ABSTRACT
As Katrin Ettenhuber suggests, detaching a small piece of writing from its context, without regard for occasion, place, and audience, is for Donne a defining characteristic of Rome's textual mentality, a habit that produces ill-digested, composite texts. To the extent that rhapsody can be understood as a process, it is a bad, or at least incomplete, one. Donne's repeated use of rages is not just a metaphor for the practice of citation; it also suggests material problems with the process of coordinating evidence. Today rhapsody' is commonly used in two senses. First, it refers to an exaggeratedly enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling' or an effusive utterance or piece of writing, often disconnected or lacking in logical argument. Second, it means a free musical composition, usually emotional or exuberant in character and in one extended movement. These uses of rhapsody' have in common the idea of disconnectedness and the ensuing problems of order and transition.
