The Worlds of John Donne. An Analysis of the Spatial Imagery in Donne’s Songs and Sonnets.

Abstract

Since the seventeenth century witnessed major changes in the understanding and in the representation of the world, this dissertation aims to analyse the spatial imagery in John Donne’s Songs and Sonnets. Attention will be focused on a selection of poems containing spatial conceits, with the purpose of displaying the different worlds described in Donne’s poetic compositions. This dissertation will first analyse the space of the subject by focussing on the central position man occupies in Donne’s poems. After discussing the analogy between man and microcosm, it will explore the world of the lovers and their tendency to retreat to enclosed spaces, as if they wanted to protect their love form the threats of the external world. It will then move on to analyse the subject in movement, with a particular reference to Good Friday, 1613: Riding Westward and A Lecture Upon the Shadow. Another interesting space Donne introduces in his poems is that of distance, which is metaphorically portrayed in farewell poems such as the Valedictions. In the light of the English colonial expansion overseas, this dissertation will explore the correspondence between the discovery of new lands and erotic discovery. It will also focus on the major tools of measurement invented in the seventeenth century, such as maps and compasses, and will point out how Donne employs them in his poems. The focus will finally shift to Christian geographical symbolism used by Donne in several of his poems.