The Poet-Priests of the Oxford Movement

Abstract

<p>The Oxford Movement is a fact of history. It aimed at the restoring to the Church of England the Catholic ideals of the seventeenth-century Anglican divines. The Movement's chief goals were the defence of the Church of England as a Divine institution tracing its origin (through Apostolic Succession) to New Testament times, and the maintaining of a rule of faith through the usage of the Book of Common Prayer.</p> <p>The aim of this thesis is to examine the poetry of four priests: John Keble, Isaac Williams, John Henry Newman and Frederick W. Faber-- who were actively engaged in the development of the Oxford Movement-- to determine to what extent, if any, their poetry was affected by the changing conditions of their lives as the Movement expanded. Their backgrounds differed. They began as men of one mind; history records that their paths diverged-- in some cases radically. This study will try to determine if the changes they underwent reflect in their poetry and, if so, did each poet have a similar experience. If it is found that their poetry, throughout their lives and among themselves, did not show any significant change in their thought, then their collective poetic expression would seem to support the contention of Aristotle in On Poetics that "poetry is something more philosophic and of greater import than history, since its statements are of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars" because the Oxford Movement, in time, achieved each of its stated goals but only after much bitter debate. To be specific to the argument, it took well over a century of history to achieve the unanimity which was evident in the poetry of the poetpriests from the beginning.</p>