Theory and Theology in George Herbert's Poetry: "Divinitie, and Poesie, Met".

Elizabeth Clarke. Theory and Theology in George Herbert's Poetry: "Divinitie, and Poesie, Met."

(Oxford Theological Monographs.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 299 pp. $75. ISBN: 0-19-826398-8.

Modern critics of Herbert have been particularly concerned to explore how Herbert reconciled his religious faith with his poetic ambitions. His faith, as Richard Strier has persuasively argued, accepted the inability of man to save himself through works, and yet Herbert produced a body of poetry demonstrating metric virtuosity, sophisticated imagery, and rhetorical skill. Elizabeth Clarke argues that this apparent conflict must be viewed in the context of both theology and rhetorical theory and that there are three important figures who contribute to that context. She claims that Savonarola, St. Francois de Sales, and Juan Valdes provide the "rhetorical and spiritual context for The Temple" (15). "They represent the range of options available to an author at the confluence of the Reformation and the Renaissance rhetorical tradition" (16).

Clarke asserts that her analysis "builds on the works of Martz and, to a lesser extent, Lewalski" (14), but her later statement of debt to Stanley Fish may be more important in understanding her approach (25). While much of the book is a survey of the three important contextual figures and their positions on Christian authorship, the central argument is about Herbert's use of "motions" and the contemporary readers' understanding of such motions. These motions are impulses from God which often mortify the poet, as in the conclusions of "Artillerie," "Love Unknown," or "The Collar." Clarke points out that: "Paradoxically, to a readership that understood the dynamic of mortification, the explicit acknowledgement of the flawed authorship of the poems confirmed their status as inspired lyrics" (256). Thus, her conclusion is: "the awareness of 'motions,' with their double force, is what characterizes Herbert's poetry. In its twin movements of empowering and disablement the seventeenth-century reader recognized the characteristic motions of God" (267).

While some readers will value the careful review of Savonarola, de Sales, and Valdes on the issue of Christian authorship, most students of Herbert will be pleased by the light Clarke sheds on Herbert's poetic methods. She builds a strong argument for the importance of the reader in Herbert's poetic/theological position: "By drawing attention to the impossibility of a self-validating discourse, Herbert in fact puts responsibility on the reader: it is the reader's response to the poetry which will validate it as spiritual discourse" (275). Clarke's analysis of individual poems can be quite successful in revealing how Herbert has shown the motion of God in its effect upon the speaker and how Herbert has structured the poem to create a motion in the reader: see the analysis of "The Quip" (232-34). Generally, however, the poems are used as steps in her overall argument of Herbert's method. Thus, there are few sustained analyses of poems. The book, then, provides an original contribution to the understanding of p oetic method for Herbert and for Christian poetry in the seventeenth-century, it provides occasional insights into particular poems, and it provides sustained analysis of the three central figures in their treatment of Christian authorship.

For a book that is concerned about the Herbert's impact on the reader there is very little concern for the reader of Clarke's argument. The index is surprisingly thin, there is no clear outline of the argument, and the introductions to and summaries of sections or chapters are often missing or not helpful. The reader's struggle to grasp the direction of the argument is worth the effort, but could have been more dearly guided.