:-)
Carrol
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Poetics of History Part VI
Date: Sat, 02 Jun 2001 17:07:05 -0400 From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" <alphavil at IX.NETCOM.COM> Reply-To: alphavil at IX.NETCOM.COM Organization: Alphaville To: EPOUND-L at LISTS.MAINE.EDU
[Connecting ideogrammically with the Edward Bernays entry that only appeared on subsubpoetics at listbot.com]
During its entire existence between 1606 and 1624, the Virginia Company employed preachers to deliver sermons to shareholders and prospective investors. One of those preachers so employed was the great metaphysical poet, John Donne. Donne was paid by the franchise in cash and possibly stock. To hard sell the economic benefits of the colonies, John Donne, the preacher, relied heavily on Christian eschatology and providentialism. But as a poet, Donne aroused interest in colonial development by employing a means familiar to Bernays and Madison Avenue, sex. For example, in his Elegy XIX, Going to Bed, Donne writes:
License my roving hands, and let them go, Before, behind, between, above, below. O my America! my new-found-land, My kingdome, safeliest when with one man man'd, My Myne of precious stones, My Emperie, How blest am I in this discovering thee! To enter in these bonds, is to be free; Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.