Anglicanism in the poetry of george herbert

Abstract

England in the seventeenth century was undergoing revolutionary changes in social, political, economic, and cultural development. Beginning with Henry VIII through several reigns, the English Church separated from the Roman Catholic Church and developed its own peculiar institutions. George Herbert, a nobleman from the Herbert family of Montgomery in Wales, was an Anglican priest and a poet. The entire corpus of his poetry, which is devotional, was influenced by the spirit of seventeenth century Anglicanism.