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{"id":16140,"date":"2014-06-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1069"},"modified":"2014-06-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T00:00:00","slug":"sacramental-rhetoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/06\/sacramental-rhetoric\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacramental Rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

In her study of\u00a0Eucharist and the Poetic Imagination in Early Modern England<\/a>, Sophie Read observes that since Donne never wrote directly on the sacramental debates of the Reformation era, his view has to be \u201creconstructed . . . from its rhetorical trace\u201d (86).<\/p>\n

Puns provide one source. A pun\u2019s \u201cpotential to double and divide, to explore the limits of the language of signification, lends it to the expression or enactment of a sacramental dynamic\u201d (86-7). His puns are \u201cJanus-faced,\u201d multiplying meanings.<\/p>\n

Citing the work of Eleanor McNees, she suggests that the double-sidedness of Donne\u2019s rhetoric reflects the rhetorical foundation of his sacramental theology. Donne wrote in one sermon, \u201cWe say the sacramental bread is the body of Christ because God hath shed his Ordinance upon it, and made it of another nature in the use, though not in the substance\u201d (87). McNees finds in this view of the real presence an \u201canalogy for Donne\u2019s use of divisive poetic figures, particularly pun and paradox.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read offers an example from La Corona<\/em>: \u201cThe last line of each of the seven sonnets forms the first line of the next, until the final line of the last turns out to have been the first line of the first, a pleasing circularity that has long been identified with the devotional practice of telling the rosary.\u201d Along the way, words begin to \u201cwork free\u201d from single significations, just as the bread takes on another nature in use because \u201cGod hath shed his Ordinance upon it.\u201d Rhetorical figures take on \u201ca sacramental function, and rhetoric and eucharist act as mutual guarantee: Donne\u2019s confidence in their powers of truthful conveyance depends, finally, on this analogy, and on the capacity of each to underwrite the other\u201d (87).<\/p>\n

The fact that the eucharist can take on a new \u201cnature\u201d by the ordinance of God underwrites a rhetorical proliferation that is something other than Derridean dissemination, a rhetorical play that is utterly serious.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"