Abiezer Coppe and the Irrational God

Book excerpt: Abiezer Coppe is one of the most exciting writers of the seventeenth century, full of urgency and passion, righteous indignation, humour, fury, wit and naked sincerity; an extraordinary writer by any measure. He does not fit easily in the canons of Literature but nevertheless has been studied by both historians such as Christopher Hill and literary scholars including Nigel Smith, reprinted in the 20th Century in various forms and even included in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, a tradition he would certainly reject. Within the tradition to which he declares his loyalty, that of the Prophetic religious writers and the Fathers of the Church, he either associates himself with or frequently incorporates writings ascribed to Paul of Tarsus, John of Patmos, King David, Solomon, Hosea, Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, and Christ. He is not afraid to speak directly in the voice of God to condemn the hypocrisy and corruption of his era. Coppe’s range of expressive strategies has led to confusion among commentators: Thomas Corns justly describes a "ludic and simultaneously aggressive idiom". Such extremes are characteristic of highly charged satirical writing such as Coppe’s. Nashe and Swift’s extremes are no less, although both come from the other side of a profound religious and philosophical divide. Coppe’s stance and style, extraordinary as they are, are not without precedent: they participate in Bakhtin’s “Apocalyptic Time”; the time when everything is about to happen.