The Poetry of Immanence: Sacrament in Donne and Herbert (review)

Robert Whalen, The Poetry ofImmanence: Sacrament in Donne and Herbert. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. 216 pp. $45. by Jeffrey Powers-Beck Although much criticism of the 1980s, led by Richard Strier and Barbara Lewalski, articulated a Protestant poetics for the early seventeenth century and allied George Herbert closely with Reformation theology, more recently critics, especially Christopher Hodgkins and Daniel Doerksen, have sought to define Herbert in terms of a via media represented by the Church of England of his day. Not surprisingly, these latter critics were deeply influenced by the former (Hodgkins, for example, was one of Strier's students at the University of Chicago), and so the "middle way" has often appeared to lead back through byways and blind alleys to Calvin's Geneva. In The Poetry ofImmanence, Robert Whalen too seeks to find Herbert's "middle way," but he takes a different tack in his search. Beginning with the centrality of the Eucharist and sacramental signs in Herbert's poetry, Whalen treats a subject that has not received a book-length exploration since Malcolm Ross's Poetry and Dogma (1954). In his introductory chapter, "The Eucharist and the English Reformation," Whalen explores the controversy over the Eucharist in the sixteenth century. On one side of the debate is Rome, which insists on the corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharistie bread and on the doctrine of transubstantiation. This latter doctrine, as Whalen explains, was rooted in Thomas Aquinas's understanding of the Aristotelian categories of substance and accidents: "In the doctrine of transubstantiation was thus developed the idea that while the substance of the elements is wholly changed, the 'accidents' or elements' appearance remains" (p. 5). On the opposite side of the debate is not Calvin of Geneva, but Zwingli of Zürich, who viewed the Eucharist as a symbolic memorial of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, " 'a byname,' not unlike Ascension Day or other names in the church calendar recalling biblical events" (p. 6). Mediating these positions are other reformers, most notably Martin Luther with his concept of consubstantiation, and Jean Calvin's equal insistence on "real presence," though both denied transubstantiation. English reformers too, such as Nicholas Ridley and Richard Hooker, followed Luther and Calvin in insisting on Christ's presence in the Eucharist, but they usually saw that presence as mysterious, spiritual, or psychological. Was this Reformation debate about the modus of Christ's presence in the Eucharist a truly crucial one? Whalen 118Book Reviews contends that it was, as "At issue here are the meaning, extent, and scope of the Incarnation, the profanation of the sacred, the Word become flesh" (p. 20). And he argues even more convincingly that Eucharistie imagery is central to the writing of both Donne and Herbert. He devotes three chapters to exploring Donne's use of Eucharistie imagery and ideas: chapter one treats Donne's frequent use of sacramental topoi in his secular love poems; chapter two focuses more narrowly on Donne's infrequent use of the Eucharist in his sacred poems; and chapter three examines the ambiguous statements about the Eucharist in Donne's 1626 Christmas Sermon. According to Whalen, Donne was convinced enough by Calvin to reject and parody the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, and to emphasize the spiritual or psychological dimension of Christ's presence at Communion. Apparently, though, Donne was not entirely convinced, and so he made his Christmas sermon into a masterpiece of equivocation: "Calvinist sacramentalism simply may not have gone far enough [for Donne] in recognizing the incarnational dimension of Holy Communion" (p. 93). While chapters two and three are more tightly focused on theology, Whalen is most interesting in writing about Donne's use of sacramental topoi in his secular verse, noting how the language of sacrament spills over into many other poetic realms: "The conceptual malleability of a sacrament or coin is an essential part of its power to signify" (p. 49). And so Whalen finds sacraments, quasi-sacraments, and fauxsacraments throughout the love and courtly poems, in "Twicknam Garden," in "Satire IV," in "The Primrose," and in many others. But unlike John Carey or other critics who view the sacred language of the young poet as primarily...