In her book Maps and Memory in Early Modern England: A Sense of Place, Rhonda Lemke Stanford discusses the importance of maps in early modern English literature. Explores how mapping metaphors are not "simply another descriptive trope," but how poets and authors use early modern mapping techniques to inform the structure of their writing; consequently, he argues that often in early modern writing, "a poet describes details of landscape and architecture as a surveyor would, and a poet names and describes parts of London as a cartographer would" (14-5). . Notably absent from his study, however, is an in-depth analysis of the work of John Donne, who frequently uses map imagery in his poetry. Stanford groups Donne, along with Shakespeare, as an author who often uses maps as a metaphor for "congress and/or sexual conquest" and whose poetry delineates "woman as a land or country to be conquered" (140-1, 59 ). ). In contrast to this claim, I argue that Donne actually uses maps in exactly the way that Stanford's book proposes: rather than acting as stagnant images, the maps in Donne's poem are constantly in flux, and the way the maps are continually made and unmade serves as a commentary on representation and creation and parallels Donne's project in writing poetry. Two of Donne's poems that deal with the theme of map-making are "The Good Morrow" and "A Valediction of Weeping." In these poems, rather than using the map as a means of understanding the body, as Stanford argues, Donne's mapping process instead reflects on his ability to create poetry; perhaps most interestingly, rather than being objects of the poet's mapping, the women in both poems become unlikely co-cartographers. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The map is one of the most commented upon images in Donne's poetry; many of these various interpretations of Donne's maps, however, share a common thread in that they seek to tie Donne's maps, as Stanford does in his book, to the body. The image of the map in "The Good Morrow" is the subject of essays by both Richard Sharp and Julia Walker: both grapple with the paradox that Donne presents the two lovers simultaneously as two separate "hearts" and "faces" and also two "hemispheres" of the same set, in the following four lines: "My face in your eyes, yours in mine appears, And true simple hearts rest in the faces; Where can we find two better hemispheres Without a sharp north, without a west in decline?" (15-8) To make sense of these lines, Sharp assumes that Donne must have used a cordiform map as the source of his image; in this way, Sharp tries to superimpose the body on the map giving the map the shape of a heart. Seeking to connect Donne's body images to language in her essay “Donne: 'But Yet the Body is His Booke,'” Elaine Scarry notes that when “Donne continually takes inventory of the body,” she often finds it “cohabited by city ,” “names,” “lens[es],” and “compass[es],” all of which also evoke the image of the map (91). The consensus, it seems, is that the map serves as a metaphor for the body and that the mapping represents Donne's exploration and categorization of the body's surfaces. I do not deny that the trope of the body as map is certainly present in Donne's poetry. , and this is evident in the two poems I chose. In both of these poems, Donne uses metaphors in which maps are the vehicle and the body is the tenor. Walker is right to note that “The Good Morrow” is a “complex mess of eyes, maps, hearts andhemispheres” (61). The body Donne describes in this poem, however, is not a woman but a genderless body: Donne abandons the theme of woman's feminine "beauty" to focus instead on the "true simple hearts" shared by lovers, on "faces," and “eyes” (6, 15, 16). In this image, the speaker of Donne is both the mapmaker and the subject, as he maps his body onto that of his beloved and vice versa. “A Valediction of Weeping” uses the metaphor of a globe to describe the tear of the beloved; the tear grows rapidly and becomes “a globe, yes, a world,” providing a complex interplay between vehicle and tenor (16). In these metaphors, maps serve, in a sense, as a means of describing the body. By privileging the tenor of the metaphor (the body), however, we risk reading reductively and losing the complexity of the map and the way it functions as a nuanced image. In both of these poems, Donne is literally concerned with space and place, and the map is key to understanding and manipulating these concepts: in “The Good Morrow,” Donne wants to eliminate the space between the speaker and his beloved; in “A Valediction of Weeping” (as in “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”), he wants to eliminate the threat that the journey, being “on a different shore,” poses to his union (9). As a result, these poems are as much about the manipulation of place through map-making as they are about love (indeed, the map image is literally at the center of these two poems) and about map-making and playing with space they are the means by which Donne can achieve his vision of union with his beloved. In paying closer attention to the map as the central image in these two poems, it is important to note that the map is not a static image; rather, both poems describe a map-making process. This is most evident in “A Valediction of Weeping,” in which “a workman” places “a Europe, an Africa, and an Asia” on an empty globe (11, 12). Donne is careful to point out that the globe begins as “nothing,” simply “a round ball,” but through the worker's craft it becomes “everything,” highlighting the process as well as the finished product (10, 13). The map in “The Good Morrow” is also described as moving: the north is “strong,” suggesting a turning point, while the west is “declining” (18). The poem also describes “discoverers of the sea” traveling and charting “new worlds,” once again emphasizing the maps being created (12-3). These images of the worker creating a globe and the discoverers mapping the new world are paralleled by the very act of writing poetry. In writing, Donne takes on the power and agency of the worker or cartographer to manipulate space within the poems; this fits with Franz Reitinger's statement about early modern maps that "the graphic formula of cartography lent itself to use in attempts at extensive overview and control, and the map became the modus scribendi for phenomena that were otherwise not easily understood " (111 italics mine); Donne uses the power of mapping to gain control over the speaker's relationship with his beloved and to circumvent any obstacles that separation and distance might pose. In “A Valediction of Weeping,” location causes a problem: Donne's speaker states that he and his lover “are nothing then, when they are on a different shore” (9); in fact, as a farewell, the poem is inspired by the speaker's imminent departure, as he fears what "the sea... might do too soon" and that the wind might "hurt me more than it means" as he travels on the waterfall. (22, 25). Rather than fall victim to separation, however, Donne uses the rest of the poem to create an alternative “map,” in whichthe beloved becomes the world, the “sphere” in which the speaker might have drowned (20). The way Donne tries to name and plot places in the poem mimics the way a cartographer draws a map. These tears even “overflow/this world” indicating that Donne's new world has surpassed the old (17-8). Donne's new worldview allows the speaker to remain with his beloved throughout the journey, because she is the whole world, eliminating the threat of separation. “The Good Morrow” deals with space on a much smaller scale than the mundane imagery of “The Good Morrow.” The poem specifically posits that love can take power and control over place: “For love, all love for other views controls, / And makes a little room everywhere” (11). Furthermore, the speaker and his beloved condense the “worlds upon worlds” that the “maps” show in a singular world that only they inhabit, once again creating an alternative “map” that privileges the lovers (11, 13-4). the identity of his beloved into one, and uses the trope of mapping to do this as well: at the beginning of the third stanza, the speaker maps his face into his beloved's eyes, and then maps his into hers, relocating the lovers into each other and eliminating the physical space between them (15).Here Donne is not delineating a body that already exists, but instead creating a completely new one, Donne resolves the lovers' problems allowing the poem to act as an alternative world where space and place work with the lovers rather than against them. In examining the map-making process in these poems, however, it becomes clear that Donne's male speaker (or Donne himself, as the male author) does not have exclusive authority and power as a cartographer; rather, in both poems, the beloved woman also takes an active role in the creation of the map. The agency these women have challenges and complicates the idea advanced by Rebecca Ann Bach that Donne's work is pervaded by "a virulent sexual misogyny" (262). In “A Valediction of Weeping,” it is the woman who cries the tears that become the world; also in the previous stanza he "coins" the tears of the speaker with his "timbre" (3). In both of these metaphors, Donne uses the language of craftsmanship and commerce (through the imagery of coins and construction), concepts usually belonging to the public and male sphere, to describe the woman's actions and reinforce her agency. "The Good Morrow" gives the woman agency by presupposing a kind of collaborative, shared identity between the lovers: in creating her new worldview, the speaker says, "we own a world," placing emphasis on importance of lovers. shared agency (14 emphasis added). The woman in “The Good Morrow” is not like the other nameless women the speaker “desired and obtained,” because instead of being possessed, she is now a landowner (7). The idea that the speaker and his beloved are “evenly mixed” really speaks to the shared sense of power and control that the lovers have in these two poems, and how essential the woman is to Donne's mapping process (19) . In this way, as Stanford notes, Donne's map images actually refer to gender; however, rather than having her body gender-mapped by the poet, the woman is instrumental in creating the map herself. In both “The Good Morrow” and “A Valediction of Weeping,” the mapping process is what ultimately solves the problem he faces. lovers of poetry, that of physical separation. Viewing map-making as a central process informing Donne's poetry, rather than simply as a symbol meant to comment on something else, 2000).. 1986): 61-65.