George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets

by George Herbert, Mario A. Di Cesare (Editor)

This volume presents the major works of five poets―George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan, and Thomas Traherne. While most of the selections fall under the heading of religious poetry, the important secular verse of Marvell and Crashaw is included.

Eighty poems by Herbert have been selected from The Temple , and two early poems from Isaak Walton's Lives are also included. Crashaw is represented by sixteen poems from Steps to the Temple, Delights of the Muses , and Carmen Deo Nostro ; Marvell, by eighteen selections from Miscellaneous Poems ; Vaughan, by forty-five poems from Silex Scintillans, Parts I and II ; and Traherne, by twelve poems from the Dobell Folio, The Third Century , and the Burney Manuscript .

All of the texts have been freshly edited, and spelling has been modernized. Textual Notes specify the procedures followed and give reasons for certain new readings. The poems are fully annotated in order to clarify unfamiliar allusions and images.

A broad range of critical viewpoints is represented in essays by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aldous Huxley, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Anthony Low, L. C. Knights, E. B. Greenwood, Joseph H. Summers, Douglas Bush, Helen C. White, Austin Warren, Richard Strier, Frank Kermode, William Empson, M. C. Bradbrook, M. G. Lloyd Thomas, Edward S. Le Comte, Karina Williamson, Dennis Davidson, Robert Ellrodt, E. C. Pettet, S. Sandbank, Arthur Clements, H. M. Margoliouth, and Stanley Stewart.

An Annotated Bibliography covers historical and cultural background, the lives and works of the individual poets, and several important aspects of religious belief especially relevant to the poems.

Genres: Poetry, British Literature, Classics, Literature

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

George Herbert (1593-1633) was a Welsh-born English poet and orator. Herbert's poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognized as "a pivotal figure: enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skillful and important British devotional lyricist."

Born into an artistic and wealthy family, Herbert received a good education that led to his admission in 1609 as a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, Herbert excelled in languages, rhetoric and music. He went to university with the intention of becoming a priest, but when eventually he became the University's Public Orator he attracted the attention of King James I and may well have seen himself as a future Secretary of State. In 1624 and briefly in 1625 he served in Parliament. Never a healthy man, he died of consumption at the early age of 39.

Reviews

[Martin Bihl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not a huge fan of this era of literature, and yet some how i have accumulated a heaping helping of books from it. and because i'm hopelessly anal, i'm determined to read them.

so as neither an expert, nor a fan, what was i looking for? at the very least, insight; at the most, to be excited by this poetry and these poets who clearly are a part of the english language canon.

got the insight - thanks to the essays (well, some of them, at least). didn't get much of the excitement.

oh well.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long time ago, a good friend suggested I read "The Search," one of Herbert's lesser-known poems. It is still one of my favorites. So simple.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

I studied Herbert too and learned to loathe Romantisism