11 Foucault, confession, and Donne
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Joel M. Dodson
Abstract
This chapter reconsiders Michel Foucault's critique of confession in order to examine, in slightly broader yet more methodological terms, what exactly we mean by negotiating 'confessional' conflict in late Reformation English literature. It offers a candid analysis of ecclesial and professional division as forms of life, illuminating in Foucault's mature work a more interesting prospect. This prospect is the re-definition of confessional practice away from a 'hermeneutics of the subject', and the articulation of a more local, civic understanding of the religious self, in which doctrinal confession forms a 'stylistics of existence', rather than subjection. The chapter focuses on John Donne's remarks at The Hague to consider his explicit references to such 'care', which Donne finds prefigured in the spiritual and vocational 'nets' of the apostolic fishermen in Matthew's gospel, as well as the theology of the confessionalized Church on which it is based.
Abstract
This chapter reconsiders Michel Foucault's critique of confession in order to examine, in slightly broader yet more methodological terms, what exactly we mean by negotiating 'confessional' conflict in late Reformation English literature. It offers a candid analysis of ecclesial and professional division as forms of life, illuminating in Foucault's mature work a more interesting prospect. This prospect is the re-definition of confessional practice away from a 'hermeneutics of the subject', and the articulation of a more local, civic understanding of the religious self, in which doctrinal confession forms a 'stylistics of existence', rather than subjection. The chapter focuses on John Donne's remarks at The Hague to consider his explicit references to such 'care', which Donne finds prefigured in the spiritual and vocational 'nets' of the apostolic fishermen in Matthew's gospel, as well as the theology of the confessionalized Church on which it is based.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Notes on contributors ix
- Acknowledgments xii
- Introduction 1
-
Part I Religious ritual and literary form
- 1 Shylock celebrates Easter 21
- 2 Protestant faith and Catholic charity 39
- 3 Singing in the counter 56
- 4 Romancing the Eucharist 72
- 5 Edmund Spenser’s The Ruines of Time as a Protestant poetics of mourning and commemoration 90
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Part II Negotiating confessional conflict
- 6 Letters to a young prince 113
- 7 Tragic mediation in The White Devil 126
- 8 ‘A deed without a name’ 142
- 9 Henry V and the interrogative conscience as a space for the performative negotiation of confessional conflict 160
- 10 Formal experimentation and the question of Donne’s ecumenicalism 182
- 11 Foucault, confession, and Donne 196
- Afterword 216
- Index 239
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Notes on contributors ix
- Acknowledgments xii
- Introduction 1
-
Part I Religious ritual and literary form
- 1 Shylock celebrates Easter 21
- 2 Protestant faith and Catholic charity 39
- 3 Singing in the counter 56
- 4 Romancing the Eucharist 72
- 5 Edmund Spenser’s The Ruines of Time as a Protestant poetics of mourning and commemoration 90
-
Part II Negotiating confessional conflict
- 6 Letters to a young prince 113
- 7 Tragic mediation in The White Devil 126
- 8 ‘A deed without a name’ 142
- 9 Henry V and the interrogative conscience as a space for the performative negotiation of confessional conflict 160
- 10 Formal experimentation and the question of Donne’s ecumenicalism 182
- 11 Foucault, confession, and Donne 196
- Afterword 216
- Index 239
