`The bodie and the letters both': `blending' the rules of early modern religion

Abstract

The role of conceptual integration or blending has featured significantly in analyses of contemporary texts. To date, no-one to my knowledge has applied this theory in an early modern context. In the sixteenth century, a historical juncture rich in innovative forms of textual expression, the Reformation generated cognitive and ideological discordances between conceptions of the spiritual and the material, or more specifically, between word and image. These tensions were made manifest in physical acts of iconoclasm by Reformers in response to the `idolatry' of early modern Catholicism. Many poetic texts of the period attempted to validate and perpetuate the Reformed position, denouncing carnal representations of divinity, focusing instead on the spiritual incarnation of Christ as the `Word'. Taking one such text, Herbert's poem `JESU', as the focus of my analysis, I trace the path of a blend through to its emergent structure. I will argue that while the blend coheres conceptually in that it appears to make `plausible' the Reformed worldview, the reality is that it generates an ideological implausibility. As such, this article aims to demonstrate the greater efficacy and scope of blending than would otherwise be available through strictly metaphorical analyses. I will focus specifically on the correspondence between conceptual and formal integration of expression and meaning. My analysis leads to insights that more impressionistic, literary analyses of the period have not addressed, and that stylistic analyses have only briefly outlined, in that I will consider the material effects of this cognitive linguistic phenomenon in the significantly literary theological context of early modern England.