Robert Herrick and the poetical book
Creators: name: Gorelik, Peter
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2010

description: Robert Herrick's complete works appeared in one large volume of poetry entitled Hesperides: or the Works both Humane and Divine (1648). The number and range of Herrick's poems are astonishing. Herrick's more than one thousand "humane" poems range in subject matter and verse form from the carpe diem lyric and polite compliment to meditations on death and immortality, from the satirical and moralistic epigram to the formal ode and epithalamium. A critical problem arises here: is there any unity among all this diversity, or is Hesperides just a haphazard collection of lyrical gems? Herrick's status as a poet and place in English poetry depends very much on the answer to this question. This study sets out to demonstrate that Hesperides is a well wrought poetical book. Herrick had behind him an ancient and well-defined tradition when he undertook the composition of Hesperides. Horace and the Latin elegists provided him with classical models of the poetical book, while Herrick's own master Ben Jonson established a precedent for the poetical book in English with The Forest and Epigrams. Indeed, the fact that the "Metaphysicals" Herbert, Crashaw and Vaughan composed poetical books demonstrates that the tradition of the poetical book transcends the familiar dichotomy between "Metaphysical" and "Cavalier." Herrick makes poetry and his book one of his major subjects. He calls his book, among other things, an "expansive Firmament" and an "immensive Sphere" metaphors which suggest that Hesperides was conceived as a microcosm which reflects the diversity-in-unity of the Renaissance world-view. Herrick also regards his book, as the poems on fame demonstrate, as a bulwark against mutability and his personal guarantee of immortality. He is thus not the singer of transience, as his popular image would have it, but a poet who celebrates permanence and cosmic order. Hesperides is structured according to a Neo-Platonic scale of love, which ascends step-by-step from profane to sacred love. Herrick's amatory ideal harmonizes profane and sacred love in the paradox of "cleanly-wantonnesse." Herrick sees himself as a poet-priest celebrating a "Poetick Liturgie" and performing the rites of "Loves Religion." Many of his poems display a subtle use of biblical allusion and liturgical symbolism. Therefore, Herrick's poems are not, as the title-page of Hesperides suggests, entirely "humane," but rather represent a synthesis of the "humane" and the "divine" in a unified world-view. Herrick's aesthetic ideal of "wilde civility," like his amatory ideal, balances freedom and discipline. Herrick sees himself as both an inspired vates, or "Lyrick Prophet," and a responsible craftsman. His idea of decorum allows for slight deviations in syntax, rhythm and phrasing. Therefore, his verses display greater freedom and subtlety in their design than Jonson's. Herrick is no slave of his master Jonson, but has his own unique voice and sensibility. In conclusion, Herrick should be ranked with Jonson, Donne and Herbert and not with the "Cavaliers." In fact, Herrick is not as far removed from Herbert as is usually thought. This thesis, then, attempts a reevaluation of Herrick by treating Hesperides as a complex but unified whole, a poetical book, and by calling attention to the "metaphysical" dimension of his verse.