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- Title
John Donne and the Legacy of Early Modern Testamentary Verse.
- Authors
Clark, Douglas
- Abstract
This article explores John Donne's contribution to the relatively overlooked genre of early modern testamentary verse. I use Donne's work to show that poetic wills and testaments do not simply constitute poems that are structured as lengthy inventories of complaints and bequests. My study instead demonstrates that the formal features of his testamentary poems relate to and deviate from the egocentrically commemorative impulses of elegiac, epitaphic, and lyric verse. I argue that testamentary poems provide a unique textual site for self-display and self-commemoration because they function to communicate and fulfill the will of the (soon-to-be) dead. In sum, this article aims to advance our knowledge of the wider role that the composition of poetic legacies played in early modern English literary culture.
- Subjects
WILLS; POETRY (Literary form); EARLY modern English literature; ELEGIAC poetry; EPITAPHS; LYRIC poetry; DONNE, John, 1572-1631
- Publication
Studies in Philology, 2023, Vol 120, Issue 2, p221
- ISSN
0039-3738
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/sip.2023.0007