John Donne's Physics [Hardcover]

A reimagining ofDevotions upon Emergent Occasionsas an original treatment of human life shaped by innovations in seventeenth-century science and medicine.
 
In 1624, poet and preacher John Donne publishedDevotions upon Emergent Occasions, a book that recorded his near-death experience during a deadly epidemic in London. Four hundred years later, in the aftermath of our own pandemic, Harvey and Harrison show howDevotionscrystalizes the power, beauty, and enduring strangeness of Donne’s thinking. Arguing that Donne saw human life in light of emergent ideas in the study of nature (physics) and the study of the body (physick),John Donne’s PhysicsrevealsDevotionsas a culminating achievement, a radically new literary form that uses poetic techniques to depict Donne’s encounter with death in a world transformed by new discoveries and knowledge systems.Elizabeth D. Harveyis professor emeritus of English at the University of Toronto, a literary critic, and a psychoanalyst. She is the author or editor of several books, most recentlyLuce Irigaray and Premodern Culture: Thresholds of History.  Timothy M. Harrisonis associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is the author ofComing To: Consciousness and Natality in Early Modern England, also published by the University of Chicago Press.List of Figures
Abbreviations
Preface

Introduction: Threshold Physics
1. Donne’s Experience
2. The Time of the Body
3. Changing Genres
4. The History of Words
5. The Physician Calls
6. Translating the Soul
Coda

Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

In their ambitious attempt to link Donnes thoughts on such topics to the work of Aristotle, Augustine, Dante, Montaigne, Paracelsus, and many ols®