Love's Architecture: Devotional Modes in Seventeenth-Century English Poetry (review)

Donne scholars have displayed in arguing about particular poems, both about interpretations and about scholarly glosses. The closest parallel in Herbert criticism is probably the dispute between Tuve and Empson over "The Sacrifice," but their exchange stands out, a rare moment of confrontation. With his "detailed examination of the work of others, [his] dependence on them and [his] differences with them," Novarr demonstrates just how "the whole will arise from a long collaboration" (p. 12). It is precisely this kind of dialogue between scholars, carried on with "a little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, some grain of charity, joining into one general and brotherly search after truth" (p. 10) that Novarr inspires. And that, I think, is precisely what the George Herbert Journal can — and should — provide more frequently. We have only to rise to Novarr's challenge.