A glimmering light: reading, writing, mysticism and presence in the religious verse of John Donne

Abstract

This thesis investigates the fate of medieval reading practices in the early modern verse of John Donne. Monastics, working within the tradition of lectio divina (I focus particularly on the work of Bernard of Clairvaux), had approached Scripture in order to experience God’s indwelling presence. Scriptural reading, these monks believed, was not a means whereby knowledge might be delivered, but an activity in which divine presence could be immanently experienced.

Investigating three Donne poems, The Anniversaries, “La Corona” and “Goodfriday 1613. Riding Westward”, I argue for Donne’s engagement with lectio divina. This engagement is not straightforward, however. Although I see Donne to be confident in verse about his ability to experience the divine through reading, he is much less evidently secure in regard to his own ability to inscribe such divinity. There is a disparity, therefore, between Donne’s felt abilities as reader and writer, which leads him to a form of verse that presses an essentially monastic reading methodology, yet displaces this method’s original goal in respect to its own readership. Donne’s concern, I argue, is with the reading experience of his own readers, what is most clearly experienced by these readers, however, is not the divine but Donne himself.