Paper Details

As cultural studies explores the fact that the culture has been shaped by power, capital and popular culture. In Donne's poems, we find that the male dominant society had shaped the culture in the Elizabethan age too. We also see how Queen Elizabeth had been Criticized for being female ruler of seventeenth century England. The culture at that time was being dominated by male members; Donne was not unaffected, he too was the member of the cultural hierarchy and that sense has been reflected through his poems. Many papers have been presented on an anti-feminist approach of Donne's selected poems. Donne has been criticized for defaming women by considering them as his property through the poems. The present paper aims to explore the influence of power and cultural hegemony in John Donne's ‘anti-feminist’ poems. It would adhere on how cultural hegemony and power plays the main role in shaping the minds of the poets to write derogatory things about women. Through this paper I want to explore that it was not natural but cultural; how the poets of Elizabethan age were having patriarchal mind set; and how they’re affected by gender discriminatory culture of that time. This paper would also explore how Donne was not intended to defame women but it was the culture and power which unknowingly affected him and thus, it becomes the part of cultural studies.

power and hegemony, anti-feminism, cultural hegemony, patriarchal mind set, etc.