ABSTRACT
The Oxford Movement, whose theology and ethos as the foundation for contemporary interest in literature and theology has been with theologians for so much was born in the spirit of poetry. In his Oxford Lectures on Poetry John Keble is broadly consistent with John Henry Newman in his writings on poetics and aesthetics. Indeed for him poetry is consistently referred to more or less in sacramental terms, its veiled expressions to be compared to that instinct of reserve in the Church Fathers who take care 'lest opponents and mockers should attain knowledge of sacramental mysteries and the keywords of the faith'. For Keble poetry and religion are inseparable, and in the poetic there is no place for the irreligious or the atheistical. It was Isaac Williams, writing on Newman as a poet in the Lyra Apostolica, who described poetry as cathartic and that which 'Providence seemed to have designed as a natural vent to ardent and strong feelings'.
