This Book of Starres: Learning to Read George Herbert - Hardcover

White, James Boyd

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0472105051 ISBN 13: 9780472105052

Publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr, 1994

Synopsis

"A real pleasure. . . . Reading this book was like revisiting a country I thought I knew well with a guide who could show me all kinds of delights I had missed in my previous sojourns. . . . A terrific, engaging book." --Michael Schoenfeldt, author of Prayer and Power: George Herbert and Renaissance Courtship

"This Book of Starres" is one of those all-too-rare books in which an author's love of someone's work--in this case, the seventeenth-century English poet George Herbert--leads to a journey of exploration.

Herbert's poetry presents a special set of challenges: It is to the modern ear archaic, difficult in thought and structure, and entirely theological in character. Yet no poet is more deeply admired by those who know him well. "This Book of Starres" is meant to engage the reader in a process of reading by which this verse can be seen to be vivid and alive. It is the record of one person's life-changing involvement with the poetry of George Herbert; in this it is about not only how, but why we read great poetry.

"It is a joy to experience Herbert's poetry in the company of James Boyd White, whose affinity for the work is always convincing and seems at times preternatural. 'This Book of Starres' is a necessary pleasure: all readers of poetry, whether expert or inexpert, will find it enriching." --Alice Fulton

". . . both a delight to read, and one of the most instructive exercises in literature and theology I have read for a long time. . . . Herbert emerges as one of the greatest, a writer to test and change the imagination, the very way in which we think about the world and that which is beyond it." --Literature and Theology

James Boyd White is Hart Wright Professor of Law, Professor of English, and Adjunct Professor of Classical Studies, University of Michigan.

About this title

About the Author

James Boyd White is Hart Wright Professor of Law, Professor of English, and Adjunct Professor of Classical Studies, University of Michigan.

Reviews

White has written a wonderful book not just about George Herbert but also about the way poetry creates meaning. White, a professor of law and classics as well as English who has written on the relationship of language and the law (e.g., Justice as Translation, Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1990), here looks at how Herbert uses language in The Temple. White begins with a close reading of several individual poems, then considers how the poems in The Temple reflect on one another and how Herbert structures his volume to create sequences and relationships that add meaning to each poem. This study is filled with insights, such as the recognition that in Herbert's manuscripts the mise-en-page allows poems-or parts of poems-to face each other and so comment on each other. For Herbert, faith finally is essential but also difficult and troubling. Recommended for academic libraries; undergraduates will enjoy the clear, jargon-free writing.
Joseph Rosenblum, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472105051
• ISBN 13: 9780472105052
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 292