Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1972. Music for a King tries to study the affinities in form and matter between the versified translation of the Psalms and George Herbert's lyrics. Coburn Freer reads Herbert's poetry by way of the metrical psalms that precede it, proposing a reading that could be applied to more poems than are discussed here. Rather than multiply examples needlessly, this book stresses a few central poems as models or representatives. This reading of Herbert recognizes the historical dimension of his poems, but the author does not make that dimension the only significant one in the determination of poetic meaning or value.
Table of ContentsPreface
Short Titles of Editions and Frequently Cited Critical Works
Part I. Introduction
Chapter 1. Herbert and the Psalter: Method and Experience
Chapter 2. A Century of Psalms
Chapter 3. Informing Patterns
Part II. Some Metrical Psalm Styles
Chapter 1. Sir Thomas Wyatt
Chapter 2. The Old Version
Chapter 3. Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke
Chapter 4. George Wither
Chapter 5. Conclusion
Part III. Orchestral Form
Chapter 1. Analogous Forms
Chapter 2. Orchestral Form
Part IV. Tentative Form
Epilogue
Index
