Margret Fetzer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719083440
- eISBN:
- 9781781700051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719083440.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter discusses the passionate connections between Donne's divine and worldly poetry. It shows that while Donne's erotic poems are more indebted to religious metaphor, his nineteen ‘Holy ...
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This chapter discusses the passionate connections between Donne's divine and worldly poetry. It shows that while Donne's erotic poems are more indebted to religious metaphor, his nineteen ‘Holy Sonnets’ rely more on erotic imagery. The chapter then analyses and compares Donne's religiously erotic poems with his erotically religious poetry. It determines that Donne's erotic poetry views love as a form of (artful) performance and engages in some form of histrionics of love making, also showing that role-play and theatricality are two main features of Donne's devotional and erotic writings.Less
This chapter discusses the passionate connections between Donne's divine and worldly poetry. It shows that while Donne's erotic poems are more indebted to religious metaphor, his nineteen ‘Holy Sonnets’ rely more on erotic imagery. The chapter then analyses and compares Donne's religiously erotic poems with his erotically religious poetry. It determines that Donne's erotic poetry views love as a form of (artful) performance and engages in some form of histrionics of love making, also showing that role-play and theatricality are two main features of Donne's devotional and erotic writings.
Brian Cummings
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187356
- eISBN:
- 9780191674709
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187356.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter explores the religious writing of John Donne, a figure caught in the crossfire between opposing theologies. Donne's writing from the death of Elizabeth to the eve of the English ...
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This chapter explores the religious writing of John Donne, a figure caught in the crossfire between opposing theologies. Donne's writing from the death of Elizabeth to the eve of the English revolution forms a summary and archetype of English religion in its most difficult century. The chapter starts by presenting Donne's Conversion of St Paul. Campion's Brag and Campion's Bloody Reasons are shown. In addition, the noise of the Holy Sonnets is explained. The dating of the Holy Sonnets has undergone the same vicissitudes as the timing of Donne's conversion: the two have moved hand in hand. The chapter also considers Donne's dangerous question. Donne's writing shows the paradox of religion and literary culture in the wake of Reformation.Less
This chapter explores the religious writing of John Donne, a figure caught in the crossfire between opposing theologies. Donne's writing from the death of Elizabeth to the eve of the English revolution forms a summary and archetype of English religion in its most difficult century. The chapter starts by presenting Donne's Conversion of St Paul. Campion's Brag and Campion's Bloody Reasons are shown. In addition, the noise of the Holy Sonnets is explained. The dating of the Holy Sonnets has undergone the same vicissitudes as the timing of Donne's conversion: the two have moved hand in hand. The chapter also considers Donne's dangerous question. Donne's writing shows the paradox of religion and literary culture in the wake of Reformation.
Frederick J. Ruf
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195102635
- eISBN:
- 9780199853458
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195102635.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
In her study of autobiography, Janet Varner Gunn argues that the religious significance of the form “lies not in its literary function but in its anthropology,” that is, in its role in articulating ...
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In her study of autobiography, Janet Varner Gunn argues that the religious significance of the form “lies not in its literary function but in its anthropology,” that is, in its role in articulating and creating human experience. She also states that much literary discussion of autobiography serves to conceal its “strangeness” and “unruly behavior.” This chapter explores the possibilities and limitations of lyric autobiography through an examination of John Donne's Holy Sonnets to point out the further dimensions of autobiography's “unruliness.” Barbara Kiefer Lewalski said that the lyrics in Holy Sonnets are unified by “the Protestant paradigm of salvation in its stark, dramatic, Pauline terms,” moving through election, calling, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. If we attend to the voice speaking in Donne's Holy Sonnets, what can we say about that voice, and what can we extrapolate regarding lyric voices more generally? A primary characteristic of any lyric voice, and especially of Donne's lyric voice in these lyrics, is limitation.Less
In her study of autobiography, Janet Varner Gunn argues that the religious significance of the form “lies not in its literary function but in its anthropology,” that is, in its role in articulating and creating human experience. She also states that much literary discussion of autobiography serves to conceal its “strangeness” and “unruly behavior.” This chapter explores the possibilities and limitations of lyric autobiography through an examination of John Donne's Holy Sonnets to point out the further dimensions of autobiography's “unruliness.” Barbara Kiefer Lewalski said that the lyrics in Holy Sonnets are unified by “the Protestant paradigm of salvation in its stark, dramatic, Pauline terms,” moving through election, calling, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. If we attend to the voice speaking in Donne's Holy Sonnets, what can we say about that voice, and what can we extrapolate regarding lyric voices more generally? A primary characteristic of any lyric voice, and especially of Donne's lyric voice in these lyrics, is limitation.
Paul Cefalu
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198808718
- eISBN:
- 9780191848063
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198808718.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The third chapter focuses on the Johannine Spirit-Paraclete of the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle. In the Johannine confessions, unlike in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus promises the arrival of the ...
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The third chapter focuses on the Johannine Spirit-Paraclete of the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle. In the Johannine confessions, unlike in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus promises the arrival of the Paraclete who will provide not simply testimony and advocacy of Jesus’ ministry once he has departed but also spiritual comfort and assurance to the brethren. As the agent of spiritual comfort, the Paraclete serves during the post-Reformed period in England to offset the fear and trembling often associated with experimental Puritanism. After a discussion of the ways in which the Johannine conception of the Spirit departs from the Synoptic presentation of the Spirit, the chapter looks closely at the reception of the Spirit-Paraclete in the sermons and Holy Sonnets of John Donne as well as in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.Less
The third chapter focuses on the Johannine Spirit-Paraclete of the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle. In the Johannine confessions, unlike in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus promises the arrival of the Paraclete who will provide not simply testimony and advocacy of Jesus’ ministry once he has departed but also spiritual comfort and assurance to the brethren. As the agent of spiritual comfort, the Paraclete serves during the post-Reformed period in England to offset the fear and trembling often associated with experimental Puritanism. After a discussion of the ways in which the Johannine conception of the Spirit departs from the Synoptic presentation of the Spirit, the chapter looks closely at the reception of the Spirit-Paraclete in the sermons and Holy Sonnets of John Donne as well as in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Lloyd Whitesell
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199794805
- eISBN:
- 9780199345243
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199794805.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter explores the first creative fruits of Britten's partnership with Pears in two cycles, Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (1940) and The Holy Sonnets of John Donne (1945). The balance in ...
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This chapter explores the first creative fruits of Britten's partnership with Pears in two cycles, Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (1940) and The Holy Sonnets of John Donne (1945). The balance in Britten's settings between spiky declamation and smoother lyric melody matches the tone of dialectical paradox common to the rhetorically elaborate sonnet form. Recalling Michelangelo's image of a nodo d'amore (love knot), the chapter illustrates the “emotional torque” attending statements of love in both cycles: a sense that love is difficult—to feel, to express, to act on, to understand. It is this complex truth that Britten explores in sounding continuities of pattern and melodic shape in songs, by turns serene and agitated, that respond unerringly to poems of some intricacy.Less
This chapter explores the first creative fruits of Britten's partnership with Pears in two cycles, Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (1940) and The Holy Sonnets of John Donne (1945). The balance in Britten's settings between spiky declamation and smoother lyric melody matches the tone of dialectical paradox common to the rhetorically elaborate sonnet form. Recalling Michelangelo's image of a nodo d'amore (love knot), the chapter illustrates the “emotional torque” attending statements of love in both cycles: a sense that love is difficult—to feel, to express, to act on, to understand. It is this complex truth that Britten explores in sounding continuities of pattern and melodic shape in songs, by turns serene and agitated, that respond unerringly to poems of some intricacy.
Julie Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198712619
- eISBN:
- 9780191780936
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712619.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
In this chapter I argue that John Donne’s verse letters to the Countess of Bedford, perhaps the most influential “Factor” or “mediatrix” in Jacobean England, were part of a politically and ...
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In this chapter I argue that John Donne’s verse letters to the Countess of Bedford, perhaps the most influential “Factor” or “mediatrix” in Jacobean England, were part of a politically and religiously charged literary transaction conducted between them, and their shifting and interrelated alliances, during the period between their initial meeting in 1608 and Bedford’s 1627 death. More than mere flattery or ill-concealed appeals for financial support, Donne’s textual exchanges with Bedford are best understood as (highly mediated) forms of co-reading, provocative poetic, theological, and political negotiations in which the matters of difference between them were subject to joint interpretation and scrutiny.Less
In this chapter I argue that John Donne’s verse letters to the Countess of Bedford, perhaps the most influential “Factor” or “mediatrix” in Jacobean England, were part of a politically and religiously charged literary transaction conducted between them, and their shifting and interrelated alliances, during the period between their initial meeting in 1608 and Bedford’s 1627 death. More than mere flattery or ill-concealed appeals for financial support, Donne’s textual exchanges with Bedford are best understood as (highly mediated) forms of co-reading, provocative poetic, theological, and political negotiations in which the matters of difference between them were subject to joint interpretation and scrutiny.
