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The rhetoric of conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan

Research for this monograph required mastering the detail of the entire poetic and prose oeuvre of three canonical poets. This was then read against nearly 150 early modern discussions of rhetoric, linguistics, theology, church discipline, anthropology, and psychology. These early modern sources are both printed and manuscript, the latter involving lengthy visits to the Bodleian, British, Folger, and Huntington Libraries. This allowed the development of a complex theory of how metaphysical poets deem that a conscience is constructed, not innate. The thesis was then tested against all literary criticism from the past 30 years which dealt with the poetry’s theology.