A Safe Space for the Texted Icon: Richard Crashaw's Use of the Emblem Tradition in His Devotional Lyrics

Abstract

This article attempts to see some of Crashaw's lyrics as part of a larger genre consisting of amphibolous art current in the seventeenth century in England. The Henrician ecclesiastical reformation forced many dedicated Catholics who did not wish to abandon all forms of traditional Catholic worship to develop ways to transfigure the rituals and material accouterments to devotion. Thus the genres of portrait painting, biographical writing, emblem drawings, among others, became lodging houses of sorts for the disguised Catholic icon. The icon was fashioned in such a way that its germane religious form was clear enough to those who were open to seeing the icon in the work yet ambiguous enough so that those who were not of Catholic sympathies could pass the resemblance off as matter only of artistic form. Drawing from elements inherent in both the lyric and emblem traditions, Crashaw wrote some of his major religious work in such a way that the accompanying illustrations, his admonitions to the reader, and his baroque style effectively combine to produce an affect in his Catholic audience similar to the affect they would feel in a gilded Catholic chapel.