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Heirs of the Renaissance, the Puritans valued the ancient classics, esteemed such moderns as Spenser, Sidney, and later Milton, and of course were in sympathy with the Renaissance belief in the ethical foundation of poetry. With such a tradition behind them, and living intensely in the present, they had a situation favorable to a high order of religious poetry. While occupied with the practical demands of early settlement in the colonial wilderness of North America, the Puritans observed an austere religion founded on the Biblical notion of the original sin. As a 17th-century American Metaphysical poet, Edward Taylor fuses thought and feeling with fresh and tense language. The research attempts to study how Taylor combines the religious meditational traditions and Biblical typology, a conservative sense of parallels between the Old Testament and the New Testament, in his religious poetry, Preparatory Meditations. I argue that Edward Taylor, the pastor and poet, draws on verbal piety as revealed in the universe of his religious poetry to reassert the union of Godhead and manhood in the Word. Besides, Metaphysical wit serves as a delight for the daily life surrounded by dangers and wilderness in North America during early colonial period. Thus, as Hephaestus forges a brave shield for Achilles under the supplication of Thetis, so does Edward Taylor as a pastor-poet forge a new poetics of Puritanism out of colonial barrenness, one that fuses Biblical typology and lyrical poetry. Keywords: Edward Taylor, Preparatory Meditations, Puritanism, Poetics, American colonial period, Anne Bradstreet, Typology, Metaphysical wit, early American literature, religious poetry

Thornton Wilder and the Puritan Narrative Tradition is the first reading of Wilder's life, fiction, drama, and criticism as a product of American culture. Konkle shows that Thornton Wilder, as a literary descendant of Edward Taylor, inherited the best of the Puritans' worldview and drew upon those attributes of the Puritan tradition within American literature that would strike a fundamental chord with his American audience. By providing close readings of Wilder's texts against seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Puritan culture and literature, Konkle demonstrates that Wilder's aesthetic was not just generically allegorical but also typically American and his religious sensibility was not just generally Christian, but specifically Calvinist.

From the Middle Ages to the close of the 17th century, alchemy was fundamental to Western culture, as scores of experimenters sought to change lead into gold. Though its significance declined with the rise of chemistry, alchemy continued to captivate the imagination of writers and its images still appear in modern creative works. This book examines the literary representation of alchemical theory and the metaphor of alchemical regeneration in the works of Edward Taylor, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller. While Taylor used alchemical metaphors to illustrate the redeeming grace of God upon the soul, these same metaphors were used by Poe, Hawthorne, and Fuller to depict a broader concept of redemption. These later writers used alchemical imagery to describe both the regeneration of the individual and the possible transformation of society. For Poe, alchemy became a metaphor for the transforming power of imagination; for Hawthorne, it became a means of representing the redeeming power of love; for Fuller, it figured the reconciliation of gender opposites. Thus these four American writers incorporated the idea of regeneration in their works, and the tropes and metaphors of the medieval alchemists provided a fascinating way of imagining the transformative process.

The Devil’s Mousetrap approaches the thought of three colonial New England divines--Increase Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Edward Taylor--from the perspective of literary theory. Author Linda Munk focuses on the background of these men’s ideas and on the sources from which they drew, both directly and indirectly, in framing their theology. She notes that the language used in the pulpit by Mather, Edwards, and Taylor is full of allusions to the Bible and Apocrypha, to Puritan treatises, and to post-biblical exegesis, Jewish and Christian. Munk proceeds to elucidate many allusions that have, for the most part, proved to be unclear to contemporary readers, in order to provide essential insights into the construction of Puritan theology.

Edward Taylor (1642-1729) was one of the most influential ministers in Puritan New England. He was also a prolific but unpublished poet. With the discovery of his poetry in 1936 and the publication of a nearly complete volume in 1960, his reputation as the premiere early American poet has grown immensely. His widely anthologized work is taught in most introductory American literature courses and nearly all courses on early American literature. This reference is a convenient guide to his poetry, including a summarization of the current state of scholarship on his work. Beginning with an overview of his life and times, this reference analyzes Taylor's Preparatory Meditations and Gods Determinations, along with his other poems, in light of Puritan doctrine and his thoughts about poetry. The book traces the genesis of his works, their editorial and publication history, and the complex cultural and historical background of his writings. Later chapters discuss his themes, his poetic art, and the reception of his works. A brief bibliographical essay completes the volume.

(c. 1644–1729), American metaphysical poet and divine. His devotional poems remained in manuscript, at his own request,

Eberwein examines Edward Taylor's Metrical History of Christianity as Puritan Narrative. Among other things, Eberwein tries to make sense of this puzzling and often aggravating text-what the poem is, and what it tells everyone about Edward Taylor's sense of poetic vocation and Puritan poetics more generally. Beyond that, an ongoing interest in early American narrative poems impels Eberwein to wonder how this massive specimen relates to Puritan storytelling approaches in prose as well as verse.

Back in August, I wrote about the Algonquin Round Table, a group of literary wits who met at the Algonquin Hotel in New York every day for lunch. Their lunch conversation, disseminated by the members' newspaper columns, has become the stuff of legend. One of the Round Tablers was Robert Benchley, a fine writer (and later actor) with an incredibly dry humor. That column drew an email from his grandson, Nat Benchley, the actor and writer who performs a one-man show of some of his grandfather's \"greatest hits\" titled \"Benchley Despite Himself.\" He saw the article on Google and was very kind to write. There's a wonderful poem by the American Puritan minister Edward Taylor titled \"Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold.\" Like most Puritans, Taylor finds a message of God's providence in the observation of nature. Unlike most Puritans, he writes in the metaphysical style. After watching the wasp, he writes: \"Lord, clear my misted sight that I / May hence view Thy Divinity, / Within this little downy Wasp / In whose small Corporation we / A school and a schoolmaster see.\" Taylor's poem makes more sense with visual aids.

Edward Taylor's poetic technique in the \"Prepatory Meditations\" were criticized by early commentators as random and undisciplined, but over the years some scholars have identified underlying patterns in his work. The poetic pattern in Taylor's \"32. Meditation. 1 Cor. 3.22 Whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas\" is discussed.