양성 간의 긴장과 성 역학의 전도: 존 던의 엘레지

Abstract

In the Early Modern era, fundamental changes in the public and private area are occurring in England. We can see these changes of the sex roles and gender identities, the relations between sexes in Donne's Elegies. The Elegies contain Donne's most unconventional and outspoken poems, and they record the defiance to the conventional authority of parents, fathers, and husbands with the vivid dramatic realism. There is an emphasis on the sexual transgressions of the masculine woman and the feminine man in the Elegies, and these transgressions are regarded as a symptom of eroded values and social destabilization. Most of Donne's elegies deal with the nature and roles of women and men, and the relations between sexes in the family and society. The social circumstances and cultural currents of the 16th and 17th century England century generated fears of social disruption and breakdown of gender identities and distinctions. Donne's elegies show these anxieties of men who fears the loss of their traditional sovereignty and mastery over women, and the tension between the male mastery and female resistance to man's control and dominance. The narrators of these elegies fear the change of sexual roles which would bring on the disintegration of family and society. The purpose of this study is to examine the tension between the sexes and reversed sex roles in Donne's Elegies, especially focussing on “Elegy 1: Jealousy,” “Elegy 3: The Change,” and “Elegy 7: Nature's Lay Idiot.”