Sexual Transgression in Donne's Elegies

Over the past two centuries, readers have often been puzzled or alienated by John Donne's Elegies. Their discomfort has arisen primarily from his treatment of women. Nineteenth-century critics worried that the Elegies indicted the Dean of St. Paul's of gross passions and misconduct; today, some readers argue that they convict Donne of misogyny. During the past few years, however, perplexities have begun to clear as scholars have recovered elucidating materials and perspectives. This article sustains the recent depreciation of love as the primary concern of the Elegies; it proposes a new interpretive field with the potential to change the way we read these poems: the popular controversy about women. Along with other Renaissance authors, Donne was prompted to question the distinctions and the relations between the sexes by a public controversy in England that spanned the years from 1540 to 1640. This debate, a protracted reevaluation of changing sexual roles, sprang from a combination of economic and cultural factors while chronicling sexual and social anxieties across a broad spectrum of people-from women who wanted more freedom and respect to men who worried about the loss of male identity. But it especially recorded the anxieties of men who feared the loss of their traditional dominance over women, and of people who feared that changing sexual roles would bring on the disintegration of family and society. An awareness of the stereotypes, concerns, and themes that constituted the public debate can clarify the Elegies substantially. In brief, the Renaissance woman question resituates these poems in a cultural context that explains their characteristic features, so alien to the traditionally idealizing bent of most vernacular love poetry. These include their frequent satirical cast as well as their variously nasty and