Love's Intermedial Limbecke: A Stylistic Analysis of Donne's “A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day, Being the Shortest Day”

Abstract

ABSTRACTJohn Donne's “A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day, Being the Shortest Day” is a complex engagement with alchemy that many critics have found difficult to decode. The stylistic approach taken in this article examines the use of alchemy as a source domain at all levels of the poem. The conceptual metaphor Love is a Force is shown to have multi-planar expression. Graphologically, this renders “Nocturnall” a pattern poem, the stanzaic form of which resembles a limbecke (distillatory vessel). This intermediality is complemented by interlocking instantiations of the trope at the level of lexis, grammar and phonology.