Sighs and Groans: Attending to the Passions in Early Modern Prayer. Issue 6 (June 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tsentourou, Naya
• Is Part Of: Literature compass. Volume 12:Issue 6(2015)
• Page Start: 262
• Page End: 273
• Publication Date: 2015-06
• Subjects: English literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; American literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Littérature -- Périodiques; Arts and Humanities -- Literature; Electronic reference sources; 805
• DOI: 10.1111/lic3.12224
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1741-4113

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>Studies on early modern passions in the last two decades have focused on the body as the site of subjectivity but they have rarely taken into account the role of the body in the context of private prayer and the sighs and groans it is meant to produce in addressing the divine. Studies on seventeenth‐century prayer, on the other hand, have started to consider gesture and voice in devotion, yet they tend to interpret discussions of physiological expression as purely metaphorical. This article examines the widespread phenomenon of sighing and groaning in prayer as both a cognitive and a sensitive experience in order to demonstrate how early modern writers imagined sighs and groans as symptoms and agents of passions simultaneously, blending in the process anatomical and theological discourses. This new methodology raises questions about the subjectivity of early modern petitioners, their experience of the distance with the divine and finally the soundscape of private prayer.</p> </abstract>