Close Reading with Richards: "The Canonization "

In John Donne’s “The Canonization,” the multi-layered and ambiguous tone (as Richards defines it) affects the interpretation of the other three meanings. What kind of audience is the speaker talking to? What kind of considerations must we as “readers” make for the historical context and audience that Donne may have been addressing? Even though sense asks for the most basic dictionary definitions, language is unstable and over time words take on new meanings and invoke different feeling within the given audience. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker urges his audience to criticize his tangible defaults (his body or his fortune) and celebrate themselves as long as they allow him to love. He goes on to show that his love is harmless to the kingdom at large, that he and his lover find their ultimate definition in their commitment to love. The lovers may be unfit for the exaltation of grand physical tombs, but they will become canonized—elevated to sainthood—by their love through poetry.

The overarching feeling is the enthusiasm for love, but that can be construed in different ways depending on the reading of the tone. Richards assumes that there is a commonality of meaning, however, the politics of Donne’s language provides complication. In the first stanza, the tone can be antagonistic or revisionary to the nobility, who value themselves on “wealth” or “state,” but now the speaker presents a new value system based on love. The dramatic language of stanza two can be read as a mocking and ironic tone towards love for what it can’t and doesn’t do, but it can also be part of the persuasion for the unbelieving audience that extends to the third stanza about living and dying by love. Stanza four and five can have a skeptical and irreverent tone towards saints, religion, and canonization at the expense of elevating love and poetry. To a devout person, this may sound like disrespect and reduction, but to a lover it would sound supportive and celebratory.

In pinpointing the elusive intention of the piece, the ulterior motive, all the meanings rather mesh together. The intention could be as simple as defending love and poetry and putting them on a pedestal. It could also be a more complex critique of the potential audiences or society at large, since for love to be elevated, other things are implied to be devalued or even mocked. Richards neat categories seem to fall apart with a poem like this, since they are meant to find a Total Meaning, that changes depending on what assumptions were made to recognize the types (sense, feeling, tone, and intention).