George Herbert and Eloquence

Kenneth E. Graham is author of The Performance of Conviction: Plainness and Rhetoric in the Early English Renaissance (1994) and Disciplinary Measures from the Metrical Psalms to Milton (2016). He co-edited Shakespeare and Religious Change (2009) and Shakespeare On Stage and Off (2019). Christopher Hodgkins is author or editor of ten books and directs the international George Herbert Society. With Robert Whalen, he co-edits The Digital Temple (2013); George Herbert: Complete Works, (2025-2027); and the Oxford World's Classics edition of Herbert's Temple and Country Parson (2027). Michael C. Schoenfeldt was John Knott Professor of English at the University of Michigan. Author of Prayer and Power: George Herbert and Renaissance Courtship (1991), Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 2010), he edited the Blackwell Companion to Shakespeare's Sonnets (2006) and John Donne in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

• Introduction. The arts of language in Herbert's world, the editors; Prologue. ''The orators place': from fine to plain speaking at Cambridge' Christopher Hodgkins; Part I. 'Brave Glorie': Classical Eloquence Revalued: 1. George Herbert's rhetorical integrity: reappraising voice in the Reditum Caroli Catherine Freis; 2. George Herbert's penitential poems as epideictic rhetoric Chad Engbers; 3. Writing in Herbert's Cambridge: memory, method, and the material word Adele Davidson; 4. One size fits all: rhetoric, decorum, and Herbert's particular 'faith' Kenneth J. E. Graham; Part II. 'A Brittle Crazie Glass': Christian Eloquence Reformed: 5. 'Weaving myself into the sense': biblical eloquence and exemplarity in the writings of George and Edward Herbert Sarah Kunjummen; 6. Disrupting Rhetoric: Herbert's subversions of eloquence Rowan Williams; 7. 'Power made perfect in weakness': George Herbert's wounded eloquence Małgorzata Grzegorzewska; Part III. 'His Joy and Throne': The Preaching Arts Revisited: 8. 'Come people': Herbert's Rhetoric of communal attention Mary Ann Lund; 9. Herbert's missing eloquence: oratory and the absent presence of etymology Nicholas D. Nace; 10. Banquet, engine, bird: the homiletics of 'Prayer (I)' Gabriel Bloomfield; Part IV. 'What Willing Nature Speaks': Sites of Eloquence Relocated: 11. 'A garden in a paradise': the eloquence of place in Herbert's temple Helen Wilcox; 12. George Herbert's visual-verbal eloquence in the temple Amrita Dhar; 13. Shelter from the storm: ecologies of eloquence in the temple Michael C. Schoenfeldt; 14. Like trees talking: Herbert's arboreal rhetorics Claire Falck; Part V. 'The Taste of Mine Inheritance': Herbert's Eloquence Renewed: 15. Common prayer and the order of the soul in the English civil war: George Herbert's the temple in Joseph Beaumont's minor poems Gary Kuchar; 16. George Herbert, Emily Dickinson, and the problem of eloquence Richard Strier; 17. The figure of metanoia in George Herbert and Elizabeth Bishop Jonathan F. S. Post; 18. Herbert among the moderns Seamus Perry; Selected works cited; Index.

'This is one of the richest examinations yet of Herbert's complicated relationship with the art of rhetoric. I cannot think of another volume that treats Herbert's eloquence in such far-reaching and comprehensive ways.' Simon Jackson, Director of Studies in English, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge