Alfred Nobel University Journal of Philology (Jun 2024)
AN INTIMATE DIALOGUE WITH GOD IN JOHN DONNE’S “HOLY SONNETS”: PETRARCHAN CONTEXT
Abstract
The purpose of the paper is to study the images of the platonic and courtly in the protagonist’s personal relations with God in J. Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” in the context of the connection with the Petrarchan tradition. In order to accomplish this, a complex approach including elements of biographical, genealogical, typological, hermeneutic, comparative, and structural-semiotic methods of literary analysis has been used. The views of literary critics on the sources of the “Holy Sonnets” (Christian meditative practices, Bible books, traditions of English religious lyrics) have been reviewed, their connection with the Petrarchan poetic tradition has been pointed out and, in this context, one of the possible interpretations of J. Donne’s sonnet sequence has been proposed. It has been shown that three poems of the sequence – XIV, XVII and XIX – are especially important and conceptual for understanding the evolution of the protagonist’s relations with God in the “Holy Sonnets”. In the first of them, feeling his own weakness and impossibility to overcome the devil, J. Donne’s persona begs the Lord to win back his heart from the enemy, using a broad palette of military metaphors typical to the Petrarchan lyrics. However, the Lord, who in sonnets I – XIII is depicted in a Petrarchan manner as distant and completely deaf to the protagonist’s pleas, remains indifferent. In sonnet XVII, which looks similar to the lyrical texts of the “Canzoniere” dedicated to Laura’s death, a notable change in the relationship between the characters takes place. As in the Italian humanist’s poems, the life path of J. Donne’s persona finally turns to heaven after the death of his beloved, and he begins to feel that the loss of earthly love is compensated by the gaining of the Divine one. However, his further relations with God, once again, seem to be built according to the Petrarchan model, most fully described in the last text of the sequence. The sonnet XIX demonstrates all the complexity of the relationship between a human being and the Lord. J. Donne’s persona is constantly dominated by conflicting feelings and emotions, which generally correlates with Petrarchan understanding of the ambivalence of love, best shown by F. Petrarch in the sonnets CXXXII and CXXXIV. Moreover, the poetic vocabulary used by J. Donne in this poem indicates the specific character of his persona’s relations with God, which are supposed to have signs of courtly love, courtly bowing-service. It has been summed up that the protagonist’s relations with the Lord in the “Holy Sonnets” might be interpreted as generally built on the same principles that are immanent in the concept of love in the poetry of Petrarchism. The persona of the English poet, as well as the traditional hero of Petrarchan texts, also suffers from unrequited feelings, longs for reciprocity with all his heart, and, in addition, speaks in the specific metaphorical language. Even if the linguistic practice utilized by the author cannot be considered exclusively Petrarchan, since a similar rhetorical code, in which the experience of spiritual communication with the Lord was described with the help of erotic images, was widely used by the Christian mystics, the sonnet poetic structure is canonical for Petrarchan lyrical discourse and require following the established rules not only in terms of form, but also in terms of content.
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