Loscocco, Paula. “Inventing the English Sappho: Katherine Philips’s Donnean Poetry.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 102, no. 1, University of Illinois Press, 2003, pp. 59–87, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27712301.
Paula Loscocco argues that rather than John Donne’s poetry manifesting itself in Katherine Philips' poetry, Philips was inspired by Donne’s lines and form which inspire a creation of her own poetics; Philips demonstrates her command of expressing everlasting unions through marriage, cursed potential of disunion in friendships, the sapphic expression and metamorphosis of the union in friendship within a (poetic, political, etc.) world commanded by masculine rhetoric. Loscocco begins her claim by setting up the reflection of Donne’s poetic lines within Philips’ poetry that express juxtaposing understandings; by invoking Donne as a foundation in her marriage poems, Philips creates an inseparable “seal,” declaring it for at once the world to witness and experience, dismissing Donne’s poetic conceits of separation between the world and a private union. The utilization of Donne differs in Philips’ friendship poems, such as “Friendship in Emblem,” in which unions are threatened by disunion through accentuated reflections of Donnean relationships. By understanding Philips’ previous two types of specular Donnean unions, Loscocco effectively sets up Philips’ poetry that center on friendship that establish female discourse and union through the inversion of Donne’s sapphic poetics. Through the analysis of Philips’ poetic language, Loscocco establishes Philips’ accomplishments while acknowledging the historical and present complexity of Philips’ position as “The English Sappho.”
