Seventeenth-Century Wreath Poems

Abstract

Marvell's "The Coronet," Herbert's "Jordan" (II) and "A Wreath," Vaughan's "The Garland" and "The Wreath," and Donne's "La Corona" weave a "vile crowne of fraile bayes" of human praise for an ineffable God.1 Describing a circle of poets copying each other's form is one way to open up their enclosure by theology in previous criticism of these poems. This article will suggest that the poems' own governing metaphor should be taken literally: they are florilegia of past reading and writing, not only a description of the dilemma of solofidianism. A.D. Nuttall has summed up the theological debate over Herbert's "Jordan" poems: