Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T20:35:46.668Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - Nature (II): church and cosmos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Reid Barbour
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Get access

Summary

Browne's Religio Medici and Harvey's De Generatione epitomize how complex and exploratory the calibration of natural theology becomes in Caroline England. In their framing of religious circumstances with problems in natural theology, Browne and Harvey were the fruition of an English religious culture in the 1620s and 30s that featured such conflicted texts as Donne's Devotions of 1624. Throughout his career, Donne sustains no consistent attitude toward the “new philosophy,” but in the Devotions, he struggles to interweave a theory of natural plenism and holism with his belief in the ceremonial unity of the church. This fusion is meant to counter the frightening possibility that community and correspondence can no longer protect the witty self from isolation and singularity. Writing in the years of Bacon's Great Instauration, that is, Donne struggles against those compelling models of the mind and of nature that threaten to destroy his argument for holism, plenism, and plurality. Defined both as cosmic correspondence and ritual context, the network of circumstances in “Natures nest of Boxes” extends the pneumatic spirit of imagination outward from the isolated patient to the world at large, especially by way of analogies. Far from resting assured in the holism of church and cosmos, however, Donne equivocates about whether the thoughts and intentions of the solitary wit necessarily remain within the nest.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Nature (II): church and cosmos
  • Reid Barbour, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: Literature and Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century England
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511483448.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Nature (II): church and cosmos
  • Reid Barbour, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: Literature and Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century England
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511483448.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Nature (II): church and cosmos
  • Reid Barbour, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: Literature and Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century England
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511483448.008
Available formats
×