Sex and the Disjunctive Syllogism: The Logic of Love in Donne's Poetry

Abstract

This article aims to shed new light on Donne’s poetry of argument by placing it in the context of early modern logic. I analyse university curricula and the intellectual practices they prescribed – especially the norms of academic disputation and of syllogistic reasoning – before applying logical categories to a number of religious and secular poems. Donne uses logical terms, concepts and processes to address questions of selfhood and subjectivity, especially from a gendered perspective; to map horizons of human knowledge and cognition in encounters with mortality, and to encourage reflection on the seductive qualities of logical and poetic form.