Demonstrating how poems like “The Windows,” “The Collar,” and “The Odour” seek to estrange-and thus to recover-the overly familiar sounds of liturgical utterances, this essay attends to Herbert’s acoustic artistry as an embodiment of his explicit emphasis on sound as an essential part of Christian edification.
Although most reformers continued to insist on the special power of liturgical language to inspire devotion, many also worked hard to distinguish that power from the actual sounds of the words themselves, eschewing the belief that God could ever be “corporally present in the voyce or sound of the speaker.” However, Herbert’s poems place peculiar emphasis on precisely this sonorous, extra-linguistic part of the voice, challenging readers to consider what vocal sound might add to the bare words of the sermon, the catechism, and prayer itself. George Herbert wrote the poems that comprise The Temple (1633) at a time when the role of the physical voice in ecclesiastical practice was a hotly contested topic.
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