George Herbert's 82

Psalmic Social Disorientation in The Temple

Nathan H. Nelson

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781532606106, 9781532606120
• eBook ISBN: 9781532606113
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Poésie religieuse

English-literature scholars have long recognized George Herbert's frequent allusions to the psalms in his early-seventeenth-century poetry, especially in his collection called The Temple. Biblical scholars have long attempted to categorize the Hebrew psalms according to one overarching principle or another. Most discussions of Herbert's psalmic borrowings are restricted to explication of individual poems, often with reference to the poet's own psychology, physical health, family, occupations, and sociocultural context. The current study adds another dimension to the dialogue by examining Herbert's varying degrees of psalmic reference within categories established by biblical scholars. The resulting data make a case for considering Herbert's sub-collection called "The Church" to be his psalter, offering a particularly intriguing comparison between one of Herbert's less-commonly-discussed poems and Psalm 82, one of the biblical collection's most dramatic works.