JOHN DONNE'S POETIC USES OF THE BIBLE
Abstract
The focus of this dissertation is the biblical texture of John Donne's poetic language. In five independent but thematically interrelated essays, it explores three principal concerns: Donne's imagination and its relation to traditional ways of reading the Bible; his attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, at appropriating biblical language; and his use of biblical poetic actions. Each chapter concentrates upon a single poem in considering Donne's innovative uses of the Bible. Chapter One considers Donne's use of biblical figures in the Latin verse epistle to George Herbert. Figural interpretation of the Bible appealed to Donne's interest in hidden correspondences and concresences in human experience and in the physical universe. Donne's attempt to read the world as a system in which everything has significance was encouraged by the way in which his culture read the Bible. Chapters Two and Three consider two of Donne's attempts to bring biblical language into the service of his own poetic designs. Elegy 19 ultimately fails in its attempt to use the language of Revelation and 1 Corinthians to create an erotic spirituality because the allusions Donne makes rarely communicate to the reader. But Holy Sonnet 14 successfully employs a sequence of images taken from the Hebrew prophets as a way both of obtaining the attention of God (the nominal "reader" of the poem) and of establishing the extent of the speaker's sinfulness. Finally, two of the very few poems in which Donne developed images for the poet and for the actions of poetry rely heavily upon the Bible. Chapter Four places "Upon the translation of the Psalmes" within a tradition of commentaries and polemical works that treat the Psalms as a primary means of spiritualizing the world, then goes beyond this tradition in order to show how the biblically-inspired action of praise is at the core of Donne's epideictic poetry. Chapter Five considers how the prophet's rhetoric, subjects of discourse, and stance inform Donne's Anniversaries, and speculates upon how Donne's understanding of the prophet's task and materials shaped much of his public work.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature
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