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WINNER of the 2024 John Donne Society Distinguished Publication Award
A new approach to the visual arts in the work of John Donne
The five known portraits of John Donne and the many artworks bequeathed in his will bear witness to his interest in painting. His interest in art is also evident in his writings, with poems and sermons including many references to pictures and engravings, painters and sculptors. However, Donne never used his familiarity with painterly techniques to produce a simple ekphrasis or description in his writings. This book offers a new approach to Donne's rich and nuanced presentation of the visual arts in his writing, arguing that even his explicit allusions to pictures are less concrete than they may first appear.
Although Donne was familiar with contemporary treatises on art, many of his most compelling references to paintings and painterly techniques come from his reading of theology, including works by Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther.These previously unidentified sources for Donne's painterly imagery help us to understand how the plastic arts become his tool to reveal the limits of representation, and thus to point beyond the material realm towards the unrepresentable and unknowable divine.
This study provides new insights on some of his best-known poems, both secular and religious, and extends our appreciation of John Donne as an artist constantly exploring the limits of his own practice as a poet - and preacher - as he confronts the relationship between the human and the divine.
On publication this book is available as an Open Access eBook under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC.
A new approach to the visual arts in the work of John Donne
The five known portraits of John Donne and the many artworks bequeathed in his will bear witness to his interest in painting. His interest in art is also evident in his writings, with poems and sermons including many references to pictures and engravings, painters and sculptors. However, Donne never used his familiarity with painterly techniques to produce a simple ekphrasis or description in his writings. This book offers a new approach to Donne's rich and nuanced presentation of the visual arts in his writing, arguing that even his explicit allusions to pictures are less concrete than they may first appear.
Although Donne was familiar with contemporary treatises on art, many of his most compelling references to paintings and painterly techniques come from his reading of theology, including works by Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther.These previously unidentified sources for Donne's painterly imagery help us to understand how the plastic arts become his tool to reveal the limits of representation, and thus to point beyond the material realm towards the unrepresentable and unknowable divine.
This study provides new insights on some of his best-known poems, both secular and religious, and extends our appreciation of John Donne as an artist constantly exploring the limits of his own practice as a poet - and preacher - as he confronts the relationship between the human and the divine.
On publication this book is available as an Open Access eBook under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC.
Price: $39.95
Pages: 192
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: D.S.Brewer
Publication Date:
05 March 2024
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9781843847076
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance, Literary studies: c 1400 to c 1600, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 17th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, ART / History / European / Renaissance
It is always refreshing when a scholar invested in theology is also comfortable with uncertainty, fluidity, and unknowing. Both Stirling's broader arguments and her specific readings repeatedly resist certainty, definitiveness, or consistency; Picturing Divinity claims untidiness and unknowing as important lyric and doctrinal territory. Stirling's literary analyses are also often nuanced, subtle, and open-ended, and this is just as true of her readings of the sermons as it is of the holy sonnets or secular poems... Stirling raises important issues about how we should think about the figure, the artwork, the icon, and the image in a writer like Donne in a moment of English culture like his. Her work models important questions about how to study influences, allusions, and intertextuality in early modern writers: John Donne and beyond.
Introduction: Verbal and Visual Art
Making and breaking images
Donne's knowledge of art
Dr. Donne's art gallery
Iconoclasm and anxiety in Donne's poetry
1. Shadows
Portraits of Donne
"His Picture"
The picture in the heart
Likeness
2. Art and the Apophatic
The "well-made and well-placed picture"
The sculptor and the statue
The red glasse
The "curious masterpeece" and the Imago Dei
3. Annunciation: Representing the Unrepresentable
"In little roome": the circumscription of the divine
The Incarnate Word
Swerving away from ekphrasis
"A circle... whose first and last concurre"
4. Crucifixion
Negative theology and "The Crosse"
The Deus Absconditus and the Cross in Donne's Good Friday Poem
The "Picture of Christ crucified"
5. Judgement
Resurrection. Imperfect.
The face of God in the Holy Sonnets
Imagined corners
Vision and Revision
Ut pictura poesis
Conclusion
Making and breaking images
Donne's knowledge of art
Dr. Donne's art gallery
Iconoclasm and anxiety in Donne's poetry
1. Shadows
Portraits of Donne
"His Picture"
The picture in the heart
Likeness
2. Art and the Apophatic
The "well-made and well-placed picture"
The sculptor and the statue
The red glasse
The "curious masterpeece" and the Imago Dei
3. Annunciation: Representing the Unrepresentable
"In little roome": the circumscription of the divine
The Incarnate Word
Swerving away from ekphrasis
"A circle... whose first and last concurre"
4. Crucifixion
Negative theology and "The Crosse"
The Deus Absconditus and the Cross in Donne's Good Friday Poem
The "Picture of Christ crucified"
5. Judgement
Resurrection. Imperfect.
The face of God in the Holy Sonnets
Imagined corners
Vision and Revision
Ut pictura poesis
Conclusion