The duality of voice in John Donne's poetry

For this study, I will examine a number of critics who address this issue of tension and/or ambivalence in Donne's love poetry and several of his religious poems. These critics span a considerable space of time and invariably reflect certain inclinations in their critical or scholarly approaches. For example, two critics in particular who examine what might be termed Donne's linguistic conflicts are Judith Scherer Herz and Stanley Fish. Herz expresses this tension as follows: “The urgent speaking voice we think we hear in the [Donne] poem is a calculated illusion, the consequence of the collision of an unstable poem and a dislocated reader” (3). Stanley Fish traces a similar path in his reading of Donne's poetry. A Donne poem is “the result of an experience in which the reader is always a step behind the gymnastic contortions of the poet's rhetorical logic, straining to understand a point that has already been abandoned, striving to maintain a focus on a scene whose configurations refuse to stand still” (225). Both these critics' approaches offer a fresh and exciting lens through which to study Donne's poetry. Both of their approaches reflect new insights that readers of Donne's poetry can search out and enjoy. Although these post-structualists' methods drift too far into a matrix of nullifying signifiers, the more recent strategies, which owe a great deal to Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man (to name but two), also offer expanded possibilities for interpretation, and infuse “close reading” with a range for exploring more deeply the psychology of Donne's poetry. However, it is not my purpose to assume any particular critical stance or to follow exactly either Herz's or Fish's methods (since I disagree with several of their conclusions), but rather to employ some of the strategies in their criticism to develop the single thread that binds together almost all of Donne's poetic endeavors.; It is my contention that Donne's use of his unique poetic style, coupled with his use of poetic convention as constructed in his imagination, creates poetry that expresses his major themes: a struggle for masculine dominance, a fear of parting, a desire for permanence and unity. The three themes are played out in a linguistic drama of two recurring voices in Donne's poetry: the assertive voice and the submissive voice, as they adapt to the subject under consideration in each particular poem, and produce powerful ambivalence. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...