William Alabaster:Rhetor, Meditator, Devotional Poet—I

Abstract

IT has been commonplace in the literary criticism of the past thirty years to acknowledge the influence of the Counter-Reformation devotional tradition on English metaphysical poetry of the seventeenth century. The sonnets of William Alabaster, a little known recusant poet writing just before the dawn of the century, provide an early example of this influence. Even when Alabaster does not rise above his craftmanship, his poems offer insights into the cultural equipment and habits of mind of the age in which he lived, revealing how meditation could vivify rhetorical invention, injecting it with feeling and passion and transforming the persona of a lyric poem into a dramatic speaker.

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