John Wesley Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on John Wesley

John Wesley, the leader of the Methodist revival, was also an intellectual and a man of letters. His two million published words feature such marks of literary craftsmanship as grasp of narrative vocabulary, the use of familiar words and aphorisms, an especially wide range of adjectives, vivid figures of speech, and a natural assimilation of scriptural idiom. His blend of theological traditions (such as the Anglican, the Dissenting, the Puritan, the Arminian, the Calvinist, the Lutheran, the Thomistic, the Catholic, and the Anglo-Catholic) emerges from his command of theme, his resonant and forceful diction, and, above all, his mastery of such formal and informal, conventional and original genres as diaries, journals, letters, advice to the Methodists, Methodist policy and principles, polemics, appeals, open letters to exponents of religion, apologetics, expositions of doctrine, biblical exegesis, homilies, devotionals, hymns, prayers, poems, editions of fiction and biography, abridgments (of works of theology, works of philosophy, and works of natural philosophy-that is, science), a medical treatise, scientific essays, history, and, clearly not least for those interested in Wesley as a literary figure, a dictionary.

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