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V A STUDY OF THE PLATONIC HERITAGE OF LOVE IN THE POETRY OF EDWARD TAILOR Vlzvrol Roy'Smith A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 1969 ABSTRACT An examination of the influence of Platonic love in the poetry of Edward Taylor, this study provided an expanded cultural framework for explaining Taylor's "unusualness" as a Puritan, Taylor's Platonic inheritance was surveyed by comparing ideas and images of love from the Platonic dialogues, the Enneads. and The Courtier. The continuing influence of Platonism within a complex tradition of Christian love was evident in Taylor's poetry through his expansive view of man and in a vitality and vividness of imagery more often associated with Hellenistic and Renaissance Platonism than with Puritanism. The first chapter examined the Puritan as poet in order to reevaluate the assumptions which have largely shaped Taylor criticism. Since the most productive efforts have examined Taylor either by reinforcing his indebtedness to metaphysical models or by acknowledging the form but dismissing it in order to reaffirm the doctrinal intent, Chapter II concluded that these touchstones have limited the range of Taylor's achievement. The chapter also explored the possible relation­ ships between the artist and his use of cultural concepts and symbols. In addition, Platonic love was identified and defined. Chapter III considered the importance of Platonism in Taylor's poetry as the concept of heavenly love. As the source of all love, it produced the world of heavenly realities and enabled the poet to anticipate its vision by raising him to the summit of creation. Of IP particular interest were those images of devotional love which Taylor restored to the spirit of Platonism. Chapter IV examined Taylor’s concept of earthly love as the desire to know and love the objects of this world. As symbols, they enabled him to transcend analogies, to penetrate teasing glimpses of divine beneficence, to unmask the reality of form and, ultimately, to confront God as even the angels could not. Taylor was concerned with the problem of knowing good as an inner beauty of form which preceded external appearances, and it was shown that Taylor restored numerous images from the natural world to the organic richness and regenerative power they enjoyed in the pre-Edenic or Platonic garden. Because the Incarnation is regarded as the pivotal doctrine in the fusion of the Platonic and Christian traditions, Chapter V compared the conventions, images, and phraseology of Neo-Flatonic secular love with Taylor's response to the Platonic Father when incarnate. The scope of the Platonic tradition of love included The Courtier and was extended to the Petrarchan and Metaphysical schools of poetry inasmuch as they illustrate different phases of Platonic love. In conclusion, love in Taylor's devotional poetry was shown to be dependent upon the reality of an intellectual vision. It was a love moved by sensual delight but guided by understanding, and it satisfied the intellectual demands of Platonism by joining the desire for beauty with a love of soul for what may also be known as good. The Platonic concept of the enhanced soul was central for Taylor. A self-renewing and aspiring consciousness led him to seek a spontaneous understanding of the whole and to share fully in the glory of creation. Taylor's expanded vision spared him the rigorous expurgation associated with the medieval ascent and lifted him, instead, in Platonic flight to the center of the Neo-Platonic All. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page I. THE PURITAN AS POET................................................................................ 1 II. THE KNEAD IN THE LOAF................................................................................ 19 III. HEAVENLY LOVE..................................................................................................36 IV. EARTHLY LOVEs NATURAL SIMBOLS...................... 71 « The Garden of the Worlds Puritan and Platonic .... 71 The Tree............................................................ 78 The Circle ..................................................................... 88 The House and the Body . ............................................ 99 V. THE COURTING CHRIST ASP LATONIC LOVER ........................................... 130 Summary ................................................................. 158 FOOTNOTES....................................................................................................... 164 LIST OF WORKS CITED 184 1 CHAPTER I THE PURITAN AS POET It has become the practice among scholars of Edward Taylor to bless his marriage of two strains of love imagery, the Christian and the mystical, and to assume the importance of the Platonic heritage to both. Yet the union of the two types of love imagery to form the literary and devotional arm of western love poetry with Platonism, the philosophical rationale, has been apparent in the substance of that poetry, if not always visible on the surface, since long before Edward Taylor.The consummation of the dual tradition of Christian and Platonic elements of love is now of such long standing and so familiar to modern scholarship as one of the concerns of mystical 2 love that an appreciation of its components, especially the Platonic, is hampered at the outset by their discrimination. General studies of religious love in English verse have acknow­ ledged a heritage composed of Christian, mystical, and Platonic love, and have proceeded by establishing usable limits for the discussion 3 4 of each. Where Taylor is concerned, however, studies of mysticism have been circumscribed by the immediate Puritan indebtedness to the English meditative tradition,"’ Although these efforts have managed to present a strong resemblance to the meditative poetry of the earlier seventeenth century, analyses of Taylor's poetry have commonly stressed a Puritan application, to the detriment of the broader Anglo-Catholic tradition, the occasional antagonist of doctrinal Puritanism but literary and religious forebear of the New England Puritans.Although 2 the end of the criticism is justified (Taylor is, after all, a Puri­ tan), studies of his mysticism are forced to proceed on limited 7 premises, if not against the grain of the more familiar interpreta- 8 tions. Further, the elements of Platonic love in Taylor s poetry, and particularly the love imagery, have gone unexamined almost as if irrelevant. It is the primary purpose of this study to consider the influ­ ence of Platonic love on the poetry of Edward Taylor as a religious and philosophical assumption and as a literary aesthetic manifest in particular images. The secondary purposes are threefolds l) to reflect the general desirability of the approach in light of the existing criticism, 2) to explore the maximum use of the evidence for Platonic love as an aesthetic criterion, and 3) to determine how these purposes affect Taylor's total accomplishment and reputation. Nowhere in the present body of scholarship can there be found a study of the Platonic love tradition in Taylor, and, with a single 9 exception, discussions of Platonism appear only to clarify meditative poetry. As statements on Platonism, the studies are indirect as well 10 as infrequent and open to the same criticisms as the mystical approach. As suggested, determinations of Taylor's practices of poetic devotion indicate that scholars have not chosen to minimize or dismiss a heri­ tage of religious love. In this sense, the absence of concern for Platonic love cannot be considered an omission. The neglect does not result from a lack of interest in the past as an agent in Taylor's poetic lovemaking but from a need to extract from Platonism that under- 11 standing necessary to relate Taylor to the meditative tradition. 3 Other critics of varying persuasion have not hesitated to uncover vital cultural and literary influences from the past, and they have realized, although to widely differing extents, that these influences account in 12 large measure for Taylor's thought and expression. These efforts have not, to borrow a familiar metaphor, feared the repressive, dead hand of the past which often threatens to choke out life. Perhaps because Platonic love is a familiar assumption to the larger tradition of love in the western world, literary scholars, who are more sensitive to traditions indigenous to our poetry than most and who often defend tradition as a value in itself, sometimes find themselves writing about a tradition which they understand too well. Quite properly, scholars have regarded the Platonic-Christian fusion not only as natural and understandable from a literary point of view but also as historical and philosophic certainty. Unfortunately, however, the very surety of the dual tradition, as well as the author­ ity of those who have written, has placed full consideration of its potential richness outside the scope of studies of Taylor, As a result, evaluations of his poetry have proceeded on the bases indicated, and his reputation has rested in large measure upon an anomalous, 13 exquisite, but nevertheless, curious provincialism. While it is clear from the range of studies that their authors have a vital sense of the cultural past, it is apparent also that the necessity to examine extra-Puritan influences in Taylor has been superseded by the priorities of Taylor criticism. These priorities have, in turn, been determined

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