Anxious martyr: John Donne and the literature of self -sacrifice

Neal Edmund Migan, Purdue University

Abstract

This project explores the psychodynamics of John Donne's faith. Its methodology is psycho-biographical in nature, and it argues that Donne's body of writing can be illuminated significantly by attending to the particulars of his peculiar death scene. Understanding that Donne fashioned his death as if he believed in his own claim to martyrdom allows us to shed light upon the thematic obsessions which informed his work. This paper argues for three inter-related theses, each of which is symbiotically germane to the others: (1) Donne was afflicted with neurotic anxiety to such a degree that he courted death as a way to obviate anxiety; in response to this, (2) he developed a principle of self-destruction, suicide, and self-sacrifice such that his oeuvre may appropriately be termed the literature of self-sacrifice; and (3) he believed that the histrionic quality of his death scene would be an appropriate conclusion to a life governed by an obsession with martyrdom. Donne saw himself as a martyr, and his body of work is an autobiographical account of his own Passion. In an extended act of passive suicide, he gave his life to God in order to replace his anxiety with faith, provide spiritual succor to those who might hear him, and contribute to his own legacy by dying in a way which would guarantee his salvation and increase his fame.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Lein, Purdue University.

Subject Area

British and Irish literature|Religion|Philosophy|Theology

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