Mr. Edwards and the Spider (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Robert Lowell
- First Published: 1946
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: Spiders, Suicide, Religion, New England, God, Ministry or ministers, Death or dying, Hell, Sermons, Devils or demons, Satan or Satanism
The Poem
Early in his literary career, Robert Lowell researched the life of the eminent eighteenth century American preacher Jonathan Edwards with the aim of writing his biography. He never wrote the life, but two of his best-known poems derive from this purported venture. “Mr. Edwards and the Spider” is a poem of five nine-line stanzas that fuses several experiences of the Northampton, Massachusetts, minister having to do with spiders, either literally or metaphorically. Lowell adopts the voice of Edwards in meditation.
The first stanza summarizes the content of a...
[The entire page is 1545 words long]
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