Transforming Holiness: Representations of Holiness in English and American Literary Texts

This fascinating collection of essays addresses the question of how holiness has been represented in English and American literary texts from early saints' lives to the poetry of the mid-twentieth century. The interaction of spiritual ideals with the creative and often worldly imagination is examined in the work of writers as varied as George Herbert, Harriet Beecher Stowe and D.H. Lawrence. The range of genres discussed includes not only devotional poetry and apparently secular prose fiction, but also political ballads, personal conduct books and congregational psalms and hymns. Holiness is set in relation to vital issues such as creativity, gender, Romanticism, translation and visual culture. Together the essays reveal the full meaning of the title of the collection: that holiness, a transforming force, has transformed itself radically as a concept over the centuries, and undergoes dynamic transformation through its expression in literature.