`Sweeter also than honey': John Ruskin and the Psalms

Author: Tate, Andrew

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 39, Numbers 1-2, 1 july 2009 , pp. 114-125(12)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

This article argues that the Book of Psalms, known in Hebrew as Tehillim, or `praises', figures as a powerful set of intertexts in John Ruskin's writing and also radicalizes his social teaching. The multiplicity of human experiences narrated in the `book of praises', a diverse anthology containing songs that affirm the goodness of Yahweh together with the rightness of his law alongside poetic cries of spiritual desertion, formed a crucial textual resource for Ruskin's complex and sometimes melancholy religious journey. The essay considers Ruskin's work as part of a tradition that the contemporary theologian Walter Brueggemann has called a `psalmic spirituality'. The argument traces Ruskin's appropriation of a Jewish text and explores the ways in which these `songs of praise' inform his critique of nineteenth-century culture both secular and sacred.

Keywords: Psalms; John Ruskin; theologian Walter Brueggemann; spirituality; Jewish; nineteenth-century culture; secular; sacred

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Lancaster University

Publication date: 2009-07-01

More about this publication?

A supplement to the Modern Language Review, this journal includes articles and reviews on the language and literature of the English-speaking world. Most of the volumes published so far are 'Special Numbers', collections of between fifteen and eighteen commissioned articles on particular topics, such as the impact of the French Revolution on English writers; literature in the modern media; and colonial and imperial themes in literature.