Der Priester als Poet: George Herbert's The Temple im Spannungsfeld von Kirche und Individualität (review)

Svenja Kuhfuss, DerPriester als Poet: George Herbert's The Temple im Spannungsfeld von Kirche und Individualität. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001. viii + 247 pp. DM 136 (approx. $74.00). by Daniel W. Doerksen Svenja Kuhfuss has written a book that Herbert scholars should not ignore, even though it is in German (the only concession to English readers being an 800-word appended summary in English). She presents a George Herbert fully cognizant of the disputes going on in the Jacobean and early Caroline Church of England, but not to be alignedwith any one of the conflicting parties. Herbert's criticisms of each of those in The Temple are thus not one-sided polemics, but complex poetic answers responding to the basic problems of religious writing, and the challenges of early seventeenth-century ecclesiology (p. 195). Kuhfuss even suggests Herbert is offering The Temple as an alternative church (p. 75); he pleads for a coexistence of different views within one church, something possible at least in a poetic "temple" (p. 217). Kuhfuss begins her well organized, on the whole clearly written book by detailing her critical approach, defined as functional structuralism , taking into account the text, the historical context, and the reader, and considering both surface and deeper levels of meaning. With previous Herbert scholarship in mind, she outlines her understanding of the English church, its history, and the role of the Eucharist and priesthood. She claims that the debate over views of time and history is central for Herbert (p. 29), and devotes substantial sections to the theories of time advanced by Godfrey Goodman, George Hakewill, and Francis Bacon, and how they are reflectied in The Temple. Herbert, Kuhfuss maintains, is aware of the splintering of truth in his time, and challenges readers to think for themselves (p. 95). Kuhfuss takes both censorship and "The Church Militant" more seriously into account than most previous Herbert critics. Noting the lines that almost didn't get past the censor, she raises the question, How long can Religion in England stand "on tiptoe" without stepping forward or falling (p, 143)? She also draws out other severely critical implications in the rest of this poem. Here and elsewhere Herbert presents ecclesiologically provocative positions in the form of poetry, thereby escaping censorship (p. 216). Kuhfuss claims that the total of critical texts outweighs the affirmative ones, such as "The British Church." The latter serves as an ideal against which the Book Reviews71 English church in "The Church Militant" is deliberately contrasted (since both poems refer to the Bride of Christ). There is much to commend in this book. This is the best attempt I know of to integrate "The Church Militant" into the whole of The Temple, while still recognizing a measure of purposeful discontinuity. Kuhfuss argues for a sophisticated Herbert, well aware of the exercise of power within the church, who sent his book to Ferrar among other reasons because Ferrar was experienced in dealing with censorship (p. 22). We know that The Temple appealed to a wide range of readers after its publication, and Kuhfuss asserts that this was Herbert's deliberate intention. Kuhfuss offers many perceptive and fresh readings of poems to support her arguments, noting details such as the shift from "thou" to "you" in "Church-rents and schismes" and from "thou" to "I" in "The Priesthood" (pp. 115, 175). Interestingly, she proposes the ambiguity of "Who" in "Who plainly say, My God, My King" ("Jordan" [I], 82), and explores different and ironic levels in "Decay" (pp. 91-96). She observes that "ease" in "Holy Communion" goes directly against Laudian tendencies (p. 169). Interesting too are the parallels she notes, giving credit to her mentor Lothar Fietz, between "The British Church" and the idea of a moated kingdom in Shakespeare (pp. 153-54), and the links she finds between the uses of "face" in "The Jews," "The British Church," and "The Church Militant" (pp. 158-59). Kuhfuss can also use the Scriptures effectively to elucidate elements or details in Herbert, such as by linking Herbert's "poetical program" with Colossians 3:16 (p. 73). Sometimes Kuhfuss does less well, as in taking lines 43-44 of "Misery" unironically, and...