Saint and Singer : Edward Taylor's Typology and the Poetics of Meditation (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture)

This book focuses on the works of America's premier colonial poet, Edward Taylor (1642–1729). This study analyses typology in Taylor's Christographia and Treatise Concerning the Lord's Supper and examining Taylor's adaptations of figural analogies to suit his personal spiritual needs, Professor Rowe advances a theory which unites Taylor's exegetical discipline as a preacher with his creativity as a poet. This is the first work to draw on the collection of unpublished sermons, discovered in 1977, Upon the Types of the Old Testament. Professor Rowe links Taylor's sermons with corresponding poetic meditations, thus providing insights into typological theories, groupings and analogies. In her conclusion, the author sees Taylor as neither metaphysical or baroque, nor a historian in the typological school, but rather as the quintessential Puritan preacher and poet, a contemplative lyricist and devotional typologist in the tradition of Herbert, Milton and Bunyan.