Transformations of the Word: Spenser, Herbert, Vaughan

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS55 John N. Wall, Transformations of the Word: Spenser, Herbert, Vaughan. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1988. xv + 428 pp. $40. by Daniel W. Doerksen John Wall sets out in this book to demonstrate an interesting, promising thesis. Assuming that Spenser, Herbert, and Vaughan need to be understood in terms of their religious faith, he maintains that most previous critics have been wrong in overemphasizing theological formulations, and in neglecting distinctive features of the English church. He views that church as Protestant, but its reformation as primarily liturgical (p. 3), focused in "the Book of Common Prayer, the Bible in English, and preaching as represented by the Book of Homilies" (p. 5). Also, Wall takes a dynamic view: the English church he describes was "concerned with developing a corporate life of worship as its place of assurance and furthering a societal transformation through the pursuit of active charity rather than private devotion as its overriding goal" (p. 5). Wall sees a didactic rhetoric of persuasion acting alike in homilies and in the poems of Spenser, Herbert, and Vaughan. (His fashionable citations of Ricoeur and Kristeva, and his attention to "texts" and "speech acts" will doubtless please some readers.) This longish book has some definite virtues. Wall shows true originality and commendable imagination in tracing a plausible pattern from Cranmer and Sidney through the poets named in his title, with an epilogue featuring Traherne and Dryden. According to Wall, Cranmer's ideal "Christian commonwealth " seemed achievable in Spenser's time, but less so in Herbert's (pp. 173-75); for Vaughan, the previously accepted regular means of attaining it through "Anglican" worship were unavailable. Wall regards the Restoration Church of England as more of an inward failure than a triumph. Also an Episcopalian priest, this author has a view of Christianitythat readerscould find appealing: dynamic but not shapeless, for example in the clear distinctions he makes from the classical outlook (pp. 71, 140, 143-44). His approach to Christian marriage in the Spenser chapter seems firm and realistic. Non-partisan readers will appreciate Wall's frank 56BOOK REVIEWS admission that the English church failed to reach its goals, and his concession that the "Puritan emphasis on sermons" proved "finally the more enduring and effective means of social mobilization" (p. 175). In spite of real virtues, Transformations of the Word is dogged by some equally real problems, some of them rather persistent. One is that his approach is too often "exclusivist" — a tendency he himself decries in Dryden (p. 374). Thrice he speaks of the "God of Anglicans" (pp. 61 , 313, 345), seeming to imply they have one of their own. Christ, he says, makes certain promises "at least to Anglicans" (p. 125), and, for Vaughan, "would be absent" ifthe "Anglican moment" were to become "fully past" (pp. 301-02). Elsewhere he seems to claim as distinctively Anglican teachings or emphases that are simply Christian. Thus he cites Prayer Book passages and a Donne sermon (p. 39) for an emphasis on practical living which any Christian could find in the Sermon on the Mount or Romans 12:1-2. Another problem is that Wall rides his thesis too hard. At times phrases like "seen in a Prayer Book context" appear tacked on rather than substantiated. It is truly of interest to learn that Herbert quotes the opening line of Cranmer's translation of the Gloria in excelsis at the end of "The Church," but Wall goes too far when he claims this proves Herbert is reminding his readers "that activity with his text is and must be enclosed in the actual eucharistie activity of the Anglican church" (pp. 1 98-99, emphasis added). Preoccupation with his thesis causes Wall to ignore the regular meaning of Herbert's phrase "bear the bell" (p. 249), which the OED relates to "bellwether." Similarly, he overlooks the obvious scriptural parallels (Ps. 19:10andEzek. 3:1-3) in "let my heart/ Suck ev'ry letter, and a hony gain" ("The H. Scriptures I"), apparently because he is so concerned to emphasize the Eucharist (pp. 249-50). A related problem is a tendency to make a plausible assertion but to accompany it with a sweeping...