Poetics of the Recumbent Body in the Seventeenth Century: John Donne, Hernando Domínguez Camargo, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. 11 views

This dissertation investigates a paradox central to early modern meditative poetry: how stillness of the body—especially in its recumbent form—functions as a site for visionary movement, cosmic displacement, and social imagination. Through the analysis of three major poetic works from the transatlantic seventeenth century—John Donne’s “Hymne to God my God, in my Sicknesse” [1631], Hernando Domínguez Camargo’s San Ignacio de Loyola, fundador de la Compañía de Jesús. Poema heroico (1666), and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Primero sueño (1691)—I argue that these texts construct a poetics that enacts movement through stillness, inviting readers into a virtual sensory experience that is both devotional and relational in its aims. Each poem centers on a solitary, prone figure—lying in bed asleep, agonizing, or in contemplation—whose bodily stillness becomes the departure point for expansive mental and spiritual travel. The human body—mapped onto planetary spheres, the universe at night, or topographies of sacred history and wealth—provides a figure through which these poems interrogate the birth and consolidation of social bodies. My methodological approach consists on a comparative reading of these three poems through their relations with early modern devotional materials, both texts and objects. Drawing on primary texts such as Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Sor Juana’s Ejercicios de la Encarnación (c.1682), and Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises (1548), I examine how each poem engages with the structures and strategies of spiritual meditation. By examining the relational qualities of poetic movement in these three texts, this dissertation aims to contribute to broader conversations in comparative studies of poetry and poetics, especially those concerned with the intersections of lyric, embodiment, and relationality. In doing so, this project challenges prevailing assumptions about lyric solitude and subjectivity to underscore the importance of devotional poetry as a site where aesthetics and ethics, body and politics, meditation and community converge.

PHD (Doctor of Philosophy)

poetics; early modern poetry; meditative poetry; body; lyric; relationality

English

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2025-12-02