Encounters With God In Medieval And Early Modern English Poetry

Clutterbuck (English, Abbotsleigh School, Sydney) examines how the anonymous medieval Crucifixion lyrics, William Langland's Piers Plowman , John Donne's Divine Poems, and John Milton's Paradise Lost employ language to construct a sense of encounter with God. She has chosen these as the only major English poems that both use a stable persona to depict an individual encounter with God, and take a public approach to the encounter, with their climaxes depicting one or more of the central moments of salvation history. While the medieval lyrics depict an anonymous meditator and focus on the loving figure of the crucified Christ, she finds that the later poems use highly individual personae and depict God as Creator, Trinity, Paraclete, or Judge as well as loving Redeemer. Annotation c2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Charlotte Clutterbuck earned her PhD at the University of Sydney. She teaches English at Abbotsleigh School in Sydney and is an Honorary Associate at Macquarie University. She has also published a book of poems.