The Poetry of Immanence: Sacrament in Donne and HerbertIn this extensive study of two of the most celebrated seventeenth-century religious poets, Robert Whalen examines the role of sacrament in the formation of early modern religious subjectivity. For John Donne and George Herbert, sacramental topoi became powerful conceptual tools with which to explore both the intersection of spiritual and material aspects of human experience and their competing claims to Christianity. Whalen's argument builds upon his central idea of 'sacramental Puritanism, ' or the effort to cultivate a Calvinist sense of interiority through a fully ceremonial apparatus, and thereby to reconcile the potentially disparate imperatives of sacrament and devotion. Unique in its combination of current historiography and informed analysis, its attention to the sacramental features of Donne's 'secular' lyrics, and its advancement of sacramental thought as an important element of Renaissance English culture, The Poetry of Immanence illuminates a crucial dimension of the work of two major Stuart writers. In his comprehensive critical readings, Whalen offers a substantial contribution to the increasing study of religious themes and devotion in the literature of the early modern period. |
From inside the book
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... Roman Catholic ecclesiology . If the centrality of ceremonial forms was a feature of what Peter Lake has called ' avant - garde conformity , ' 5 establishment clergy such as Donne and Herbert were concerned nonetheless that sacrament ...
... Catholic Martzians and , on the other , those whose via media readings veer in the direction of a ' Protestant poetics . ' Thus in his early Poetry and Dogma - until very recently the only book - length treatment of the Eucharist in ...
... Roman Catholic and Reforma- tion theories of the sacrament , even Calvin himself held that it is by ' analogy ' that the human mind comprehends spiritual significance in the physical domain.20 Now , a Thomist might object that Calvin's ...
... Roman Catholic world view allowed him to invest a surprising range of interests with eucharistic significance , the poems ' sacred profanities at once analogous to and an extreme manifestation of the Incarnation . Such poems are an ...
... Roman Catholic religious sensibility , The Poetry of Immanence finds in Herbert a via media that runs neither between Rome and Geneva , nor , as Daniel Doerksen would have it , through Geneva between Rome and radically Protestant ...
Contents
Secular Verse of the Religious Man Donne and Sacrament at Play | 22 |
Sacrament and Grace | 61 |
Eating the Word Donnes 1626 Christmas Sermon | 83 |
Hearts Altar Herbert and Presence | 110 |
Sacramental Puritanism Herberts English via media | 127 |
Poetry and Self The Eucharistic Art of Devotion | 149 |