| The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation initiated a controversy over the Christian doctrine of the eucharist, during which no issue was more contentious than the sacrament's semiotic status. Catholics and Protestants agreed that the eucharist was a sign but differed radically over exactly how it signified; Protestants also disagreed with one another. As a result, continental and English tractarians produced a large body of polemic articulating a range of semiotic approaches to the sacrament. In so doing, they developed four different models of how the sacramental sign might relate to its referent: identity, similitude, exhibition, and convention. The model of identity proposes that sign and referent become one and the same; similitude, that sign and referent, while separate, are ontologically linked by their inherent resemblance to one another; exhibition, that sign and referent, while separate, have a wholly reliable connection generated by the unique power of the sign-maker; and convention, that sign and referent have no essential connection, being linked only by the habits of a particular human community.;These sacramental semiotic models did not remain cordoned off from the world of literature: John Donne imports them into his literary texts, using them to experiment with different ways of shaping literary representation in response to the unique pressures faced within particular texts. For instance, he imagines his letters as sacraments that represent him more or less closely, depending on the person to whom he writes, and in the Devotions, he uses the model of exhibition to create a modified version of imitatio Christi that balances his dueling impulses toward humbleness and self-promotion. Recognizing Donne's representational practices as influenced by the sacramental semiotic models not only indicates the power of religious discourse to shape early modern literature, but also suggests new approaches to form in Donne's work. Past formal work too often has focused on Donne's conceits and paradoxes, reading them as literary gems that shine more brightly than their textual or historical surroundings. Donne's representational innovations are better understood as varied, often subtle, and both socially and historically situated. |
