Ritual, Routine, and Regime : Repetition in Early Modern British and European Cultures

Repetition dynamically shaped important modes of thought and action in early modern British and European cultures. The centrality and often problematic ambiguity of repetition as they converge in ritual, routine, and regime, however, are rarely assessed accurately because repetition is often dismissed as quaintly primitive or embarrassingly visceral. Ritual, Routine, and Regime is a collection of essays that reveals varied meanings given to and created by repetition from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The contributors reveal repetition at work in evolving definitions of the self and of the emotions, in political rhetoric used to assert a nation’s history, in values ascribed to musical styles, in religious verse grounded in practices of prayer, in the aesthetics created by the poetry of work and by rhyme in general, in the recreation of British classics through French translations, and in the repeated but significantly varied sculpture of the portrait bust. Edited by Lorna Clymer, Ritual, Routine, and Regime juxtaposes early modern practices with twentieth- and twenty-first century theoretical accounts of the institutions of repetition. Providing a stimulating, new perspective on early modern culture, the collection describes repetition’s often peculiar demands, its surprising gratifications, and its contested interpretations. Contents 5 Acknowledgments 7 Contributors 9 Introduction 15 PART I. OVERTURE 33 Chapter One. Cycles of Repetition: Chacona, Ciaccona, Chaconne, and the Chaconne 33 PART II. REPETITION, THE SELF, AND THE EMOTIONS 61 Chapter Two. Repetition and Narration: Tracking the Enlightenment Self 61 Chapter Three. Escape from Repetition: Blake versus Locke and Wordsworth 75 Chapter Four. Emerging Emotion Theory: Forgiveness and Repetition 92 PART III. RITUAL AND REGIME 115 Chapter Five. Acts of Remembrance, Acts of Oblivion: Rhetoric, Law, and National Memory in Early Restoration England 115 Chapter Six. Christopher Smart's Late Religious Lyrics: Building Churches in the Air 144 PART IV. ROUTINE AND RHYTHM 165 Chapter Seven. 'The Year Runs Round': The Poetry of Work in Eighteenth-Century England 165 Chapter Eight. Seven Reasons for Rhyme 184 PART V. REPLICATING ORIGINALS 213 Chapter Nine. Translation as Original Composition: Reading the Work of Pierre Le Tourneur 213 Chapter Ten. Multiple Heads: Pope, the Portrait Bust, and Patterns of Repetition 236 Index 259