ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I examined how Donne's image of Spanish coins at once signals his awareness of the global trade of precious metals dominated by Ming China and reflects the economic base of East-West contact in the Renaissance. This chapter shifts from the material base to the superstructure and explores how maritime discoveries and geographical expansion to the Far East impacted early modern reconfigurations of the world and the conceptual adjustment to the emergence of a global horizon. Specifically, I examine how Donne's image of the “Anyan” strait in his “Hymne to God my God, in my Sicknesse” (1623) symbolizes his perception of the limitations of biblical discourse, and how this new vision impels him to accommodate the scriptural economy to a globalized world.
