« Lo, here I lie » : les jeux du paradoxe chez Donne
Abstract : Although Donne’s works hardly ever allude to Early Modern games, they are far from being play-free. In them, however, play takes on a poetic guise. This article first examines the context in which Donne started to write, in the 1590s. It points out that together with his peers from the In...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institut du Monde Anglophone
2021-05-01
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| Series: | Etudes Epistémè |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/12385 |
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| Summary: | Abstract : Although Donne’s works hardly ever allude to Early Modern games, they are far from being play-free. In them, however, play takes on a poetic guise. This article first examines the context in which Donne started to write, in the 1590s. It points out that together with his peers from the Inns of Court and “convivial societies” he contributed to the rise of a playful ex tempore poetry at a time when collections of paradoxical statements and pseudo-encomiums had become very popular. As theorised by American anthropologist Gregory Bateson, play always involves an implicit self-referential comment and it is deeply paradoxical for it always transforms and transfers the meaning of what it represents. Borrowing from Bateson’s work, this article analyses the paradoxes and, more particularly, the self-reflexive paradoxes in “The Paradox”, “The Triple Fool” and “Paradox VII” (“That a wise man is knowne by much Laughinge”) from Paradoxes and Problems (1633) as a form of play, that is to say, in the mechanical sense, as a space in which fluctuations occur. These figures indeed cause the constant and dizzying migration of meaning. |
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| ISSN: | 1634-0450 |