The theological poetics of George Herbert

Abstract

The English poetry of George Herbert (1593-1633) is a representation of the authority of God in salvation. As the initiation, power, and continuance in the salvation process is entirely God’s, so Herbert’s literary authority does not derive from the past, or from himself, but from God. As Herbert, and his speakers, are written upon, so do they write and speak.

Herbert therefore gives a theological meaning to the humanistic terms and concepts of the English literary renaissance. I have chosen four critical categories as being particularly important in England and as significantly transformed by Herbert. These are “imitation”, “invention”, “decorum”, and the Horatian dictum that poetry should “teach and delight”. These categories are by no means entirely discrete.

The stylistic result of seeing literary authority as one with soteriological authority is a double layering in many poems. The speaker-level is that of experience and is dramatic; the underlying level is that of the unchanging love of God, embodied in the completed work of Christ in human history and revealed in the written Word, and is therefore static. The two levels sometimes are made to appear contradictory: this is one of the engines of Herbert’s wit.

Many of the poems appear to be expressive or confessional, but this is a means to Herbert’s delightful, and pastoral, didacticism. The poetic “I” is generalised, representative. Delight is provided by identification with the speaker as well as by the formal poetic features. Delight is also found in the content, which is an imitation of the experiential proof of the doctrines of grace as brought again to light in the Reformation. The poetry’s faithfulness to the Bible, and the reader’s prior state, together determine the effectiveness of the poetry in the reader’s relationship with God.

Herbert’s theological poetic, in contrast to the literary criticism of his time, provided a means of writing poetry which, without needing theories of divine inspiration, found its authority and its true authorship in God. Future poetry moved away from this achievement. Herbert’s poetry, therefore, is probably a unique presentation of the authoritative love of the God whose gift is language.