Henry Vaughan, Silex Scintillans: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations

Glyn Pursglove (Swansea University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.04: English Writing and Culture of the Seventeenth Century, 1625-1688.
Vol. editors: Jennifer Brady (Rhodes College), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Neil Forsyth (Université de Lausanne), Claire Preston (Queen Mary, University of London), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1650 - 1655

Places

Wales (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection
Religion and Spirituality (any)
- Prayer

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Silex Scintillans

is one of the great works of English poetry in the seventeenth century. To a reader of Vaughan's one previous publication,

Poems, with the tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished

, which had been published in 1646, this new volume would have come as quite a surprise. Instead of the somewhat bloodless (and often rather shapeless) Cavalier lyrics which made up the bulk of that first collection, here were religious lyrics of great emotional intensity, considerable intellectual weight, and a verbal energy often disciplined into well-ordered poetic forms (though this latter quality has often been underestimated by later critics). The change of poetic and, presumably, personal direction which

Silex Scintillans

represented, may have been the product of a religious experience of…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1544 words

Citation: Pursglove, Glyn. "Silex Scintillans: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 July 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2066, accessed 11 May 2024.]

Save this article