The Canonization
Encyclopedia
The Canonization is a poem written by metaphysical poet John Donne
. First published in 1633
, the poem exemplifies Donne's wit
and irony
. It is addressed to one friend from another, but concerns itself with the complexities of romantic love
: the speaker
presents love
as so all-consuming that lovers forgo other pursuits in order to spend time together. In this sense, love is asceticism
, a major conceit
in the poem. The poem's title
serves a dual purpose: while the speaker argues that his love will canonize him into a kind of sainthood, the poem itself functions as a canonization
of the pair of lovers.
New Critic Cleanth Brooks
used the poem, along with Pope's "An Essay on Man
" and Wordsworth's "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
," to illustrate his argument
for paradox
as central to poetry
.
has been done by his love. The speaker describes how dramatically love affects him and his lover
, claiming that their love will live on in legend
, even if they die. They have been “canonized by Love.”
The speaker asks rhetorically, “Who’s injured by my love?” He says that his sighs have not drowned ships, his tears have not flooded land, his colds have not chilled spring, and the heat of his veins has not added to the list of those killed by the plague. Soldiers still find wars and lawyers still find litigious men, regardless of the emotions of the speaker and his lover.
The speaker tells his addressee to “Call us what you will,” for it is love that makes them so. He says that the addressee can “Call her one, me another fly,” and that they are also like candles (“tapers”), which burn by feeding upon their own selves (“and at our own cost die”). In each other, the lovers find the eagle and the dove, and together (“we two being one”) they illuminate the riddle of the phoenix, for they “die and rise the same,” just as the phoenix does—though unlike the phoenix, it is love that slays and resurrects them.
He says that they can die by love if they are not able to live by it, and if their legend is not fit “for tombs and hearse,” it will be fit for poetry, and “We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms.” A well-wrought urn does as much justice to a dead man’s ashes as does a gigantic tomb; and by the same token, the poems about the speaker and his lover will cause them to be “canonized,” admitted to the sainthood of love. All those who hear their story will invoke the lovers, saying that countries, towns, and courts “beg from above / A pattern of your love!”
Form
The five stanzas of “The Canonization” are metered in iambic lines ranging from trimeter to pentameter; in each of the nine-line stanzas, the first, third, fourth, and seventh lines are in pentameter, the second, fifth, sixth, and eighth in tetrameter, and the ninth in trimeter. (The stress pattern in each stanza is 545544543.) The rhyme scheme in each stanza is ABBACCCDD.
Commentary
This complicated poem, spoken ostensibly to someone who disapproves of the speaker’s love affair, is written in the voice of a world-wise, sardonic courtier who is nevertheless utterly caught up in his love. The poem simultaneously parodies old notions of love and coins elaborate new ones, eventually concluding that even if the love affair is impossible in the real world, it can become legendary through poetry, and the speaker and his lover will be like saints to later generations of lovers. (Hence the title: “The Canonization” refers to the process by which people are inducted into the canon of saints).
In the first stanza, the speaker obliquely details his relationship to the world of politics, wealth, and nobility; by assuming that these are the concerns of his addressee, he indicates his own background amid such concerns, and he also indicates the extent to which he has moved beyond that background. He hopes that the listener will leave him alone and pursue a career in the court, toadying to aristocrats, preoccupied with favor (the King’s real face) and money (the King’s stamped face, as on a coin). In the second stanza, he parodies contemporary Petrarchan notions of love and continues to mock his addressee, making the point that his sighs have not drowned ships and his tears have not caused floods. (Petrarchan love-poems were full of claims like “My tears are rain, and my sighs storms.”) He also mocks the operations of the everyday world, saying that his love will not keep soldiers from fighting wars or lawyers from finding court cases—as though war and legal wrangling were the sole concerns of world outside the confines of his love affair.
In the third stanza, the speaker begins spinning off metaphors that will help explain the intensity and uniqueness of his love. First, he says that he and his lover are like moths drawn to a candle (“her one, me another fly”), then that they are like the candle itself. They embody the elements of the eagle (strong and masculine) and the dove (peaceful and feminine) bound up in the image of the phoenix, dying and rising by love. In the fourth stanza, the speaker explores the possibility of canonization in verse, and in the final stanza, he explores his and his lover’s roles as the saints of love, to whom generations of future lovers will appeal for help. Throughout, the tone of the poem is balanced between a kind of arch, sophisticated sensibility (“half-acre tombs”) and passionate amorous abandon (“We die and rise the same, and prove / Mysterious by this love”).
“The Canonization” is one of Donne’s most famous and most written-about poems. Its criticism at the hands of Cleanth Brooks and others has made it a central topic in the argument between formalist critics and historicist critics; the former argue that the poem is what it seems to be, an anti-political love poem, while the latter argue, based on events in Donne’s life at the time of the poem’s composition, that it is actually a kind of coded, ironic rumination on the “ruined fortune” and dashed political hopes of the first stanza. The choice of which argument to follow is largely a matter of personal temperament. But unless one seeks a purely biographical understanding of Donne, it is probably best to understand the poem as the sort of droll, passionate speech-act it is, a highly sophisticated defense of love against the corrupting values of politics and privilege.
," a comparison that is "seriously meant". In the third stanza, the speaker likens himself and his lover to candles, an eagle
and dove
, a phoenix
, saints, and the dead. An eagle is a sign of Freedom, while a dove stands for Peace. A phoenix means rebirth. The Phoenix, argues Cleanth Brooks, is a particularly apt analogy, since it combines the imagery of birds and of burning candles, and adequately expresses the power of love to preserve, though passion
consumes.
All of the imagery employed strengthens the speaker’s claim that love unites him and his lover, as well as giving the lovers a kind of immortality. The conceit involving saints and the pair of lovers serves to emphasize the spirituality of the lovers' relationship.
of "The Canonization," critic Leonard Unger focuses largely on the wit exemplified in the poem. In Unger's reading, the exaggerated metaphors employed by the speaker serve as "the absurdity which makes for wit". However, Unger points out that, during the course of the poem, its apparent wit points to the speaker's actual message: that the lover is disconnected from the world by virtue of his contrasting values, seen in his willingness to forgo worldly pursuits to be with his lover. Unger's analysis concludes by cataloguing the "devices of wit" found throughout the poem, as well as mentioning that a "complexity of attitudes," fostered largely through the use of the canonization conceit, perpetuates wit within the poem.
“The Canonization” figures prominently in critic Cleanth Brooks’s arguments for paradox as integral to poetry, a central tenet of New Criticism
. In his collection of critical essays, The Well Wrought Urn, Brooks writes that a poet “must work by contradiction and qualification,” and that paradox “is an extension of the normal language of poetry, not a perversion of it”. Brooks analyzes several poems to illustrate his argument, but cites Donne’s “The Canonization” as his main evidence
. According to Brooks, there are superficially many ways to read “The Canonization,” but the most likely interpretation is that, despite his witty tone and extravagant metaphors, Donne’s speaker takes both love and religion seriously. He neither intends to mock religion by exalting love beside it, nor aims to poke fun at love by comparing it to sainthood. Instead, Brooks argues, the apparent contradiction in taking both seriously translates into a truer account of both love and spirituality
. Paradox is Donne’s “inevitable instrument,” allowing him with “dignity” and “precision” to express the idea that love may be all that is necessary in life. Without it, “the matter of Donne’s poem unravels into ‘facts’.”
Brooks looks at paradox in a larger sense:
For Brooks, "The Canonization" illustrates that paradox is not limited to use in logic
. Instead, paradox enables poetry to escape the confines of logical and scientific language.
However, Brooks's analysis is not the definitive reading of "The Canonization." A critique by John Guillory points out the superficiality of his logic. On whether to regard the equation of profane love with divine as parody or paradox, Guillory writes that "the easy translation of parody into paradox is occasioned by Brooks's interest". Guillory also questions Brooks's decision to concentrate on the conflict between sacred and secular, rather than sacred and profane, as the central paradox: "the paradox overshoots its target". Guillory also writes that "the truth of the paradoxes in question," here the biblical quotations Brooks uses to support his claim that the language of religion is full of paradox, "beg[s] to be read otherwise," with literary implications in keeping with Brooks's agenda for a "resurgent literary culture".
Likewise, critic Jonathan Culler
questions the New Critical emphasis
on self-reference, the idea
that by "enacting or performing what it asserts or describes, the poem becomes complete in itself, accounts for itself, and stands free as a self-contained fusion of being and doing". For Brooks, "The Canonization" serves as a monument
, a "well-wrought urn" to the lovers, just as the speaker describes his canonization through love: the lovers' "legend, their story, will gain them canonization". To Culler, however, this self-referentiality reveals "an uncanny neatness that generates paradox, a self-reference that ultimately brings out the inability of any discourse
to account for itself," as well as the "failure" of being and doing to "coincide". Instead of a tidy, "self-contained urn," the poem depicts a "chain of discourses and representations," such as the legend about the lovers, poems about their love, praise from those who read these poems, the saintly invocation
s of the lovers, and their responses to these requests. In a larger sense, self-referentiality affords not closure
but a long chain of references, such as Brooks's naming his New Critical treatise
The Well-Wrought Urn to parallel the urn in the poem.
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
. First published in 1633
1633 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Works published:-Great Britain:* Abraham Cowley, Poetical Blossomes...
, the poem exemplifies Donne's wit
Wit
Wit is a form of intellectual humour, and a wit is someone skilled in making witty remarks. Forms of wit include the quip and repartee.-Forms of wit:...
and irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
. It is addressed to one friend from another, but concerns itself with the complexities of romantic love
Romantic love
Romance is the pleasurable feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.In the context of romantic love relationships, romance usually implies an expression of one's love, or one's deep emotional desires to connect with another person....
: the speaker
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
presents love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
as so all-consuming that lovers forgo other pursuits in order to spend time together. In this sense, love is asceticism
Asceticism
Asceticism describes a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various sorts of worldly pleasures often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals...
, a major conceit
Conceit
In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison...
in the poem. The poem's title
Title
A title is a prefix or suffix added to someone's name to signify either veneration, an official position or a professional or academic qualification. In some languages, titles may even be inserted between a first and last name...
serves a dual purpose: while the speaker argues that his love will canonize him into a kind of sainthood, the poem itself functions as a canonization
Canonization
Canonization is the act by which a Christian church declares a deceased person to be a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the canon, or list, of recognized saints. Originally, individuals were recognized as saints without any formal process...
of the pair of lovers.
New Critic Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...
used the poem, along with Pope's "An Essay on Man
An Essay on Man
An Essay on Man is a poem published by Alexander Pope in 1734. It is a rationalistic effort to use philosophy in order to "vindicate the ways of God to man" , a variation of John Milton's claim in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, that he will "justify the ways of God to man" . It is concerned...
" and Wordsworth's "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
"Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" is a sonnet by William Wordsworth describing London and the River Thames, viewed from Westminster Bridge in the early morning. It was first published in the collection Poems in Two Volumes in 1807....
," to illustrate his argument
Argument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
for paradox
Paradox
Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
as central to poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
.
Summary
The speaker begs his friend not to dissuade him from loving, but to insult him for other reasons instead, or to focus on other matters entirely. He supports his plea by asking whether any harmHARM
HARM or H.A.R.M. may refer to:* AGM-88 HARM, a high-speed anti-radiation missile* Historic Aircraft Restoration Museum, a museum in Creve Coeur, Missouri, United States...
has been done by his love. The speaker describes how dramatically love affects him and his lover
Sexual partner
Sexual partners are people who engage in sexual activity together. The sexual partners can be of any gender or sexual orientation. The sexual partners may be in a committed relationship, either on an exclusive basis or not, or engage in the sexual activity on a casual basis...
, claiming that their love will live on in legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
, even if they die. They have been “canonized by Love.”
Detailed Summary
The speaker asks his addressee to be quiet, and let him love. If the addressee cannot hold his tongue, the speaker tells him to criticize him for other shortcomings (other than his tendency to love): his palsy, his gout, his “five grey hairs,” or his ruined fortune. He admonishes the addressee to look to his own mind and his own wealth and to think of his position and copy the other nobles (“Observe his Honour, or his Grace, / Or the King’s real, or his stamped face / Contemplate.”) The speaker does not care what the addressee says or does, as long as he lets him love.The speaker asks rhetorically, “Who’s injured by my love?” He says that his sighs have not drowned ships, his tears have not flooded land, his colds have not chilled spring, and the heat of his veins has not added to the list of those killed by the plague. Soldiers still find wars and lawyers still find litigious men, regardless of the emotions of the speaker and his lover.
The speaker tells his addressee to “Call us what you will,” for it is love that makes them so. He says that the addressee can “Call her one, me another fly,” and that they are also like candles (“tapers”), which burn by feeding upon their own selves (“and at our own cost die”). In each other, the lovers find the eagle and the dove, and together (“we two being one”) they illuminate the riddle of the phoenix, for they “die and rise the same,” just as the phoenix does—though unlike the phoenix, it is love that slays and resurrects them.
He says that they can die by love if they are not able to live by it, and if their legend is not fit “for tombs and hearse,” it will be fit for poetry, and “We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms.” A well-wrought urn does as much justice to a dead man’s ashes as does a gigantic tomb; and by the same token, the poems about the speaker and his lover will cause them to be “canonized,” admitted to the sainthood of love. All those who hear their story will invoke the lovers, saying that countries, towns, and courts “beg from above / A pattern of your love!”
Form
The five stanzas of “The Canonization” are metered in iambic lines ranging from trimeter to pentameter; in each of the nine-line stanzas, the first, third, fourth, and seventh lines are in pentameter, the second, fifth, sixth, and eighth in tetrameter, and the ninth in trimeter. (The stress pattern in each stanza is 545544543.) The rhyme scheme in each stanza is ABBACCCDD.
Commentary
This complicated poem, spoken ostensibly to someone who disapproves of the speaker’s love affair, is written in the voice of a world-wise, sardonic courtier who is nevertheless utterly caught up in his love. The poem simultaneously parodies old notions of love and coins elaborate new ones, eventually concluding that even if the love affair is impossible in the real world, it can become legendary through poetry, and the speaker and his lover will be like saints to later generations of lovers. (Hence the title: “The Canonization” refers to the process by which people are inducted into the canon of saints).
In the first stanza, the speaker obliquely details his relationship to the world of politics, wealth, and nobility; by assuming that these are the concerns of his addressee, he indicates his own background amid such concerns, and he also indicates the extent to which he has moved beyond that background. He hopes that the listener will leave him alone and pursue a career in the court, toadying to aristocrats, preoccupied with favor (the King’s real face) and money (the King’s stamped face, as on a coin). In the second stanza, he parodies contemporary Petrarchan notions of love and continues to mock his addressee, making the point that his sighs have not drowned ships and his tears have not caused floods. (Petrarchan love-poems were full of claims like “My tears are rain, and my sighs storms.”) He also mocks the operations of the everyday world, saying that his love will not keep soldiers from fighting wars or lawyers from finding court cases—as though war and legal wrangling were the sole concerns of world outside the confines of his love affair.
In the third stanza, the speaker begins spinning off metaphors that will help explain the intensity and uniqueness of his love. First, he says that he and his lover are like moths drawn to a candle (“her one, me another fly”), then that they are like the candle itself. They embody the elements of the eagle (strong and masculine) and the dove (peaceful and feminine) bound up in the image of the phoenix, dying and rising by love. In the fourth stanza, the speaker explores the possibility of canonization in verse, and in the final stanza, he explores his and his lover’s roles as the saints of love, to whom generations of future lovers will appeal for help. Throughout, the tone of the poem is balanced between a kind of arch, sophisticated sensibility (“half-acre tombs”) and passionate amorous abandon (“We die and rise the same, and prove / Mysterious by this love”).
“The Canonization” is one of Donne’s most famous and most written-about poems. Its criticism at the hands of Cleanth Brooks and others has made it a central topic in the argument between formalist critics and historicist critics; the former argue that the poem is what it seems to be, an anti-political love poem, while the latter argue, based on events in Donne’s life at the time of the poem’s composition, that it is actually a kind of coded, ironic rumination on the “ruined fortune” and dashed political hopes of the first stanza. The choice of which argument to follow is largely a matter of personal temperament. But unless one seeks a purely biographical understanding of Donne, it is probably best to understand the poem as the sort of droll, passionate speech-act it is, a highly sophisticated defense of love against the corrupting values of politics and privilege.
Imagery
The poem features images typical of the Petrarchan sonnet, yet they are more than the "threadbare Petrarchan conventionalities". In fact, in critic Clay Hunt's view, the entire poem gives "a new twist to one of the most worn conventions of Elizabethan love poetry" by expanding "the lover-saint conceit to full and precise definitionDefinition
A definition is a passage that explains the meaning of a term , or a type of thing. The term to be defined is the definiendum. A term may have many different senses or meanings...
," a comparison that is "seriously meant". In the third stanza, the speaker likens himself and his lover to candles, an eagle
Eagle
Eagles are members of the bird family Accipitridae, and belong to several genera which are not necessarily closely related to each other. Most of the more than 60 species occur in Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just two species can be found in the United States and Canada, nine more in...
and dove
Dove
Pigeons and doves constitute the bird family Columbidae within the order Columbiformes, which include some 300 species of near passerines. In general terms "dove" and "pigeon" are used somewhat interchangeably...
, a phoenix
Phoenix (mythology)
The phoenix or phenix is a mythical sacred firebird that can be found in the mythologies of the Arabian, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chinese, Indian and Phoenicians....
, saints, and the dead. An eagle is a sign of Freedom, while a dove stands for Peace. A phoenix means rebirth. The Phoenix, argues Cleanth Brooks, is a particularly apt analogy, since it combines the imagery of birds and of burning candles, and adequately expresses the power of love to preserve, though passion
Passion (emotion)
Passion is a term applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for something....
consumes.
All of the imagery employed strengthens the speaker’s claim that love unites him and his lover, as well as giving the lovers a kind of immortality. The conceit involving saints and the pair of lovers serves to emphasize the spirituality of the lovers' relationship.
Analyses and applications in criticism
In his analysisAnalysis
Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle , though analysis as a formal concept is a relatively recent development.The word is...
of "The Canonization," critic Leonard Unger focuses largely on the wit exemplified in the poem. In Unger's reading, the exaggerated metaphors employed by the speaker serve as "the absurdity which makes for wit". However, Unger points out that, during the course of the poem, its apparent wit points to the speaker's actual message: that the lover is disconnected from the world by virtue of his contrasting values, seen in his willingness to forgo worldly pursuits to be with his lover. Unger's analysis concludes by cataloguing the "devices of wit" found throughout the poem, as well as mentioning that a "complexity of attitudes," fostered largely through the use of the canonization conceit, perpetuates wit within the poem.
“The Canonization” figures prominently in critic Cleanth Brooks’s arguments for paradox as integral to poetry, a central tenet of New Criticism
New Criticism
New Criticism was a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic...
. In his collection of critical essays, The Well Wrought Urn, Brooks writes that a poet “must work by contradiction and qualification,” and that paradox “is an extension of the normal language of poetry, not a perversion of it”. Brooks analyzes several poems to illustrate his argument, but cites Donne’s “The Canonization” as his main evidence
Evidence
Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either presumed to be true, or were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth...
. According to Brooks, there are superficially many ways to read “The Canonization,” but the most likely interpretation is that, despite his witty tone and extravagant metaphors, Donne’s speaker takes both love and religion seriously. He neither intends to mock religion by exalting love beside it, nor aims to poke fun at love by comparing it to sainthood. Instead, Brooks argues, the apparent contradiction in taking both seriously translates into a truer account of both love and spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
. Paradox is Donne’s “inevitable instrument,” allowing him with “dignity” and “precision” to express the idea that love may be all that is necessary in life. Without it, “the matter of Donne’s poem unravels into ‘facts’.”
Brooks looks at paradox in a larger sense:
More direct methods may be tempting, but all of them enfeeble and distort what is to be said. … Indeed, almost any insight important enough to warrant a great poem apparently has to be stated in such terms.
For Brooks, "The Canonization" illustrates that paradox is not limited to use in logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
. Instead, paradox enables poetry to escape the confines of logical and scientific language.
However, Brooks's analysis is not the definitive reading of "The Canonization." A critique by John Guillory points out the superficiality of his logic. On whether to regard the equation of profane love with divine as parody or paradox, Guillory writes that "the easy translation of parody into paradox is occasioned by Brooks's interest". Guillory also questions Brooks's decision to concentrate on the conflict between sacred and secular, rather than sacred and profane, as the central paradox: "the paradox overshoots its target". Guillory also writes that "the truth of the paradoxes in question," here the biblical quotations Brooks uses to support his claim that the language of religion is full of paradox, "beg[s] to be read otherwise," with literary implications in keeping with Brooks's agenda for a "resurgent literary culture".
Likewise, critic Jonathan Culler
Jonathan Culler
Jonathan Culler is a class of 1966 Harvard graduate and Professor of English at Cornell University. He is an important figure of the structuralism movement of literary theory and criticism.- Background and career:...
questions the New Critical emphasis
Emphasis
Emphasis or emphatic may refer to:* Emphasis , intentional alteration of the amplitude-vs.-frequency characteristics of the signal to reduce adverse effects of noise...
on self-reference, the idea
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
that by "enacting or performing what it asserts or describes, the poem becomes complete in itself, accounts for itself, and stands free as a self-contained fusion of being and doing". For Brooks, "The Canonization" serves as a monument
Monument
A monument is a type of structure either explicitly created to commemorate a person or important event or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, or simply as an example of historic architecture...
, a "well-wrought urn" to the lovers, just as the speaker describes his canonization through love: the lovers' "legend, their story, will gain them canonization". To Culler, however, this self-referentiality reveals "an uncanny neatness that generates paradox, a self-reference that ultimately brings out the inability of any discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
to account for itself," as well as the "failure" of being and doing to "coincide". Instead of a tidy, "self-contained urn," the poem depicts a "chain of discourses and representations," such as the legend about the lovers, poems about their love, praise from those who read these poems, the saintly invocation
Invocation
An invocation may take the form of:*Supplication or prayer.*A form of possession.*Command or conjuration.*Self-identification with certain spirits....
s of the lovers, and their responses to these requests. In a larger sense, self-referentiality affords not closure
Closure
Closure may refer to:* Closure used to seal a bottle, jug, jar, can, or other container** Closure , a stopper* Closure , the process by which an organization ceases operations...
but a long chain of references, such as Brooks's naming his New Critical treatise
Treatise
A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject.-Noteworthy treatises:...
The Well-Wrought Urn to parallel the urn in the poem.