This dissertation explores the influence of Reformation representational anxiety on early seventeenth-century poetic depictions of Christ. I study the poetic shift from physical to metaphorical portrayals of Christ that occurred after the English Reformation infused religious symbols and visual images with transgressive power. Contextualizing the juncture between visual and verbal representation, I examine the poetry alongside historical artifacts including paternosters, a painted glass window, an emblem, sermons, and the account of a state trial in order to trace signs of sensory “loss” in the verse of John Donne, George Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton. The introduction provides a historical and poetic overview of sixteenth-century influences on religious verse. The first chapter contrasts Donne’s sermons—which vividly describe Christ—with his poems, in which Christ’s face is often obscured or avoided. In the chapter on George Herbert's The Temple, I show how Herbert’s initial, physical portraits of Christ increasingly give way to metaphorical images as the book progresses, paralleling the Reformation’s internalization of images. The third chapter shows that Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum makes use of pastoral conventions to fashion Christ as a shepherd-spouse, the divine object of desire. In the final chapter I argue that three poems from John Milton’s 1645 volume can be read as containing signs of Milton’s emerging Arianism. Depictions of Christ in the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Lanyer, and Milton reveal the period’s contestation over images; the sensory strain of these metaphorical representations results in memorable, vivid verse.

This study examines both the theological aesthetics of George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet, and those of his friends, the Ferrar family of Little Gidding, who founded a quasi-monastic religious community near Cambridge from 1624-1646. In their writings, Herbert and the Ferrars negotiated two traditional but usually competing aesthetic stances: the "beauty of holiness"; on the one hand, and austere plainness, on the other. They skillfully navigated between conflicting theological positions during the years leading up to the English Civil War. Chapter 1 reviews the historical connection between Herbert and Nicholas Ferrar (1592/3-1637) in light of recent revisionist biographies. It describes and contextualizes the anomalous and controversial devotional life at Little Gidding within the complex religio-political landscape of the 1620s and 1630s; it also argues for a shared theological aesthetic between Herbert and the Ferrars as evident in their collaboration on various projects. (Herbert also designated the Ferrars his literary executors.) Chapter 2 revisits the question of Herbert's paradoxical "plain style," a topic that has engaged scholars for decades, by exploring his poetic use of clothing images in conjunction with the Renaissance commonplace of the "garment of style." Chapter 3 examines in detail liturgical practice at Little Gidding, both the family's public and private worship life, as well as their extensive renovation of two churches. Here I argue that the community did not fit easily within any single category in the "worship wars" of the early seventeenth century, but instead drew upon influences across the liturgical spectrum, from Laudianism to puritanism. Chapters 4 and 5 explore how Herbert (in his poetry) and the Ferrars (in their religious dialogues called the Story Books) use narrative of various kinds, but especially parable and exempla, for catechetical ends, and emphasize the centrality of "true stories" to Christian belief. The conclusion argues that these texts present a theological aesthetic that is deeply connected to a lived, practiced ethics. This project fills in a major gap in Herbert studies while recovering important primary sources for the understanding of religion, literature and culture in early modern England. / 2018-04-30T00:00:00Z

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While aspects of mysticism appear in the poetry of both George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, the general consensus among critics has acknowledged the mysticism of Vaughan while ignoring its roots in Herbert's writings. Among the leading authorities on the poetry of Herbert, there has been a general tendency to dismiss, ignore, or explain away mystical elements. A study of representative works by prominent critics to ascertain their positions on this issue reveals not only what can be known for certain about Herbert's theology, but also the interpretations that have been offered for his most famous poems. While these interpretations are useful, the discerning reader must look beyond them, both to the tradition of mysticism and to the Bible, to understand the intensely personal nature of Herbert's spiritual journey. Only then can the full extent of his influence on Vaughan be understood.

George Herbert Mead constructed a brilliant theory of the self as a social phenomenon emerging from the interplay of linguistic symbols. While the persuasiveness Mead's theory remains, he provides an inadequate account of the significance of emotions and conflict for the development of the self. After outlining Mead's theory, this study suggests how Mead's understanding might be improved to account more adequately for the significance of emotions and conflict while maintaining the central strengths of Mead's theory. Examining a range of Mead's writings, this study critiques Mead's theory via three primary means: the theoretical works of William James and Karen Horney; contemporary research in neuroscience; Mead's attempts to apply his theoretical understanding to concrete social conflicts. This study concludes that while Mead's theory fails to account adequately for the significance of emotion and conflict, his theory can be readily modified by incorporating some of the ideas of James and Horney.

<p>Social psychology is often said to be a scientific discipline aiming at the observation and explanation of actions between human beings or, more generally, between the human individual and the environment. This general proposition holds for most social psychologists, irrespective of allegiance. Accepting this, it is implied that we are observing the social aspect of a human individual. This text will ask for the conditions under which this social psychology is possible. Indeed, what has to be the case for the observation and explanation of the sociality of the individual to occur?</p><p>On the basis of G. H. Mead, generally considered the hub around which modern social psychology developed, it will be argued that for a social psychological science to be possible, conditions are implied that make it impossible. Less rhetorically put, accepting or returning to Meads social argument and trying to co-ordinate it with basic premises of scientific conduct, one will find oneself caught between two Meadian facts. On the one hand each individual must be considered social, i.e., appearing to experience as two objects at once. On the other hand, however, explaining an object is to state the object in an unambiguous fashion, i.e., as an independent, hence individual, object. </p><p>It will be argued here that Mead’s epistemology does not support a scientific and social psychology. Rather a scientific social psychology based on Mead constitutes a contradiction in terms, stemming from a series of misinterpretations. It is the objective of this text to demonstrate these misinterpretations with respect to attempts at a scientific social psychology based on the social vision of this scholar.</p>

Social psychology is often said to be a scientific discipline aiming at the observation and explanation of actions between human beings or, more generally, between the human individual and the environment. This general proposition holds for most social psychologists, irrespective of allegiance. Accepting this, it is implied that we are observing the social aspect of a human individual. This text will ask for the conditions under which this social psychology is possible. Indeed, what has to be the case for the observation and explanation of the sociality of the individual to occur? On the basis of G. H. Mead, generally considered the hub around which modern social psychology developed, it will be argued that for a social psychological science to be possible, conditions are implied that make it impossible. Less rhetorically put, accepting or returning to Meads social argument and trying to co-ordinate it with basic premises of scientific conduct, one will find oneself caught between two Meadian facts. On the one hand each individual must be considered social, i.e., appearing to experience as two objects at once. On the other hand, however, explaining an object is to state the object in an unambiguous fashion, i.e., as an independent, hence individual, object. It will be argued here that Mead’s epistemology does not support a scientific and social psychology. Rather a scientific social psychology based on Mead constitutes a contradiction in terms, stemming from a series of misinterpretations. It is the objective of this text to demonstrate these misinterpretations with respect to attempts at a scientific social psychology based on the social vision of this scholar.

Critics have observed that in early Stuart England, the broad, socially significant concept of melancholy was recoded as a specifically medical phenomenon—a disease rather than a fashion. This recoding made melancholy seem less a social attitude than a private ailment. However, I argue that at the Stuart universities, this recoded melancholy became a covert expression of the disillusionment, disappointment, and frustration produced by pressures there—the overcrowding and competition which left many men “disappointed” in preferment, alongside James I’s unprecedented royal involvement in the universities. My argument has implications for Jürgen Habermas’s account of the emergence of the public sphere, which he claims did not occur until the eighteenth-century. I argue that although the university was increasingly subordinated to the crown’s authority, a lingering sense of autonomy persisted there, a residue of the medieval university’s relative autonomy from the crown; politicized by the encroaching Stuart presence, an alienated community at the university formed a kind of public in private from authority within that authority’s midst. The audience for the printed book, a sphere apart from court or university, represented a forum in which the publicity at the universities could be consolidated, especially in seemingly “private” literary forms such as the treatise on melancholy. I argue that Robert Burton’s exaggerated performance of melancholy in The Anatomy of Melancholy, which gains him license to say almost anything, resembles the performed melancholy that the student-prince Hamlet uses to frustrate his uncle’s attempts to surveil him. After tracing melancholy’s evolving literary function through Hamlet, I go on to discuss James’s interventions into the universities. I conclude by considering two printed (and widely circulated) books by university men: the aforementioned The Anatomy of Melancholy by Burton, an Oxford cleric, and The Temple by George Herbert, who left a career as Cambridge’s public orator to become a country parson. I examine how each of these books uses the affective pattern of courtly-scholarly disappointment—transumed by Burton as melancholy, and by Herbert as holy affliction—to develop an empathic form of publicity among its readership which is in tacit opposition to the Stuart court. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-27 15:30:01.702

This dissertation explores the influence of Reformation representational anxiety on early seventeenth-century poetic depictions of Christ. I study the poetic shift from physical to metaphorical portrayals of Christ that occurred after the English Reformation infused religious symbols and visual images with transgressive power. Contextualizing the juncture between visual and verbal representation, I examine the poetry alongside historical artifacts including paternosters, a painted glass window, an emblem, sermons, and the account of a state trial in order to trace signs of sensory “loss” in the verse of John Donne, George Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton. The introduction provides a historical and poetic overview of sixteenth-century influences on religious verse. The first chapter contrasts Donne’s sermons—which vividly describe Christ—with his poems, in which Christ’s face is often obscured or avoided. In the chapter on George Herbert’s The Temple, I show how Herbert’s initial, physical portraits of Christ increasingly give way to metaphorical images as the book progresses, paralleling the Reformation’s internalization of images. The third chapter shows that Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum makes use of pastoral conventions to fashion Christ as a shepherd-spouse, the divine object of desire. In the final chapter I argue that three poems from John Milton’s 1645 volume can be read as containing signs of Milton’s emerging Arianism. Depictions of Christ in the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Lanyer, and Milton reveal the period’s contestation over images; the sensory strain of these metaphorical representations results in memorable, vivid verse.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden, 1981. / Includes index; corrected index inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. [167]-174).