Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne

Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne

Author: Dr Frances Cruickshank

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-04-28

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1409476154

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Innovative and highly readable, this study traces George Herbert's and John Donne's development of a distinct poetics through close readings of their poems, references to their letters, sermons, and prose treatises, and to other contemporary poets and theorists. In demonstrating a relationship between poetics and religious consciousness in Donne's and Herbert's verse, Frances Cruickshank explores their attitudes to the cultural, theological, and aesthetic enterprise of writing and reading verse. Cruickshank shows that Donne and Herbert regarded poetry as a mode not determined by its social and political contexts, but as operating in and on them with its own distinct set of aesthetic and intellectual values, and that ultimately, verse mattered as a privileged mode of religious discourse. This book is an important contribution to the ongoing scholarly dialogue about the nature of literary and cultural study of early modern England, and about the relationship between the writer and the world. Cruickshank confirms Donne's reputation as a fascinating and brilliant poetic figure while simultaneously rousing interest in Herbert by noting his unique merging of rusticity and urbanity and tranquility and uncertainty, allowing the reader to enter into these poets' imaginative worlds and to understand the literary genre they embraced and then transformed.


Book Synopsis Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne by : Dr Frances Cruickshank

Download or read book Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne written by Dr Frances Cruickshank and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-28 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovative and highly readable, this study traces George Herbert's and John Donne's development of a distinct poetics through close readings of their poems, references to their letters, sermons, and prose treatises, and to other contemporary poets and theorists. In demonstrating a relationship between poetics and religious consciousness in Donne's and Herbert's verse, Frances Cruickshank explores their attitudes to the cultural, theological, and aesthetic enterprise of writing and reading verse. Cruickshank shows that Donne and Herbert regarded poetry as a mode not determined by its social and political contexts, but as operating in and on them with its own distinct set of aesthetic and intellectual values, and that ultimately, verse mattered as a privileged mode of religious discourse. This book is an important contribution to the ongoing scholarly dialogue about the nature of literary and cultural study of early modern England, and about the relationship between the writer and the world. Cruickshank confirms Donne's reputation as a fascinating and brilliant poetic figure while simultaneously rousing interest in Herbert by noting his unique merging of rusticity and urbanity and tranquility and uncertainty, allowing the reader to enter into these poets' imaginative worlds and to understand the literary genre they embraced and then transformed.


Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne

Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne

Author: Frances Cruickshank

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-17

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 131700244X

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Innovative and highly readable, this study traces George Herbert's and John Donne's development of a distinct poetics through close readings of their poems, references to their letters, sermons, and prose treatises, and to other contemporary poets and theorists. In demonstrating a relationship between poetics and religious consciousness in Donne's and Herbert's verse, Frances Cruickshank explores their attitudes to the cultural, theological, and aesthetic enterprise of writing and reading verse. Cruickshank shows that Donne and Herbert regarded poetry as a mode not determined by its social and political contexts, but as operating in and on them with its own distinct set of aesthetic and intellectual values, and that ultimately, verse mattered as a privileged mode of religious discourse. This book is an important contribution to the ongoing scholarly dialogue about the nature of literary and cultural study of early modern England, and about the relationship between the writer and the world. Cruickshank confirms Donne's reputation as a fascinating and brilliant poetic figure while simultaneously rousing interest in Herbert by noting his unique merging of rusticity and urbanity and tranquility and uncertainty, allowing the reader to enter into these poets' imaginative worlds and to understand the literary genre they embraced and then transformed.


Book Synopsis Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne by : Frances Cruickshank

Download or read book Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne written by Frances Cruickshank and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-17 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovative and highly readable, this study traces George Herbert's and John Donne's development of a distinct poetics through close readings of their poems, references to their letters, sermons, and prose treatises, and to other contemporary poets and theorists. In demonstrating a relationship between poetics and religious consciousness in Donne's and Herbert's verse, Frances Cruickshank explores their attitudes to the cultural, theological, and aesthetic enterprise of writing and reading verse. Cruickshank shows that Donne and Herbert regarded poetry as a mode not determined by its social and political contexts, but as operating in and on them with its own distinct set of aesthetic and intellectual values, and that ultimately, verse mattered as a privileged mode of religious discourse. This book is an important contribution to the ongoing scholarly dialogue about the nature of literary and cultural study of early modern England, and about the relationship between the writer and the world. Cruickshank confirms Donne's reputation as a fascinating and brilliant poetic figure while simultaneously rousing interest in Herbert by noting his unique merging of rusticity and urbanity and tranquility and uncertainty, allowing the reader to enter into these poets' imaginative worlds and to understand the literary genre they embraced and then transformed.


Comparative Essays on the Poetry and Prose of John Donne and George Herbert

Comparative Essays on the Poetry and Prose of John Donne and George Herbert

Author: Russell M. Hillier

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2021-10-15

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1644532263

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This book brings together ten essays on John Donne and George Herbert composed by an international group of scholars. The volume represents the first collection of its kind to draw close connections between these two distinguished early modern poet-thinkers. The contributors illuminate a variety of topics and fields while suggestion new directions that future study of Donne and Herbert might take.


Book Synopsis Comparative Essays on the Poetry and Prose of John Donne and George Herbert by : Russell M. Hillier

Download or read book Comparative Essays on the Poetry and Prose of John Donne and George Herbert written by Russell M. Hillier and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together ten essays on John Donne and George Herbert composed by an international group of scholars. The volume represents the first collection of its kind to draw close connections between these two distinguished early modern poet-thinkers. The contributors illuminate a variety of topics and fields while suggestion new directions that future study of Donne and Herbert might take.


The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan

The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan

Author: Ceri Sullivan

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2008-09-11

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0191563285

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There is a kind of conscience some men keepe, Is like a Member that's benumb'd with sleepe; Which, as it gathers Blood, and wakes agen, It shoots, and pricks, and feeles as bigg as ten Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan see the conscience as only partly theirs, only partly under their control. Of course, as theologians said, it ought to be a simple syllogism, comparing actions to God's law, and giving judgement, in a joint procedure of the soul and its maker. Inevitably, though, there are problems. Hearts refuse to confess, or forget the rules, or jumble them up, or refuse to come to the point when delivering a verdict. The three poets are beady-eyed experts on failure. After all, where subjects can only discover their authentic nature in relation to the divine it matters whether the conversation works. Remarkably, each poet - despite their very different devotional backgrounds - uses similar sets of tropes to investigate problems: enigma, aposiopesis (breaking off), chiasmus, subjectio (asking then answering a question), and antanaclasis (repetition with a difference). Structured like a language, the conscience is tortured, rewritten, read, and broken up to engineer a proper response. Considering the faculty as an uncomfortable extrusion of the divine into the everyday, the rhetoric of the conscience transforms Protestant into prosthetic poetics. It moves between early modern theology, rhetoric, and aesthetic theory to give original, scholarly, and committed readings of the great metaphysical poets. Topics covered include boredom, torture, graffiti, tattoos, anthologizing, resentment, tears, dust, casuistry, and opportunism.


Book Synopsis The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan by : Ceri Sullivan

Download or read book The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan written by Ceri Sullivan and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-09-11 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a kind of conscience some men keepe, Is like a Member that's benumb'd with sleepe; Which, as it gathers Blood, and wakes agen, It shoots, and pricks, and feeles as bigg as ten Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan see the conscience as only partly theirs, only partly under their control. Of course, as theologians said, it ought to be a simple syllogism, comparing actions to God's law, and giving judgement, in a joint procedure of the soul and its maker. Inevitably, though, there are problems. Hearts refuse to confess, or forget the rules, or jumble them up, or refuse to come to the point when delivering a verdict. The three poets are beady-eyed experts on failure. After all, where subjects can only discover their authentic nature in relation to the divine it matters whether the conversation works. Remarkably, each poet - despite their very different devotional backgrounds - uses similar sets of tropes to investigate problems: enigma, aposiopesis (breaking off), chiasmus, subjectio (asking then answering a question), and antanaclasis (repetition with a difference). Structured like a language, the conscience is tortured, rewritten, read, and broken up to engineer a proper response. Considering the faculty as an uncomfortable extrusion of the divine into the everyday, the rhetoric of the conscience transforms Protestant into prosthetic poetics. It moves between early modern theology, rhetoric, and aesthetic theory to give original, scholarly, and committed readings of the great metaphysical poets. Topics covered include boredom, torture, graffiti, tattoos, anthologizing, resentment, tears, dust, casuistry, and opportunism.


Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-century Poetry

Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-century Poetry

Author: R. V. Young

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780859915694

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English devotional poets of 17c set in a wider European and Catholic context. This book offers a comprehensive account of the literary and theological background to English devotional poetry of the seventeenth century, concentrating on four major poets, Donne, Herbert, Vaughan and Crashaw. It challenges both Protestant poetics and postmodernism, the prevailing critical approaches to Renaissance literature: by reading the poetry in the light of continental Catholic devotional literature and theology, the author demonstrates that religious poetry in seventeenth-century England was not rigidly or exclusively Protestant in its doctrinal and liturgical orientation. He argues that poetic genres and devices that have been ascribed to strict Reformation influence are equally prominent in the Catholic poetry of Spain and France; he also shows that postmodernist anxiety about subjective identity and the capacity of language for signification is in fact a concern of such landmark Christian thinkers as Augustine and Aquinas, and appears in devotional poetry in the Christian tradition. Professor R.V. YOUNGteaches at North Carolina State University.


Book Synopsis Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-century Poetry by : R. V. Young

Download or read book Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-century Poetry written by R. V. Young and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2000 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English devotional poets of 17c set in a wider European and Catholic context. This book offers a comprehensive account of the literary and theological background to English devotional poetry of the seventeenth century, concentrating on four major poets, Donne, Herbert, Vaughan and Crashaw. It challenges both Protestant poetics and postmodernism, the prevailing critical approaches to Renaissance literature: by reading the poetry in the light of continental Catholic devotional literature and theology, the author demonstrates that religious poetry in seventeenth-century England was not rigidly or exclusively Protestant in its doctrinal and liturgical orientation. He argues that poetic genres and devices that have been ascribed to strict Reformation influence are equally prominent in the Catholic poetry of Spain and France; he also shows that postmodernist anxiety about subjective identity and the capacity of language for signification is in fact a concern of such landmark Christian thinkers as Augustine and Aquinas, and appears in devotional poetry in the Christian tradition. Professor R.V. YOUNGteaches at North Carolina State University.


John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets

John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets

Author: Harold Bloom

Publisher: Infobase Publishing

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 143813438X

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Presents a collection of critical essays about the works of John Donne and other metaphysical poets.


Book Synopsis John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets by : Harold Bloom

Download or read book John Donne and the Metaphysical Poets written by Harold Bloom and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of critical essays about the works of John Donne and other metaphysical poets.


Four Metaphysical Poets

Four Metaphysical Poets

Author: John Donne

Publisher: Everyman's Classic Library in Paperback

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13: 9780460878579

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This anthology poems by John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell and Thoma


Book Synopsis Four Metaphysical Poets by : John Donne

Download or read book Four Metaphysical Poets written by John Donne and published by Everyman's Classic Library in Paperback. This book was released on 1997 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology poems by John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell and Thoma


Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert

Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert

Author: Francesca Cioni

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-12-12

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0198874421

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George Herbert, his contemporaries, and readers inhabited a world of material things that were spiritually animated but deeply troubling. Habitual providential and typological interpretation imbued matter with meaning, and connected it with the rest of Creation; using material things was an act of interpretation, devotion an act of habitual reading. Materialist philosophies rejected distinctions between body and soul; injunctions to continuous prayer made every place and every bodily motion a potential house of and vehicle for prayer. At the same time Protestant doctrine and Church of England policy, expressed in sermons, visitation articles and works of theology as well as devotional manuals, prayer books and even physiologies and biographies, policed the ways and conditions in which material things, bodies, and spaces might be properly used in devotion. Herbert's Temple is built, read, and used in this world of continual textual and material 'reading'. By a close reading of The Temple, this book explores how Herbert and his readers understood, experienced, and used material objects in devotion. The Temple is an edifice built of paper and ink, of Biblical allusion, and of analogy to both physical churches and spiritual communities of believers: a material and spiritual, literal, and figurative construction. In his verse, Herbert plays with the boundaries between material and spiritual presence, and between literal and figurative signification; in its devotional poetics material and spiritual meanings inform one another and its readers' devotional lives. Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert focuses in turn on three of the most significant kinds of material things seventeenth-century English believers encountered in devotion: their bodies, church buildings, and books.


Book Synopsis Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert by : Francesca Cioni

Download or read book Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert written by Francesca Cioni and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-12 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Herbert, his contemporaries, and readers inhabited a world of material things that were spiritually animated but deeply troubling. Habitual providential and typological interpretation imbued matter with meaning, and connected it with the rest of Creation; using material things was an act of interpretation, devotion an act of habitual reading. Materialist philosophies rejected distinctions between body and soul; injunctions to continuous prayer made every place and every bodily motion a potential house of and vehicle for prayer. At the same time Protestant doctrine and Church of England policy, expressed in sermons, visitation articles and works of theology as well as devotional manuals, prayer books and even physiologies and biographies, policed the ways and conditions in which material things, bodies, and spaces might be properly used in devotion. Herbert's Temple is built, read, and used in this world of continual textual and material 'reading'. By a close reading of The Temple, this book explores how Herbert and his readers understood, experienced, and used material objects in devotion. The Temple is an edifice built of paper and ink, of Biblical allusion, and of analogy to both physical churches and spiritual communities of believers: a material and spiritual, literal, and figurative construction. In his verse, Herbert plays with the boundaries between material and spiritual presence, and between literal and figurative signification; in its devotional poetics material and spiritual meanings inform one another and its readers' devotional lives. Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert focuses in turn on three of the most significant kinds of material things seventeenth-century English believers encountered in devotion: their bodies, church buildings, and books.


Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert

Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert

Author: Francesca Cioni

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-01-11

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0198874405

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This book uses textual and material evidence -- in poetry, prayers, physiologies, sermons, church buildings and monuments, manuscript diaries and notebooks -- to explore how material things held spiritual meaning in George Herbert's poetry, and to reflect on scholarly approaches to matter and form in devotional poetry.


Book Synopsis Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert by : Francesca Cioni

Download or read book Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert written by Francesca Cioni and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-11 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses textual and material evidence -- in poetry, prayers, physiologies, sermons, church buildings and monuments, manuscript diaries and notebooks -- to explore how material things held spiritual meaning in George Herbert's poetry, and to reflect on scholarly approaches to matter and form in devotional poetry.


Poetic Priesthood in the Seventeenth Century

Poetic Priesthood in the Seventeenth Century

Author: Tessie Prakas

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-08-25

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0192857126

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Poetic Priesthood reads seventeenth-century devotional verse as staging a surprising competition between poetry and the established church. The work of John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, John Milton, and Thomas Traherne suggests that the demands of faith are better understood by poets than by priests--even while four of these authors were also ordained. While recent scholarship has tended to emphasize the shaping influence of the liturgy on the poetry of this period, this book argues that verse instead presents readers with a mode of articulating piety that relies on formal experimentation, and that varies from the forms of the church rather than straightforwardly reproducing them. In crafting this poetic aid to devotion, these authors practiced an alternative and even more ample form of ministry than in their ecclesiastical activities. In the wake of the Reformation, the liturgy of the English church centered on rituals of communal prayer and praise, but the poetry considered in this study suggests that such rituals in fact risk distracting worshippers from the pleasures and challenges of navigating an individual relationship with God. Yet these poets do not make this suggestion by rejecting communal rituals outright. Their verse invokes ecclesiastical practice as a basis for formal innovation that suggests how intimacy with the divine might look, feel, and sound, connecting humans with their God more precisely and more individually than the liturgy can. As they shift between explicit comment on the liturgy and more subtle departures from it in the interplay of verse form and denotation, these authors claim the work of priesthood for poetry.


Book Synopsis Poetic Priesthood in the Seventeenth Century by : Tessie Prakas

Download or read book Poetic Priesthood in the Seventeenth Century written by Tessie Prakas and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poetic Priesthood reads seventeenth-century devotional verse as staging a surprising competition between poetry and the established church. The work of John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, John Milton, and Thomas Traherne suggests that the demands of faith are better understood by poets than by priests--even while four of these authors were also ordained. While recent scholarship has tended to emphasize the shaping influence of the liturgy on the poetry of this period, this book argues that verse instead presents readers with a mode of articulating piety that relies on formal experimentation, and that varies from the forms of the church rather than straightforwardly reproducing them. In crafting this poetic aid to devotion, these authors practiced an alternative and even more ample form of ministry than in their ecclesiastical activities. In the wake of the Reformation, the liturgy of the English church centered on rituals of communal prayer and praise, but the poetry considered in this study suggests that such rituals in fact risk distracting worshippers from the pleasures and challenges of navigating an individual relationship with God. Yet these poets do not make this suggestion by rejecting communal rituals outright. Their verse invokes ecclesiastical practice as a basis for formal innovation that suggests how intimacy with the divine might look, feel, and sound, connecting humans with their God more precisely and more individually than the liturgy can. As they shift between explicit comment on the liturgy and more subtle departures from it in the interplay of verse form and denotation, these authors claim the work of priesthood for poetry.