'Heaven and Hell in Robert Herrick's Body of Work,' (original) (raw)

This essay examines the prominent treatment of the body in the published works of Robert Herrick. Leaving behind the mere cataloguing of body features in Petrarchan imitations (so characteristic of Elizabethan poetry) Herrick deals not just with limbs and members but with the functional aspects of the parts of the body. This essay offers a reading of the volume of Herrick's works (which included both Hesperides and Noble Numbers) as part of the overall pattern that is focused on the physical body as it is represented in his verses. Further, rejecting the critical tendency to treat the divine poems of Noble Numbers as an entirely separate collection (albeit bound together with Hesperides), it argues that to be fully understood and appreciated the volume as a whole requires reading as a composite like the body and the soul, or as Herrick refers to the two parts a ‘Hell’ and a ‘Heaven’.