Semeiologia, Semiotic Bridges, and the “New Science” in Donne's Ignatius His Conclave and An Anatomy of the World

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper re-examines a number of scholarly claims about John Donne’s attitudes toward the “New Science” in Ignatius His Conclave and An Anatomy of the World. Published in the same year (1611), both texts confirm Donne’s intense interest in the cosmological debates of his day; yet, each poem explores a different cosmological model. Read together, the two poems, provide a more resolved picture of Donne’s thoughts about the controversy. Making use of extensive archival research in early-modern medicinal semeiology (diagnosis/prognosis), this paper pays special attention to Donne’s use of anatomy as a metaphysical conceit. In particular, a careful examination of the medical use of astrological anatomy in early-modern Europe extends our understanding of Donne’s concerns about the controversy. Ultimately, this paper maintains that Donne’s distress about the “New Science” extends well beyond contemporary debates over cosmological models and atomism, to concerns over the status of meaning itself, in a world robbed of signification.