Typology and Iconography in Donne, Herbert, and Milton: Fashioning the Self after Jeremiah by Reuben Sánchez, and: Poetry & Religion: Figures of the Sacred ed. by Ineke Bockting, Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec, and Cathy Parc (review)

Who knew? Who knew that the biblical prophet Jeremiah presented a typology of heroic and inspired melancholy that coincided with “turns” in the careers of Donne, Herbert, and Milton? Who knew that “hearkening,” a form of attentiveness different from our contemporary sense of listening, occurs throughout Herbert’s Temple, reinforcing the liturgical and dialogical patterns in the poems? Who knew that Jeremiah had a long and rich iconographical tradition, rivaling David and Isaiah, in painting, engraving, and sculpture – one that fascinated English Renaissance poets? Who knew that The Temple could be described as an “Anglican Manifesto” that uses “virtuous word play” to “reconcile man with God”? Who knew that Jeremiah was central to the tradition of Schola Cordis so evident in Herbert’s Temple? Well, perhaps some did know, and perhaps others will disagree, but Sánchez’s book and the Peter Lang collection of essays present much scholarship along these lines about Herbert that deserves a hearing.

Although the title of Sánchez’s book is descriptive of its contents, the sub-title, Fashioning the Self after Jeremiah, is even more so. With erudition and special delight in graphic arts, the author summons the traditions of Renaissance typological readings and artistic renderings of Jeremiah, Cornelius Agrippa’s occult understanding of “inspired melancholy,” and the biographies of Donne, Herbert, and Milton to make his case for the centrality of the prophet to the self-fashioning of the three poets. In doing so, Sánchez sometimes over-reaches, but he almost always does so in provocative ways. The case is clearest for Donne’s poetry and prose, as Donne wrote “The Lamentations of Jeremy” (a poetic paraphrase in 195 couplets of “Lamentations”) as well as his Sermon on Lamentations 3.1. Citing the penultimate couplet of the poem (“Restore us Lord to thee, that so we may / Returne, and as of old, renew our day,” ll. 387-88), Sánchez connects these forgettable lines to the famous conclusion of “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward”: “Restore thine image, so much, by thy grace, / That thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face” (ll. 41-42). He likewise concludes that Donne’s Jeremiah was a typological figure of “turning,” and so the poem fits with Donne’s conversion from a secular diplomatic career to a religious life, circa 1608-13. Donne, by this logic, internalized the typology of the prophet’s inspired turn to God, and, transcending the leaden lines of the earlier poem, dramatized the convetere in one of his greatest poems. If the account is true, Donne did a work of poetic alchemy in progressing from the former to the latter. In the case of the Sermon on Lamentations 3.1 (“I am the man that hath seen affliction …”), Sánchez links the consolatory tone of the piece to Donne’s letter to his mother on the death of his sister Anne Lyly in 1616. The sense of loss in both pieces is “inordinate,” and the greatness of the grief leads the writer to attribute both “afflictions” to “God’s purpose.” In both sermon and letter, Donne presents the role of Jeremiah as practicing artes concionandi, the preaching arts of consolation. And Sánchez believes that the Jeremian “turn” from a secular to religious career applies equally well to both Donne and Herbert.

Always eager to find iconographic sources, Sánchez finds an unlikely iconographic source for Herbert in a representation of Jeremiah (a statue in “The Well of Moses” [1404] by Claus Sluter) with two stone tablets that illustrate the prophet’s writing and rewriting of God’s Word. In the biblical account, Jeremiah...