literary, conceit, friendship, personal, decorum, letter, verse, voices, dialogue, choreograph

<< previous   next >>

185

literary conceit used to demonstrate the profundity of personal friendship, the affectation of multiple bodies sharing one soul serves an important utilitarian purpose for these poets.

Lynne Magnusson argues that one of the primary functions of the familiar epistle is the “repair and maintenance” of social relationships, of preserving and mending social bonds and erasing differences of opinion as a strategy of self-preservation in a competitive and factious society. She writes,

If the concept of repair work in epistolary interaction provides a crucial perspective on the rhetoricity of the letter, the related understanding of repair as conditioned jointly by the relative positioning of the correspondents and the risk level of the business at hand enables us to negotiate the complex dynamics of the letter’s flexible decorum. ³²⁶

In the verse miscellanies of Googe and Whitney, the epistolary exchanges they include display publicly this process of repair and maintenance as they present themselves as part of cohesive social groups their membership of which presents a united front against social rivals and acts as a deterrent against potential detractors. In the case of Donne’s verse letters he occasionally departs from epistolary decorum in verse letters that seem to threaten to disrupt and undermine the harmony of his social ties with his correspondents. He does this with the intention of generating a reconciliatory outcome for the exchange by subsequently mending the rift he has created and thereby demonstrating performatively his aptitude for the diplomatic repair and maintenance of his social relationships. Thus it can be seen that the intersubjectivity displayed in these formations of verse dialogue is manufactured and choreographed by their central members Googe, Whitney and Donne, probably with the willing collusion of their correspondents. Moreover, all three writers invest in a moral philosophy which stipulates that such interaction with friends promotes psychological well-being.

Harvey, Ventriloquized Voices: Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts (London and NY: Routledge, 1992), pp.134-5.
³²⁶ Lynne Magnusson, Shakespeare and Social Dialogue: Dramatic Language and Elizabethan

<< previous   next >>

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web www.cultureandrhetoric.net