The Pulse of Praise: Form as Second Self in the Poetry of George Herbert & Writing the Flesh: The Herbert Family Dialogue.

Julia Carolyn Guernsey, The Pulse of Praise: Form as Second Self in the Poetry of George Herbert 

Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999. 270 pp. $46.50. ISBN: 0-87413-679-2.

Jeffrey Powers-Beck, Writing the Flesh: The Herbert Family Dialogue

Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998. xviii + 281 Pp. $54.50. ISBN: 0-8207-0293-5.

In 1652, Barnabas Oley declared that George Herbert "writ Flesh and Blood" when he wrote Latin verses in memory of his mother but "Inspirations poericall" when he wrote the English poems of The Temple. Julia Carolyn Guernsey and Jeffrey Powers-Beck can be read as correctives to Oley since both examine familial ties that bind Herbert's English poetry to the flesh of lived experience.

The Pulse of Praise takes on the difficult task of reading Herbert's English poetry according to British psychoanalyst D.W.Winnicort's idea of empathetic mothering while at the same time locating the fundamental conceptual framework of Herbert's poetry in Reformation theology. Guernsey argues that Herbert's theology was distinctively Lutheran, rather than Calvinisric; and she argues that Luther's notion of a postlapsarian divided self can be understood according to Winnicott's model of the "good-enough mother" who holds and mirrors her child. Guernsey quotes Luther's view that the "old" or fallen man is "born of Adam, nor according to his nature but according to the defects of his nature." In this view, the biblical "flesh" is to be understood as sinfulness, not as the flesh of the material body. The child of the flesh is a sinful "self" who, like the speaker of some of Herbert's poems, is "rebellious, broken, dying." By contrast, the "new man is born of the Spirit" and "is often at odds with the flesh" (26) . In Winnicottian terms, the Spirit becomes "the good-enough mother" whom the child may rake for granted but who embraces and mirrors the child, helping it discover in time its "new" self, that is, its redeemed and restored self. In Herbert's poetry, Guernsey argues, the "old man" or the false or fallen self of the flesh is represented by the discursive speaker, while the second or Christ-like self is represented by the poem's formal elements. The result is that the discursive self and the formal self are finally united in poems as the formal elements hold, mirror, and ultimately complete the frequently inadequate speaker.

Guernsey briefly takes note of some of the possible ways Herbert's own experience of being mothered may have shaped his adult understanding of a mother-like God, but she regards what we can know about Magdalen Herbert's relationship to her son as "indeterminate" (229). Despite setting aside the autobiographical, Guernsey's approach presupposes experiential grounding for Herbert's poetry, and she develops this presupposition by looking at historical evidence for children's relations with parents in the seventeenth century. Relying perhaps too heavily on the work of Lawrence Stone, she notes, for example, the tendency of "especially Puritan parents" to stifle "self-assertion" due to assumptions about original sin (134). She sees the constructive relationship between silent form and discursive speaker in Herbert's poems as a healthy alternative in an historical period when deeply damaging childhood experiences were the norm. Guernsey uses this observation to argue against Stephen Greenblatt and others who can f ind only socially constructed selves in the Renaissance, only what amount to Winnicottian "false selves." For Guernsey, Herbert's poetry reveals that the development of a mature "true self" was possible then despite often unfavorable circumstances. Why late twentieth-century circumstances are distinctly more conducive to the development of true selves, an assumption of the author, is not explained.

Despite the provocative directions Guernsey's linking of Reformation rheology and psychoanalysis opens for speculation, she appropriately focuses throughout her book on close readings of Herbert's poems. Readers who are unenthusiastic about theoretical issues should not be put off by the interpretive material Guernsey uses since she succeeds in offering one stimulating reading after another. Consistently, she is able to show how the formal elements of poems (metrical, iconic, and occasionally even syntactic) provide an alternative to the discursive voice of the poems, an alternative that surrounds the speaker in a loving counterpoint and leads it, often without its seeming to be aware, to resolution and to the discovery of a self grounded more securely than it knew.

In contrast with Guernsey, Jeffrey Powers-Beck takes the historical circumstances of George Herbert's family as his primary context and accordingly gives less space to the poetry of The Temple and considerably more to Herbert's mother, his siblings, and to John Danvers. The title, adapted from the phrase of Barnabas Oley quoted above, refers not only to George Herbert's work but also to the "family dialogue." Powers-Beck notes that "as early as 1846 ... Margaret Fuller recognized that the poetry of George Herbert formed a dialogue with his brother Edward's poetry," a dialogue that has been examined also by Cristina Malcolmson and others, but Powers-Beck is the first to examine carefully the literary dialogue among all the members of Magdalen Herbert's household whose work survives in "poems, letters, treatises, and other documents" (4).

Using more up-to-date historical work than Guernsey (the work of David Cressy, for example), Powers-Beck frames his analysis of the surviving writing of the Herberts by characterizing principal differences between families then and now. In his first chapter he also provides a photograph and description of the Herbert family tomb at St. Nicholas Church, Montgomery, Wales; and he gives some attention to the very modest literary remains of Charles Herbert (four lines of Latin verse) and to a single letter by Frances Herbert, the only extant writing by any of Magdalen's three daughters. Following this opening chapter. Powers-Beck turns to careful examinations of the surviving writings focusing primarily on their possible connections to writing by George Herbert.

In examining Magdalen Herbert's letters and kitchen account book (chapter 2), Powers-Beck argues that her "strenuous attempts to bring together opposite parties and realms of experience" may have been the source for George Herbert's ability to appeal to Christians of diverse theological stands (36). Appendix A supports the claim that Magdalen Herbert was adept at bringing diversity together by printing a list of 162 guests at her table compiled from Kitchin Booke entries by herself and by steward John Gorse. In chapters 3 and 4, Powers-Beck explores the possibilities of mutual influence between George Herbert and his brother Henry in their efforts to seek employment at court. Pointing out that George Herbert emphasized similar concerns about advancement in "The Church-porch" and in his Country Parson and Outlandish Proverbs, Powers-Beck argues that these precepts were common to the family and a matter of life-long commitment. If George Herbert did not pursue a court career in later years, Henry Herbert's new s-at-court letters to Lord Scudamore demonstrate his ability to maneuver his way in the political world and may reflect family values that George Herbert never repudiated. In the area of devotional writing, Powers-Beck argues against attributing The Broken Hears and Herbert's Golden Harpe to George Herbert's brother Henry, eliminating that potential avenue of family dialogue.

In chapter 5, Powers-Beck suggests that in their respective writings, George and Edward Herbert reveal "two distinct voices ... indicating the brothers' different positions in the family." As the eldest, Edward prizes independence and places "his trust in his own will and reason, assuming the prerogatives of the heir . . .." On the other hand, George accepts dependence and "... unable to do the will of the Father, [he relies]... on the generous mediation of the Son..."(122). This birth-order theory begs for a fuller analysis, perhaps even along psychoanalytical lines, but it suggests an interesting possibility that Guernsey's account of Herbert's speaker in The Temple does not consider. In chapter 6, Powers-Beck compares Thomas Herbert's poem, "The Storme... from Plimmouth," with such poems by George Herbert as "The Storm" and "The Bag" (the Thomas Herbert poem is edited and printed in Appendix C). In the final chapter, John Danvers's involvement with the Virginia Company is examined, and Powers-Beck argues on the evidence of this involvement that George Herbert most likely wrote "The Church Militant" between spring, 1619, and summer, 1622, as he and other members of the Virginia Company were contemplating a "movement away from a career at court" (192).

As this summary suggests, Powers-Beck's diverse material necessarily leads in many directions, yet he manages to hold it together by focusing on possible exchanges of influence within the Herbert family, especially influences evident in the writing of George Herbert. As a result the book can accurately be described as an account of George Herbert's literary relationship to his mother, his brothers, and to John Danvers. Placed together, Powers-Beck and Guernsey continue the efforts of recent years to contextualize The Temple. Both of these thoughtful and well-written books contribute substantively to our historical understanding of the poetry of George Herbert.