Book review by Sidney Gottlieb.
Chambers, A. B. Transfigured Rites in Seventeenth Century Poetry. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992. ISBN 978082620808

Gottlieb, Sidney

English

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Sacred Heart UniversityDigitalCommons@SHUSchool of Communication and Media Arts FacultyPublications Communication and Media Arts (SCMA)Spring 1995Transfigured Rites in Seventeenth Century Poetry(Book Review)Sidney GottliebSacred Heart University, gottliebs@sacredheart.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/media_facPart of the Literature in English, British Isles CommonsThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Communication and Media Arts (SCMA) at DigitalCommons@SHU. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in School of Communication and Media Arts Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@SHU.For more information, please contact ferribyp@sacredheart.edu.Recommended CitationGottlieb, Sidney. "Transfigured Rites in Seventeenth Century Poetry by A.B. Chambers" (Book Review). Renaissance Quarterly 48.2(1995): 397-399.REVIEWS among others in the circle? If the consumer's taste is self-conscious, what specific qualities of the poems give one confidence that their choices will be validated? Was taste within a given circle so homo- geneous that it merely met expectations rather than made distinc- tions? (She avoids pursuing the breakdown of homogeneity dis- played by the Skipwith MS-"not a typical Oxford collection, despite its links with King" [66].) To what extent does a poem exist in manuscript to commemorate a relationship more than to pro- duce aesthetic pleasure? (Tangent to this question is Hobbs' most intriguing, yet unexamined, speculation: that sometimes "a poem's popularity in the manuscript verse miscellanies derived from its well-known musical setting" [103].) What does the theory of"close acquaintance" (70) between compiler and source (the author or au- thor's family) suggest about manuscript production: were such manuscripts of privileged access meant to be exhaustive, rather than selective? (In some respects, then, one would for sociological, rather than textual, reasons want to know what poems from an ex- haustive manuscript are unique. Similarly, one might be more in- terested in the unpublished contents of a manuscript that also con- tains material excerpted for print--an editorial process that she inexplicably finds "comparatively random" [148].) While it is use- ful to know how access to these manuscripts was afforded (Hobbs' underlying interest throughout), it is more valuable to ask why individuals chose to filter the fruits of that access. While Mary Hobbs does issue the disclaimer that she has only "tried here to open up and indicate the possibilities so that others may carry this whole matter further" (147), she has not covered much new ground beyond confirming the need for good editions of William Strode, Thomas Randolph, and the Calfe MSS (Harley 6917/8). Upon finishing this book one can only echo its author's own lament over the inadequacies of a DNB entry: "one would like to know more" (95). YALE UNIVERSITY Randall Louis Anderson A. B. Chambers. Transfigured Rites in Seventeenth-Century Poetry. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1992. xiii + 275 pp. $39.95. A. B. Chambers' Transfigured Rites is a rich and rambling med- itation on the surprising variety of seventeenth-century liturgical poems. He hardly pauses to define his subject matter or introduce 397 This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 11:54:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsRENAISSANCE QUARTERLY his critical method. Instead, from nearly the first word of his first chapter he takes off on a series of leaps and bounds, resting for un- even intervals on poems by Donne, Herbert, Beaumont, Crashaw, Vaughan, Milton, and Herrick, among others. His chapter titles sketch out some semblance of a structure and indicate that he will examine selected liturgical sub-genres (prayers and litanies), orga- nizing principles and techniques (such as pericopes), and events or seasons (for example, baptism, circumcision, Christmas, and Ad- vent). But Chambers' approach is not so much deductive and se- quential as it is agile and allusive. He presses various points about the general relationship between liturgy and poetry, but never lin- gers long on theory, history, or abstraction. Above all else, this is a book of detailed interpretive readings attempting to uncover seventeenth-century poetic processes: poetry created in the pres- ence of liturgy and often out of liturgical materials and modes. Part of what makes Chambers' analyses so intriguing is his con- stant effort to illustrate the breadth of the seventeenth-century un- derstanding of liturgy. Liturgy is not simply a collection of texts used to establish orderly public worship: it is itself a dynamic re- configuration of the Bible that helps turn textuality into social action, confirming the sacramental basis of human experience. Through liturgy, private and public spheres blend, without cancel- ing one another, earthly time expands to include not only history but grace and eschatology (145), and the individual worshipper is simultaneously effaced and fulfilled in the encounter with God's ap- prehensible mystery. These themes are central to such poems as Donne's "Goodfriday, I613. Riding Westward" and Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," both of which Chambers examines extensively and brilliantly. There are some wonderful surprises in Transfigured Rites, one of which is the recurrent focus on context and sequence. The Book of Common Prayer is a reshuffling of biblical materials. Chambers draws two conclusions from this. First, we must be careful to dis- tinguish between biblical and liturgical allusions, because the same words may have significantly different meaning depending on whether they recall their context in the Bible or in the Book of Common Prayer. The term "pericope" refers specifically to a scrip- tural passage "appointed to be read in Church Services" (64), and Chambers uses examples from Herbert and Milton, among others, to demonstrate that recognition of a pericope, not just a biblical al- lusion, at the heart of a poem may resolve interpretive cruxes. Sec- 398 This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 11:54:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsREVIEWS ond, we must pay more attention to how seventeenth-century po- ets follow liturgical models and use combinations of poems to create meaning. For years critics have examined how Herbert's poems are arranged in clusters, so much so that a substantial part of the meaning and effect of any one poem often depends upon its relationship with the others it is placed alongside or otherwise as- sociated with. Chambers sees this as an expressive technique rein- forced, if not taught, by liturgical practice, and examines at length the importance of linking patterns in not only Herbert but also Beaumont, Vaughan, Traherne, and Herrick. Indeed, Chambers' chapter on Herrick- his only chapter devoted to a single author-is a kind of tour deforce examination of how one poet's liturgical men- tality is visible not only in the individual details of the poems but in the overall shape of the highly interconnected volume. Chambers is a remarkably skillful writer and his commentaries are knowledgeable and forceful, but his premises and approach are not unassailable. He is of course aware of how fiercely contested the role of the traditional liturgy was in the seventeenth century, but he nevertheless proceeds as though the Book of Common Prayer is inextricably and equally part of the accepted religious con- sciousness of all seventeenth-century poets. Herbert, however, fits better into his plan than Milton, who is in many respects deeply anti-liturgical. And even though Chambers' method seems more suitable for poets like Herbert, it downplays what may very well be idiosyncratic uses of or personal interpretations of the liturgy even by such poets as Herbert. To give him credit, Chambers cer- tainly tries to address some ways that poets "transfigure" ritual, but he is more concerned with how liturgy transfigures them and shapes their poetry. Finally, Chambers makes broad claims for habits of mind that he calls liturgical without carefully distinguishing between the dis- tinctive contributions of liturgy and the ways in which liturgy is only one part, however prominent, of religious practice, doctrine, and dogma. That liturgy figures in much seventeenth-century poetry is unquestionable, and we owe a great deal to Chambers for expanding our knowledge of how liturgy provides poets with particularly adaptable themes, structural principles, and doctrinal support. But liturgy does not account for all of seventeenth-century religious poetry, or, ironically, even all that is in seventeenth- century liturgical poetry. SACRED HEART UNIVERSITY Sidney Gottlieb 399 This content downloaded from 74.217.196.17 on Wed, 24 Jul 2013 11:54:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Transfigured Rites in Seventeenth Century Poetry (Book Review)

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Transfigured Rites in Seventeenth Century Poetry (Book Review)

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