John Donne and baroque allegory : the aesthetics of fragmentation

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

John Donne and baroque allegory : the aesthetics of fragmentation

Hugh Grady

Cambridge University Press, 2017

  • : hardback

Available at  / 2 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 212-225) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

John Donne has been one of the most controversial poets in the history of English literature, his complexity and intellectualism provoking both praise and censure. In this major re-assessment of Donne's poetry, Hugh Grady argues that his work can be newly appreciated in our own era through Walter Benjamin's theory of baroque allegory. Providing close readings of The Anniversaries, The Songs and Sonnets, and selected other lyrics, this study reveals Donne as being immersed in the aesthetic of fragmentation that define both the baroque and the postmodernist aesthetics of today. Synthesizing cultural criticism and formalist analysis, Grady illuminates Donne afresh as a great poet for our own historical moment.

Table of Contents

  • 1. Walter Benjamin and John Donne: constellations of past and present
  • 2. The Anniversaries as baroque allegory: mourning, idealization, and the resistance to unity
  • 3. Donne's The Songs and Sonnets: living in a fragmented world
  • 4. Allegorical objects and metaphysical conceits: thinking about Donne's tropes with Benjamin
  • 5. The metaphysics of correspondence or a fragmented world? Baroque poetics in the seventeenth century
  • 6. Conclusion.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top