Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert by F... - 9780198874409

Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George HerbertAuthor(s): Francesca Cioni\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Oxford University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Oxford University Press\nISBN-13: 9780198874409, 978-0198874409\nSynopsis\nGeorge Herbert, his contemporaries, and readers inhabited a world of material things that were spiritually animated but deeply troubling. Habitual providential and typological interpretation imbued matter with meaning, and connected it with the rest of Creation; using material things was an act of interpretation, devotion an act of habitual reading. Materialist philosophies rejected distinctions between body and soul; injunctions to continuous prayer made every place and every bodily motion a potential house of and vehicle for prayer. At the same time Protestant doctrine and Church of England policy, expressed in sermons, visitation articles and works of theology as well as devotional manuals, prayer books and even physiologies and biographies, polic.