Consulting the MLA Bibliography as first source, and then possibly additional such sources of literary criticism and literary scholarship, write a survey of criticism paper on one of the authors in listed in the table below.  Your emphasis should be on finding patterns and connections among the secondary sources, which will constitute authentic originality in your paper, since the secondary sources themselves will not have emphasized this task.  In addition, you should indicate the kind of critical approach in each source or group of sources, based on the main kinds of literary criticism prevalent today (most of which can be looked up in PDLT or HTL), listed alphabetically:  archetypal or myth criticism, biographical criticism or biographical research criticism, deconstructionist criticism, feminist criticism (or gender criticism or "queer theory"), history of ideas criticism, linguistics (or Prague School) criticism, Marxist (or cultural materialist or cultural determinist or economic determinist) criticism, New Criticism (or formalist criticism), New Historicism, phenomenological criticism, postcolonial criticism, post-structuralist criticism, psychoanalytical criticism, reader-response criticism, semiotics, sources and analogues or influences criticism, and structuralism. Besides the attached sample review-of-research article from English Literary Renaissance, good models of such research writing can be found in the bibliographies in the "Selected Bibliographies" section in the back of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.  The research paper should follow MLA format, though it may have section headings.  Either a particular author or a particular work by an author may be chosen for the review of research, which should be in discursive, essay form.  (See restrictions in the Table of Authors, below.)  Between ten and fourteen items should be analyzed, categorized, connected (compared or contrasted or both; placed with respect to trends or groupings or categories within the criticism), and very briefly summarized in the 1600 words (about seven pages in a font of size 11, about two items per page).  Be careful not to simply summarize ten separate sources in isolation, not to overparaphrase any source, or not to overquote any source; your paper will then have wandered away from research into just copying.  The items should be as recent as possible, preferably from within the last five years or so.  Note that some general books (e.g., on English Renaissance poetry) may contain a chapter or section on a particular author or literary work. Avoid repeating information in either the most recent Norton Anthology of English Literature "Selected Bibliographies" section or of a recent (e.g., within the last five years) survey-of-criticism article in English Literary Renaissance.

        For some major authors such as Ben Jonson who produced many works in two main genres (and consequently generates substantial criticism in two or more genres), the review of research should focus on one genre; for Jonson, for example, the review of research should be on either the poetry (many articles and books covering Ben Jonson's poetry) or the plays (many articles and books covering one or more of the plays) or possibly one play.

        See the grade template for the research paper along with this assignment posted in my Engl. 3002 materials  for further criteria and components relating to the paper.

        Below is an alphabetical table of authors included in NAEL7, in the sixteenth-century and early-seventeenth century sections.  In boxes ("cells") where alternatives are given, only one of the choices must be selected.
 
 

Roger Ascham	John Foxe: literary studies	John Lyly	Thomas Traherne
Francis Bacon: (a) Essays; (b) Prose Style; (c) general literary studies	George Gascoigne: (a) poetry generally, (b) particular poem, (c) works generally	Christopher Marlowe: (a) plays generally; (b) particular play; (c) poetry	Henry Vaughan
Sir Thomas Browne: (a) general studies, (b) or of particular works	Fulke Greville	Andrew Marvell	Edmund Waller
Robert Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy	Lady Ann Halkett	John Milton: (a) sonnets; (b) particular poem	Isaak Walton
Thomas Campion: (a) poetry generally (b) or particular poem	Thomas Hariot	Sir Thomas More	John Webster
Thomas Carew: (a) poetry generally, (b) or particular poem	George Herbert	Thomas Nashe	Isabella Whitney
Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland	Mary (Sidney) Herbert, Countess of Pembroke	Katherine Philips	Lady Mary Wroth
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle	Robert Herrick	Sir Walter Ralegh	Sir Thomas Wyatt
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon	Sir Thomas Hoby	Sir Philip Sidney: (a) poetry; (b) fiction; (c) the Apology or Defense
Abraham Cowley	Richard Hooker	John Skelton
Richard Crashaw	Lucy Hutchinson	Robert Southwell
Samuel Daniel	Ben Jonson: (a) poetry; (b) plays generally; (c) particular play	Edmund Spenser: (a) Faerie Queene; (b) other poetry
John Donne: (a) poetry generally; (b) particular poem; (c) prose	Aemilia Lanyer	Sir John Suckling
Michael Drayton	Richard Lovelace	Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

        More extended and well-known examples of book-length reviews of research, usually with individual chapters or sections, can be found in the following:

Renaissance Period of British Literature

Logan, Terence, and Denzell Smith, eds. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in
    English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1978.
Logan, Terence, and Denzell Smith, eds. The New Intellectuals: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama.
    Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1977.
Logan, Terence, and Denzell Smith, eds. The Popular School: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama.
    Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1975.
Logan, Terence, and Denzell Smith, eds. The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English
    Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1973.

The Romantic Period of British Literature

Jordan, Frank, et al. The English Romantic Poets: A Review of Research and Criticism. 4th ed. New York: MLA, 1985.

The Victorian Period of British Literature

DeLaura, David. Victorian Prose: A Guide to Research. New York: MLA, 1973.

Faverty, F. E. The Victorian Poets: A Guide to Research. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1968.

Ford, George. Victorian Fiction: A Second Guide to Research. New York: MLA, 1978.

Propas, Sharon. Victorian Studies: A Research Guide. 1992.

Stevenson. Victorian Fiction: A Guide to Research. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1964.

American Literature

Bryer, Jackson, ed. Sixteen Modern American Authors: A Survey of Research and Criticism. New York: Norton, 1973.

Bryer, Jackson, ed. Sixteen Modern American Authors: A Survey of Research and Criticism since 1972. New York: Norton, 1989.

Harbert, Earl, and Robert Rees, eds. Fifteen American Authors before 1900: Bibliographical Essays on Research and Criticism. Rev. ed.
    Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1984.
 
 

        The standard text is L. C. Martin's The Works of Henry Vaughan, 2nd ed. (1957), a revision and expansion of his two-volume edition (1914). Vaughan's poetry has been edited by French Fogle in The Complete Poetry of Henry Vaughan (1964) and by E. L. Marilla in The Secular Poems of Henry Vaughan (1958), with prose translations of the Latin poems.

I. General

A. Biographical. The details of Vaughan's life are in Douglas Bush's English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, 2nd ed. rev. (1962), and E. L. Marilla annotates the early biographical sources in A Comprehensive Bibliography of Henry Vaughan (1948). The only full-length biography is F. E. Hutchinson's Henry Vaughan: A Life and Interpretation (1947). which enlarges on preliminary research by Gwenllian E. F. Morgan and Louise I. Guiney. Hutchinson intersperses discussion of Vaughan's career with examination of the poetry and prose, providing chapters on the Puritan regime and the prose treatises to reveal the "mind and feeling" of the author of Silex Scintillans. Hutchinson supports the traditional view that "there was nothing in the secular verse to prepare the reader for [the] heightened feeling and majestic utterance" in Silex Scintillans. The "conversion" issue is also examined by E. L. Marilla in "The Religious Conversion of Henry Vaughan," RES, 21 (1945), 15-22, and in "Henry Vaughan's Conversion: A Recent View," MLN, 63 (1948), 394-97. James D. Simmonds amends both Hutchinson and Marilla in "The Problem of Henry Vaughan's Illness," Anglia, 78 (1960), 353-56 (rev. and rpt. in Masques of God: Form and Theme in the Poetry of Henry Vaughan [1972], pp. 197-203).

        Also of interest are Marilla's "Henry and Thomas Vaughan," MLR, 39 (1944), 180-83, and Simmonds' "Henry Vaughan's 'To His Friends. . .'," N&Q, 8 (1961), 428; "Henry Vaughan: Imprisonment, Boethius, and Owen Felltham," N&Q, 8 (1961), 183-84; and "Henry Vaughan's 'Fellow-Prisoner'," ES, 45 (1964), 454-57. In "Henry Vaughan's Amoret and Etesia," PQ, 42 (1963), 137-42 [rev. and rpt. in Masques of God, pp. 204-07], Simmonds discusses the biographical implications of Vaughan's love poetry.

B. General Critical Studies. James D. Simmonds' Masques of God (i, a) examines both the secular and sacred poetry, correcting the view that Vaughan was an "artless poet." Simmonds evaluates the major cruxes in Vaughan criticism, and follows Marilla in concluding that it is more accurate to see Vaughan's development as "essentially organic, continuous, and natural" rather than as "radically disjunctive." Examination of the love poetry, satire, Vaughan's interpretation of nature, and the "Bed-Grave" image emphasizes both Vaughan's poetic "flexibility and variety within a unified form" and his place in the Jonsonian tradition in which the end of poetry is seen not as a "reflexive satisfaction of the writer" but "in its effect on a wider public." Simmonds rejects the primacy of Hermeticism or mysticism, since, for Vaughan, "poetic invention should operate, not toward enfolding religious mysteries in verbal enigmas" but toward "unfolding them, making them plainer and more evident."

        In Henry Vaughan: Experience and the Tradition (1959), Ross Garner gives attention to the "basic philosophic attitudes which underlie Vaughan's expression of experience." Discussions of Vaughan's allegorical habit of mind, view of nature, and "Augustinian distrust of reason" form the background for Garner's conclusions that Hermeticism in the poetry is more metaphor than attitude, that the world of nature is part of a "providential scheme of regeneration," and that Vaughan's mysticism is more longing than fulfillment.

        Margherita Leardi, in La Poesia di Henry Vaughan (Firenze, 1967), argues that the authentic Vaughan is revealed in the poetry of Silex Scintillans. Unlike Simmonds, she suggests that Vaughan's poetic career indicates a progressive liberation from the disciplines of art, and she sees a basic dualism between the themes of his poetry and the language in which he embodies them.

        The following general works contain briefer commentaries. Joan Bennett's Four Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, 2nd ed. rev. (1953; rpt., with essay on Marvell, as Five Metaphysical Poets [1964]), examines the various influences on Vaughan, noting the transmutation of metaphysical elements in the religious poems. The best of Vaughan, she concludes, "would include some single stanzas, lines, or even half lines." Helen C. White's earlier study, The Metaphysical Poets: A Study in Religious Experience (1936; rpt. 1962), surveys the biographical details and examines both the basic diaological ideas and Vaughan's incorporation of Hermetical and mystical ideas. S. L. Bediell's "The Poetry of Henry Vaughan, Silurist," Journal of the Historical Society of the Church in Wales, 1 (1947), 112-40, is included in his The Cultural Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (1951). Bediell treats Vaughan's use of the metaphysical manner in his sacred poems and provides a brief account of the philosophic background of the poems in Silex Scintillans.

        Marilla's bibliography (i, a) is updated in Henry Vaughan: A Bibliographical Supplement, 1946-1960 (1963), by E. L. Marilla and James D. Simmonds. Lloyd E. Berry edits A Bibliography of Studies in Metaphysical Poetry,1939-1960 (1964), which extends Theodore Spencer's and Mark Van Doren's earlier Studies in Metaphysical Poetry 10,12-10,38 (1939). Useful but selective bibliographies are in Simmonds and Leardi (i, b) and in Itrat-Husain and Ellrodt (below, n, A, 2). Imilda Tuttle's Concordance to Vaughan's "Silex Scintillans" (1969) is based on the text established by French Fogle.

II. Studies in Selected Topics

A. Sources and Influences

1. Herbert. Vaughan's self-acknowledged debt to George Herbert is discussed in most major studies; the important echoes have been listed in the notes in Martin (1957). Mary Ellen Rickey, in "Vaughan, The Temple, and Poetic Form," SP, 59 (1962), 162-70, notes that Vaughan adopts Herbert's complex rhyme structures and adapts his verbal devices. In Utmost Art: Complexity in the Verse of George Herbert (1966), Rickey states that Vaughan expands and renders more explicit many of Herbert's allusions. In "The Action of the Self: Devotional Poetry in the Seventeenth Century," Metaphysical Poetry, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 11, ed. Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer (1970), pp. 101-21, Louis L. Martz remarks that while Vaughan learned important techniques from Herbert, his poetry lacks Herbert's "architectural neatness." Martz also discusses Vaughan's poetic debt to Herbert in "Henry Vaughan: The Man Within," PMLA, 78 (1963), 40-49 (rpt. and rev. in The Paradise Within: Studies in Vaughan, Traherne, and Milton [1964]).

        Both Wilfred R. Childe, in "Henry Vaughan," Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, 3rd ser., 22 (1945), 131-60, and Malcolm M. Ross, in "George Herbert and the Humanist Tradition," UTQ, 16 (1947), 169-82, note Herbert's influence, yet see differences of outlook between Herbert and Vaughan.

2. Hermeticism, Mysticism, Meditation. Recent studies have upheld, for the most part, the views of Elizabeth Holmes's Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy (1932; rpt. 1962) and Wilson O. dough's "Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy," PMLA, 48 (1933), 1108-30, that Vaughan assimilated and subordinated his Hermetic borrowings; thus Frank J. Warlike, in Versions of Baroque: European Literature in the Seventeenth Century (1972), states that "Vaughan's Hermeticism almost always appears within a framework of ordiodox Christian reference." Garner (i, b) surveys the critical literature, pp. 46-127. Ruth Wallerstein concludes, in Studies in Seventeenth-Century Poetic (1950; rpt. 1961), that Vaughan's poems owe less to "magical Hermeticism" than to the "larger and profounder concepts" of the ancient Hermetica and neo-Platonism. P. Grant's "Hermetic Philosophy and the Nature of Man in Vaughan's Silex Scintillans," JEGP, 67 (1968), 406-22, suggests diat Vaughan's Hermeticism was "subliminal," but that it provided "the necessary objective correlative" for his "latitudinarian, 'cosmological' view of man."

        A. W. Rudruni argues a more explicit influence in "The Influence of Alchemy in the Poems of Henry Vaughan," PQ, 49 (1970), 469-80, by showing that important concepts in Vaughan's poetryù"change" and "process"ùhave alchemical meaning. Rudrum also discusses, in "Vaughan's 'The Night': Some Hermetic Notes," MLR, 64 (1969), 11-19, the phrase "Virgin-shrine" as a Hermetic concept; and in "Henry Vaughan's 'The Book': I A Hermetic Poem," AUMLA, 16 (1961), 161-66, he explains the poem by drawing on the Paracelsian concept of "restitution." James D. Simmonds argues against this interpretation in "Vaughan's 'The Book': Hermetic or Meditative?" Neophil, 47 (1963), 320-28. Karl H. Krcgor treats the importance of the "artfully constructed talisman" in "Henry Vaughan and Natural Magic," ForumH, 9 (1971), 82-86.

        Vaughan's "mysticism" is examined in R. A. Durr's On the Mystical Poetry of Henry Vaughan (1962), which supports Itrat-Husain's view (below) that Vaughan's religious verse records a Christian mystic's progress through purgation, penance, and illumination. Durr stresses that "the difference between the secular and religious poetry cannot be minimized," and he excludes Vaughan's sacred poetry from the meditative tradition since that term denotes "a formal regulation and arrangement of devotion" which is alien to Vaughan's poetry. The "major metaphors," analyzed in detail in "Regeneration," "The Proffer," and "The Night," embody a single theme: regeneration.

        Vaughan's mysticism has also been examined in detail by Itrat-Husain, in The Mystical Element in the Metaphysical Poets of the Seventeenth Century (1948; rpt. 1966), and by Robert Ellrodt, in L'Inspiration Personelle et L'Esprit du Temps chez Les Poetes Metaphysiques Anglais, Tome II, Premiere Partie, Livre iv (1960). Itrat-Husain concludes that Vaughan's greatest poems celebrate the "state of illumination," and Thomas Vaughan is seen as the essential source for Vaughan's ideas. Ellrodt notes Vaughan's longing for "un univers ou regne le calme. La vague sans repos et bruyante du temps s'y apaise, avant de mourir sur la greve du 1'eternite."

        E. L. Marilla responds to Durr in "The Mysticism of Henry Vaughan: Some Observations," RES, 18 (1967), 164-66, arguing that Vaughan's "deepest religious experience was not a sudden visitation." Frank Kermode asserts, in "The Private Imagery of Henry Vaughan," RES, N.s. i (1950), 206-25, that Vaughan's poetic subjects are lyrical, devotional, or meditative, not mystical. In response, H. J. Oliver's "The Mysticism of Henry Vaughan: A Reply," JEGP, 53 (1954), 352-60, advances the more traditional view that Vaughan is a genuine mystic, not merely a poet using a mystic's language. A. W. Rudrum supports this view in "Henry Vaughan and the Theme of Transfiguration," SoRA, i (1963). 54-68, analyzing "Regeneration" as proof that Vaughan did have a genuine mystical experience which transformed his apprehension of the natural world.

        Vaughan's place in the "meditative tradition" has been argued by Louis L. Martz who, in The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century (1954; rev. 1962), states that Vaughan is a "fervent adept in meditative practices, especially in the wide-spread practice of meditation on the 'creatures'." Martz discusses several poems governed by a meditative structure "corresponding to the acts of memory, understanding, and will." In The Paradise Within (n, A, i), he examines the poetry "from the standpoint of the Augustinian concept of interior 'illumination'," associating Vaughan's "characteristic triad, the Bible, Nature, and the Self" with Augustinian concepts. William H. Halewood's The Poetry of Grace: Reformation Themes and Structures in 17th Century English Poetry (1970) also notes the importance of Augustinian concepts to the "structural dynamics of [Vaughan's] poetry."

3. The Bible. Several recent studies support Douglas Bush's assertion that "the most pervasive and important element in Vaughan is biblical allusion and symbol" (i, a). Fogle's text extensively annotates the biblical allusions. Their importance to specific poems is discussed in Fern Farnham's "The Imagery of Henry Vaughan's 'The Night'," PQ, 38 (i959), 425-35; in Leland H. Chambers' "Henry Vaughan's Allusive Technique: Biblical Allusion in 'The Night'," MLQ, 27 (1966), 371-87, and "Vaughan's 'The World': The Limits of Extrinsic Criticism," SEL, 8 (1968), 137-50; and in James Dale's "Biblical Allusion in Vaughan's 'The World'," ES, 51 (1970), 336-39. The unity which the biblical text provides for "The World" is examined by Paul A. Olson, in "Vaughan's 'The World': The Pattern of Meaning and the Tradition," CL, 13 (1961), 26-32, and by James D. Simmonds, in "Vaughan's Masterpiece and Its Critics: 'The World' Revaluated," SEL, 2 (1962), 77-93, who sees the poem as an "expansion and dramatization" of the text. Ross Garner's monograph The Unprofitable Servant in Henry Vaughan, University of Nebraska Studies, N.s. 29 (1963), studies the importance of the text to "Unprofitablenes." In The Temple of the Mind: Education and Literary Taste in Seventeenth Century England (1969), John R. Mulder briefly treats typology in Vaughan's poetry.

4. Nature. The earlier view of Vaughan as a pre-Romantic influencing Wordsworth has been generally discredited. M. M. Mahood, in Poetry and Humanism (1950; rpt. 1970), pp. 252-95, discusses the "complex undercurrents of meaning" in his interpretation of nature, noting that Vaughan's certainty that Nature "is only a shadow of a greater world saves him from the excesses of many illuminist sects and seers." Both L. C. Martin, in "Henry Vaughan and the Theme of Infancy," Seventeenth-Century Studies Presented to Sir Herbert Grierson, ed. John Purves (1938; rpt. 1967), pp. 243-55, and Merritt Y. Hughes, in "The Theme of Pre-existence and Infancy in 'The Retreat'," PQ, 20 (1941), 484-500, have examined Vaughan's treatment of infancy as an aspect of his view of nature. In The Enclosed Garden: The Tradition and the Image in Seventeenth-Century Poetry (1966), Stanley Stewart suggests that aspects of nature provided for Vaughan a convenient structure for "juxtaposing biographical fact and spiritual truth," and Leona Spitz's "Process and Stasis: Aspects of Nature in Vaughan and Marvell," HLQ, 32 (1968-69), 135-47, argues that, for Vaughan, the objects of nature become a reminder of man's separation from nature; contemplation of nature is a temporary substitute for the final experiencing of God.

        Fredson Bowers' "Vaughan's Multiple Time Scheme," MLQ, 23 (1962), 291-96, treats time as allegory, and Horace H. Underwood's "Time and Space in the Poetry of Vaughan," SP, 69 (1972), 231-41, studies the opposition of finite and infinite time in Silex Sdntillans.

B. Vaughan's Poetic Development

l. Secular Verse. E.L. Marilla and James D. Simmonds have argued the value of Vaughan's secular poetry both as poetry and as an important stage in his artistic development. Marilla's "The Significance of Henry Vaughan's Literary Reputation," MLQ, 5 (1944), 155-62, is a useful survey suggesting the need to re-examine the secular verse, an issue Marilla pursues in both "Vagaries in Modern Literary Criticism: Some Instances Touching the Renaissance," in Studies in English Renaissance Literature, ed. Waldo McNeir (1962), pp. 168-80, and "The Secular and Religious Poetry of Henry Vaughan," MLQ, 9 (1948), 394-411. His views are supported by Simmonds in "Henry Vaughan and the Great Chain of Being," in Studies in English Renaissance Literature, pp. 149-67, and in "Some Traditional Oxymora in Vaughan's Secular Verse," NS, 11 (1962), 569-73, in which Simmonds finds no justification for finding anything "radically new" in the poetic imagination which produced Silex Scintillans.

2. Vaughan's Poetics. Important aspects of Vaughan's poetics have been treated in the studies mentioned above and in several recent dissertations which are beyond the scope of this survey. One of the most influential essays is Frank Kermode's (n, a, 2), which emphasizes the need to concentrate on literary sources and to evaluate Vaughan's work by standards of poetry, not piety. Michael Murrin, in The Veil of Allegory: Some Notes Toward a Theory of Allegorical Rhetoric in the English Renaissance (1969), pp. 13 5-41, argues that "The Water-fall" demonstrates a "process of allegorical criticism" as a "dramatized exegesis of a particular symbol" charged with multiple levels of meaning.

        In The Metaphysical Mode from Donne to Cowley (1969), Earl Miner notes that Vaughan "represents one version of the last phase of metaphysical poetry" in which "the dramatic audience is all but completely lost"; in The Cavalier Mode from Jonson to Cotton (1971), he places Vaughan's poetics in literary and social context, asserting that in "To the pious meniorie of C. W. Esquire...," Vaughan "enacts much of his own career as a poet" and "presents a microcosm of his age." Vaughan's denunciation of "profane" poetry in the preface of 1654 to the expanded edition of Silex Scintillans (1655) is discussed briefly by Patrick Cruttwell in The Shakespearean Moment and Its Place in the Poetry of the 17th Century (1955), and more extensively by Simmonds in The Masques of God (i, b), pp. 208-17.

        Gayle E. Wilson's "A Characteristic of Vaughan's Style and Two Meditative Poems: 'Corruption' and 'Day of Judgement'," Style, 4 (1970), 119-31, examines Vaughan's use of a "quasi-logical  'since, when/then'  formula." Vaughan's use of the metaphysical conceit is debated by George Watson, in "Hobbes and the Metaphysical Conceit," JHI, 16 (i955), 558-62, and T. M. Gang, in "Hobbes and the Metaphysical Conceit: A Reply," JHI, 17 (1956), 418-21. R. E. Wiehe discusses Vaughan's use of metaphysical wit in "Two Images in Vaughan," ES, 45 (1964), 457-60.

III. Studies of Individual Works

A. Silex Scintillans. E. C. Pettet's Of Paradise and Light: A Study of "Silex Scintillans" (1960) argues that "the reality of Vaughan's regeneration" produces the transmutation in Silex Sdntillans of earlier poetic elements. Because a great deal of "circumstantial knowledge" is needed to read Vaughan, Pettet approaches four major poems with background chapters on the Bible, Herbert, Hermetic philosophy, and Nature. In theme and spirit, he concludes, the poems "owe little to Herbert," and although Hermeticism "gave his poetic vocabulary an unmistakable and individual tinge," Vaughan's best poems are ones that show "a minimum of hermetic influence." Pettet finds that although the volume reveals many influences, it has a unity provided by the "highly individualized imagery."

        Details concerning the editing, dating, and dedication of Silex Scintillans are discussed by Simmonds in "The Identity of Vaughan's Suppressed Poems," MLQ, 22 (1961), 390-98; "The Date of Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans, N&Q, 7 (1960), 64-65; and "The Dedication of Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans," ES, 41 (1960), 369.

B. Osor Iscanus. Harold R. Walley gives an account of the chronology of the poems of Osor Iscanus in "The Strange Case of Osor Iscanus," RES, 18 (1942), 27-37, and further details of the preparation and publication arc examined by Marilla in " 'The Publisher to the Reader' of O/or Iscanus," RES, 24 (1948), 36-41, and by Simmonds in "The Publication of O/or Iscanus," MLN, 76 (1961), 404-08.

C. Prose Works. "The Chymists Key" is authoritatively attributed to Vaughan by L. C. Martin in "Henry Vaughan and 'The Chymists Key'," TLS, Dec. 11, 1953, p. 801, a discussion incorporated in Martin's edition (1957). In "A New Source for Henry Vaughan's 'Man in Darkness'," N&Q, 14 (1967), 93-94, Giinther Wiese suggests Robert Bolton's The Four Last Things (1632) as a source for the second section of The Mount of Olives.

D. The State of Criticism. The judgment of Vaughan as a poet of "single stanzas, lines, or even half lines" has been modified in the past quarter century by the many studies which have used Vaughan's sources to demonstrate the unity and intention of the individual poems. In some instances, this very emphasis has tended to overshadow Vaughan's ability to assimilate and reshape his sources, sometimes radically, for his own ends. The other danger has been to view certain of Vaughan's poems as evidence of his total rejection of the contemporary world, an attitude which has led to a detailed criticism of only a fraction of Vaughan's work from a corpus numbering over two hundred poems. The evidence that the secular and sacred poems have much in common needs to be further examined, as does Vaughan's poetics, particularly its Jonsonian base and the allegorical process proposed by Murrin. Little extensive attention has been paid to Vaughan's use of typology. Vaughan's qualities of "mind, temperament, and poetic technique," as Fogle indicates, may indeed set him off from other poets of the century, but many of the studies have also demonstrated how much he shares widi his age. His prose works have yet to receive significant attention, and a definitive study of Vaughan is needed, although Simmonds' book is a major contribution.

IV. Canon and Text

A. Works. The entire Vaughan canon is established through copies of early editions and, with "The Chymists Key" assigned to Vaughan, the canon presents no further problem. William F. Stead, in "Some Unknown Verses by Henry Vaughan?" TLS, Feb. 8, 1952, p. 116, suggests Vaughan's authorship of the memorial inscription to Games Jones in Llansantirfraed Church.

B. Critique of the Standard Edition. Martin's edition (1914; rev. 1957) replaces important earlier editions: The Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, 2 vols. (1896), ed. E. K. Chambers; A. B. Grosart's The Works in Verse and Prose Complete of Henry Vaughan, Silurist (1871); and H. F. Lyte's Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations by Henry Vaughan (1847). The errors in Martin's first edition of The Works of Henry Vaughan (1914) have been largely corrected in the 1957 edition, and the notes have been helpfully enlarged. Martin notes, however, that "several of the obscurities in the poems have had to be left unexplained." Fogle's edition of the poetry improves upon Martin's edition by collating the British Museum copies with copies of the first editions in the Huntington Library and the libraries of Harvard, Yale, and the University of Illinois, producing changes, often substantial, in the spelling. Variants are noted in an appendix. Fogle's edition also contains Vaughan's Latin poems newly translated by John Carey, an improvement on the prose translations in Marila's edition of the secular poems.

C. Other Editions. L. C. Martin has edited Henry Vaughan: Poetry and Selected Prose (1963). Louis L. Martz's The Anchor Anthology of Seventeenth Century Verse, Vol. i (1969; rev. ed. of The Meditative Poem [1963]), includes the major poems from Silex Scintillans, and most of the major poems are included in Helen Gardner's The Metaphysical Poets (1957; and ed. 1967). Christopher Dixon has edited A Selection from Henry Vaughan (1967; rpt. 1969). Major Poets of the Earlier Seventeenth Century: Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, Jonson, Herrick, Marvell, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski and Andrew J. Sabol (1973), contains a generous selection and a useful introduction to Vaughan which sets forth the important critical issues.