시성의 패러디로서의 시성

Abstract

This essay attempts to read John Donne’s “The Canonization” as an anti-Catholic parody. As we read the poem, we seldom see that it was a poem of parody by a poet who was a bright young man aspiring to a court-based career. In the poem, the poet degrades the honored tradition of canonization in the Roman Catholic Church in which Donne’s ancestry had kept firm faith. Despite his biographical ambiguity, Donne’s life and writings before 1601 show how strenuously he strove to reason himself into a higher career like a lawyer or a courtier. For him the Catholic background of his family, in which he was deeply involved, was a big burden, since England was fighting against the Catholic Church. This religio-political situation of the time seems to have driven him into a very awkward hole, forcing him to choose between the different Churches for his future career. Intentional or not, he wrote poems which twisted and parodied Catholic traditions, thus seeking to establish himself as an exemplary person of the nation who was neutral to religion or at least unsympathetic with Catholicism. From the New Historical perspective, this aspect in his poetry can be understood as resulting from his agonized responses to the religio-political interests of the time which he tried to take advantage of.