Catholic Religious Poets

Download or read book Catholic Religious Poets written by Anthony D. Cousins and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1991-07-25 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.