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Donne, Castiglione and the Poetry of Courtliness
Published by: Indiana University Press
5 b&w photos, 1 index
- eBook
- 9780253109484
- Published: January 2001
$27.95
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Donne, Castiglione, and the Poetry of Courtliness
Peter DeSa Wiggins
The influence of The Book of the Courtier on the work of John Donne.
John Donne has been described as a "poet of ambition," who used his poems as agents in his quest for preferment among the elites of Elizabethan and early Stuart London. Until now the extent of the influence on Donne's work of that era's most influential court text—Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier— has never been fully explored. Courtier was Elizabethan England's approved repository of the complex social codes that governed the behavior of those desiring advancement at Court. In these revelatory readings of some of Donne's best-known poems, Peter DeSa Wiggins demonstrates that this book fired Donne's imagination and that, in his secular poetry, Donne applies, adapts, and unfolds to its fullest potential the persona of the courtier. In poems such as "The Canonization," "A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day," "Aire and Angels," "The Flea," and "The Exstasie," Donne confronts his elite readers with the most exacting standard of aristocratic conduct while presenting his qualifications for sensitive government posts. By substituting social codes for poetic convention as the formative principle of his art, Donne assumed the voice of a powerful aristocracy, turned it to his advantage, built one political career out of it (which he lost), then built another, and in the process revolutionized his art form.
Peter DeSa Wiggins is Professor of English at The College of William and Mary and author of Figures in Ariosto's Tapestry: Character and Design in the Orlando Furioso.
Contents
Introduction
The Satirical Art of the Disabused
The Art of Impasse
The English Secretary
Poets and Lawyers
The Future of an Illusion
The Looking Glass
Aesthetic Play
Courtly Art
"On his Mistris"
Modern Instances
Courtly Comedy
Sprezzatura or Transcendence: From Travesty to Palinode
Travesty
A Lesson in Deportment
Palinode
Discerning Insincerity
The Good Courtier
The Bad Courtier
Sincerity Then and Now
Conclusion
Preliminary Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Satirical Art of the Disabused
The Art of Impasse
The English Secretary
Poets and Lawyers
The Future of an Illusion
The Looking Glass
Chapter 2: Aesthetic Play
Courtly Art
"On his Mistris"
Modern Instances
Courtly Comedy
Chapter 3: Sprezzatura or Transcendence: From Travesty to Palinode
Travesty
A Lesson in Deportment
Palinode
Chapter 4: Discerning Insincerity
The Good Courtier
The Bad Courtier
Sincerity Then and Now
Conclusion
Peter DeSa Wiggins is Professor of English at The College of William and Mary. (More to come.)
Aiming to show that Donne's quest for a political career .. could produce poetic performances of subtlety and originality and that Baldassere Castiglione's The Courtier constituted a paradigm structure within which Donne could retain his critical detachment, maintain the highest standards of poetic excellence .. and write a poetry of ambition designed to advance his political interests, Wiggins (College of William & Mary) declares his intention to strike a middle way between what he regards as two prevailing schools of Donne criticism. At one end of the spectrum are proponents of the radical Donne—Earl Miner, Arnold Stein, Richard Strier; at the other, adherents of the conformist Donne—John Carey, Arthur F. Marotti, Jonathan Goldberg. Throughout, Wiggins does an exemplary job of using the criticisms of each school while simultaneously showing the weaknesses of their collective viewpoints—weaknesses he claims are often due to unwarranted neglect of the influence of The Courtier on Donne and his age. Whether or not one agrees, readers should be grateful for Wiggins's careful analysis of such poems as Aire and Angels, On His Mistress, and Satyres, among many others. Extremely readable and remarkably free of critical jargon, this volume is a very welcome addition to Donne studies. Full notes. Graduate students through faculty. —L. L. Bronson, emeritus, Central Michigan University
~"2001sep CHOICE