Anybody here read Pilgrim's Progress? Is it worth the read?

bumping this, I'm always looking for books such as these (didn't even know some of those, thanks mate)

Actually, you are right. Not sure why I made a dichotomy out of it.

Both are excellent.

Medeival mystery plays? Think there's a penguin classic collection of them

Shit, new I forgot to include something. That being said, there are volumes and volumes of those I can read. The penguin one was pretty good, included a decent number of plays, I think eight, and some of those were real quality

Would The Wandering Jew count?

Prudentius (348-413 AD) wrote probably the first Christian epic poem. Loeb has a nice edition in Latin with English translations on the opposite page like most of their books. He was from Iberia.

T.S. Eliot has some lengthy poems such as Ash Wednesday and arguably also The Wasteland. Most of his work is informed by a serious Christian ethic.

>Day of Doom
Nice. I don't always see many Puritans on here. I appreciate that.

>Orthodox, Syriac, or Coptic traditions
I'm aware that Byzantine literature exists, but you'll have to do some digging yourself. As for Syriac, since John Milton learned it, I presume it also exists. Read up on the Coptic language and you'll probably find something similar.

That meme writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb had some stuff on his blog about Syriac literature.

I'll post some more tomorrow as I've gotta wake up mighty early tomorrow. This is just some stuff that comes to mind.

Would the Shepherds of Hermas count?

There's a poem written in the 20s by "the successor of man" called the Last Christian. Its a little late, but still, it looks good

I only know two poems in eastern traditions. There's The Book of Adam, which comes from an Armenian Apostolic clergyman from the 16th century, and The Ray of the Microcosm, a 19th century Russian epic written by some Prince-Bishop

Some great English Devotional lit from Jeremy Taylor and Lancelot Andrewes to the sermons of John Donne and the prayers of Samuel Johnson. In the 17th century especially sermons were a lively literary form with even men as worldly as Pepys going to church to church of a Sunday just to hear (and later rate and discuss) the more powerful reverends. Church start times were actually staggered in urban areas back then so that this could be easily done.
Just as Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls was lifted from a famous Donne Meditation, Pride and Prejudice was copped from a work of Taylor's. The 18th century moral essayists continued this tradition from Addison and Steele early on to Sam Johnson in the latter half of the century. In the 19th Coleridge of coursed picked it up along with a near score of others. Some truly great writing. Also should make mention of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (17th c.), more intellectual (or justifying) than practically helpful, but still a great book.

>Pride and Prejudice was copped from a work of Taylor's.

sounds interesting. what're you referring to?

She took her title from a mid-17th century work of his called Liberty of Prophesying but if youre at all interested in him read the Holy Living and Holy Dying. He writes in a very friendly, intimate manner reminiscent of the later nature writers in the American Dial. He's definitely worth checking. A character in Middlemarch knows many of his works by heart (her name escapes me!). Wait. Dorothea Brooke..

read it when I was very young

is he a significant influence on Austen and Eliot?

I'm back ( )
The greatest Byzantine poet is probably Romanos the Melodist, a writer of hymns. It seems as if the majority of poets who wrote on Christian themes in Byzantium were hymnists, so you probably won't find what you're looking for.

Do you have St. John of the Cross in your list? "The Dark Night" is a very popular narrative Christian poem.

Torquato Tasso wrote an epic poem on the crusades called "Jerusalem Delivered."

There are many Syriac writers while Coptic literature appears to be relatively unknown because of the Ar*bs. I'll have a look at the Syriacs later today.

Not him, but I'd like to add that Lancelot Andrewes was the main translator of the Psalms in the King James Version, therefore, he's probably the most influential poet in English history.

Pride and prejudice is taken from Fanny Burney surely?

>St. John of the Cross
Shit, I always meant to look into him. He was introduced to me as the best place to start with Christian mysticism. I didn't know he wrote an epic.

Symeon the New Theologian has several long narrative Akathists that you could consider heroic ballads

He did not write an epic (I think), but you specified "narrative poem" (presuming you're that guy who inquired about narrative Christian poems) which Dark Night of the Soul probably fits. I personally haven't read him but have been meaning to do so. Also Teresa of Avila probably wrote narrative poems as well.

Symeon sounds like a great poet. I only found about Romanos through wiki just to find some Eastern Christian poets for the guy who asked.

Just from personal experience, I've read far more English Christian poets, so most of these suggestions from other countries are just what I know by reputation but not personal experience.

Speaking of, "the Dream of the Rood" is a VERY Christian poem from the Anglo-Saxon era. It's a bit how Wagner might have told the story about Christ's death had he been alive in the early Middle Ages.

Sadly here in America there are very few explicitly Christian poets, T.S. Eliot probably being the best example. Obviously many people were influenced by the Bible in other ways, such as Melville and Whitman adapting the King James Version's cadence for their prose and poetry, but I can't immediately think of anyone except for T.S. Eliot and some of the Puritans.

Speaking of the Puritans, "Day of Doom" by Michael Wigglesworth was mentioned; you should also add "God's Controversy with New England." Another great Puritan poet was Edward Taylor. All of these poets can be said to belong to the Metaphysical school of poets in 17th century England, John Donne being the most prominent of them. Others include George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, and Richard Crashaw. They were primarily Christian poets.

There are other Christian poets from England I'll mention later but I don't want to make this blog post any bigger. I've rambled on a bit.

Im heading over to my school library today, I'll see what I cant dig up. Ive noticed some promising books before, so hopefully it'll turn out fruitful. I know of another Georgian medieval book called The Balavariani, which is a Christianized Buddhist narrative about a wicked king of India who persecutes Christians once astrologers prophesize that his son will convert

Can't remember the source for the Taylor reference, but think it was Park Honan's biography. At any rate she owns it, easy to look up.
(You) an Evelina reader? I've also read into her (Burney's) journals. FWIW John Constable's journals read like an Austen novel up until the point that he is married, at which further entries concern art topics exclusively. Very strange.

Writes a mean sermon as well.

I may try to force a meme that Cecilia is the Infinite Jest of the 18th century just to get more anons to read it

Hard to measure. The popularity of devotional works at that time is exceptionally difficult for modern readers to appreciate, and therefore evaluate. Nothing even remotely similar has filled that gap.

Good luck! I'll read it anyway.

There's the Heliand, and the poems of St. Caedmon

Love the language in the old pre-1980's editions. Just a wonderful severely underrated book.

I recently bought mine and a facsimile of the original King James Bible. It's got the 1662 edition with two of the 16th century editions including the first. I've been using it for reading the Psalms. Can you recommend any other sections?

Yeah, I love the Psalter. Mine's just a 1953 Seabury Press Edition. Just includes tables, forms relating to the church calendar, ordination, baptism, marriage, burial, and prayers for all occasions.

>Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii
>Pauline - Robert Browning
>childe harold's pilgrimage
>The Hymn of Man - Swinburne

Here's some works you might want to look into

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That should definitely include Spenser and Chaucer. Ie Faerie Queen and Canterbury tales.

The canterbury tales

Whatever your faith, it's a timeless adventure story. Part 1 is better, but Part 2 is well worth a read, too.

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Thank you for the recommendations. I'm a great fan of the Victorian poets and pre-Raphaelite art both of which I think are painfully underrated.

Spenser and Chaucer, while great authors, never printed books that were as widely owned in Britain, the Empire, and America as that canon I made. The only missing book is the Book of Common Prayer which was a terrible oversight on my part.

Spenser and Chaucer are more poets' poets. They wrote profoundly influential works of high seriousness, but they haven't entered the idiom and Anglo culture to the extent my canon did + the Book of Common Prayer.

Speaking of Spenser, this site is a great resource that documents his influence on a variety of poets and other cultural figures: spenserians.cath.vt.edu/

It's one of those books that appears to be made up of famous quotations

I agree to your thoughts on the pair; however they may not be on any layman's mind, it is as said "poets' poets" is their influence enough?
Also wholly love Victorian Era lit.

2nd grade teacher read this to us. i remember it being a cool fantasy story and enjoying it. the xtian elements were not explicit to me at that age but the gist of the story is pretty neat for a child's story.

Let's put it this way. Every few hundred years you have a poet who is not only an immensely popular creator of works of high seriousness, but his works reach a level where they are widely revered. Reverence is what every poet aspires the masses to have for their work and 99.9% of them fail.

For example, Homer was not only popular and an excellent poet, but people held a reverence for his work. In fact, I may be mistaken, but I think I read somewhere that the Iliad and the Odyssey were considered to be sacred literature.

Spenser and Chaucer were great, but can you say the masses have ever turned to them in the event of, say, disaster? On the other hand people even today open the King James Bible or Book of Common Prayer while in crisis. Sadly Bunyan and Milton are in decline, but they were popular and revered at a formative time in Anglo culture therefore they have influenced popular imagery we have of Adam and Eve, the "narrow path" to salvation, etc. Bunyan and Milton have so strongly influenced Christians of all creeds in English-speaking countries that they could practically be added on as New Testament apocrypha (maybe the Mormons are working on that).

Don't get me wrong, Chaucer and Spenser probably deserve to be on a list of the top 5 greatest English poets of all time—Spenser is more of virtuoso poet than Shakespeare by far—but his work has never reached the level of reverence people have for the works of my canon.

tl;dr To be part of my Anglo canon the works must have been revered by the multiple generations of the masses since about the 17th century when England was getting ready to conquer the world.

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