John+Keble's+The+Christian+Year



// The Christian Year // is a book of devotional poetry written by John Keble. First published in 1827, //The Christian Year// is considered to be one of the most popular works of poetry published and read in the Victoria era, selling 379,000 copies between its original publication date and the expiration of its copyright in 1873 (Altick 386). By Keble's death in 1866 there were 95 editions released (//Oxford Dictionary of National Biography//). The collection was originally unsigned, as Keble believed that its content depended on freedoms from authorship and therefore refused to have his name attributed to the book while he was alive (McKelvy 86). Despite Keble’s intended anonymity, his authorship was extremely well known. (King 417).

The poems in this book are organized in correlation with the Anglican liturgical calendar and are intended to compliment the Book of Common Prayer. In the advertisement to //The Christian Year//, Keble explicitly states this intent: “the object of the present publication will be attained, if any person find assistance from it in bringing his own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommended and exemplified in the Prayer Book” (Keble VI). The majority of the collection is comprised of short poems that correspond to every Sunday in the liturgical calendar, where each poem connects with the weekly Biblical reading in the Book of Common Prayer. These poems present an artistic rendering of these Biblical teachings, realigning biblical learning with a spiritual poetic. Accordingly, //The Christian Year// also includes religiously inspired poetry for specific occasions. These occasional poems correspond to prayers in the Book of Common Prayer and include poems for “Morning” (Keble 12) and “Evening,” (Keble 15) as well as poems for specific religious events such as, “Holy Communion,” (Keble 280) “Holy Baptism,” (Keble 283) “Matrimony,” (Keble 289) and “The Burial of the Dead” (Keble 293). Significantly, Keble precedes each poem within //The Christian Year// with a biblical quote that reconnects the poetic subject back to the poem’s original religious source.

Keble, a theologian, clergyman, and poet, is known for writing //The Christian// //Year//, as well as his involvement in Tractarianism (the Oxford Movement) (//Oxford Dictionary of National Biography//). Dominated by Anglicans, this movement strove to reintroduce Catholic influences into the Anglican Church (Schlossber). Thus, Keble wrote //The Christian// //Year// in a significant cultural context of social transition, as //The Christian Year// is regarded as the poetic preliminary to the Oxford Movement (Beek 1), and so it ought to be read in terms of the theology associated with the Oxford Movement (McKelvy 76). In specific, Broughamism, which was the name John Henry Newman, a fellow Tractarian, gave to the period's faith in restoring reading to the lower and middle classes, presented what Keble considered to be a potentially problematic shift in the nature of biblical interpretation (McKelvy 84). This movement sought to increase education and literacy among the lower classes, thus giving the general public increased opportunity for unguided biblical interpretation (McKelvy 84). These cultural opportunities for changed biblical reading in Victorian society created fear of misguided biblical interpretation. In the advertisement to //The Christian Year,// Keble addresses, what he considered to be the problem of biblical disconnect in Victorian society. He describes the Church of England as producing feelings of sobriety and happiness, yet he warns that “in times of much leisure and unbounded curiosity, when excitement of every kind is sought after with a morbid eagerness, this part of the merit of out liturgy is likely in some measure to be lost, on many even sincere admirers” (Keble V).

// The Christian Year // achieved enormous success in its own time. It was read across Christian denominations, by all classes, and in the United States (Blair 8). Significantly, the reading practices for // The Christian Year // differed from the typical popular publication because this book followed the liturgical calendar. // The Christian Year // was most likely re-read on an annual basis and its religious poetry remained compelling for an extended time, as shown by its sales figures ( // Oxford Dictionary of // //National Biography//). Every edition of the book published the advertisement with the same date of “May 30th 1827” perpetually situating it in a fixed time (McKelvy 86).

The poems within //The Christian Year// are uniformly compositions praising God and are thus considered to be devotional lyrics, or hymns. While Keble’s poems were written for specifically religious purpose, they still presented a great poetic value, accordingly influencing many poets of the Victorian era, such as Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Matthew Arnold (Blair 9). Keble’s poems were situated in the transitional period between the Romantic and Victorian era and his poetic style often draws on Romantic influences by focusing on producing an expressive affect within the poems (Blair 9). These poems represent the Tractarian goal to assert the beauty of Christian religion and to realign the spiritual experience with the poetic experience. Overall, Keble’s poems and their popularity are representative of artistic connection between personal faith and devotion in the Victorian era.

Works Cited Altick, Richard D. //The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900//. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1957. Print. Beek, Willem Joseph Antoine Marie. //John Keble's Literary and Religious Contribution to the Oxford Movement.// Nijmegen: Centrale Drukkerij, 1959. Print. Blair, Kirstie. "Introduction." //John Keble in Context//. Ed. Kirstie Blair. London: Anthem Press, 2004. 1-16. Print. Butler, Perry. ‘Keble, John (1792–1866)’, //Oxford Dictionary of National Biography//, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2006 accessed 18 Jan 2016 Keble, John. // The Christian Year //. Second American Edition. Philedelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1840. Print. King, Joshua. “John Keble’s //The Christian Year//: Private Reading and Imagined National Religious Community.” //Victorian Literature and Culture.// 40 (2012): 397-420. Web. September 30 2013. McKelvy, William. “Ways of Reading 1825: Leisure, Curiosity, and Morbid Eagerness.” //John Keble in Context//. Ed Kristie Blair. London: Anthem Press, 2004. 75-88. Print. Schlossber, Herbet. “The Tractarian Movement.” //Victorian Web.// 4 April 2012. Web. September 30 2013.