SOURCE: Marks, Carol L. “Thomas Traherne and Cambridge Platonism.” PMLA 81, no. 7 (December 1966): 521-34.

In the following essay, Marks considers the argument that Traherne can be categorized as a Cambridge Platonist and concludes that he defies all attempts at categorization.

Although the Oxford-educated Thomas Traherne is indeed “thoroughly representative” of the “salient ideas” of the Cambridge Platonists,¹ and without a doubt should be classed with them philosophically, he is most akin emotionally to that maverick among the Cambridge men, Peter Sterry. Yet ideological differences separate him from Sterry, and even the emotional intensity which seems to link them takes radically variant forms. The case is the same with Henry More, whose work we know Traherne read,² and whose spiritual autobiography resembles Traherne's: their responses to the new ideas of space were remarkably alike in feeling, yet Traherne took issue vigorously with More's theories of space and deity, and in...