Made Flesh: Sacrament and Poetics in Post-Reformation England PDF
Preview Made Flesh: Sacrament and Poetics in Post-Reformation England
Made Flesh Sacrament and Poetics in Post-Reformation England Kimberly Johnson UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS PHILADELPHIA Copyright(cid:2)2014UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsusedforpurposesofrevieworscholarly citation,noneofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformbyanymeanswithout writtenpermissionfromthepublisher. Publishedby UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress Philadelphia,Pennsylvania19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Johnson,Kimberly. Madeflesh:sacramentandpoeticsinpost-ReformationEngland/Kimberly Johnson.—1sted. p.cm. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN978-0-8122-4588-2(hardcover:alk.paper) 1.Christianpoetry,English—Earlymodern,1500-1700—Historyandcriticism. 2.Christianityandliterature—England—History—17thcentury.3.Lord’sSupperin literature.4.Theologyinliterature.5.Symbolisminliterature.6.Transubstantiationin literature.I.Title. PR545.R4J642014 821(cid:2).409382—dc23 2013042034 Formychildren, BennettZionGreenfieldandElijahWestGreenfield C o n t e n t s Introduction.EucharisticPoetics:TheWordMadeFlesh 1 Chapter1.‘‘TheBodieandtheLettersBoth’’:TextualImmanence inTheTemple 34 Chapter2.EdwardTaylor’s‘‘MenstruousCloth’’:StructureasSeal inthePreparatoryMeditations 63 Chapter3.EmbracingtheMedium:MetaphorandResistance inJohnDonne 89 Chapter4.RichardCrashaw’sIndigestiblePoetics 119 Chapter5.ImmanentTextualitiesinaPostsacramentalWorld 148 Notes 167 Bibliography 203 Index 221 Acknowledgments 235 I n t r o d u c t i o n Eucharistic Poetics: The Word Made Flesh This is a book about how poems work, and about how the interpretive demandsofsacramentalworshipinformtheproductionofpoetictexts. Ifitseems impolitefora booktodeclareitsintentionssobrashlyinits first gesture, such insolence has nevertheless been made necessary by the publication of several critical texts that set out to investigate what they termthepoeticsofthepost-Reformationperiod,particularlyinconjunction with a consideration of eucharistic theology. In what has become a minor fad in Renaissance literary criticism, a number of studies advertise them- selves as engaged in an examination of the relationship between the sacra- mental theologies of the early modern period and the representational strategies of poetic texts; but too often these critical examinations seem to lose track of, or fundamentally to misunderstand, the terms in which they frametheirprojects.Whileanumberofwell-meaningcriticshavetrafficked inphraseslike‘‘eucharisticpoetics,’’‘‘sacramentalpoetics,’’and‘‘thepoet- ics of immanence,’’ and have acknowledged, either explicitly or implicitly, the interpretive overlap between sacramental worship and the processes of signification, their attention remains focused not on poetics—that is, not on the way poems work as literary artifacts—but rather on whatever opin- ionsconcerningsacramentaltheologyRenaissanceliteratureseemstooffer. The present study, by contrast, concerns itself primarily with poetics, with the ways in which poems communicate information beyond denotation and in addition to the referential content of words rather than with what- everthematiccommentarypoemsmayofferonthesubjectoftheEucharist. Iammosturgentlyinterested,inotherwords,inhowpoemssayasopposed towhatpoemssay.Foritisintheirconcernwiththesuccessandfailureof language to provide interpretive experiences that these poetic texts reveal
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