Donne and Paradoxes and Philosophy

I just read the article “Paradox in Donne” by Michael McCanles. This article was fascinating and had some really interesting points in it, but it was also nearly impossible for me to read because it seems to have been written by someone far more steeped in traditions of philosophy and philosophical language than I am. I managed to get the gist of it, though. So that’s nice.

McCanles is making an argument about what Donne’s paradoxes are accomplishing in terms of philosophical traditions in what he calls “concept-object correspondence,” which, as far as I can tell, is the practice of asking to what degree do the things we can conceive of reflect reality. In order to give an understanding of the philosophical tradition that Donne is writing in, McCanles starts his paper by giving an overview of various schools of thought regarding concept-object correspondence, ultimately showing that while many of them approach the idea of correspondence from differing angles and understandings, most people have been inclined to agree that there is some degree of correspondence between what we can think and what actually is factual. This tendency becomes especially clear when we think about our tendency to have a commitment to logic as a legitimate way of making statements about factual reality.

McCanles argues that Donne’s paradoxical poems (and here he is addressing a somewhat specified set of his poems, mostly found in Songs and Sonets, which form arguments similar to classical paradoxical puzzles) use the practice of connecting things which bear similar characteristics and logic to argue things — but he takes the argument so far as to force the reader to come to the opposite conclusion of what the poem’s speaker is arguing. He does a fascinating analysis of “The Flea” under this theory, which is really too detailed to summarize here. If you’re interested, the article is well worth a read.

McCanles concludes by acknowledging the poems that he does not address under this theory. Donne’s more “serious” paradoxical poems — and here he lists “The Extasie,” “A Valediction: forbidding mourning,” and “Lovers infinitenesse” — are not ones that submit themselves to be immediately contradicted, but instead “the dialectic between reader and writer and mind and matter ends not simply in a destruction of the poem’s argument, but rather results in a balanced, unresolved dialectic by which both sides cooperate in holding in solution existential situations which defy clear conceptualization and which can be defined only in paradox” (286). It would appear then, that here Donne challenges readers not to just reject the speaker’s propositions, but instead to see the problematic paradox inherent in the poem and to accept both sides of the paradox anyway.

This article seems like an excellent jumping-off point for me in considering Donne’s use of paradox and how that may relate to his concept of the self. McCanles writes that Donne’s paradox “requires the mind of the reader to take a new look not only at the reality [which may be the opposite of what has just been logically argued] but also at its own capabilities for grasping that reality” (277). I’m hoping that by looking at how Donne is forcing the reader to rethink their own understanding of the world and even of their understanding itself, I can find a place to pursue the idea that Donne is perhaps trying to show the reader that ultimately, existing as the self is itself a paradox.