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Title: Revisiting John Donne’s metaphorical language in “Meditation 17”: A hermeneutic reading

 

Vol. 13(3), 2025, pp. 149-161

DOI: https://doi.org/10.46687/ULYT6622  

 

Author: Kuğu Tekin

About the author: Kuğu Tekin graduated from the Department of English Language and Literature, Atılım University in 2001. She received her M.A. in English Literature from Atılım University in 2003 and her PhD from Middle East Technical University in 2010. The title of her doctoral dissertation is Parody in the Context of Salman Rushdie’s Magical Realistic Fiction: Midnight’s Children, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Shalimar the Clown. She is currently teaching at Atılım University in the Department of English Language and Literature. Her current areas of interest are postcolonial literature, contemporary British fiction, immigrant literature and urban studies. She has published several articles and chapters in national and international journals and books.

E-mail: kugu.tekin@atilim.edu.tr                 

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0123-8523  

Author: Zeynep Rana Turgut

About the author: Zeynep Rana Turgut graduated from English Language and Literature Department of Atılım University in 2001. She received her M.A. degree in 2004 with her thesis titled “Basic Influences on Arnold Wesker’s Early Drama” from Atılım University, English Language and Literature Programme. She completed her PhD titled “Postmodern Rewriting of Detective Fiction: Reformulating the Convention of Traditional Detective Fiction in The Collector, Chatterton and When We Were Orphans.” Zeynep Rana Turgut worked as an English instructor at Atılım University, Department of Basic English between 2001–2019. She has been working at Atılım University English Language and Literature Department since October 2019. Turgut, whose interests are contemporary drama, postmodern novel, detective novel, short story and women’s works, has published several articles and book chapters in national and international journals and books.

E-mail: rana.selimoglu@atilim.edu.tr            

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2048-966X

Link: http://silc.fhn-shu.com/issues/2025-3/SILC_2025_Vol_13_Issue_3_149-161_13.pdf

Citation (APA): Tekin, K., & Turgut, Z. R. (2025). Revisiting John Donne’s metaphorical language in “Meditation 17”: A hermeneutic reading. Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT, 13(3), 149-161. https://doi.org/10.46687/ULYT6622.

 

Abstract: John Donne (1572-1631) was the leading poet of the metaphysical school of poetry in the 17^th century. His mastery of using extended metaphors, also termed “metaphysical conceits,” manifests itself not only in his secular and religious poems, but also in his sermons. This paper intends to revisit centuries-long influence of Donne’s rich metaphorical language through a close reading of “Mediation 17.” The claim of the paper is that the unique stylistic and content based features of Donne’s multi-layered metaphors moving from the individual to the communal and conveying the universal themes of life and death and the shared human experience surpass temporal and cultural boundaries. Thus, the ultimate aim of this paper is to draw attention to the enduring quality of the metaphors Donne employs in “Mediation 17” as the aesthetics of the compelling interaction between the individual and the communal appeals to the literary taste of even contemporary readership. The theoretical frame of this paper draws largely on Schleiermacher’s theory of modern hermeneutics. 

Key words: John Donne, extended metaphor, “Meditation 17”, modern hermeneutics, life and death, unity of humankind

 

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