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Epistemes and Imitations: Thom Gunn on Ben Jonson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Stefan Hawlin
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Abstract

The mode of imitatio enhances the persistence and evolution of genres over time, contrary to the implications of Foucault's concept of epistemes (the idea of discontinuous historical eras). Imitatio, well practiced, awakens extraordinary commonalities of sensibility among poets of different periods (classical, Renaissance, contemporary), including how they understand and manipulate genres, and so raises the possibility of a more unitive view of history, culture, and time. Ben Jonson, with his coherent theoretical view of imitatio, was a crucial poet for Thom Gunn, who self-consciously imitated the mode of imitation, producing in “An Invitation” a re-creation of the country-house poem as embodied by Jonson's “To Sir Robert Wroth” and in “Lament” (his great AIDS elegy) a response to seventeenth-century funeral elegy, in particular Jonson's “Elegie on the Lady Jane Pawlet.”

Type
Special Topic: Remapping Genre Coordinated by Wai Chee Dimock and Bruce Robbins
Information
PMLA , Volume 122 , Issue 5: Special Topic Remapping Genre , October 2007 , pp. 1516 - 1530
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by The Modern Language Association of America

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