Biografia come riscrittura e come accumulo di contributi: la prima edizione a stampa delle poesie di John Donne

Maria Grazia Dongu

2024-01-01

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Abstract

This essay examines the epitaphs and elegies written by Donne's friends and included in the first edition of the poet's poems. It aims to show that this edition recorded the collective biography of the member of the national community as it was performed on the day of his funeral. The parishioners of St Dustan's, some of whom also belonged to the enlightened Great Tew Circle, gathered to mourn and celebrate the Dr in Divinity, trying to bring together the two halves of his life as a love poet and a preacher. As was customary, they read their elegies and epitaphs, always intertextually referring to the various personae Donne had created in his poems, in the famous final portrait, and to which he alluded in his gift to his friends.