Emblèmes et fragments emblématiques : influences et résurgences dans la poésie profane de John Donne

Abstract

In the first issue of Emblematica, Peter M. Daly highlighted the importance of the emblem in 16th- and 17th- century literature. According to him, the emblem was used in virtually all forms of verbal and visual communication at the time. Its fortune rested largely on the fact that it was based on the homology of two languages: one textual, the other pictorial. In this respect, the poetical works of John Donne seem a perfect example of the influence of emblems in Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry. The eminently visual and tactile character of his poetry rests on the conceptual foundation of ut pictura poesis. According to Rosemond Tuve, this “poetics” of the image “emphasized graphic liveliness” in metaphysical and Baroque poetry. The present study will examine, through what may be described as an archaeological reading, the resurgence of the emblem in the Songs and Sonets, the Elegies, the versified letters (Letters to severall personages) and in Donne's satirical poem Metempsychosis, and it will also try to identify the emblematic sources that inspired the poet’s Elizabethan and Jacobean Imaginotheca while revealing the specificity of the emblem in his works.

Keywords

• poetry
• John Donne
• emblems
• Andrea Alciati
• Thomas Palmer
• ut pictura poesis