Common Prayer: The Language of Public Devotion in Early Modern England. By Ramie Targoff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Pp. xiiii + 162; 4 illustrations. $17.

Targoff's book offers a welcome alternative to the emphasis on the "individualistic speaker" in the study of early modern devotional poetry. This emphasis has resulted in provocative works of criticism but misrepresented seventeenth-century Protestantism. She argues instead that the liturgy used at every church service throughout the year had a more direct effect on this poetry than any version of individualism. According to Targoff, Anglican churchmen believed that the "spontaneous and unpremeditated expression of self" produced "an unnecessary spiritual discomfort rather than the sensation of freedom" (p. 101). Therefore the formalized language of the Book of Common Prayer was meant to shape the unreliable inner experience. Her book traces the history of the Book of Common Prayer from the early Reformation in England to its replacement by the Bay Psalm Book in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Throughout she demonstrates how thoroughly the celebration of "radically individualized experience" has determined modern criticism of seventeenth-century religious poetry.

Cristina Malcolmson
Bates College