Tradition and Invention in the Songs and Sonets and Sermons of John Donne

Abstract

This chapter describes the convergence of secular poetics and biblical hermeneutics in the writings of John Donne. Discussion of Thomas Carew’s elegy and of Donne’s first three “Satires” highlights the preoccupation in Songs and Sonnets with questions of language and imitation. A recurring motif in Songs and Sonnets is the creative autonomy of erotic experience, separate both from the external world and from literary tradition. Formally, Songs invents alternatives to, rather than merely rejecting, conventional expectations. Donne’s biblical exegesis articulates a similarly constructive response to tradition: his sermons reinvent the role of interpretive tradition in biblical meaning. This correlation, between Donne’s secular lyrics and sermons regarding tradition and invention, epitomizes this book’s argument about the interaction of literary language and Reformation hermeneutics.