George Herbert Journal

Herbert's The Temple and the Heritage of Erotic Exegesis by Lissa Beauchamp Early modern scriptural exegesis employs a structural rhetoric of paradox that is inherited from medieval practices. The principle of the exegetical genre is itself highly sophisticated, falling into what we might now call reader-response criticism; because of the remarkable variety of interpretive models generated by the principle of rhetorical paradox, interpretation of scripture remains fundamentally openended . In rhetorical terms, a paradox is defined by an irresolvable tension between two seemingly opposed things (not by synthesis or resolution of thesis and anti-thesis, as in dialectic). From the Greek para, beside or beyond, and doxa, opinion, a paradox is defined as a self-contradictory statement of relation between things or ideas that conflicts with preconceived notions of what is reasonable or possible — in other words, a paradox is beyond what we might ordinarily think (OED). Paradox, then, is ah ontological contrariness; the rhetorical effect of paradox is indeterminacy, a fundamental lack of closure. In this sense, then, the defining principle of exegesis is paradox, despite the use of dialectical devices such as typology: because interpretive models of divine works cannot determine the divine plan, they work on the principle of open-ended elaboration.1 The various approaches of current criticism resemble the plurality of interpretive models within the category of exegesis, and the principle of rhetorical paradox works to sustain a self-reflexive approach beyond doctrinal and historical agendas, as surprising as this may seem to many twenty-first century critics. My discussion here will consider the principle of exegetical rhetoric as a structural motif of George Herbert's The Temple. Herbert employs a number of containing or framing devices that end up contradicting themselves by opening, rather than resolving, his text. Indeed, the architectural motif of The Temple figures not just the structure of the Church, but also those who build it, animating the edifice by filling it with bodies. Each body of the congregation, furthermore, figures the temple in the same way that the temple figures it: each body is animated by a soul that, in turn, signals the divine presence that is ultimately the subject of Herbert's 2 Lissa Beauchamp interpretation. As with the blurring of definition between scripture and commentary in medieval and Reformation Bibles, the very notion of "text" in The Temple is opened beyond what we might ordinarily think — the world is figured as the Book of Nature, and the human body is a hieroglyphic of divine signification within it. The exegetical notion of the physical body as a hieroglyphic of the divine is a particularly important example of the kind of rhetorical paradox that "defines" itself in open closure because the body, animated by the soul, signifies the divine presence. I will focus on the most "bawdy" of biblical texts, the Song of Songs and its exegetical tradition, as a common structural influence on both secular and sacred poetry of love. The inclusion of the "profane" Song of Songs within the biblical canon is what initiated Origen's third-century Christian exegesis of the Bride and Bridegroom ; typologically linking the courtship and betrothal of the lovers to the apocalyptic wedding feast of Revelation justified the spiritual allegory, despite concurrent secular traditions that focused on the carnal imagery of the Song. The often contentious interactions between sacred and profane traditions of love with regard to this religious lyric are well established by the seventeenth century. Criticism of The Temple often notes the influence of secular love rhetoric in the religious context of the divine-human relationship: forms such as the sonnet, garden imagery, the theme of physical separation and metaphysical union, and the voice of the beseeching, anguished lover are common in both genres. But this kind of "conventional " crossover is then assumed to be censorious of secular concerns — concerns which are, admittedly, depicted as impermanent , worldly, and insubstantial in a spiritual context.2 Beyond this, however, secular love poetry often discloses its own failures in a selfparodic stance.3 Indeed, secular and religious verse seem to agree on this point: material concerns are ephemeral and transitory, while virtue, whether that of a woman or of the soul, signifies "true...