Musicalizing the Instrumental Body: Sibbes and the English Puritans

This research aims to explore and interpret the metaphoric or allegorical use of music and musical instruments of Richard Sibbes’ and his Puritan contemporaries in their preaching and writing. In light of existing scholarly research that concludes English Puritans embraced secular music for social purposes but were disapproving of the use of instruments in church gatherings, it examines seventeenth-century English Puritan leaders’ integration of musical instruments as analogies with theological meaning, their significance in religious instructions and teaching, and the possible impact such allegorizations of musical instruments had on other religious traditions in England in the eighteenth century.