Social Context in the Poetry of John Donne Essay -- Biography Biograph

Social Context in the Poetry of John Donne modern literary theory has thoroughly debunked the traditional view of the artist as a divinely inspired, completely original and creative individual. This view has been replaced with the more than apt view of the seed as a product of his or her environment and the animated discourses of the society in which he or she lives. In this radical attitude toward the writer as a product of society, the author is considered, according to Dr. James E. Porter, as somewhat of a quiltmaker who takes miscellaneous traces of the existing cultural intertext (the collected writing and debate of a society) and combines them in new ways to create new discourse (34). Differences in these new discourses of various authors are the result of existing debates concerning the dominant ideology of a extra society. While this theory of writing whitethorn be recent, it applies to the literature and the writers of entirely historical periods, including the Sevent eenth century. By looking at two poems by John Donne, namely The Canonization and The Flea, we can see how existing societal debates and beliefs create literature. At the time of the writing of The Canonization and The Flea, around the unloosen of the 17th century, one of the biggest debates in English society concerned who was trustworthy for the choice of a mate and what the criteria should be the basis for marriage. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, it had been traditional for the parents in the upper classes to be the sole source of married decisions with their child having no say in the selection process and sm whollyer if any say in the approval of a proposed match (Stone 70). These logical marriages tended to be based solely on the accu... ...e historical and social stage setting of a poem can one truly see all of the dynamics at work within a poem. These analytical methods may not simplify the process of reading and interpreting literature, but they fur nish a greater depth of understanding and appreciation that should be of raise to students of literature. Works Cited Donne, John. The Canonization. The books of Renaissance England. Ed. John Hollander and Frank Kermode. New York Oxford University Press, 1973. 526-27. Donne, John. The Flea. The Literature of Renaissance England. Ed. John Hollander and Frank Kermode. New York Oxford University Press, 1973. 534-35. Porter, James. Intertextuality and the Discourse Community. Rhetoric brush up Fall 1986 34-47. Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500- 1800. Abr. Ed. New York Harper & Row, Publishers, 1979.