Epistolary Copulation in John Donne's Verse Letters

This article explores John Donne's sense of intimacy in the verse letters, arguing that the virtual space of the verse epistle becomes a site for spiritual union between writer and addressee. By turning to the archive of verse epistles before Donne, and exploring them alongside Donne's writing on epistolarity, this article highlights how an intense belief in spiritual copulation shapes his unique intervention in the history of the European verse epistle, an often-neglected genre in critical discourse.