Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John L. Klause

Critical Essay by John L. Klause

SOURCE: Klause, John L. “Donne and the Wonderful.” English Literary Renaissance 17, no. 1 (winter 1987): 41-66.

In the following essay, Klause examines how Donne uses the concept of miracles and alchemy—the science of changing matter into gold—in his elaborate, sometimes satirical metaphysical conceits in poets such as “Loves Alchymie,” “The Canonization,” “The Extasie” and “A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day,” as well as in religious essays.

In Ignatius His Conclave Donne mocks Paracelsus, portraying “Bombast of Hohenheim” as a foolish innovator whose empty, in some ways pernicious, works and pomps fail to win him distinction even in the precincts of hell.¹ Since Donne's writings often rely upon the alchemical “mystery” to which Paracelsus contributed, the satirist's contempt, playful as it is, may seem like ingratitude. We cannot take seriously his reference to Paracelsus as “an excellent Chirurgian” (Biath., p. 216). Even so, Donne's implicit acknowledgment that alchemy might have...
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