Coleridge and the Lay Sermon. Issue 7 (3rd October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: During, Simon; O'Connell, Lisa
• Is Part Of: English studies. Volume 98:Issue 7(2017)
• Page Start: 747
• Page End: 757
• Publication Date: 2017-10-03
• Subjects: English philology -- Periodicals; English literature -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Philologie anglaise -- Périodiques; Littérature anglaise -- Étude et enseignement -- Périodiques; 420
• DOI: 10.1080/0013838X.2017.1339992
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0013-838X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay, a contribution to the study of secularisation, explores conditions under which a new genre, the lay sermon, emerged early in the nineteenth century. It does so through a reading of the texts that inaugurate the genre, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lay Sermons (1817). In particular, the essay examines Coleridge's Lay Sermons ' historical context, that is, to the beginnings of liberal politics. And it also pays attention to Coleridge's relation to the heritage of religious sermons, especially seventeenth- century sermons. It argues that the lay sermon, unlike the religious sermon, tends to be directed to particular social groups or formations rather than, more broadly, to Christians of a particular denomination.