Visions of British Culture from the Reformation to Romanticism: The Protestant Discovery of Tradition (Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000)

This book is a major new contribution to the study of cultural identities in Britain and Ireland from the Reformation to Romanticism. It provides a fresh perspective on the rise of interest in British vernacular (or "folk") cultures, which has often been elided with the emergence of British Romanticism and its Continental precursors. Here the Romantics' discovery of and admiration for vernacular traditions is placed in a longer historical timeline reaching back to the controversies sparked by the Protestant Reformation. The book charts the emergence of a nuanced discourse about vernacular cultures, developing in response to the Reformers' devastating attack on customary practices and beliefs relating to the natural world, seasonal festivities, and rites of passage. It became a discourse grounded in humanist Biblical and antiquarian scholarship; informed by the theological and pastoral problems of the long period of religious instability after the Reformation; and, over the course of the eighteenth century, colored by new ideas about culture drawn from Enlightenment historicism and empiricism. This study shows that Romantic literary primitivism and Romantic social thought, both radical and conservative, grew out of this rich context. It will be welcomed by historians of early modern and eighteenth-century Britain and those interested in the study of religious and vernacular cultures. Celestina Savonius-Wroth is Assistant Professor, History Librarian, and Head of the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. She holds a doctorate in British history from Indiana University Bloomington Acknowledgements Contents Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Ritual, Ceremony, and Custom in the Aftermath of the British Reformations Attacking and Defending Customs in Britain’s Long Reformations Britain’s Culture Wars Sacraments, Ceremonies, and Customs After the Restoration The Authority of Custom Chapter 3: “Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaism”: Erudition, Polemic, and Apologetics in the Study of British Customs Customs in the Bible Rival Antiquities and the Search for a Middle Ground “Innocent Customes of the Heathens”: Universal Origins of Customs Vernacular Culture in the Context of Biblical Scholarship and Religious Polemic “Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme” Chapter 4: The Antiquities of the Common People Bourne’s Pastoral Aims The Making of an Eighteenth-Century “Popular Antiquary” The Worlds of Henry Bourne Origins of Customs Transformation of Pre-Christian Customs: Metaphor and Emblem Provincial Anglicanism and “Popular Antiquities” Chapter 5: Embodied Religion in Eighteenth-Century Britain: “All Mankind Are the Vulgar in This Respect” Body and Soul The Decline of “Symbolical Arguments” A Strange Meeting of Minds Mid-century Defenses of “Externals in Religion” Vernacular Culture, Religion, and Poetry Chapter 6: Religion in the Bardic Revival Language and Religion in Britain and Ireland Celtic Literary Traditions and Bible Translators Patriarchal Druids Hebrew Bards The Bible and the Origins of Poetry Heirs of the Ancient Celts Chapter 7: Against the Cold Calculus of Modernity Vernacular Culture and the “Unreformed” Church of England Observations on Popular Antiquities A “Seemly Course of Practice, Pray’r and Laud” “Thoughts on the Neglect of Old Customs” Pastoral Revival Romanticism in Practice Chapter 8: Conclusion Bibliography Reference Works Manuscript Sources London, British Library Manchester, Chetham’s College Library Oxford, Bodleian Library Preston, Lancashire, Lancashire Archives Printed Primary Sources: Periodicals Printed Primary Sources: Books and Pamphlets Secondary Sources Index