Rituals of Spontaneity

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a new-found love of spontaneity transformed Christian worship and revolutionised the Enlightenment's "culture of sensibility". This book tells the story of how and why spontaneity came to be so revered. Using archival material and works of Bunyan, Shaftes [...]
Visa längre beskrivning

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a new-found love of spontaneity transformed Christian worship and revolutionised the Enlightenment's "culture of sensibility". This book 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 secularisation and demonstrates the deep, often troubling connections between religion and secularism in modernity.