Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans: Scripture Uses

It has been said that the poems of Vaughan's Silex Scintillans (1650; 1655) are the most biblical in English: this book revises our understanding of that claim, not by rejecting it, but by asking what it might have meant in the 1650s. Recovering the historical, literary, and scriptural context of Vaughan's poetry and his neglected prose works, particularly The Mount of Olives (1652), this study reveals the different ways in which Vaughan's work is shot through and fired by the Bible as it was read in the 'Godly nation' of the mid-seventeenth century. The uses, or scripture practices, singled out, relate both to his position as an 'Anglican survivalist' during the Commonwealth and to his acceptance of George Herbert's task of writing 'true hymns': his reading of the Genesis story of Jacob as an analogue for his own experiences as a Christian and as an image of the true Church in the 1650s; his framing of Silex Scintillans as an act of thanksgiving modelled on Hezekiah's song in Isaiah; his construction of a paraliturgical 'rule' of holy living; his exposure of the 'false prophets' of the Last Days prophesied by Christ; and his profoundly scriptural rejection of the fraud (as he saw it) of millenarian religion.

Table of Contents:
Abbreviations and References 1: Introduction: Scripture Uses 2: Patriarchs and Pilgrims 3: Hezekiah and the Hand of Heaven 4: Holy Living, Hourly Living 5: True Lights and New Lights: Vaughan's 'White Sunday' and the False Prophets of the 1650s 6: Perfection Postponed Bibliography Index of Vaughan's Works Scripture Index General Index

Review :
For those readers who have always wanted to see him as the author of quiet, meditative verse, it will come as a revelation - even, perhaps as a shock - to find him being cast as one who was consciously constructing his verse, with its profoundly biblical sensibility, as a bulwark against puritan attack. The erudition and sensitivity with which West has set about his task makes his case incontrovertible; he is in complete control of his material and his reading of the poetry in its biblical framework will enable readers to enter more sympathetically into the poet's world and more deeply into his imagination. Journal of Theological Studies West's detailed exposition of the poetry convincingly demonstrates not only the poet's profound knowledge of Scripture, but the extent to which he used it to shape his imagination and inform his verse ... This study will be of interest not only to lovers of English poetry but also to anyone wanting to know more about the history of England at a particularly violent and critical period. Journal of Theological Studies