George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets (review)

Abstract

Superior texts for courses in seventeenth-century English literature have been hard to find. The standard anthologies have generally printed too many minor writers, with consequent neglect of those major figures who would actually be taught. One is not likely, for exam pie, to get around to teaching Wotton, Sandys, Corbett, and Townshend, admirable though these people may be, but one would like to have both of Donne's Anniversaries and all the Holy Sonnets, all of Jonson's "Celebration of Charis" and all the poems in 77»· Foreet. Herbert's "The Sacrifice," Herrick's "Farewell to Sack" and also the "Welcome," Marvell's "Upon Appleton House," and so forth. Often, however, major works such as these are either omitted or given in excerpts so as to make room for items of far less significance.