George Herbert and the Sincerity Effect

Abstract: In the early seventeenth century, rhetoric was understood as the art of lying. As poetry was a branch of rhetoric, this perception of untruthfulness made the question of religious poetry controversial. George Herbert confronts the question of religious poetry's moral status as rhetoric, treating the problem of sincerity versus artful language not as an irreconcilable opposition but as a creative tension. Herbert transforms cultural ambivalence about rhetoric into a sophisticated poetics by creating a sincerity effect in his poetry, thereby legitimizing religious verse. In short, Herbert achieves a sincerity effect in his rhetoric by acknowledging rhetoric's limited ability for sincerity.