Patterns and Patterning: A Study of Four Poems by George Herbert (review)

This is a contextual study after the manner of Rosemond Tuve and in the tradition of Rosemary Freeman. Its aim is "to establish the intended meaning of certain poems by George Herbert," its method the application of historical information about pattern poems and Renaissance emblematics to "The Altar," "Easter-wings," "The Pilgrimage," and "Love" (III). Westerweel seems fully aware of the special accidents that can befall imprudent contextual studies, and indeed he objects to the way in which "Tuve's scholarly method, however useful as a means of transmitting information, has a tendency to crush the poem through sheer weight of annotation." He even invokes an article in which F.R. Leavis, almost furiously attacking the New Scholarship that Tuve represented, had dismissed A Reading of George Herbert as a species of book that was "inimical to criticism, that is, to intelligence" (Scrutiny, 19 [1953], 162-83). "Relevance," says Westerweel, "would seem to be a key term here." The sage contextual scholar must avoid irrelevance, and vigilantly "sift evidence that clarifies the poem's meaning from material that does not."