Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | Hymns have substantially contributed to the success of the Methodist revival. John Wesley discovered that in addition to their function in worship services, hymns could play an educational role in the spiritual training of an otherwise unschooled audience. His message of love and hope was here given a palatable and memorizable form, supported by skilful stylistic, rhythmic and metrical choices. Diverging opinions on the literary and linguistic value of the hymns indicate a wide variety of texts. A systematic investigation of the hymn corpus shows that the critics who censure the hymns as a form of linguistic manipulation base themselves on too partial a sample. |
