Experiencing the Divine: Emotion and the Fallibility of Language in Jonathan Edwards' &quot;Personal Narrative&quot;

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Literary Studies (MA)

Akkerman, Lilian (2019)

Experiencing the Divine: Emotion and the Fallibility of Language in Jonathan Edwards' "Personal Narrative"

Master thesis | Literary Studies (MA)

Jonathan Edwards’ “Personal Narrative” is a chronological, retrospective account of Edwards’ spiritual life interposed with comments and reflections on his experiences with the Divine. He describes multiple powerful, highly emotional encounters as he recounts his religious development from his childhood to the present. It stands as a central text of eighteenth-century spirituality, a touchstone of religious thinking in this period. This thesis argues that concerns with the fallibility of language are central to Jonathan Edwards’ “Personal Narrative” (c.1740), as he struggles adequately to describe spiritual experience in words even as that experience is said to go beyond language, including in its emotional and bodily effects.