The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan by Ceri Sullivan

Abstract

MLR, 104.3, 2009 831 Chapter 2 contrasts themaritime adventures of the saintly Brendan and unsaintly Tristan and Ysolt. Chapter 3 looks at the Latin writers Gildas, Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, andMatthew Paris. These all possessed Insular mentalities, whether in seeing Britain as aworld beyond theworld (as on aMapa Mundi) or (withMatthew Paris in landlocked StAlbans) expressing distaste for saltwater as a haunt of storms and monsters. The remaining chapters are securelymoored toMiddle English. Chapter 4 ana lyses the romances ofKing Horn and (inGower's version) Apollonius. Then follow contrasting experiences of seafaring as seen (a) by the author of Patience and (b)Margery Kempe on her way toGdarisk. We conclude with themedieval origins of the law of the sea and territorialwaters, complemented by discussion of The Libelle ofEnglyshe Poly eye, a text (now attracting attention after long neglect) that unwittingly foreshadows the era ofEuropean sea power and world colonization. The book closes with an epilogue quoting the epilogue of The Tempest, an island-play written as the age of empire moved to itszenith. The author is original both in his approach to early English, Latin, and French textsand inhis intellectual adventurousness. He refers with ease tobooks inFrench, German, Dutch, Italian, and Polish on subjects as diverse as ecclesiology (in the work ofHugo Rahner) and jurisprudence. There is littleof thenarrow or provincial in his breadth of knowledge and range of interests, as shown by his bibliography, which is unconventional and full of surprises. He (and his supervisor) perhaps needed courage to do this,because his way of proceeding contrasts with much that isdrearily familiar in todays Anglo-American academy. So one remembers striking ideas on varied subjects. Jeromeand Augustine (p. 38) discuss thewaters of theBook ofGenesis as primordial chaos.When a gale threatens shipwreck and death by drowning, Ysolt's fear of damnation as an unreconciled sinner (p. 70) is eclipsed by love forTristan. Gildas (born atArclid, near Chester?) locates Britain (p. 73) on theutter limitsof theworld. The author ofPatience (p. 124, n. 14) shows unusual knowledge of ships and their tackle (which he perhaps learnt in 1378 on a troopship bound forAquitaine). This book hence reveals uncommon intellectual curiosity. One looks forward to Sobeckfs futurework. He is a researcher likely to illuminate whatever he discusses; particularly when he begins to see through one or two fashionable writers, and can spell correctly the name ofNicolas Jacobs, lifefellow of JesusCollege, Oxford. University of Navarre, Pamplona Andrew Breeze The Rhetoric of theConscience inDonne, Herbert, and Vaughan. By Ceri Sullivan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. xiv+275 pp. ?50. ISBN 978-0-19 954784-5. This book sets out to explore how a similar set of rhetorical tropes (or figures) is used in poems by Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan to signal failures of conscience; and since it is also concerned with the various kinds of assault thatmay be made 832 Reviews upon the conscience, not least through the experience of torture, the discussions of poetics are framed within a somatic context. It is, therefore, a book about rhetoric and thebody, though this is tomake the subject sound more familiar than itreally is. The introduction begins by shifting the focus from figures of speech to recurrent images such as theheart being racked to confess its sinfulness. The rationale for this is thatwhile 'tropes' are generated by the dialogue of the conscience with God, the fact that poets tend to think in terms of the body produces the images. Although the summative gloss (Tn short, the theology produces the trope, the social context produces the image' (p. 4)) shifts the terms again, this is really the gist of Ceri Sullivan's argument. The subject of the firstchapter,which also supplies the book's opening epigraph, is not rhetoric but logic, since it develops the point about the dialogue of the conscience with God by presenting conscience as syllogism. Here Sullivan discusses casuistrywith reference toDonne, but also to William Perkins, who was well known as a Ramist. Although she admits that it isnot possible to trace direct influence of Ramism on her chosen poets, Sullivan's claims for the importance of Ramist logic are plausible enough (itwas certainly important for Milton). In the final part of...