• EAL Book Prize for 2022
• Awarded to: Wendy Raphael Roberts

Wendy Raphael Roberts, Associate Professor of English at the University at Albany, SUNY, has been selected to receive the 2022 Early American Literature Book Prize. Roberts's Awakening Verse: The Poetics of Early American Evangelicalism was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. The prize selection committee consisted of Early American Literature's Coeditor for Reviews, Katy Chiles; our Advisory Editor, Sandra Gustafson; the incoming Chair of the Modern Language Association's Early American Forum, Kirsten Silva Gruesz; and the prior President of the Society of Early Americanists, Patrick Erben, with EAL Editor Marion Rust as an ex officio member. We thank our publisher, the University of North Carolina Press, for continuing to support the award, which carries a $2,000 cash prize. The selection committee praised Awakening Verse as "well structured, coherent, erudite and up to date": a "rare and important work" existing "at the forefront of a critical turn that investigates aesthetics, feeling, and faith as formative elements in the development of American culture from the mid-eighteenth century through the Romantic period and beyond." We heartily congratulate Wendy Roberts for her signal achievement.

Awakening Verse looks at revival poetry's key role in the outpouring of religious enthusiasm that characterized the First and Second Great Awakening. It advances a recent wave of research that focuses on the aesthetic and other pleasures to be found in early American Calvinist-based faith traditions, countering the common misconception of Puritanism as a religion for which misery was the only assurance. Within this trajectory, it does something entirely new by focusing on the overlooked archive of popular religious poetry written and read by everyday individuals—often women—throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. It was revival poetry that drew evangelical converts to their faith, Roberts argues, even [End Page 317] more than the sermons, hymnodies, and other religious literature more commonly associated with conversion. To put it briefly: "Poetry saved."

In the process, poetry changed. Once distinguished from the hymn as an elite form "fit for the cultured and educated reader," the poetry championed by ministers and lay practitioners alike aspired to be broadly accessible. The writers treated in this study represent that expanding universe: Scottish theologian Ralph Erskine; well-known Boston poet Sarah Parsons Moorhead; foundational Black author Phillis Wheatley (Peters); and Virginian Baptist convert James Ireland, among many others.

Fittingly for a book about popular literature, readers are just as important as authors to this work: whether the coteries that formed around the work of Wheatley, Moorhead, and Ireland, or the lone sailor's wife who snuck a revival poem into her husband's store of shipboard novels. Those who take up Awakening Verse will learn in its opening pages just how important that single slip of paper was to become. Awakening Verse may likewise be seen as the slip of paper that, dropped into our stack of scholarly tomes, changes the worldview of anyone who comes across it.

The EAL Book Prize is awarded in even calendar years to a first monograph published in the prior two years, and in odd years to a second or subsequent book. Next year's prize will be awarded in the latter category, and monographs published in 2021 and 2022 are eligible. The prize carries a $2,000 award stipend. The deadline for submission is March 1, 2023. Please consult the journal's website at https://eal.uky.edu/ for additional information. [End Page 318]

• 2022 年EAL图书奖
• 授予：温迪·拉斐尔·罗伯茨

纽约州立大学奥尔巴尼大学英语副教授温迪·拉斐尔·罗伯茨 (Wendy Raphael Roberts) 被选为 2022 年早期美国文学图书奖获得者。罗伯茨的《觉醒诗歌：美国早期福音主义诗学》于 2020 年由牛津大学出版社出版。评选委员会由《早期美国文学评论》联合编辑凯蒂·奇利斯 (Katy Chiles) 组成；我们的顾问编辑 Sandra Gustafson；现代语言协会早期美国论坛即将上任的主席 Kirsten Silva Gruesz；以及早期美国主义者协会 (Society of Early Americanists) 前任主席帕特里克·厄本 (Patrick Erben) 与EAL编辑 Marion Rust 作为当然成员。我们感谢我们的出版商北卡罗来纳大学出版社继续支持该奖项，该奖项提供 2,000 美元的现金奖励。评选委员会称赞《觉醒诗》 “结构良好、连贯、博学且与时俱进”：这是一部“罕见且重要的作品”，存在“处于关键转折的最前沿，该转折将美学、情感和信仰作为发展中的形成要素进行调查”。从十八世纪中叶到浪漫主义时期及以后的美国文化。” 我们衷心祝贺温迪·罗伯茨取得的重大成就。

觉醒诗着眼于复兴诗歌在第一次和第二次大觉醒的特征的宗教热情的流露中发挥的关键作用。它推动了最近的一波研究，重点关注早期美国加尔文主义信仰传统中发现的审美和其他乐趣，反驳了清教徒作为一种宗教的普遍误解，认为苦难是唯一的保证。在这个轨迹中，它通过关注十八世纪及以后的日常个人（通常是女性）撰写和阅读的被忽视的流行宗教诗歌档案，做了一些全新的事情。罗伯茨认为，正是复兴诗歌吸引了福音派信徒皈依他们的信仰，甚至[第 317 页结束]比布道、赞美诗和其他更常与皈依相关的宗教文学更重要。简而言之：“诗歌得救了”。

在这个过程中，诗歌发生了变化。诗歌一度与圣歌区别开来，被认为是一种“适合有文化和受过教育的读者”的精英形式，受到牧师和平信徒的拥护，都渴望被广泛接受。这项研究中的作者代表了那个不断膨胀的宇宙：苏格兰神学家拉尔夫·厄斯金（Ralph Erskine）；波士顿著名诗人莎拉·帕森斯·穆尔黑德；黑人基础作家菲利斯·惠特利（Peters）；弗吉尼亚浸信会皈依了詹姆斯·爱尔兰等等。

对于一本关于通俗文学的书来说，读者与作者同样重要：无论是围绕惠特利、穆尔黑德和爱尔兰的作品形成的小圈子，还是将一首复兴诗偷偷塞进丈夫书店的孤独水手的妻子。船上小说。那些学习《觉醒诗篇》的人将会在其开头几页中了解到那张纸条的重要性。觉醒诗句同样可以被视为一张纸条，放入我们的学术巨著中，改变任何遇到它的人的世界观。

EAL图书奖在偶数年颁发给前两年出版的第一本专着，在奇数年颁发给第二本或后续书籍。明年的奖项将颁发给后一类，2021 年和 2022 年出版的专着符合资格。该奖项包含 2,000 美元的奖金。提交截止日期为 2023 年 3 月 1 日。请访问期刊网站 https://eal.uky.edu/ 了解更多信息。[完第318页]