Voices and Echoes: Poetical Precedents from Herbert to Bunyan

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 22; pp. 14 - 38
• Main Author: Wilcox, Helen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2018
• Subjects: 17th century; Aesthetics; Allusion; Ambiguity; Apologies; Authorship; Bible; British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Christianity; English literature; Epic literature; Herbert, George (1593-1633); Language; Literary canon; Literary devices; Literary influences; Literary translation; Logic; Metaphor; Morality; Narrative techniques; Poetry; Readers; Religion; Reported speech; Rhetoric; Sonnets; Spirituality; Welsh literature; Writers
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Nor was Baxter alone among Dissenters in this positive view of poetry's power to captivate the soul by embodying 'somewhat of Heaven'. [...]spiritual poets 'delight' by 'awakening [...] the richest, the liveliest Images of the Divine Work, the Divine Mind'.11 This view among Dissenters such as Baxter and Sterry, that poetry possesses a divine and revelatory power, readily lent itself to practical, even utilitarian, uses of religious verse in the later seventeenth century. [...]the case for the explicitly purposeful, utilitarian application of this sugar-coated poetic pill wins the day, and the subsequent popularity of Wigglesworth's substantial poem suggests the accuracy of Mitchell's argument in its favour.14 II As Mitchell announces, the opening line of his stanza is in fact a quotation from the work of the earlier seventeenth-century devotional poet, George Herbert.15 Indeed, the most remarkable aspect of Mitchell's defence of poetry is that it is announced and established by reference to the authority of an Anglican poet.16 On what basis, then, did Dissenters find fellowship with poetic predecessors, and whose work did they consider it helpful to echo as they sought to establish their own devotional voices? The primary common feature among all the poetry found acceptable by Dissenting readers and writers is a secure grounding in the text of the Bible, encouraged by St Paul's reference to the 'psalms and hymns and spiritual songs' used by the early Christians.17 The scriptural precedents for poetic writing - the Psalms, the Song of Songs, the parables, and the uses of metaphor - were naturally the startingpoint for all early modern justifications of poetry, from Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry onwards.18 However, these biblical precedents become even more intensely significant in the context of Nonconformist scepticism (as we have seen in Speed, Bunyan and Tate, among others) about the enticingly rich rhetoric used in the furtherance of faith.