Abstract:This essay is a study of one of the earliest and most systematic applications in England of the historical writings of Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini to a specific political problem, the threat of Spanish invasion in the months prior to the Armada of 1588. Its subject is an Elizabethan treatise on foreign policy, existing in fragments and incomplete copies, that can be reconstructed only through uncovering its concealed revisions of Florentine writing. Textual restoration reveals the treatise to be engaged in a sustained negotiation between Machiavellian exemplarity and Guicciardinian historicism, reflected in its tactical adaptations of Florentine aphorisms and examples. History is diminished as a source of definite political knowledge and enlarged as an illustration of the vulnerabilities of nations and kingdoms, establishing an urgent need for prudential judgment in sovereigns and their counselors. In turn this propels the treatise toward an increasingly rhetorical use of examples, mediated through figures such as Geoffrey Fenton, in order to cultivate this faculty of judgment in its readers.
{"title":"Reading for Echoes: The English Guicciardini and the Rhetoric of Exemplarity in the Age of the Armada","authors":"Nicholas Fenech","doi":"10.1353/sip.2021.0035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2021.0035","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay is a study of one of the earliest and most systematic applications in England of the historical writings of Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini to a specific political problem, the threat of Spanish invasion in the months prior to the Armada of 1588. Its subject is an Elizabethan treatise on foreign policy, existing in fragments and incomplete copies, that can be reconstructed only through uncovering its concealed revisions of Florentine writing. Textual restoration reveals the treatise to be engaged in a sustained negotiation between Machiavellian exemplarity and Guicciardinian historicism, reflected in its tactical adaptations of Florentine aphorisms and examples. History is diminished as a source of definite political knowledge and enlarged as an illustration of the vulnerabilities of nations and kingdoms, establishing an urgent need for prudential judgment in sovereigns and their counselors. In turn this propels the treatise toward an increasingly rhetorical use of examples, mediated through figures such as Geoffrey Fenton, in order to cultivate this faculty of judgment in its readers.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"233 - 271"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42250578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Scholars have spent considerable time grappling with the erratic sequence of events that comprise Redcrosse’s regeneration or spiritual rebirth in book 1 of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. While they have recognized the ecumenical dynamics of the knight’s spiritual progression, they have not accounted for the way in which his rebirth includes pitfalls and setbacks that disrupt its order. This article turns to early modern Protestant regeneration treatises—religious works that center on the topic of rebirth— to find a discourse that characterizes regeneration as an uneven process, which includes false starts and stops along the way to salvation. Reading through the lens of that discourse, we can see how Redcrosse’s peripatetic pricking through Faeryland depicts a recursive rebirth punctuated by episodes of false regeneration that erroneously start and stop his spiritual growth. Ultimately, Spenser demonstrates romance’s compatibility with Protestant allegory by using the circuitous narrative structure of the knight’s quest to metaphorize the recursive nature of rebirth. Indeed, the haphazard movement of the knight “pricking on the plaine” deftly allegorizes the backsliding, digression, and delay associated with regeneration.
{"title":"“Pricking on the plaine”: Romance and Recursive Regeneration in The Faerie Queene, Book 1","authors":"Brice Peterson","doi":"10.1353/sip.2021.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2021.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Scholars have spent considerable time grappling with the erratic sequence of events that comprise Redcrosse’s regeneration or spiritual rebirth in book 1 of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. While they have recognized the ecumenical dynamics of the knight’s spiritual progression, they have not accounted for the way in which his rebirth includes pitfalls and setbacks that disrupt its order. This article turns to early modern Protestant regeneration treatises—religious works that center on the topic of rebirth— to find a discourse that characterizes regeneration as an uneven process, which includes false starts and stops along the way to salvation. Reading through the lens of that discourse, we can see how Redcrosse’s peripatetic pricking through Faeryland depicts a recursive rebirth punctuated by episodes of false regeneration that erroneously start and stop his spiritual growth. Ultimately, Spenser demonstrates romance’s compatibility with Protestant allegory by using the circuitous narrative structure of the knight’s quest to metaphorize the recursive nature of rebirth. Indeed, the haphazard movement of the knight “pricking on the plaine” deftly allegorizes the backsliding, digression, and delay associated with regeneration.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"118 1","pages":"43 - 69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/sip.2021.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48870648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:John Keats’s Lamia was shaped by interrelated anxieties that troubled the poet throughout 1819. These anxieties centered on the cultural power of women readers but ramified to include Lord Byron as well. Borrowing the story of Lamia from Robert Burton but also presenting his serpent-heroine as a metonymy for the western canon, Keats uses his poem to lament the parodic feminization of canonical norms on the Regency literary scene. Yet this cultural debasement, he suggests further, must also be blamed on Lord Byron, who has made himself Regency England’s star poet in part by theatrically catering to the ladies. My essay invokes Regency criticism of Byron as an audience-manipulating poseur to argue that Lamia’s amatory career restages Keats’s ambivalence about Byron, allowing Keats to seek a broader readership through an experiment in Byronic role-playing while also indicting Byron for his insincerity and cynicism.
{"title":"Serpent’s Tongue: The Byronism of Lamia","authors":"W. A. Ulmer","doi":"10.1353/sip.2021.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2021.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:John Keats’s Lamia was shaped by interrelated anxieties that troubled the poet throughout 1819. These anxieties centered on the cultural power of women readers but ramified to include Lord Byron as well. Borrowing the story of Lamia from Robert Burton but also presenting his serpent-heroine as a metonymy for the western canon, Keats uses his poem to lament the parodic feminization of canonical norms on the Regency literary scene. Yet this cultural debasement, he suggests further, must also be blamed on Lord Byron, who has made himself Regency England’s star poet in part by theatrically catering to the ladies. My essay invokes Regency criticism of Byron as an audience-manipulating poseur to argue that Lamia’s amatory career restages Keats’s ambivalence about Byron, allowing Keats to seek a broader readership through an experiment in Byronic role-playing while also indicting Byron for his insincerity and cynicism.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"118 1","pages":"181 - 206"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/sip.2021.0007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48236957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay traces the varying implications of the word-concept conversion from the early Reformation to its use in John Donne’s poems and sermons, in a sermon by Lancelot Andrewes, and in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Conversion is by definition a turning, usually a turning to or toward something, although also a turning back or even around, like a top. Historically, the English word derives from the Latin verb vertere, meaning “to turn,” and over time it develops a wide range of sociocultural applications. Its religious application—a redirecting, renewal, or reconfiguration of faith—is the most familiar. Another common word in the Renaissance that also means “turn” is trope, which refers to a figure of speech, such as metaphor. Like a trope (or turn), a conversion (or turn) involves a change, a shift, or a movement from one thing to another. Not surprisingly, given this intertwined background, controversies about the figurative or literal interpretation of the words with which Christ instituted the Eucharist in the Bible were at the very heart of religious conversion in England and on the Continent during the Reformation. Evident in these controversies is the changing perception of matter itself, of the material world, and of its relation to spirit. In Donne’s, Andrewes’s, and Milton’s writings, the persistence of religious tradition is equally evident, along with its radical appropriation to other meanings.
{"title":"Biblical, Linguistic, and Literary Conversions: John Donne, Lancelot Andrewes, and John Milton","authors":"Judith H. Anderson","doi":"10.1353/sip.2021.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2021.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay traces the varying implications of the word-concept conversion from the early Reformation to its use in John Donne’s poems and sermons, in a sermon by Lancelot Andrewes, and in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Conversion is by definition a turning, usually a turning to or toward something, although also a turning back or even around, like a top. Historically, the English word derives from the Latin verb vertere, meaning “to turn,” and over time it develops a wide range of sociocultural applications. Its religious application—a redirecting, renewal, or reconfiguration of faith—is the most familiar. Another common word in the Renaissance that also means “turn” is trope, which refers to a figure of speech, such as metaphor. Like a trope (or turn), a conversion (or turn) involves a change, a shift, or a movement from one thing to another. Not surprisingly, given this intertwined background, controversies about the figurative or literal interpretation of the words with which Christ instituted the Eucharist in the Bible were at the very heart of religious conversion in England and on the Continent during the Reformation. Evident in these controversies is the changing perception of matter itself, of the material world, and of its relation to spirit. In Donne’s, Andrewes’s, and Milton’s writings, the persistence of religious tradition is equally evident, along with its radical appropriation to other meanings.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"118 1","pages":"120 - 144"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/sip.2021.0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48673694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The rarely discussed Middle English poem “Alas, quid eligam ignoro” might be read as an estates satire, but it takes the form of a complaint. Two young men (a clerk and a layman) describe their seeming paralysis in the face of an impossible choice. In contrast to the usual strategy of estates satire, the poem does not view the moral failures of the professions from some kind of objective distance but from the bottom-up perspective of two individuals who see choice as a kind of foreclosure or hopeless compromise. The crisis of “Alas, quid eligam ignoro” resembles similar crises faced by Will in William Langland’s Piers Plowman and by the speaker of a fragmentary poem known as “Why I Can’t Be a Nun.” In contrast to prevailing views of professional identity as a natural, inescapable destiny, these texts suggest that finding a profession might involve anxious introspection and that this search might be obstructed at every turn.
摘要:中古英语诗歌《唉，魁德·利格兰·无知者》(唉，魁德·利格兰·无知者)虽可理解为对社会的讽刺，但其表现形式却是一种抱怨。两个年轻人(一个是职员，一个是门外汉)描述了他们在面对一个不可能的选择时似乎束手无策。与地产讽刺的通常策略相反，这首诗没有从某种客观的距离来看职业的道德失败，而是从两个自下而上的角度来看，他们把选择看作是一种丧失抵押品赎回权或无望的妥协。“唉，我不知道”的危机类似于威廉·朗兰(William Langland)的《农夫皮尔斯》(Piers Plowman)中的威尔(Will)所面临的危机，以及一首支离破碎的诗《为什么我不能成为修女》(Why I Can Be a Nun)的作者所面临的危机。与普遍认为职业身份是一种自然的、不可避免的命运的观点相反，这些文本表明，寻找职业可能涉及焦虑的内省，而且这种寻找可能处处受阻。
{"title":"What to Choose: “Alas, quid eligam ignoro” and Professional Anxiety in Middle English Literature","authors":"George Shuffelton","doi":"10.1353/sip.2021.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2021.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The rarely discussed Middle English poem “Alas, quid eligam ignoro” might be read as an estates satire, but it takes the form of a complaint. Two young men (a clerk and a layman) describe their seeming paralysis in the face of an impossible choice. In contrast to the usual strategy of estates satire, the poem does not view the moral failures of the professions from some kind of objective distance but from the bottom-up perspective of two individuals who see choice as a kind of foreclosure or hopeless compromise. The crisis of “Alas, quid eligam ignoro” resembles similar crises faced by Will in William Langland’s Piers Plowman and by the speaker of a fragmentary poem known as “Why I Can’t Be a Nun.” In contrast to prevailing views of professional identity as a natural, inescapable destiny, these texts suggest that finding a profession might involve anxious introspection and that this search might be obstructed at every turn.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"118 1","pages":"1 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/sip.2021.0000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47680854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Daniel Defoe’s Jure Divino is a generic oddity, a twelve-book poem in heroic couplets devoted to dense political theorizing, labeled by its author a “Satyr.” Accounts of Jure Divino suggest a work of would-be great heroic poetry communicating straightforward mainstream Whig ideology—but we have not fully understood the radical nature of the statement Defoe makes about resistance and the limits of political obligation. Jure Divino amplifies John Locke’s anticlericalism; reflects Defoe’s commitment to advancing Protestant politics and the Reformation project against the dark politics of the high church; represents a reversal of the High Tory argument about the sinfulness of rebellion; and desanctifies claims about divine right government and hereditary succession. The poem represents a reminder that we have not fully understood Defoe’s role in the religiopolitical controversies of late Stuart Britain.
{"title":"“Treason and Loyalty go Hand in Hand”: Moral Politics and Radical Whiggery in Defoe’s Jure Divino (1706)","authors":"A. Marshall","doi":"10.1353/sip.2021.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2021.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Daniel Defoe’s Jure Divino is a generic oddity, a twelve-book poem in heroic couplets devoted to dense political theorizing, labeled by its author a “Satyr.” Accounts of Jure Divino suggest a work of would-be great heroic poetry communicating straightforward mainstream Whig ideology—but we have not fully understood the radical nature of the statement Defoe makes about resistance and the limits of political obligation. Jure Divino amplifies John Locke’s anticlericalism; reflects Defoe’s commitment to advancing Protestant politics and the Reformation project against the dark politics of the high church; represents a reversal of the High Tory argument about the sinfulness of rebellion; and desanctifies claims about divine right government and hereditary succession. The poem represents a reminder that we have not fully understood Defoe’s role in the religiopolitical controversies of late Stuart Britain.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"118 1","pages":"145 - 180"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/sip.2021.0006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46418506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article offers a rereading of Fulke Greville’s A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney, arguing that Greville’s text, resisting a motif in earlier commemoration literature of Sidney’s life that painted him as militaristic, violent, and bold, displays instead a Sidney who is devoted to irenic counsel, caution, and an emphasis on peacekeeping. Building on recent studies of Greville’s life and work that have illustrated his preoccupation with political counsel, it illustrates how Greville uses his biography of Sidney to develop an implicit argument not only for the worthiness of counselors in general, but for the specific value of an aversion to military conflict. Finally, this article examines Greville’s choice to depict Sidney in this fashion in the contexts of both Caroline foreign policy— an issue of pressing concern during the period in which Greville composed A Dedication—as well as Greville’s understanding of his own political career as “Concellor to King James.”
{"title":"“This steady counsel”: Fulke Greville’s Transformation of Sidney in A Dedication","authors":"Kevin Windhauser","doi":"10.1353/sip.2021.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2021.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article offers a rereading of Fulke Greville’s A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney, arguing that Greville’s text, resisting a motif in earlier commemoration literature of Sidney’s life that painted him as militaristic, violent, and bold, displays instead a Sidney who is devoted to irenic counsel, caution, and an emphasis on peacekeeping. Building on recent studies of Greville’s life and work that have illustrated his preoccupation with political counsel, it illustrates how Greville uses his biography of Sidney to develop an implicit argument not only for the worthiness of counselors in general, but for the specific value of an aversion to military conflict. Finally, this article examines Greville’s choice to depict Sidney in this fashion in the contexts of both Caroline foreign policy— an issue of pressing concern during the period in which Greville composed A Dedication—as well as Greville’s understanding of his own political career as “Concellor to King James.”","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"118 1","pages":"119 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/sip.2021.0004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46987466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The title of Michael Drayton’s Ideas Mirrour (1594) has often been seen as encapsulating a Petrarchan and Neoplatonic poetics adopted by most Elizabethan sonneteers and countered or subverted by the most canonical poets. This essay suggests that such an interpretation misrepresents the complexity of Elizabethan sonnet sequences in general and of Drayton’s in particular, reassessing Drayton’s Petrarchism and alleged Neo-platonism as well as revising Thomas P. Roche Jr.’s notion of a widely shared Augustinianism among English sonneteers. I turn away from a vision of Drayton as a belated Spenserian or nostalgic Elizabethan to focus on his early career in the 1590s. More specifically, I insist on the connections between Drayton’s three “Ideas”: Idea: The Shepheards Garland (1593), Ideas Mirrour (1594), and Endimion and Phoebe: Ideas Latmus (1595) to identify a career pattern in the progression from one to the next. In drawing these connections, I argue for a revaluation of the role of the Sidney family as a social and poetic ideal for Drayton in the 1590s.
{"title":"Michael Drayton’s Early Career: Reconsidering the Petrarchism of Ideas Mirrour (1594)","authors":"R. Vuillemin","doi":"10.1353/sip.2021.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2021.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The title of Michael Drayton’s Ideas Mirrour (1594) has often been seen as encapsulating a Petrarchan and Neoplatonic poetics adopted by most Elizabethan sonneteers and countered or subverted by the most canonical poets. This essay suggests that such an interpretation misrepresents the complexity of Elizabethan sonnet sequences in general and of Drayton’s in particular, reassessing Drayton’s Petrarchism and alleged Neo-platonism as well as revising Thomas P. Roche Jr.’s notion of a widely shared Augustinianism among English sonneteers. I turn away from a vision of Drayton as a belated Spenserian or nostalgic Elizabethan to focus on his early career in the 1590s. More specifically, I insist on the connections between Drayton’s three “Ideas”: Idea: The Shepheards Garland (1593), Ideas Mirrour (1594), and Endimion and Phoebe: Ideas Latmus (1595) to identify a career pattern in the progression from one to the next. In drawing these connections, I argue for a revaluation of the role of the Sidney family as a social and poetic ideal for Drayton in the 1590s.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"118 1","pages":"70 - 96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/sip.2021.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42855809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay begins by asking why, in revising, restructuring, and extending his work in the Bodleian Manuscript, George Herbert broke the original sequence of The Church after "Obedience." I then offer a speculative response to this question based on a close reading of "Obedience" and an effort to historicize its theological and social content. Three claims are central. First, I suggest that particular devotional and theological significance ought to be attributed to "Obedience" in relation to The Church sequence overall. This is true, as I figure mainly through the writings of Martin Luther, insofar as the poem addresses what for Reformation theology was a definitive principle of Christian liberty. Correspondingly, "Obedience" purposes to conduct what for the Christian subject is a defining but only potentially redeeming act of consent to God's Law. Second, through close reading and discreet reconstruction, I consider how this act of consent is obstructed in Herbert's poem. Above all, I suggest, this obstruction should be understood in terms of a social and religious contest for the voice of the first-person speaker, and a failed introspection of the Christian neighbor. Finally, I argue that "Obedience" not only marks a theological impasse that was decisive for Herbert's restructuring of The Church in the Bodleian manuscript, but additionally, and crucially, that it also shows us how his poetry and theology were vitally responsive to changing social and class relations in England during the early seventeenth century.
{"title":"Breaking The Church: George Herbert's Problem with \"Obedience\"","authors":"J. Gallagher","doi":"10.1353/sip.2020.0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2020.0030","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay begins by asking why, in revising, restructuring, and extending his work in the Bodleian Manuscript, George Herbert broke the original sequence of The Church after \"Obedience.\" I then offer a speculative response to this question based on a close reading of \"Obedience\" and an effort to historicize its theological and social content. Three claims are central. First, I suggest that particular devotional and theological significance ought to be attributed to \"Obedience\" in relation to The Church sequence overall. This is true, as I figure mainly through the writings of Martin Luther, insofar as the poem addresses what for Reformation theology was a definitive principle of Christian liberty. Correspondingly, \"Obedience\" purposes to conduct what for the Christian subject is a defining but only potentially redeeming act of consent to God's Law. Second, through close reading and discreet reconstruction, I consider how this act of consent is obstructed in Herbert's poem. Above all, I suggest, this obstruction should be understood in terms of a social and religious contest for the voice of the first-person speaker, and a failed introspection of the Christian neighbor. Finally, I argue that \"Obedience\" not only marks a theological impasse that was decisive for Herbert's restructuring of The Church in the Bodleian manuscript, but additionally, and crucially, that it also shows us how his poetry and theology were vitally responsive to changing social and class relations in England during the early seventeenth century.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"117 1","pages":"881 - 907"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/sip.2020.0030","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43586316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article explores George Herbert's engagement with concepts of practical and spiritual charity through close attention to the language of feast, fast, and feeding others in The Temple and The Countrey Parson. Arguing that an intensely bodily conception of compassion works as a vital hinge between the literal and metaphorical understandings of feeding and eating throughout Herbert's writing, the article focuses on a recurring image of the beggar at the door as a potent distillation of Herbert's pastoral and poetic understanding of human charity.
{"title":"Consuming Compassion: Feast, Fast, and Charity in George Herbert","authors":"Lindsey Larre","doi":"10.1353/sip.2020.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2020.0029","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores George Herbert's engagement with concepts of practical and spiritual charity through close attention to the language of feast, fast, and feeding others in The Temple and The Countrey Parson. Arguing that an intensely bodily conception of compassion works as a vital hinge between the literal and metaphorical understandings of feeding and eating throughout Herbert's writing, the article focuses on a recurring image of the beggar at the door as a potent distillation of Herbert's pastoral and poetic understanding of human charity.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"117 1","pages":"846 - 880"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/sip.2020.0029","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49514304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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