The article examines the Donne’s elegy “Obsequies to the Lord Harrington, brother to the Lady Lucy, Countesse of Bedford”; poem is studied by the method of close reading. Written to order by the Countess in 1614, the work may have become the poet’s last poetic text. It absorbed all the features of Donne’s metaphysical style and poetic “wit”. Throughout the elegy, the metaphor of the soul’s journey unfolds with the help of such navigation tools as a compass, a clock, a telescope and a celestial map. Concept combines Christian, philosophical and modern scientific invension end Kepler’s optik ideas. In the context of the idea of the Great Chain of Being and the platonic concept set forth in the Timaeus, Donne thinks of the cosmos as connected with the state, society, community, and each of its members, and the poet managed to capture and show this connection thanks to the short and righteous life of the deceased. The poem is built on the principle of a retrospective and is compositionally divided into three parts: the first is dedicated to the world above, the second to social life, the third to the personal life of J. Harrington.
early modern period; John Donne; elegy; John Harrington; Lucy Bedford; I. Kepler; metaphysical style; concept; religious poetry; optics; navigation.
Lisovich, I.I. “Optics of the Divine and the Earthly in Elegy of John Donne ‘Obsequies to the Lord Harrington, Brother to the Lady Lucy, Countesse of Bedford’” (1614). Literaturovedcheskii zhurnal, no. 4(58), 2022, pp. 28–47. (In Russ.)
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