph.D supervisors, Dr Rachel Adcock (@RachelCAdcock if you are on Twitter!). The day was organised by the Centre for the English-Speaking World of Aix-Marseille Université in association with the Dr Williams's Centre for Dissenting Studies and the University of Liverpool.

The conference focused on the forms of dissenting expression available to dissenters and their congregations, both in England and in America, throughout the seventeenth century. Within this remit, it also looked at how the written materials available to dissenting communities and congregations were intimately related to their religious and social experiences.

It was a conference packed with a great variety of papers given by scholars from many different areas of academia: several covered the usefulness of the contents of Church Record books to researchers; others examined the transition of these records into the digital age; and another looked at the relationship between poetry, politics and dissenting experience. Anyone who knows my research interests will immediately be able to tell that this last paper was the one I was most excited about!

That said, the talk from Margaret Bendroth (Executive Director of the Congregational Library, Boston, MA) and James F. Cooper (who also does work with this library) was fascinating. Their intention is to recover the church records of congregations across America, and to be able to provide digitized versions of them both to researchers, and to those who are just curious to explore their religious heritage. The website for the library is a veritable treasure trove for researchers so, if you are at all interested in religious writing, and especially that relating to dissent or congregationalists, then I urge you to go and explore: http://www.congregationallibrary.org/. I for one will definitely be returning to this website, and am very tempted to look into the possibility of doing some transcription of the church records: watch this space! Both Peggy and Jeff (as they are commonly known!) were wonderful speakers, and have inspired me to seriously take note of this oft-neglected avenue of research. Just because a resource is not 'literary' in the strictest sense, does not mean that it will be of no use to us!

The final paper that Rachel and I were able to go to was George Southcombe's wonderful talk on 'Poetry, Politics and Dissenting Experience'. Throughout my studies, any non-conformist poetry that I have come across, or paid significant attention to, has tended to be that of the libertines. Whilst this poetry is certainly worthy of our attention, I was excited by several new names that George's paper brought to my attention, including Robert Wild and Benjamin Keach (if I had heard of these men before, I had definitely forgotten...). So, apart from opening my eyes to an area of poetry that I have definitely neglected until now, George's paper reminded me of the need to always see the poetry of dissenters as participating in a much broader early-modern culture. In other words, the fact that they, like other 'conformist' writers, used the poetry of their predecessors such as Milton and Dryden for their specific political purposes, should mean that we read their work within the broader context of seventeenth-century poetry. A valuable point to bear in mind!

All in all, the day was a brilliant one (despite the 4.30am start!), and has really ignited my passion for research once again. I don't know about all of you, but I find going to stimulating conferences like this one always reminds me of the reasons why I love what I do.

If you are curious about the other things that the Dr Williams's Centre for Dissenting Studies has to offer, do have a look at their website: http://www.english.qmul.ac.uk/drwilliams/

Beautiful Bibles

Happy September everybody! Am I the only one who doesn't know where that summer went?

About a week ago on Twitter, I stumbled across a link to MS 19; a sumptuously illustrated Bible from the 14th century that was given to the University of Edinburgh in 1680. The entire manuscript is digitized, and can be found here: http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/view/search/what/Ms%2019?q=bible%20historial

It really is an absolutely beautiful thing. The craftsmanship of medieval texts such as this never fails to astound me, so I just had to share three of my favourite images with you all! I have cropped the original facsimiles so that you can really see the incredible detail of the illustrations.

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f.89v

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I am going to be away for a couple of weeks now on holiday, so won't be able to do much other than tweet about any beautiful early modern things that I stumble across in Rome (my Twitter is @MyEMWorld in case you aren't already following). I do, however, have another couple of posts planned for when I return, one of which will be a write-up of the EEBO-TCP conference that I will be attending at Oxford University in two weeks' time!

© Jenna Townend 2013

Review: 'This I Warn You in Love': Witness of Some Early Quaker Women

The world of female Quakers who lived, operated, and preached in the seventeenth century is still a relatively untilled field of early-modern research. A couple of weeks ago, I did a post on Dorothea Gotherson, and her firm belief in the necessity of female modesty and decorum. I was pointed to Gotherson's work from reading 'This I Warn You in Love': Witness of Some Quaker Women, a booklet that was written by two of my lecturers at Loughborough, Elaine Hobby and Catie Gill, and published this year by The Kindlers. The booklet was so insightful and thought provoking, that I thought I would give an overview of it here!

The booklet is set out with an introduction to the fundamental principles of Quaker women, and an account of the movement's progression during the seventeenth century. One of the most significant things that the introduction notes is that Quaker writers, and thus Quaker women, believed their relationship with God to be intensely personal, and that God was working with them. This is something that is explicitly present in several of the extracts transcribed in the booklet. Furthermore, the introduction explains the fact that Quakers had a great dislike of the strict formalities that had come to dominate religious worship. Quakers firmly believed that these practices had distanced Christians from the dedication seen in early Christianity, and were keen to encourage worshippers to re-engage with it. This, too, is shown to be a recurring theme throughout the excerpts in the booklet.

There are six excerpts in the booklet, focusing on the work of the following Quaker women: Sarah Blackborow, Margaret Abbott, Priscilla Cotton, Mary Cole, Katherine Evans, Sarah Cheevers, Dorothea Gotherson, Margaret Killin, Barbara Patison, Hester Biddle and Dorothy Waugh. As well as these prose extracts in the booklet, an audio recording of them is also included on a CD. Hearing these accounts being read aloud really brings them to life, and the words of these Quaker women take on a new resonance. 

Below I have picked out a couple of my favourite sections from the work of Sarah Blackborow and Margaret Abbott that highlight the potential for a highly personal relationship with God, and the dislike of highly-organised and formal worship or religion.

1) Sarah Blackborow, A Visit to the Spirit in Prison (1658):
'A love there is which doth not cease to the seed of God in you all; and therefore doth invite you everyone, priest and people, to return in to it, that into Wisdom's house you may come, where there is a feast provided of all things well refined'.

2) Margaret Abbott, A Testimony against the False Teachers of this Generation (1658):
'You shall be made anew by the power of the pure spirit of the Son of God. It will teach you to deny all ungodliness. You shall need go to no man to be taught. It will bring you out of all the ways of the world, fashions, customs and traditions...'

The tenacity, self-belief, and sheer determination of these radical women is remarkable, and I would urge anyone with an interest in religious writing to get hold of a copy of this booklet; it will certainly open your eyes to this fascinating world.

'Male and Female Quakers at their Assembly', French School, 17th century

Source: http://firstyear.barnard.edu/americas/puritans/images

© Jenna Townend 2013

Dorothea Gotherson: in search of demureness and decorum

A lot of people will have heard of several prominent Quaker preachers, such as George Fox, from the early days of the movement in the seventeenth-century. However, often relegated to the shadows of history (but thankfully enjoying a resurgence in popularity in recent years), are the Quaker women who were equally fundamental in the establishment of the Quaker movement in England, and further afield. One of these women was Dorothea Gotherson.

In this extract of To All that Are Unregenerated, Gotherson takes the female fashions of Charles II’s court to task, and criticises them for their ostentatiousness and vanity. For Quakers, the decorum and modesty required in an individual’s spiritual life should be visible in all aspects of their person, including their clothing and appearance. It is surely not surprising, therefore, that the court was Gotherson’s chosen target, given its infamy for indulgence.

The persona that Gotherson presents in this excerpt (and indeed for much of the rest of her work), is, I’m sure you’ll agree, absolutely marvellous. I think that it is a brilliant example of Quaker women as prophetesses.

‘And all ye Ladies of England, who walk with stretched-out necks, and wanton eyes, mincing as you go, and making a clattering with your feet, curling your hair, and painting and spotting your faces, wearing gorgeous array, and the like; why consider, when  you come to give an account for all things done in the body, where will you appear? For none of this adornes the Gospel; God works none of these works in you or for you; and one day you shall know you have not lived and moved in him, for he is the author of none of this: you shall not have so much time for sinning as you have had heretofore if you will not bow to the righteous law written in the heart, that which reproves in secret for these and all other sins, you shall fall and perish in them; for in the grave there is no repentance. Let no blinde guide or merchant of souls sell you any longer to work wickedness…’ (pp. 77-9). 

1. Dorothea Gotherson, To All That are Unregenerated a Call to Repentance (London: 1661), in EEBO.

An excellent introduction to the work of early Quaker women (including more of an insight into Dorothea Gotherson) can be found in 'This I Warn You In Love': Witness of Some Early Quaker Women, a short book written by Elaine Hobby and Catie Gill and published this year by The Kindlers.

© Jenna Townend 2013

Tracing a transfiguration of death in seventeenth-century religious literature

The central focus of my dissertation's final chapter was on how two of George Herbert's poems ('Death' and 'Heaven') could have succeeded in dispelling mortal fear in his aged Christian reader by presenting death as a transcendent event to be welcomed, rather than something to be feared. Of course, this transfiguration in attitude is aligned with the progression in the presentation of death seen across the Old and New Testaments. Here, death is transformed from a finite event in which the body is simply recommitted to the dust from which it was created (Genesis 3:19, and see also 'The Order for the Burial of the Dead' in John Booty's edition of the 1599 Book of Common Prayer), to its position in the New Testament as a transcendent event for the Christian soul that, according to Scripture, was provided by Christ's self-sacrifice and the resulting doctrine of soteriology.

One of the most interesting things that I observed when looking at Herbert's 'Death' (which I have reproduced below from Helen Wilcox's edition), is how the poem follows this Biblical chronology of transforming death into a positive event. In relation to this, it also constructs a powerful pictorial representation of death's transfiguration by drawing upon its personified form as a skeletal figure that was seen in the meditatio mortis tradition of the Renaissance. In Herbert’s poem, the figure of death is gradually transformed from being the fear-inducing figure of this artistic tradition, where it is 'nothing but bones', to a figure that, 'since our Saviors death', is 'clad' with 'beauty' and can be 'much sought for as a good'.

When researching other primary sources which support or echo this transfiguration that Herbert enacts, I came across a fascinating source entitled Death's Universall Summons (EEBO) published in 1650. Whilst obviously published some time after Herbert's death in 1633, this anonymous work presents a discourse between 'the great Messenger of Mortality' and 'a presumptious Sinner', and it concludes with this man's 'chearful Entertainment of Death' (p. 1). Apart from a similar transfiguration of a Christian individual's attitude to death, what also struck me was this illustration included on the pamphlet's title page:

I would suggest that this skeletal figure (who is certainly an allusion to the meditatio mortis tradition seen in Renaissance art such as Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors) is very similar to the terrifying figure that Herbert alludes to in the first half of his poem. Furthermore, like the conclusion of Herbert's poem where his speaker welcomes death 'as a good', this dialogue also concludes with the Sinner confidently stating that 'my Friend [Death] I do Embrace' (p. 8). Because of Christ's own transfiguration of death, the Sinner has realised that the Christian can, in the spiritual and physical sense respectively, 'go Live for-ever, yet for-ever Die!' (p. 7) by greeting this personified figure of death.

I was so excited when I came across this obscure pamphlet in my research around Herbert's poem, and I'd love to hear if anyone else has found any other similar transfigurations of death in some of the more obscure religious literature of the seventeenth-century (whether poetic or otherwise!).

‘Death’

Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,

                           Nothing but bones,

      The sad effect of sadder groans:

Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

For we considered thee as at some six

                           Or ten years hence,

      After the loss of life and sense,

Flesh being turned to dust, and bones to sticks.

We looked on this side of thee, shooting short;

                         Where we did find

      The shells of fledge souls left behind,

Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.

But since our Savior’s death did put some blood

                           Into thy face,

      Thou art grown fair and full of grace,

Much in request, much sought for as a good.

For we do now behold thee gay and glad,

                           As at Doomsday;

      When souls shall wear their new array,

And all thy bones with beauty shall be clad.

Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust

                           Half that we have

      Unto an honest faithful grave;

Making our pillows either down, or dust.

• George Herbert, ‘Death’, in The English Poems of George Herbert, ed. by Wilcox, p. 648. 
• Death's Universall Summons: or, A General Call; to all Mankind, to the Grave: in a Dialogue Betwixt a Presumptious Sinner, and the Great Messenger of Mortality (London: [n. pub.], 1650), in EEBO.
• The Book of Common Prayer: 1559 The Elizabethan Prayer Book, ed. by John E. Booty.

© Jenna Townend 2013