Keach and poetics

The gardens of Canterbury Cathedral

If beauty, wealth or honour thou dost prize,
I do present one now before thine Eyes,
That is the Object, this alone is he;
None, none like him did ever mortals see,
He is all fair, in him’s not one ill feature,
Ten thousand times more fair than any Creature
That lives, or ever lived on the Earth,
His Beauty so amazingly shines forth;
Angelick Nature is enamour’d so,
They love him dearly, and admire him too,
His Head is like unto the purest Gold,
His curled Tresses lovely to behold,
And such a brightness sparkles from his Eyes,
As when Aurora gilds the Morning Skies.
And tho’ so bright, yet lovely like the Doves,
Charming all hearts, where rests diviner Loves,
Look on his beauteous Cheeks, and thou’lt espy
The Rose of Sharon deckt in Royalty.
His smiling lips, his speech, and words so sweet
That all delights and joy in them do meet;
Which tends at once to ravish ear and sight,
And to a kiss all heavenly Souls invite.
The Image of his Father’s in his face;
His inward parts excel, he’s full of grace.
If Heaven and Earth can make a rare Complexion,
Without a spot, or the least imperfection;
Here, here it is, it in this Prince doth shine,
He’s altogether lovely, all Divine.

(The Glorious Lover, II.iii.9-36)

Between studying for my MA exam, graduating, getting married, working, and moving across several states, my work on Benjamin Keach has been relegated to the back burner for the past couple years. Lately, though, I've found time to resume my transcription project on his "epic" poem, The Glorious Lover. There's material in here for a doctoral dissertation (wink wink), but for now, I'm especially interested in this passage I came across yesterday, in which Keach turns his attention to a prolonged discussion of the beauty of Christ. The excerpt above is merely the prologue to his eight-item exposition on the topic. There's several things going on here that are worthy of consideration.

First, on a contextual level, Keach is obviously taking part in the ongoing Renaissance discussion of the relationship between beauty/aesthetics/poetic art and morality/didacticism/spirituality. Writers understood art and poetry to be more than ornamental forces; they were, more importantly, vehicles of communication. Sir Philip Sidney, whose Apologie for Poetrie has come to be the best-known Renaissance case for poetic art, explained it thus:

Poesie therefore is an arte of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in this word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfetting, or figuring foorth: to speake metaphorically, a speaking picture: with this end, to teach and delight... (p. 12)

Sidney goes on to pinpoint the "chiefe both in antiquitie & excellencie" of all poetic forms to be those that explicitly point their readers to the spiritual world by "imitat[ing] the inconceivable excellencies of GOD" (ibid.). He then goes on to list the major biblical and classical poets who produced devotional lyrics. Thus, in the world from which Keach emerged, the best poetry was that which encouraged its readers to be better (=godlier) people, and furthermore, the best type of this poetry was the kind which drew directly from Scripture itself.

Second, in grounding what follows in his discussion on the beauty of Christ, Keach is also taking part in the ubiquitous Western trope of courtly love (just a few examples include Dante, Spenser, and Herbert). In other words, by following the rules of the romance genre, he's connecting his work with that of his poetic predecessors (we know that Keach was familiar with the work of Herbert, for example). Interestingly, though, while he commits himself to following the generic romance conventions, he's also very invested in bending or outright flouting them. Whereas in Dante and Spenser, the beloved lady is a source of inspiration, the Soul of the Glorious Lover is a "vile wretched Creature" (I.i.208). Many times, there's more Hosea than Song of Solomon going on here. Keach is reinventing the genre, at once making it darker and yet simultaneously more wholesome.

Finally, speaking of the Song of Solomon, everything above comes together in the biblical book that inspired Keach to write his poem. Elizabeth Clarke reveals how significant the romance, or "mystical marriage" trope, is in Keach's thought by turning to his landmark guide to biblical metaphors, Tropologia. Describing what Keach called "the most pleasant metaphor of all...[the] Espousals," she observes that Keach gives this trope the most airtime of all, even concluding his exegesis with a marital poem on Christ and the Church ("The Glorious Lover," Baptist Quarterly 43.8, 458). In Keach's mind, the romance between Christ and the Church is the meta-theme that unites all of Scripture together. With this in mind, it's incredibly significant that, in The Glorious Lover, he combines the most prestigious form of literature - the epic - with the most important of biblical metaphors, using form and content to reinforce the legendary nature of its subject matter. Just as Milton wrote Paradise Lost as the great theodicy of Christian literature, Keach is setting forth the great romance of the Bible.

So those are just a few of the reasons I find The Glorious Lover fascinating. There is a lot of ambition on Keach's part. He, a puritan, is writing in the worldliest of genres, reinventing them, and using the product to "mythologize" the Christian narrative.