Journal Article

Impossible Art: Groaning Beautifully at Herbert’s “Church” Door

Hodgkins, Christopher

2025

Overview

With thirteen editions of 7he Temple appearing before 1700, Herbert was one of the bestselling English poets of the Seventeenth Century - and letters, diaries, commonplace books and other documents from the period show that the most frequent and appreciative references to Herbert were to this gateway poem, with its straightforward and pithy proverbial wisdom delivered in rhymes about prudent life management.' (II. 1-6) This is the \"sweetened pill\" theory of poetry, or to put it more formally, this is aesthetic utilitarianism: as Horace famously suggested in Ars Poetica, the purpose of art is to teach and to delight, and in traditional Christian practice this usually means that the delight serves the teaching.· The further embarrassment offered by \"The Church-porch\" is related to this aesthetic utilitarianism: that is, its very prudence, its pragmatic, instrumentalist attitude to spiritual life and human relations. Strier is hardly alone in noting the sometimes jarring differences between the stress on external behavior and self-advancement in this opening poem and the emphasis on interior grace and self-denial in the lyrics that follow. To put this explanation succinctly: the broad organizational structure of The Temple functions as a kind of narrative, a difficult but hopeful narrative of what we might call progressive unsuccess.

• Publisher: George Herbert Journal,Sidney Gottlieb
• Subject: Architecture / Attitudes / Beauty / Donne, John (1572-1631) / English literature / Historical text analysis / Narratives / Poetry / Readers / Spirituality / Subtitles & subtitling