Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Poetry: Studies in Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan (review)

R.V. Young, Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Poetry: Studies in Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000. ? + 241 pp. $75. by Graham Roebuck Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Poetry is part of Studies in Renaissance Literature, a series founded by John T. Shawcross and intended to focus on sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury topics that grow out of "medieval concerns." R.V. Young's contribution amply fulfills this editorial expectation: his writing is suffused with the theology and philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose work, liberally quoted and translated, constitutes a cornerstone of Young's powerfully articulated critique of postmodernism. Indeed, the doctor angelicus is presented as having fully anticipated the discontents of the modern and postmodern world, as St. Augustine himself had done. A central tenet of the book is that Catholic Christendom, guided firmly by the Fathers and Doctors, rejects the nihilistic secularism that, in our times, arises from precisely the same recognitions of absent presences and the phenomenon of "différance." So too, the argument runs, did the English devotional poets, even under Protestant dispensation, reject these implications. In this manner deconstruction is stood on its head. Young returns again and again to this theme, fruitfully elaborating its further implications in relationship to the devotional poetry he discusses, and employing it as a central critical principle in his reading of texts. For example, in an extensive discussion of divine grace, with reference to Derrida and to Crashaw — the latter of whom Young finds especially sympathetic — he illustrates the tenor of the poet's thought: Crashaw seems to have known — always already — what the deconstructionists would tell us: signification can only be generated by differences, and signifiers necessarily indicate the absence of what they signify. Crashaw would maintain, contrary to Derrida, that it is only the divine presence, the fullness of Being, that makes difference possible in the first place: only the presence of the Creator — even if deferred or displaced — gives creatures a ground on which to enact their differences, (pp. 7576 ) Book Reviews79 Here — "always already" — and elsewhere, without diminishing the seriousness of his critique, Young enjoys tweaking the Derridean mantra. Although the book has little to say about political, ecclesiastical or social history, it emphasizes important dimensions of cultural history, especially a rich context of continental European devotional verse and theology drawn from Italian, French, Dutch, and German sources. For Young, the Spanish context is especially impressive. Such notable poets as Lope de Vega, Quevedo, St. John of the Cross, and the mystic, St. Teresa, are frequently discussed. Other less familiar Spanish writers quoted include Fray Luis de León, the Scripture scholar, Luis de Molina, the Jesuit theologian, and the poet Pedro Espinosa, whose thought is compared with both Vaughan and Crashaw. There is also informative discussion of three paintings by Velazquez, Christ on the Cross, Christ After the Flagellation Contemplated by the Christian Soul, and The Rokeby Venus. They illuminate the dilemma of Donne's anguished persona in the Holy Sonnet, "What if this present were the world's last night?" This sonnet is especially important to the argument of the book. Juxtaposing the paintings with the sonnet and an anonymous Spanish poem of fervent devotion, "To Christ Crucified," Young gives a subtle, persuasive analysis of the conflicting religious forces at work in Donne's mind and soul. Young's discussion of the Donne sonnet, occurring strategically early in his book, sets a standard for subsequent discussions of the other three English poets he examines, not only for the rigor of his reading, but also for the way in which he characterizes the tug of Calvinism on the minds of poets whom he sees as not radically, doctrinally Protestant or Puritan, but, rather, as deeply committed in their devotion to an unbroken tradition that was reaffirmed by the Counter-Reformation. Put in non-theological terms, the four poets of this study strive "to capture in the spell of verbal form a sense of the mystery that was rapidly being banished from the world" (p. 2). Young does not deny the influence of the reformers on his poets, but, as I read his argument, he rejects the view that their...