John Donne's Verse Epistles

Introduction Donne's Verse Epistles have received many critiques but also praises since the time of their writing: the former have mostly focused on the social context of their composition, blaming them for being more the products of the custom of advancement than proper works of literature; the latter, instead, have stressed their labyrinthine wit and brilliant eulogies as testimonies of their sophisticated literariness. Many unfavourable comments may be found over the centuries: Ben Jonson himself charged them with blasphemy 1 , and in the twentieth century Grierson argued that in their "scholastic theology is made the instrument of courtly compliment and pious flirtation" 2 . Besides, Patricia Thomson and John Carey fail to acknowledge a purely aesthetic import in them: the former maintains that they are unctuous declarations of loyalty addressed to possible future patrons 3 , and the latter affirms that they are laudatory religious poems prompted by an anxiety for patronage 4 . J. B. Leishman's evaluation, instead, is mixed, as he traces a huge amount of Donne's "unserious wit, or serious trifling", and believes that such baroque compliments and obscure references mostly drawn from theology should not be considered as clues of Donne's genuine appreciation of theology itself. Yet his Verse Epistles have garnered also several positive interpretations. Gardner, for instance, recognizes beauty in many of them and is amused by the dynamics of Donne's thought 5 , while Stapleton considers them as a preparatory study for the Anniversaries 6 . On the contrary, Milgate perceives the "sheer wit and elaborate play of mind and fancy" of the Verse Epistles's encomiastic lines: he understands that according to Donne every trace of virtue on Earth is a clue of the existence of God, which leads to the notion that the commendations of his patrons' and patronesses' virtues, as profane as they may sound, contain a certain degree of sincerity. Therefore, he holds them to be true in "an other-world", the divine world, even though he finds them "courtly" and lacking in "solemnity" 7 . Finally, DeStefano judges them "Donne's most ambitious and 1 Even though Jonson uttered such words as regards to Donne's Anniversaries, stating that they were "profane and full of Blasphemies", "if they had been written of ye Virgin Marie it had been something" (cit. in Stubbs, The Reformed Soul, London, Penguin-Viking, 2006, p. 281), DeStefano goes as far as to applying it also to the Verse Epistles, because she reckons that "Ben Jonson's charge […] continues to underlie the criticism of Donne's extravagant complimentary verse": B. DeStefano, "Evolution and Extravagant Praise in Donne's Verse Epistles", in Studies in Philology, (Winter, 1984), p. 75. 2 H. Grierson, Donne's Poetical Works, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1912, p. xx, cit. in DeStefano, op. cit., p. 75. 3 P. Thomson, "The Literature of Patronage 1580-1630", in Essays in Criticism, 1952, II, (3), cit. in DeStefano, op. cit., p. 75. 4 J. Carey, John Donne: Life, Mind and Art, New York, Oxford University Press, 1981, cit. in DeStefano, op. cit., p. 75. 5 H. Gardner, "Notes on Donne's Verse Letters", in The Modern Language Review, V ol. 41, No. 3 (Jul. 1946), p. 318. 6 L. Stapleton, "The Theme of Virtue in Donne's Verse Epistles", in Studies in Philology, 55, (1958), p. 187. 7 According to Milgate, Donne's relationship with his patronesses is in no way sycophantic: he actually conjectures that "the ingenuity and lively fancy with with he pursues the basic analogy to the remotest paradox or the most refined abstraction, the resource of mind which summons all sorts of apparently unrelated but fascinating detail to 3