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Wendy Roberts is a 1999 alumna of Biola English. Her new book, Awakening Verse, was recently published by Oxford University Press. It is “the first monograph to address [the] large corpus of evangelical poetry in the American colonies, shedding light on important dimensions of eighteenth-century religious and literary culture.” In this interview, we ask about her book, the place of poetry in Evangelicalism, and how Biola English prepared her for a career in literary academia.
You write, in your introduction, "This book aims to correct a [persistent belief]: the ubiquitous treatment of the hymn as the sole poetic interest of revivalists." Perhaps you could give us a rough outline of the book's thesis/argument.
The book argues that evangelical poetry (both hymnal and non-hymnal forms) flourished in the eighteenth century and became the foundation for a nineteenth-century American verse that relied heavily on feeling and the poetess. I trace one aspect of this prolific poetry as it circulated in the British North American colonies—a Calvinist verse based in espousal poetics. I start with the emergence of the idea that the poem is the most effective sermon and then look at several revivalist poet-ministers. The first chapter turns to the Scottish minister’s bestselling book Gospel Sonnets and what I call his use of the Calvinist couplet that imbued form with the lived tensions of Calvinist belief. His poem became an avenue for a woman poet-minister in Boston, Sarah Moorhead, to expand her own verse ministry, which I examine in chapter two. I then look at the importance of verse in Samuel Davies’s ministry to slaves in Virginia and its implications for an evangelical anthropology based in a common aesthetics. Chapter four turns to Phillis Wheatley (Peters) who critiques evangelical aesthetics, specifically the Calvinist couplet, espousal piety, and the white poetess, for how it embeds white supremacy. The final chapter turns to James Ireland, a Baptist itinerant minister, and his muscularized Christianity to show not only the different pulls within evangelical poetics, but also how the poet and lyric can function differently than Mill imagined. As a whole, the book argues that evangelicalism can best be understood as a religio-aesthetic movement and that literary historians need to take better account of the gods and those that interact with them to fully understand the development of early American poetry.
You write that "poetry was not insubstantial decor adorning the real stuff of scholarly concern—sermons, conversion narratives, and revival journals. Instead, a vast library of poetic productions served as one of the primary actors in the creation, maintenance, and adaptation of evangelical culture." Why did poetry, in particular, have such a generative and sustaining power at that time?
Poetry was everywhere in the larger culture and it was part of everyday life—it helped shape and sustain ways of thinking, feeling, and interacting with the world and with God. When evangelicalism began to emerge, it also had strong influences, of course, from German Pietism with its attendant emphasis on verse. And there was an argument that emerged at the beginning of the century that the Bible was the oldest poetry and that sacred poetry was the language of heaven. If we start to think about evangelicalism as less of an adherence to certain beliefs and more about a feeling one has that they are doing Christianity more authentically than others, it makes sense that genres that help create this experiential form of Christianity and help create a sense of one’s deeper authenticity would be particularly important. It’s also very accessible. Women and people of color could use it, and did use it for verse ministries.
Perhaps you could say something about the difference between lyric and other verse forms, and how the rise to dominance of lyric poetry (among all poetries) affected the role poetry played in 18th and 19th century evangelical culture. You might contextualize this in light of Watts's distinction between hymnody and poetry.
There is a hardening that has occurred between the terms poetry and hymn that has a good deal to do with the consolidation of poetry as lyric. Virginia Jackson and Yopie Prinns set that conversation in motion some time ago. The language can be tricky to handle. When a 20th/21st century critic says poetry, they have generally meant lyric poetry and they have generally not meant hymnody. In the eighteenth century, the association of poetry with lyric verse had not yet happened. There were all sort of verse forms. I think early evangelicalism helped muddy them up further for us. Watts says he had to take his “spoiled hymns” out of his book of hymns and put them in his book entitled Horae Lyricae (Lyric Hours). The evangelical hymns needed to be for the “plainest capacity” and his “spoiled hymns” (presumably now a different kind of poem) were too rich in imagery and too sophisticated in verse form. Ultimately, for Watts and many in the eighteenth century, taste, class, and whiteness are what make literary poems. But, then there are whole arguments that are made by evangelicals about the need for poetry for the plainest capacity—and this includes hymns and other verse forms.
Verse likely evolved out of a need to keep things in memory for pre-literate cultures. This suggests an instrumental—and not just aesthetic—purpose for poetry. Perhaps you can say something about how this tension (between the instrumental and aesthetic qualities of poetry) played out during and after the time your book is focused on.
This question brings at least two important points to mind. The first is that I’m not entirely convinced these are helpful distinctions. Both oral and non-alphabetic writing cultures and alphabetic writing cultures had aesthetic and instrumental purposes for poetry. The question brings up an important point that I touch on in the book and that many other scholars have written about: that the aesthetic emerges as a scholarly category within the context of the slave trade, colonialism, and indigenous genocide. My chapter on the Presbyterian minister Samuel Davies shows how a version of evangelical anthropology emerges out of poetics. Phillis Wheatley (Peters) shows how it is insufficient.
In my undergraduate courses, I was taught that until Dickinson and Whitman came along there was no "American" poetry. All that came before was derivative of European styles. How does your book touch on that question?
I love Dickinson and Whitman. But, to think there was no American poetry before them is absurd. Of course, there has been poetry on this continent for millennia. I’m not interested in narratives of “true” or “authentic” American (United States) poetry that are divorced from European styles. I don’t touch on that. I deal with British North American poetry written in English and some of the British poets who were particularly important for transatlantic revivals. It would be strange to think of Edwards’s revival as derivative. For an emerging evangelicalism, God’s work spreads like a fire, and when events appear that mimic other events it is indicative of the movement of the Holy Spirit. If we don’t view aesthetics as something outside of this activity, but central to it, (a transatlantic relgio-aesthetic movement of God doesn’t care a wit about derivative), it’s easier to see how certain aesthetics and narratives of American literary history are not the whole story.
I once heard a Catholic poet who was visiting Biola point out that the evangelical tradition hasn't produced a lasting literature in the way that high church and Catholic believers have (he mentioned several writers as well as poets—Hopkins, Auden, Merton, et. al.). Would your book suggest this poet was onto something, maybe evangelical suspicions of art or concerns about interpretation?
I’m not sure I would say it is suspicion of art; it might be more of a suspicion of authority and a different understanding of the purpose of art. From my perspective, contemporary evangelical novels and music have a lot in common with eighteenth-century evangelicalism. From the start evangelicals insisted that an aesthetic experience of God had to occur for someone to be a “true” Christian. They insisted that there is some kind of basic sense in humanity that responds to beauty. Because of this, they weren’t interested in elite taste. They looked to the common forms that the most people seemed to have an aesthetic response to, and they used those forms. I’m also not convinced that the evangelical tradition hasn’t produced a lasting literature. If they’ve produced a static definition of evangelicalism back to the eighteenth century, surely they have also established a literature. Evangelicals read Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Erskine, William Cowper and others. They also read many poets from 19th century America, many of them women. This seems to me to be the same old argument about great literature. Evangelicals helped create a canon that is not a canon; oddly, they are often defenders of “great books” curriculum. But their literature is most often of the common aesthetic and attempts to affect culture from within culture. Usually they are busy creating popular literature of the moment.
Finally, might you say a few words about your journey from Biola to your current position as Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Albany?
Whenever anyone asks about my experience in Biola’s English department, I tell them about the rigorous curriculum that (at the time I was there) included both the history of literary theory and contemporary critical theory, as well as three survey courses. It gave me a very strong foundation for graduate school. The value of the seminar style classes that made up most of my schedule in the English department cannot be overstated. I value both the religious community I experienced at Biola and the secular community I experienced at the University at Arizona and Northwestern University. It has given me a different perspective than most of my peers. Something called secular and something called religion are viewed by many people as static, firm concepts and identities. I don’t see or experience them that way, and I find it fascinating to move through institutions and communities that do.
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