“Unapocryphall Vision”: Jeremiah as Exemplary Model for Donne, Herbert, and Milton

Abstract

This study began with a consideration of the significance of humorism during the Renaissance and, more specifically, with how one of the four humors was understood at the time. Of the many forms of melancholy perceived, analyzed, and discussed during the Renaissance and in modern times, the most significant for this study is the form known as heroic melancholy, a term most appropriate to the fashioning of the self by Donne, Herbert, and Milton because it evokes the extremes of despondent inactivity and frenetic action. Like Jeremiah, each of these three English authors either finds himself unable to act or simply turns away from God (which amounts to the same thing); each must then find a way to act, find a way to turn.