"Whatsoever" Being: Agamben, Donne, and Lovability

This article seeks to reclaim some of John Donne's most maligned, misread, and correspondingly underconsidered verse. Despite their continuing reputation as disingenuous flatteries, I consider Donne's verse epistles to the Countess of Salisbury and the Ladies Carey as earnest and material expressions of Donne's philosophy of lovability, on which I cast new light with help from contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Like Agamben's recent work, Donne's letters, verse encomia, and sermons reflect an interest in Neoplatonic signatures and locate lovability in the bodily existence of a being "in all deeds all," a recognition of which precedes the exercise of fallen interpretive faculties.