Rituals of Spontaneity - by Lori Branch (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a new-found love of spontaneity transformed Christian worship and revolutionized the Enlightenment's "culture of sensibility." Rituals of Spontaneity tells the story of how and why spontaneity came to be so revered. Using archival material and works of Bunyan, Shaftesbury, Goldsmith, Smart and Wordsworth, Branch shows that the rise of spontaneity was intimately connected to the forces of commerce and science at the dawn of the Enlightenment. By focusing on the language in which spontaneity was defended and on its psychological repercussions, Rituals of Spontaneity challenges previous understanding of secularization and demonstrates the deep, often troubling connections between religion and secularism in modernity.

Winner of the Book of the Year Award for the Conference on Christianity and Literature.

Review Quotes

Rich, well-argued, and frequently fascinating... The book yields particularly useful insights about anxieties over commercialized religious culture... and the paradoxically regimented nature of much early-modern "spontaneity."... Recommended.

About the Author

Lori Branch (Ph. D. Indiana University) is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa.