From the ‘broken Altar’ to ‘The Banquet’ of Love: The Song of Songs in George Herbert’s The Temple (1633)

The paper investigates the use of the Song of Songs in George Herbert’s The Temple (1633), focusing on some of the poems gathered in the central section, “The Church”, and revolving around the image of the Banquet. “The Church” as a whole can be read as a spiritual path (and autobiography) moving from an Old Testament (and Catholic) idea of the Eucharist as a ‘sacrifice’ - well represented in “The Altar”, the first poem of the section, and in the following one, “The Sacrifice” - to a New Testament (Protestant) idea of Eucharist as a figural communion and spiritual marriage. This is most evident in poems like “The Invitation” and “The Banquet” which explicitly exploit the imagery of the Song and Songs and pave the way to the Eucharistic climax of the section that is the final poem “Love III”. Here Herbert draws upon the tradition of the lovers’ banquet in Songs of Songs II,4 staging a table prepared by the Lord for the believer, combining this tradition with Gospels allusions to the parable of the wedding feast (Matthew xxii, 1.10), to the Last Supper and to Revelation (xix, 9). Thus Herbert renovates the Song and Songs tradition giving his poetical contribution to the so-called sacramental poetics and once again displaying its powerful and ageless ductility.