Eying the Thought Awry: The Anamorphosis of John Donne's Poetry

Abstract

AbstractBy applying the concept of anamorphosis to the logical structures of John Donne's poetry, this essay extends the concept of anamorphosis from the visual peculiarity of an obscured image whose revelation requires finding an eccentric point of view to the epistemological process experienced by the viewer. An encounter with anamorphosis possesses its own strict logic; likewise, anamorphic constructions engender a rhetoric specific to their needs. Riehl argues that literary criticism should extend the study of anamorphosis in early modern literary texts in a new direction: both visual and verbal anamorphic models are engendered by the habits of thought, patterns of thinking that, by the seventeenth century, pervade various media and modes of representation. Even in the absence of explicit references to perspective, seeing, or painting, a text may nevertheless operate according to the rules of anamorphic logic and rhetoric. Aiming the anamorphic lens at Donne, this essay unravels anew the complex argum...