SOURCE: Edelen, Georges. “Hooker's Style.” In Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of His Works, edited by W. Speed Hill, pp. 241-77. Cleveland: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1972.

In the following essay, Edelen examines the length and complexity of Hooker's sentences, concluding that his writing style places “a deliberate emphasis on the whole rather than the part.”

I

The most significant elements of Hooker's style in the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity are the length of his sentences and the complexity of their structure. Even for his contemporaries it was these aspects of Hooker's prose that drew immediate attention. George Cranmer, in his notes on a preliminary manuscript of Book vi, urges Hooker at a number of points to abbreviate his sentences. A Puritan attack complains of his “cunningly framed sentences, to blind and entangle the simple.” Thomas Fuller describes his style as “long...