Strange Harmony: Rhetorical Figures as Devices of Estrangement in Donne’s “Upon the Annunciation and Passion”

• In Event: Donne in Dialogue

Abstract

On March 25, 1608, the fixed Feast of the Annunciation coincided with the moveable date of Good Friday. Donne’s poem on this unusual concurrence of holy days is an illuminating site for examining early modern literary “devices of estrangement.” In “Upon the Annunciation and Passion,” Donne employs various rhetorical figures, such as aporia and synoeciosis, to create doubt about the double nature of the day and defamiliarize the Christ story. However, these estrangements function dialectically; the poem ultimately aims to renew awe for God’s composition of contraries in both the life of Christ and that of the individual believer. I explore Donne’s use of figures alongside the directions of Renaissance theorists such as Peacham and Hoskyns. Situating Donne’s estranging aesthetic in the wider context of Renaissance literary and rhetorical theory sheds new light on Donne’s characteristic strangeness and on the poetics of estrangement in early modern England more generally.

Author

• Anton E. Bergstrom, Wilfrid Laurier University