john donne's sacred aesthetics and protestant eschatology
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University of RichmondUR Scholarship Repository
Master's Theses Student Research
5-1999
John Donne's sacred aesthetics and protestanteschatology in La CoronaKaren R. Knudson
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Recommended CitationKnudson, Karen R., "John Donne's sacred aesthetics and protestant eschatology in La Corona" (1999). Master's Theses. 568.http://scholarship.richmond.edu/masters-theses/568
John Donne's Sacred Aesthetic and Protestant Eschatology in La Corona
Karen R. Knudson
Master of Arts
University of Richmond
May, 1991
Dr. Louis Schwartz, Advisor
The operative figure for describing John Donne's religious poem, La Corona, is not a circle, as it
has often been characterized, but a spiral. This figure incorporates the linear narrative and
climax of the poem while maintaining the circularity of on-going spiritual experience. Scholars
i
such as Patrick O'Connell and Elizabeth Hodgson are correct in viewing the poem as Donne's
ars poetica sacra - his apologetic for the religious poet. But such scholars see either a climax
and resolution for the speaker of La Corona or an unresolved question of his place as a poet.
This paper argues that while the speaker of the poem does reach a spiritual crisis and learns a-"
lesson of faith, that lesson is not fmished in the eschatological sense. The linked sonnets of the
poem take the reader back to the beginning of the poem with a new understanding and ability to
continue the catechism.
