The World as Emblem: Language and Vision in the Poetry of Edward Taylor

TN THE PAST THIRTY YEARS, a good deal of critical attention has been concentrated on the paradoxes posed by Edward Taylor's role as an "American Metaphysical."' From his life and teachings Taylor emerges as a strong, even reactionary exponent of the "New England Way" in theology and church polity;2 yet his poetry suggests a theology more like that of the Anglo-Catholics Donne and Herbert, "supernaturalist and incarnational," admitting of "miracles and transcensions of common sense," of ecstasy and ingenuity in the world of the poem as in the world of human experience.3 The