John Wesley, Practical Divinity and the Defence of Literature

Emma Salgård Cunha is Lecturer in English at Middlebury College’s Oxford Humanities Program and College Lecturer in Theology at Keble College, Oxford. Her research focuses on the relationship between religion and literature in the long eighteenth century.

• Methodism and the Defence of Literature: An Introduction; 1 Methodist Literary Culture: Literacy and Grace; 2 Wesley’s Christian Library: Practicality, Controversy and the Methodist Canon; 3 Wesley in the Literary Sphere: The Methodist Miscellany; 4 Wesleyan Poetics: Practical Divinity and the Function of Literature; 5 Negotiating Nonconformity: Practical Divinity and the Politics of Methodist Hymnody; 6 Experience, Experiment and Wesley’s Spiritual Autobiography; Conclusion

"his is an. academic book tor those who are interested in Joh:n Wesley's publication projects as they related to and were part of the literary print culture of the eighteenth century a time when a significant number of reli­gious texts were produced. Wesley himself may have been responsible for as many as 3,500 items. Thls study, lhen, will be most useful for scholars interesting in the history of publishing in various religious movements such as Methodism, in the purposes and uses of literature and the readers of literature, and the reputation of John Wesley as a literary figure who instigated, as the fro.ntis note says "a s0phisticated programme of reading, writing, and publishing within Ws Methodist Societies' (iii)." - Rudolph P. Almasy, West Virginia University