오독과 위험: 위험한 담론과 존 던의 글쓰기 전략

Misinterpretation and Danger: Dangerous Discourse and Donne’s Writing Strategy.

John Donne was constantly conscious of dangers inherent in many different forms of discourse and communication. Donne, born into a Catholic family during the rapidly changing times of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, struggled between the pressure of conversion and his social and political ambitions. This significantly influenced and shaped Donne’s habitus, which is reflected in his writings. Under these circumstances, he tried to express his ideas, seemingly new and paganistic, through his rhetorical strategies rather than compromising with or accepting dominant religious or state authority. Donne’s correspondences and works express the fear Donne had towards ruling powers and authorities as well as his internal conflicts deriving from his resistant and defiant nature. In particular, Donne’s anxiety and fear caused by the dangers inherent in his writings and speeches, are scattered through his Satires , Elegies and Biathanatos . On sending his manuscript of Biathanatos, the paradoxical treatise defending suicide, to his friend, Donne pronounced it to be “upon a misinterpretable subject” and was concerned about the risks of misinterpretation and misreading. This paper aims at analyzing what are the factors of misinterpretation and danger of Donne’s misinterpretable text, and researching how Donne employed his writing strategies to conceal the potentially dangerous discourse through his early writings, Biathanatos and his correspondences.