LAUSR

Abstract:Ben Jonson, who practiced a satirical variant of Augustinian charitable reading that may be termed a "Beneficent" hermeneutic, was an appreciative reader of Donne's verse satires. A Beneficent reading of the moon mission episode in Donne's prose satire Ignatius His Conclave reveals the episode's multiple functions. It continues an assault, begun in an earlier passage, on the Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius. It looks askance at King James's consort Queen Anne, using language that evokes her performances in court masques written by Jonson; it reinforces parallels, operative throughout the work, between the court of Lucifer and that of James I; and, deploying scornful paradoxes reminiscent of Donne's "Satyre 3" and "Satyre 4," it signals Donne's contempt for both sides in the Oath of Allegiance controversy.