"Cease, Be Dumb and Mute:" George Herbert's Ars Moriendi and the Poetics of Self-Discipline

Abstract: This essay explores how George Herbert's poetry frames apocalypticism in terms of personal mortality to strengthen individual practices of obedience and passivity in one's daily habits. By bringing together the science of daily devotion in the ars moriendi tradition and the imaginative resources of poetry and rhetoric, Herbert's verses locate the site of politics in the management and maintenance of practical, everyday affects. These intersections between early modern poetry and religion render habits of self-discipline in service of political passivity and quiescence, encouraging readers to practice obeying forces larger than oneself—even upon the destabilizing extremities of existential finitude.