A Cognitive Approach to John Donne’s Songs and SonnetsSighs and Tears: Biological Costly Signals and Donne’s “Whining Poëtry”
A Cognitive Approach to John Donne’s Songs and Sonnets: Sighs and Tears: Biological Costly...
Winkelman, Michael A.
2015-11-12 00:00:00
[Sighs and tears permeate John Donne’s poetry, as well they should. Crying in particular functions as a “costly signal” in biological terms: a blatant, physiologically demanding, involuntary show of hurt feelings. “Teares dimme mine eyes,” laments Donne’s Sappho (56); they are “fruits of much griefe” in “A Valediction of weeping” (7). The theory of costly signalling, related to the “handicap principle,” was developed not too long ago by Israeli zoologists Amotz and Avishag Zahavi. As the Zahavis explain: “In order to be effective, signals have to be reliable; in order to be reliable, signals have to be costly.”1 Initially their idea was denigrated, but it has since been accepted, and it has proven extraordinarily helpful for making sense of both animal and human behavior. Wasteful conspicuous consumption among upper-class Americans, something noted a century ago by sociologist Thorstein Veblen, exemplifies this handicap principle in action. Like gazelles jumping in place or “stotting” rather than running away when wolves appear, it indicates fitness by flaunting excess resources.]
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A Cognitive Approach to John Donne’s Songs and SonnetsSighs and Tears: Biological Costly Signals and Donne’s “Whining Poëtry”
[Sighs and tears permeate John Donne’s poetry, as well they should. Crying in particular functions as a “costly signal” in biological terms: a blatant, physiologically demanding, involuntary show of hurt feelings. “Teares dimme mine eyes,” laments Donne’s Sappho (56); they are “fruits of much griefe” in “A Valediction of weeping” (7). The theory of costly signalling, related to the “handicap principle,” was developed not too long ago by Israeli zoologists Amotz and Avishag Zahavi. As the Zahavis explain: “In order to be effective, signals have to be reliable; in order to be reliable, signals have to be costly.”1 Initially their idea was denigrated, but it has since been accepted, and it has proven extraordinarily helpful for making sense of both animal and human behavior. Wasteful conspicuous consumption among upper-class Americans, something noted a century ago by sociologist Thorstein Veblen, exemplifies this handicap principle in action. Like gazelles jumping in place or “stotting” rather than running away when wolves appear, it indicates fitness by flaunting excess resources.]
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