Lyric Fanaticism
Chapter 2 argues that Donne uses the sonnet to experiment formally with the self-annihilation required for the performance of God’s violent will. Fanaticism reveals to Donne that poetic making itself may prepare for, but also necessarily postpones, the self-loss required for violent martyrdom. A new reading of two Holy Sonnets demonstrates that Donne, typically thought of as vigorously dismissive of such sacrifice, developed a sophisticated theory of passive martyrdom free from any human will. This theory of the human transformed into divine organ underwrote his analysis of Samson and violent actions undertaken against a state in his Pseudo-Martyr and Biathanatos even as it protected against the possibility that such actions might be imitated. What Donne called “passive action” defines the paradox of Samson’s inimitable fanaticism, an insight that Milton inherits in his own engagement with Samson.