Thesis advisor: Mary Crane / “Motions of the Soul” explores and analyzes moments in the development of what I call an early modern poetics of religious desire, i.e. desire that has God as its referent. This poetics of religious desire builds upon but also departs from and transforms early modern Petrarchan and Ovidian poetics of secular erotic desire. I examine the poetics of religious desire in sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century metrical psalms, which are verse paraphrases of the lyric prayers that constitute the biblical book of Psalms. While much critical attention has been paid to seventeenth-century religious lyric poetry and its engagement with and response to contemporary secular love lyric traditions, much less attention has been paid to literary metrical psalms, which were the predominant form of religious poetry in the sixteenth century and, some have argued, the parent to the religious lyric poetry that flowered in the seventeenth century. This dissertation analyzes metrical psalms by Sir Thomas Wyatt, Anne Locke, Sir Philip Sidney, and George Herbert, exploring and demonstrating how these poets bring together the poetics of secular love poetry with the biblical poetics of the Psalms and contemporary theological and philosophical discourses on desire in order to develop a poetics of religious desire that illustrates and addresses early modern English culture’s interests and concerns in relation to desiring God. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

The Book of Psalms has occupied a privileged place in Christianity from its earliest years, but it was not until the sixteenth century that metrical versifications of the Psalms became popular. Because of the notable influence of Martin Luther and John Calvin, the musical phenomenon of metrical psalm singing spread throughout Protestant circles on the European mainland and in Britain. These versifications knew no boundaries among Protestants: reformers and parishioners, kings and laypeople, men and women, young and old memorised and sang the metrical psalms. In England and Scotland, the versifications written by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins became the most popular, as editions of these texts were printed in England from 1549 to 1828. The present study considers these metrical versifications and their melodies as they were printed and performed in England and Scotland from their inception until the final Scottish edition appeared in 1640. In particular, this study asserts that the years from 1560 to 1640 saw the development and reinforcement of two distinct ecclesiastical psalm cultures, one in England and the other in Scotland. Though based on a common foundation in the Sternhold and Hopkins texts, English and Scottish metrical psalmody preserved their distinct natures. However, both traditions also influenced their counterparts. The present study considers these cross‐influences and their effect on the tensions between conformity with foreign influences and fidelity to established practice in both countries. This study finally seeks to fill two significant gaps in current scholarship. It first compares the developments in English and Scottish metrical psalmody in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Secondly, it considers the relationships between psalm tunes and their texts, with a closer musical analysis of the tunes than has previously been attempted.