Paradoxical Body Politic Of Queen Elizabeth In John Donne’s Erotic Poetry

John Donne as the forefather of English Metaphysical poetry has already been a hot topic both abroad and at home. And he won his fame through his neoteric but obscure conceits in his works mainly including sonnets. elegies. songs. sermons. For many commentators. the generally acknowledged subject in his poetry is love. death. and religion. Donne’s love poetry is identified with erotic poetry because of the erotic experience in these poems. Strictly speaking. the erotic poetry encompasses Songs and Sonnets and Elegies. It has been epitomized as Donne’s metaphysical conceits of love generally. However. this kind of reading not only confounded some readers. but also made the reading itself confined to the text and the subtext can not be revealed. As some critics have noticed that Donne brings politics and religion into his erotic poems, where amatory, political, and religious discourses are so interwoven that the history is reconstructed and that the reader is challenged to decipher the poems, and to determine what Donne might be saying about the service of love, politics and religion. But few further gives an exploration of what the political subtext of Donne’s erotic poetry refers to. This thesis is devoted to this exploration.New Historicism provides a good way to reveal the subtext of the literature text. It is a literary critical approach emerged in the1980s. which advocates the mutual verification between historv and literature. It means the social context not onlv exists as a background. but a mutual reflection between the history and text. In short. it is the historicity of text and textuality of history. So. not only the historical and social ideology can affect the literary works. but also the literature can reconstruct the history in turn.This thesis attempts to employ New Historicism to analyze the erotic poetry of John Donne. It proposes that the central lady in Donne’s erotic poetry is an allusion to Queen Elizabeth. And the paradoxical sonnet sequence is a depiction of the paradoxical body politic of Queen Elizabeth. In Songs and Sonnets, the theme of the frustrated yearning of the mutually spiritual love with the centered woman forms a paradox with the longing for the erotic love with the desired woman. It is an allusion to the paradoxical body politic of Queen Elizabeth. In Elegies. the poet shows a great disillusionment with the "love" for the queen. so he further uglifies the queen into two kinds of morbid body:the lubricious body and the demonized body. They represent the body politic of Queen Elizabeth. which form a paradox with the publicly advertised chaste, virtue, and fair body politic of the queen. and this labeled divine body politic is also mentioned in the poems and always exists as a subtext. This depiction is a representation of the historical context of the reign under a woman monarch. and it in turn reconstructs the history of the queen’s reign. which expresses Donne’s political appeal. On one side, from the perspective of religion. Donne shows his anxiety and doubt of the woman monarch. who violates the Christ-centered premise of the King’s Two Bodies, ridiculously and paradoxically, since the king should be a mimesis of Christ:on the other side, it shows a hatred of the queen’s body politic. which exists only in the form of her body natural and executes power by taking advantage of the gender. not only bringing chaos to England but also putting heavy burdens on people. Thus. the body politic of the queen becomes a profaned and downtrodden object of the courtiers and others abroad. Apart from that, such a textuality of history aims to get the identification of a favor of Queen Elizabeth. Earl of Essex. who can help Donne to realize his political ambition since Essex is tolerant with religion and hostile to the woman monarch. He is a suitable successor to overthrow the reign of Elizabeth. So. the depiction of the paradoxical body politic of Queen Elizabeth in erotic poetry is not only a historicity of text. but also a textuality of history.This thesis consists of five parts:The introduction part gives a brief literature review of John Donne and his erotic poetry from abroad and at home. It also presents the basis and significance of this thesis. including the theme and organization.Chapter one gives an explicit explanation of what the New Historicism is and how it is related with the literary criticism. And then it employs the approach of mutual verification of literature and history in New Historicism to analyze how the queen Elizabeth is alluded in John Donne’s erotic poetry. It goes for three parts. including the allusion to "loving service", the allusion to Queen’s body politic, and the allusion to Donne’s political appeal in the erotic poetry.Chapter two specifically analyzes the paradoxical body politic of Queen Elizabeth in John Donne’s erotic poetry. It divides into two parts. One is the queen’s paradoxical body politics in Song.s and Sonnets. the paradox between the Queen-centered body politic and Christ-centered body politic. The other one is the paradoxical body politic of Queen Elizabeth in Elegies. It refers to the body politic of the queen existing only in the form of her natural body, which is categorized into two types:the lubricious Queen’s body politic and the demonized Queen’s body politic, and they form a paradox of the governmentally built image of a chaste, virgin and fair Queen. And these two secularized body politics form a morbid body politic in Donne’s Elegies.Chapter three reveals Donne’s motives of writing the paradoxical body politic of Queen Elizabeth in the erotic poetry. It encompasses his political consideration in religion and his political ambition. This is why Donne wrote history into his erotic poetry and why he reconstructed it in the paradoxical depiction of Queen Elizabeth’s body politic.The conclusion part concludes that Donne’s erotic poetry is an allusion to the paradoxical body politic of Queen Elizabeth. This is how the history affects his writing and in turn how he reconstructs it in his way.