Jessica Fay
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198816201
- eISBN:
- 9780191853555
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198816201.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter offers the first detailed analysis of Wordsworth’s engagement with Quakerism. It explores the coalescence of Wordsworth’s interests in Quakerism, gardening, and ruined monastic sites ...
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This chapter offers the first detailed analysis of Wordsworth’s engagement with Quakerism. It explores the coalescence of Wordsworth’s interests in Quakerism, gardening, and ruined monastic sites during 1806 when he encountered Thomas Clarkson’s Portraiture of Quakerism (1806) and undertook two gardening projects, one with his Quaker friend Thomas Wilkinson and another for Sir George and Lady Beaumont at their Leicestershire estate of Coleorton. Gardening and working the land are sacred activities for Quakers, and from the seventeenth-century foundation of the Society of Friends, Quakerism was understood as a purified version of monasticism. Wordsworth’s appreciation for these aspects of Quakerism is manifest in the Winter Garden he designed for the Beaumonts. His eight-month residence at Coleorton in 1806–7—during which he focused on this gardening project, learned about Beaumont’s ancestry, and visited the nearby ruins of Grace Dieu Priory—is thus presented as an important transitional period in Wordsworth’s poetic career.Less
This chapter offers the first detailed analysis of Wordsworth’s engagement with Quakerism. It explores the coalescence of Wordsworth’s interests in Quakerism, gardening, and ruined monastic sites during 1806 when he encountered Thomas Clarkson’s Portraiture of Quakerism (1806) and undertook two gardening projects, one with his Quaker friend Thomas Wilkinson and another for Sir George and Lady Beaumont at their Leicestershire estate of Coleorton. Gardening and working the land are sacred activities for Quakers, and from the seventeenth-century foundation of the Society of Friends, Quakerism was understood as a purified version of monasticism. Wordsworth’s appreciation for these aspects of Quakerism is manifest in the Winter Garden he designed for the Beaumonts. His eight-month residence at Coleorton in 1806–7—during which he focused on this gardening project, learned about Beaumont’s ancestry, and visited the nearby ruins of Grace Dieu Priory—is thus presented as an important transitional period in Wordsworth’s poetic career.
Gawdat Gabra and Hany N. Takla
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789774163111
- eISBN:
- 9781617970481
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774163111.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
In the period of intensive Christian settlement (fifth–eighth centuries), the entire district was home to numerous monastic establishments built mainly in and over the temples and tombs of the ...
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In the period of intensive Christian settlement (fifth–eighth centuries), the entire district was home to numerous monastic establishments built mainly in and over the temples and tombs of the pharaonic age, continuing the ancient tradition of their use as holy space. Traces of the existence of Christian cities in the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth century were regularly sacrificed in the search for pharaonic remains of their mud-brick fabric exploited for fertilizer. Impressive remains of monastic ruins could still be seen by travelers in the mid-nineteenth century, but their modern destruction means that their locations are largely unrecorded. Despite widespread destruction, careful excavation and analysis of extant material can still provide useful information, as is shown by recent research.Less
In the period of intensive Christian settlement (fifth–eighth centuries), the entire district was home to numerous monastic establishments built mainly in and over the temples and tombs of the pharaonic age, continuing the ancient tradition of their use as holy space. Traces of the existence of Christian cities in the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth century were regularly sacrificed in the search for pharaonic remains of their mud-brick fabric exploited for fertilizer. Impressive remains of monastic ruins could still be seen by travelers in the mid-nineteenth century, but their modern destruction means that their locations are largely unrecorded. Despite widespread destruction, careful excavation and analysis of extant material can still provide useful information, as is shown by recent research.
