Common Prayer: The Language of Public Devotion in Early Modern England (review)

Abstract

Ramie Targoff, Common Prayer: The Language ofPublic Devotion in Early Modern England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. xiii + 162 pp. $40 cloth; $17 paper. by Daniel W. Doerksen In Common Prayer Ramie Targoff has made one of the best efforts so far to trace the effects of the Book of Common Prayer on the flowering of English devotional poetry in early Stuart times. She acknowledges the previous work of John N. Wall, in Transformations of the Word (1988), but not that of Rosemary van Wengen-Shute, George Herbert and the Liturgy of the Church ofEngland (1981), with some of whose views she would probably disagree. Targoff sets out to show that after the Reformation in England there was "less a triumphant embrace of the individual's private and invisible self than a concerted effort to shape the otherwise uncontrollable and unreliable internal sphere through common acts of devotion" (p. 6). She works first by stages, in a fascinating chapter challenging customary views by asserting that the medieval Catholic church, more than its Protestant successor, encouraged "private experience of its liturgy" (p. 5). Her second chapter examines Puritan and Conformist views of common prayer to and including Hooker. A third takes up first medieval religious verse, then English metrical Psalms, and finally Sidney and the Sidney-Pembroke translation of the Psalms. For readers of this journal the most pertinent chapter is the fourth, where a look at Donne on those translations leads into an evaluation of Herbert poems in the light of common prayer in his church. A short conclusion considers the Bay Psalm Book. Crucial to Targoff's argument is the analytical focus on "the particular properties of common prayer — its emphasis upon premeditation rather than spontaneity, its insistence upon the interchangeability of first-person singular and plural pronouns; its preference for simultaneously eloquent and reiterable texts over complex and difficult models of language" (pp. 5-6). Also important for this book is the scholarship, investigating for example The Layfolk's Mass Book for its use of verse, the successive Prayer Book versions, which become "increasingly collective" (p. 28), the detailed arguments of Cartwright and Whitgift, and comparisons to a Puritan alternative liturgy. Taking English Protestantism seriously, Targoff cites writers like Tyndale and Becon, and historians such as Judith Maltby and Diarmaid MacCulloch. She effectively stakes out her own position vis-à-vis Patrick Collinson, Peter Lake, 96Book Reviews and Christopher Haigh (p. 134n). Her reading of Hooker contributes significantly to the argument, recognizing both his originality, even innovation (p. 51), and his "affinity to Calvin" (p. 55) in some respects. Targoff gives attention to Conformists Hall and Wither, but also to the puritan Samuel Hieran as an interesting advocate of order in prayers. She turns up some interesting surprises, such as the Roman defense of unintelligibility in the liturgy (p. 14), and the Puritans' downplaying of the role of the laity (pp. 40-41), something that ironically links them with the sacerdotalism of the Laudians in later decades. The association of Herbert's The Temple with liturgical publications of the Cambridge University Press (pp. 111-17) is fascinating. Targoff writes well, launching her presentation with a look at Claudius' prayer in Hamlet, and marshaling her arguments in an orderly but not over-simple way. She often makes careful distinctions and effective use of comparison and contrast, such as to the views of Milton. Her accruing of medieval examples (pp. 60-64) helps build a convincing case at that point. Elsewhere the Sidney-Herbert version of Psalm 100 in perfect sonnet form beautifully supports her argument (pp. 76-77). Targoff acutely associates the Puritan stress on spontaneity with nineteenth-century Romanticism (p. 87). Her reading of Herbert (pp. 99-111) is quite good in suggesting how the undoubtedly personal poems "seem designed to represent common devotional experiences" (p. 99). Interestingly she notes, with credit to Annabel Patterson, that the concluding lines of "The Collar" amount to the common meter of Sternhold-Hopkins (p. 102). A problem with this book is that at times it is given to overstatement, or insufficiently unsupported assertions. No proof is offered that Aristotle's views on the effects of habit had any influence in the...