SOURCE: Jeske, Jeff. “Edward Taylor and the Traditions of Puritan Nature Philosophy.” In The Tayloring Shop: Essays on the Poetry of Edward Taylor in Honor of Thomas M. and Virginia L. Davis, edited by Michael Schuldiner, pp. 27-67. Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press, 1997.

In the following excerpt, Jeske examines Taylor's perception of the changing concept of nature in seventeenth-century American thought.

In A Reading of Edward Taylor, Thomas M. Davis notes that he is “primarily interested in the way the poetry—and the poet—changes and develops over the more than half-century when he wrote” (13). Such an interest is not misplaced. As Davis shows us, Taylor's evolving attitudes toward both his art and the state of his soul underwrite “subtle but clear developments in the poetry.” Taylor's early and mature poems must not be confused, and Davis's study helps us to understand the differences between them...