ABSTRACT
Izaak Walton and John Donne had a friend in common: the diplomat and writer Henry Wotton, a man whose enthusiasm for freshwater fishing is documented in his own verse and in Walton’s reminiscences. Wotton was the recipient of some of Donne’s most famous letters, in prose and verse; the two were close friends. Throughout his career, or from one career to the other, the poet-preacher uses fish to think through aspects of social and embodied life. Donnean fish defy generic boundaries, moving fluidly from epistle to elegy. What Donne exhibits is an interest in the edges of piscine life—the way a fish emerges into a swimming shape from its embryonic origins, the danger it faces of being captured and suddenly killed by any number of creatures. John Taverner, like Donne, at once personifies the fish and chronicles a life history that is radically non-human.
