Resume : Cet article se propose d'examiner comment Donne, dans sa « Satyre III », manipule l'amour pour l'Être divin par l'intermédiaire de la « hill of Truth ». L'article tente aussi de démontrer en quoi cette image constitue le centre symbolique des satires de l'auteur et une solution au problème du dévouement sociopolitique décrit dans les quatre poèmes. La fonction rhétori-que de l'ascension saute aux yeux dans les sermons, où Donne attise avec méthode le désir et l'ambition pour diriger

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... auditeurs vers l'amour de l'Être divin. D onne wrote his Satyres as an ambitious young man in search of a public career worthy of his talents, and he wrote these poems for other ambitious young men seeking the same. 1 These are practical poems that seek to answer a common but essential problem: how does one engage actively in the world of affairs without becoming polluted and compromised by it? This situation, the need to balance conscience with socio-political concerns, naturally evokes a casuistical mindset, but the means Donne chooses are poetic rather than theological. 2 When critics talk about the poetic operation of the Satyres as a whole, it is often in terms of a narrative progression from a young scholar cloistered in his study to the mature Donne taking up a position as Sir Thomas Egerton's secretary. 3 The narrative, however, offers no lasting solution to the problem of pollution: it culminates with Donne finding a position within the world of affairs, serving Egerton and the Queen in the task of weeding out corruption in the courts, but even this new career is no guarantee against personal pollution. 4 Moreover, the narrative unity of this set of poems, such as it is, is disrupted by the conspicuous insertion of the third poem, a meditative rather than narrative poem, whose mode is private rather than public. 5 Yet, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVII, 4 (2003) /5