Equivocal Predication: George Herbert's Way to God by Heather A.R. Asals (review)

HUMANITIES 4J 7 tradition. The most telling illustration is that of 'Satyre III: for here the voice of the ironic wit is subordinated to that of the earnest casuist who recommends a strenuous search for the truth and insists on the sovereignty of the individual conscience. The discussion of the other four satires, while full of interest, is somewhat less convincing because it fails to provide a way of relating the methods of the satirist (who seeks to arouse doubt) with those of the casuist (who seeks to resolve doubt). Herbert, like his country parson, was already much versed in cases of conscience, and his ability to resolve practical moral problems is evident in his poetry. Slights is on finn ground in arguing that Herbert most characteristically teaches by exemplary problem-solving rather than by direct prescription, and that his self-correcting poetic structures show an affinity with the methods of the casuists. Parallels from the writing of Perkins are effectively used, especially in glossing Herbert's preoccupation with assurance. Yet Herbert seems more source than product of the English casuistical tradition; his dramatic use of the speaker as learner and his deployment of a wide range of artistic devices indicate that casuistry offers but a partial view of his best poetry. Milton's prose is a record of his repeated efforts to bring principles into relation with the practice of a fallen world, and his poetry is full of dramatized choices. Itis thus not surprising that the most satisfying of the four studies deals with Samson Agonistes. Slights argues that the central action of the tragedy is the resolving of doubtful conscience. Only when that process is complete does Samson become free to act. As he learns to distinguish between the letter and the spirit of the law, he serves as a model of liberty. Cases of conscience abound in the play, and the imagery, too, recalls the tradition. Yet Miltonic casuistry is so radical that it breaks free of the limits assumed by conventional casuists. They offer no clear parallels for the hero's discovery of the authority of his own conscience in interpreting divine law. Surely, too, the peace of mind achieved .by the resolving of conscience is different from that which arises out of tragic catharsis? Once again, the author's clear and illuminating exegesis of the text carries her interpretation beyond her professed concern with the casuistical tradition. (HUGH MACCALLUM) Heather A.R. Asals. Equivocal Predication: George Herbert's Way to God University of Toronto Press. xii, 145. $25.00 Professor Asals says that her work is a 'technical study of the dynamiCS of Herbert's religiOUS language' and that it is intended for theologians and linguists as well as literary critics. She is right to warn the reader to 'have open a copy of the complete poetry of Herbert,' not merely because (as she says) she moves from poem to poem, but also because many of her critical points are made in Herbert's own words. In my view the air of cogency thus achieved is not always earned. The author argues that 'Herbert criticism ... has been crippled by an effort to analyse at length single poems out of the context of the whole' but leaves herself open to the criticism that her method of running quotation, leaping from poem to poem, only apparently brings her sufficiently close to her material to achieve accurate deScription. In the opening sentence of her first chapter Asals implicitly claims that her material is both original and important: 'Profoundly significant, the references in The Temple to the poet's practice of the physical act of writing, to the event of his transcribing of the poem, have gone virtually unnoticed by modern criticism.' Unfortunately doubts about accuracy surface before the end of the first paragraph, and recur. The problem seems to be that the author extrapolates from the undeniable fact that Herbert wrote poems about the writing of religious verse to the conclusion that the poems are self-referring whenever writing is mentioned . '''Assurance'' demonstrates not just the existence but the meaning of this extremely self-conscious preoccupation of the poet's. Here the speaker makes the act of...