In her book Maps and Memory in Early Modern England: A Sense of Place, Rhonda Lemke Stanford discusses the importance of maps in early modern English literature. She explores how cartographic metaphors are not "just another trope of description", but how poets and authors use early modern cartographic techniques to illuminate the structure of their writing; as a result, she claims that often in modern writing, "a poet describes details of landscape and architecture as a surveyor would, and a poet names and describes parts of London as a cartographer would" (14 -5). . However, notably absent from his study is an in-depth study of the work of John Donne, who frequently uses map imagery in his poetry. Stanford ranks Donne, alongside Shakespeare, as an author who often uses maps as a metaphor for "sexual congress and/or conquest", and whose poetry describes "woman as a land or country to be conquered" (140 -1.59). ). Contrary to this assertion, I argue that Donne actually uses maps in exactly the same way as Stanford's book proposes: rather than acting as stagnant images, the maps in Donne's poetry are constantly evolving, and the way the cards are continually created and unmade serves as a commentary on representation and creation and parallels Donne's project of writing poetry. Two of Donne's poems dealing with the theme of cartography are "The Good Morrow" and "A Valediction of Weeping". In these poems, rather than using the map as a means of understanding the body, as Stanford claims, Donne's process of mapping instead reflects his ability to create poetry; What is perhaps most interesting is that rather than being a subject of the poet's mapping, the women in both poems become unlikely co-cartographers. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The map is one of the most discussed images in Donne's poetry; Many of these varied interpretations of Donne's maps, however, share a common thread in that they seek to link Donne's maps, as Stanford does in his book, to the body. The image of the map in "The Good Morrow" is the subject of essays by Richard Sharp and Julia Walker: both grapple with the paradox whereby Donne presents the two lovers as simultaneously two "hearts" and " distinct faces” and also two “hemispheres” of the same whole, in the following four lines: “My face in your eyes, yours in mine appears, and the true simple hearts rest in the faces; where can we find two better hemispheres without a sharp north, without a decline to the west? (15-8) In order to make sense of these lines, Sharp assumes that Donne must have used a cordiform map as the source of his image; in this way, Sharp seeks to superimpose the body on the card giving the card a heart shape. In seeking to link images of Donne's body to language in her essay "Donne: 'But Yet the Body is His Booke'," Elaine Scarry notes that when "Donne continually takes inventory of the body," he often finds it "cohabited ". by cities,” “names,” “lens[s],” and “compass[es],” all of which also evoke the image of the map (91). The consensus, it seems, is that the map serves as a metaphor for the body and that the cartography represents Donne's exploration and categorization of the body's surfaces. I do not deny that the trope of the body as map is certainly present in Donne's poetry. , and this is clear from the two poems I havechosen. In these two poems, Donne employs metaphors in which the cards are the vehicle and the body the tenor. Walker is right to note that “The Good Morrow” is a “complex pasticcio of eyes, cards, hearts, and hemispheres” (61). The body that Donne describes in this poem, however, is not a woman but a degendered body: Donne abandons the subject of the woman's feminine "beauty" to focus instead on the "true simple hearts" shared by lovers , “faces,” and “eyes” (6, 15, 16). In this image, Donne's speaker is both the cartographer and the subject, as he maps his body onto that of his beloved, and vice versa. “A Valediction of Weeping” uses the metaphor of a globe to describe the tear of the beloved; the tear grows rapidly and becomes its own “a globe, even a world,” offering a complex interaction between the vehicle and the tenor (16). In these metaphors, the maps actually serve, in a sense, as a means of describing the body. But by focusing on the content of the metaphor (the body), we risk reading in a reductive way and missing out on the complexity of the map and its functioning as a nuanced image. In these two poems, Donne is literally interested in space and place, and the map is the key to understanding and manipulating these concepts: in "The Good Morrow", Donne wants to eliminate the space between his speaker and his good -loved; in “A Valediction of Weeping” (as in “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”), he wants to eliminate the threat that the journey, being “on a diverse shore,” poses to his union (9). As a result, these poems are as much about the manipulation of place through map-making as they are about love (indeed, the image of the map is literally at the center of both of these poems) and map-making and the play with space are the means by which Donne can achieve his vision of union with his beloved. Paying more attention to the map as the central image in these two poems, it is important to note that the map is not a static image; rather, both poems describe a process of creating maps. This is particularly evident in “A Valediction of Weeping,” in which “a worker” places “a Europe, an Africa, and an Asia” on a blank globe (11, 12). Donne is careful to point out that the globe begins as “nothing,” just “a round ball,” but that through the craft of the worker, it becomes “everything,” highlighting the process as well as the finished product (10 , 13). The map in “The Good Morrow” is also described as being in motion: the north is “sharp,” suggesting a turn, while the west is “declining” (18). The poem also describes "discoverers of the sea" traveling to and mapping "new worlds", again emphasizing the maps being created (12-3). These images of the worker creating a globe and the discoverers mapping the new world are paralleled. by the act of writing poetry itself. Through writing, Donne assumes the power and agency of the worker or cartographer to manipulate the space within the poems; this corresponds to Franz Reitinger's assertion about early modern maps that "the graphic formula of cartography lent itself to use in attempts at in-depth overview and control, and the map became the modus scribendi for phenomena which were otherwise not easily comprehensible” (111, emphasis mine). ); Donne uses the power of mapping to take control of his speaker's relationship with his beloved and to circumvent the obstacles that separation and distance might pose. In "A Valediction of Weeping," the location poses a problem: Donne's speaker claims that he and his lover "are nothingthen, when they are on a diverse shore” (9); indeed, as a farewell, the poem is evoked during the speaker's imminent departure, as he fears what "the sea... might do too soon" and that the wind might "do me more harm than it did not want it” as he travels on the water. (22, 25). Rather than remaining victims of separation, Donne uses the rest of the poem to create an alternative "map" in which the beloved becomes the world, the "sphere" in which the speaker might drown (20). The way Donne seeks to name and map places in the poem imitates the way a cartographer draws a map. These tears “overflow even from this world,” indicating that Donne’s new world has surpassed the old (17-8). Donne's new worldview allows his interlocutor to remain with his beloved throughout the journey, because she is the whole world, eliminating the threat of separation. “The Good Morrow” deals with space on a much smaller scale than the mundane imagery of “A Weeping Greeting.” The poem specifically posits that love can assume power and control over place: "For love, all love of other views controls, /And makes a little room a place.everywhere" (11). Furthermore, the speaker and his beloved condense the “worlds upon worlds” that the “maps” show into a singular world that only they inhabit, again creating an alternative “map” that privileges the lovers (11, 13 -4). The speaker wants to merge his body and identity with those of his beloved into one, and also uses the mapping trope to do so: at the beginning of the third stanza, the speaker maps his face into the eyes of his beloved, then his own in the eyes of his beloved. his own, moving the lovers into each other and eliminating the physical space between them (15). Here, Donne does not map a body that already exists, but creates an entirely new one. In both poems, Donne resolves the lovers' problems by allowing the poem to act as an alternative world in which space and place work with the lovers rather than against them. However, in examining the map-making process in these poems, it becomes clear that Donne's male speaker (or Donne himself, as the male author) does not have exclusive authority and power as as a cartographer; on the contrary, in both poems the beloved woman also plays an active role in the cartography. The agency available to these women challenges and complicates the idea put forward by Rebecca Ann Bach that Donne's work is imbued with "virulent sexual misogyny" (262). In “A Valediction of Weeping,” it is the woman who cries the tears that become the world; also in the preceding stanza, she “marks” the speaker’s tears with her “stamp” (3). In these two metaphors, Donne uses the language of craftsmanship and commerce (through the imagery of coins and buildings), concepts generally belonging to the public and masculine sphere, to describe the actions of the woman and strengthen its action. “The Good Morrow” gives the woman the power to act by positing a kind of collaborative and shared identity between the lovers: in creating her new vision of the world, the speaker says: “let us have one world”, by putting emphasis on the love of lovers. shared agency (14, emphasis mine). The woman in “The Good Morrow” is not like the other anonymous women the speaker “desired and obtained,” because rather than being possessed, she is now a possessor (7). The idea that the speaker and his beloved are "mixed in equal parts" truly speaks to the shared sense of power and control that the lovers have in these two poems, and to the essential importance of the woman in the process of 2000).. 1986): 61-65.