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Title: James Leeke, George Herbert, and the Neo-Latin Contexts of The Church Militant
Author(s): GIBSON, Lindsay G. , KUHN, John
Journal: Humanistica Lovaniensia
Volume: 67    Issue: 2   Date: 2018   
Pages: 379-425
DOI: 10.2143/HLO.67.2.3292347

Abstract :
This article situates George Herbert’s poem The Church Militant in new Neo-Latin contexts. Rather than reading the poem in relation to Herbert’s English poetry, as has often been done before, it argues that it has close generic ties to Anglo-Latin miniature epics on the Gunpowder Plot. This article first shows how Herbert’s English poem draws on and revises elements of this tradition; it then turns to a little-known manuscript translation of The Church Militant prepared immediately after its publication. The translation – which significantly revises Herbert’s original text – attempts to pull Herbert’s poem closer to the miniature epic tradition from which it had broken. Taken together, these contexts demonstrate the surprising proximity of this English poem to a Neo-Latin poetic genre and shed new light on Herbert’s choice of the vernacular as a departure from the politics of the miniature epic tradition.

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