ABSTRACT
Edward Taylor's devotional poetry has been consistently approached as 'poetry of meditation' in the tradition defined by Louis Martz. Martz's account of meditation forms the starting point of a continuing discourse on Taylor. The poet Taylor investigates his deep and a far-reaching Hebraic commitment opens different avenues into his work and into the implications of Hebraism in American culture. But the meditation model is finally limited in what it can say about Taylor's work. In Puritan hermeneutics of history, text directs history and history itself becomes text, open to hermeneutic modes of interpretation. This hermeneutic governs Taylor's typological practices. But the restoration of concrete historical dimension itself registers a return to Hebrew scriptural norms. Biblical pattern comes to chart and govern not only relations among its texts, nor only the interior Christian experience, but immediate history; while history itself is thereby made text, governed by biblical hermeneutics.
