Proving one God, one harmonie : the persona of George Herbert's 'The Temple' and its poetic legacy

The thesis examines the presentation of the persona in George
Herbert's The Temple, and uses this persona as a central focus for
discussion of Herbert's later "imitators and adaptors". The first part
of the thesis deals with the theoretical implications of the term
"persona" in relation to the seventeenth century religious lyric, and
with Herbert's portrayal of a multivocal persona in The Temple. After a
discussion of Herbert's work, other seventeenth century writers who
acknowledged a poetic debt to The Temple, Christopher Harvey (The
Synagogue), Richard Crashaw (Steps to the Temple), and Henry Vaughan
(Silex Scintillans) are dealt with in detail, while the work of some of
the less familiar of Herbert's poetic followers is examined ~n Chapter
Six. Throughout this section, the discussion is centred upon the
presentation of the persona.
While during the seventeenth century the interest in poetic
spiritual autobiography takes the form of verse collections modelled
around a central theme, in the eighteenth century this interest is
reflected in the growing popularity of the hymn. The second part of the
thesis examines the contribution of The Temple to the portrayal of the
central voice in the hymns of Isaac Watts, John Wesley and William
Cowper. The anonymous Select Hymns, Taken out of Mr Herbert's Temple is
also looked at in this section.
In the final chapter, the return to popularity of thematically orientated verse collections, such as Keble's The Christian Year, is
discussed with relation to The Temple. The poems of Gerard Manley
Hopkins and Christina Rossetti are also discussed in terms of Herbert's
poetic legacy.