SOURCE: "Transcendent Dialogic: Madness, Prophecy, and the Sublime in Christopher Smart," in Compendious Conversations: The Method of Dialogue in the Early Enlightenment, edited by Kevin L. Cope, Peter Lang, 1992, pp. 151-64.

In the following essay, Katz argues that by organizing language in his poetry, Smart both defines himself and gives form and shape to the inexpressible.

During the period extending from May 1757 to February 1763, Christopher Smart was confined to asylums for treatment of visual hallucinations and religious delusions, first at St. Luke's and later, after a brief recovery, at Potter's private house in Bethnal Green. The composition of Jubilate Agno (not published until 1939) dates from this time, and A Song to David reached the press only nine weeks after his discharge from Potter's. Smart's literary reception fluctuated in his own day and most of his contemporaries felt compelled to characterize the poet in terms describing either a borderline...