George Herbert's 82

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.


""The '82' of the title is Psalm 82 that is Herbert's sub-text. This study explores the way in which Herbert's poem 'Humilitie' is a daring play upon Psalm 82 that attends to the 'administrative malfeasance in the polis' and the distortion of the Virtues. Herbert's shrewd imagination is never removed from lived reality. This wee book is a forceful reminder of how rich is the poetic heritage of the biblical tradition that calls us to attend to the holy words from ancient voices.""
--Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary

""Nelson combines critical assiduity and poetic acuity in this study of George Herbert's intersection with the Psalms. His careful reading of Herbert's adaptation of a psalm of Asaph provides readers with spiritual nourishment in the context of a short scholarly feast.""
--Diane Awbrey, Professor of English, Evangel University

""Readers of Dr. Nelson's George Herbert's 82 sit in privileged theater seats, surrounded by varied and respected scholarly voices, experiencing the drama of Herbert's 'Humilitie' and keenly sensing the social concern that inspires Humilitie's weeping. Nelson has immersed himself in Herbert's poetry, and with special consideration of its Psalm emulation in his chart and rhetoric, he also sets the stage for Herbert readers to explore intertextual possibilities.""
--LaDonna Friesen, Assistant Professor of English


Nathan H. Nelson is Professor of English and Chair of the Humanities Department at Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri. He is the author of The Dissidence of Suffering: Disaster Narratives and the Novelization of England's Maritime Epic (1989) and Spiritual Devotion: Intimacy with God (1996/2000).