Donne's "Complex moment of feeling": The imagery of the verse letters

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine in detail the imagery of the verse letters of John Donne. Specifically, the verse epistles were studied with a view toward establishing the nature of their images and commenting upon Donne's skill as an imagist. The method involved in this study was, because of the dearth of criticism on Donne's verse epistles, relatively simple. First, the epistles themselves were divided into major groupings, according to their recipients. Correspondents for whom only one letter is extant were excluded from the list. Each group of letters formed the nucleus of a chapter, so that the arrangement of the dissertation follows the approximate chronological order of the letters by dates of composition: Chapter I: The Brooke Letters. Chapter II: The Woodward Letters. Chapter III: The Wotton Letters. Chapter IV: The Bedford Letters. Chapter V: The Huntingdon Letters. Next, all criticism relevant to the verse epistles was surveyed; although this dissertation is primarily an original study, this secondary information was incorporated whenever it proved pertinent to the topic. This study was proved worthwhile by its findings. The imagery of the verse epistles reveals Donne's ability to unify seemingly disparate objects and, therefore, to achieve harmony out of apparent discord. Furthermore, this discordia concors within Donne's images is often facilitated by a fusion of the intellectual and the sensuous, or by a process T. S. Eliot terms "a direct sensuous apprehension of thought, or a recreation of thought into feeling." Finally, in the last chapter of this dissertation, these qualities of Donne's imagery are put to practical use in dating two verse epistles hitherto dated only by external evidence.