О НАВОДНОЈ ИНСТРУКТИВНОСТИ ДАНОВИХ ЕЛЕГИЈА
ON THE ALLEGED DIDACTICISM OF DONNE’S ELEGIES

Summary/Abstract: In a rare book-length study of Donne’s erotology - appropriately entitled John Donne: Conservative Revolutionary - N. J. C. Andreasen tried to turn on its head the well established (at the time, at least) idea of Donne as a radical / revolutionary poet. Having established the conceptual framework of Donne as a ‘conservative revolutionary’, Andreasen then interpreted Donne’s elegies as satirical, didactic and moralistic poems, which, according to Andreason, mock and condemn the hedonism that they superficially embrace and celebrate. Focusing not on Andreasen’s readings of Donne’s poems, but rather on the external suppositions of the conceptual framework, the paper at hand points out some of the contradictions and inconsistencies of this ‘didactic’ approach to reading Donne. By filling in some of the ‘blanks’ of Andreasen’s contextualization, and by expanding its scope, the paper shows how easily Andreasen’s argumentation can turn against itself, and become a ‘point of departure’ in the (re)establishing of a critical framework that allows Donne’s elegies to be approached as entertaining upshots of their author’s wit.

• Details
• Contents