"The meate was mine": Donne's Satyre II and the Prehistory of Proprietary Authorship

Unlike his contemporary Ben Jonson, who closely identified with the printed word, John Donne is often thought to have shown no interest in the idea of literary property. However, this assumption does not account for the visceral metaphors, such as authorial cannibalism, that Donne applied to the circulation of his poems in manuscript. Through a close reading of Donne's Satyre II, which situates his concerns for misappropriation in a legal context, this essay argues not only that Donne was in a better position than his contemporaries to appreciate the needs for authorial control, but that due to his training in the law he was also better able to articulate an inchoate conception of proprietary authorship.