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To Take Posesion Of The Crown: Forms, Themes, And Politics In Julia Palmer's Centuries, Brittany Beahm

Theses and Dissertations

Julia Palmer, a little-known religious poet, composed two centuries-collections of one hundred poems intended to be sung as hymns-in the two years between 1671 and 1673. Palmer's manuscript is unique in that its author was perhaps the only self-taught Nonconformist woman to have composed centuries during the Restoration period. Although religion shaped the lives of most British citizens at the time, the public literary expression of spiritual experiences-particularly by middle-class women-was uncommon within conventional Puritanism. The poetry's hybrid of forms, proliferation of religious themes, and undertones of political subversion offer an important glimpse into the way Puritan women writers of …