The Hymns Of Prose For Children By Anna Laetitia Barbauld...

In her ‘Preface’ to Hymns in Prose for Children, Anna Laetitia Barbauld affirms that: That Barbauld is a believing woman is incontrovertible: she seeks, after all, to ‘impress devotional feelings’ upon the minds of her young readers. It is also evident, however, that Barbauld is not especially interested in communicating scriptural minutiae and theological specificities to her readers: the Hymns, as Lynne Vallone notes, mostly ‘â€Å"preach† analogically to the children of privilege’ – children for whom ‘the pastoral world of the Hymns’, where praising God ‘is the only imperative’, is a recognisable world – ‘to love God: as [they] respect and are awed by the beauty of nature so should [they] be thankful to and praise the God who is the Creator of Nature’. Barbauld intimates, in fact, that the phenomena and processes of the ‘natural’, or physical, world corroborate the existence of a divine presence; in discussing the natural order of things, and in encouraging the reade r to both look out for and make note of ecological patterns and quirks, Barbauld seems to insinuate, in turn, that religion cannot be taught in churches and classrooms – that it must, instead, be learned spontaneously through one’s observations of the universe. It is, of course, possible that Barbauld believed children incapable of grasping orthodox constructions, or interpretations, of God and His designs. In her ‘Preface’ to the Hymns, she mentions, for example, that poetry – ‘an elevation in thought and styleShow MoreRelatedWoman Writers of the Romantic Period1800 Words   |  8 Pagesfemale writers include: Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Charlotte Turner Smith, Mary Robinson, Hannah More and Joanna Baillie. This essay will look closer to some of them. As poet, educator, essayist and critic, Anna Laetitia Aikin is considered to be one of the literary giants of her time. She was born on June 20th, 1743, in family of Jane Jennings and John Aikin, a Presbyterian minister and schoolteacher. Her family lived near the village of Kibworth Harcourt, in Leicestershire. Anna was educated at home