The Mystical Poetry of Thomas Traherne

In reevaluating Thomas Traherne’s stature as a poet, A. L. Clements examines the art and thought of the Dobell Folio poems, and places the poetry within the context of Traherne’s other writings and of the Christian mystical tradition. The author attempts to show that the Dobell Folio is a unified, coherent sequence; to point out the two voices and the specialized symbolism and imagery of the poems; to clarify the particular nature of the mysticism; and to reveal by comparisons the widespread destructiveness of Philip Traherne’s editing of his brother’s poetry.