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| Biography: John Donne |
John Donne (1572-1631), English metaphysical poet, Anglican divine, and pulpit orator, is ranked with Milton as one of the greatest English poets. He is also a supreme artist in sermons and devotional prose.
John Donne's masculine, ingenious style is characterized by abrupt openings, paradoxes, dislocations, argumentative structure, and "conceits" - images which yoke things seemingly unlike. These features in combination with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax, and his tough eloquence were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. Since Donne's times such poetry has been unaptly called "metaphysical" - a term more appropriate for the philosophical verse of Lucretius.
Son of a prosperous ironmonger of Welsh ancestry, Donne was born between Jan. 4 and June 19, 1572, and was bred a Londoner and a Roman Catholic. His mother, a great niece of Sir (later St.) Thomas More, came from a cultured, devout family: her father, John Heywood, wrote interludes; her brother Jasper was a Jesuit; and her son Henry, John's brother, died in 1593 of a fever caught in Newgate Prison, where he was incarcerated for harboring a Roman Catholic priest. Donne's father died when John was 4, and his mother married a prominent physician.
His Poetry
After some years at Oxford (from 1584) and possibly Cambridge, Donne studied law at Lincoln's Inn (1592-1594) and became one of the first to write in English formal verse satires in the classical mode. It was also in the 1590s that he wrote many of his amatory poems. Most of them are dramatic monologues expressive of attitudes toward love, ranging from cynical fleshly realism to platonic idealism. It is sounder to see them not as autobiographical but as exposing the extremes of carnal and spiritual love and as putting in a favorable light love in which they are complementary. He also composed verse letters, elegies, epithalamia, and epigrams; they were published after his death as Songs and Sonnets.
Donne partook in the Earl of Essex's expeditions against the Spanish in Cadiz and the Azores in 1596-1597 and reflected this military experience in his poems "The Storm" and "The Calm." By 1597-1598, when he became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord keeper, he had dissociated himself from Roman Catholicism. In 1601 he blasted the promise of a successful career by secretly marrying Lady Egerton's niece, Ann More. He was dismissed from his post and temporarily imprisoned, and for about a decade he and his ever-increasing family were largely dependent on relatives and patrons.
During this middle period Donne wrote Biathanatos, a treatise on instances of justifiable suicide which may have been intended as a satire on casuistry; it was published by his son in 1646. His Pseudo-Martyr (1610) accused Roman Catholics of fostering false martyrdom for secular ends. Ignatius His Conclave (1611) was popular in both English and Latin versions: it brilliantly satirized the Jesuits but is interesting today because it reflects the then new astronomy of Galileo and toys with the notion of colonizing the moon.
Donne continued to write secular poems and, about 1609-1610, a powerful series of "Holy Sonnets," in which he meditated on sickness, death, sin, and the love of God. In 1611 he composed two companion poems, The Anniversaries, on the Idea of woman, the decay of the physical universe, the vanity of this world, and, in contrast, the permanence of God and spiritual values. These commemorated the death of little Elizabeth Drury and won him the patronage of her father, with whom Donne traveled to France and Germany. He briefly served as a member of Parliament in 1601 and again in 1614.
Church Career
About 1606 Thomas Morton offered Donne a benefice if he would take Anglican orders. But it was not until 1615, after long pious and practical hesitations, that he was ordained a priest. Appointed a royal chaplain in the same year, he also received a doctor of divinity degree from Cambridge. In 1616-1622 he was reader in divinity at Lincoln's Inn, where he preached regularly. He was desolated in 1617 by the death of his wife: she had borne him 12 children, 5 of whom died. He preached frequently at court and in 1619 was an embassy chaplain in Germany. In 1621, on James I's nomination, he became dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, attracting huge congregations with his brilliant oratory. A serious illness in 1623 gave rise to his Devotions, those moving meditations on sickness, death, and salvation from which Ernest Hemingway derived the title For Whom the Bell Tolls.
On Feb. 25, 1631, Donne left his sickbed to preach his last and most famous sermon, "Death's Duel." On March 31 he died. An effigy of him wrapped in funeral shrouds which survived the burning of St. Paul's in the Great Fire of 1666 is preserved in the present cathedral, built by Sir Christopher Wren. The effigy is that of an old, seasoned man who has thought and suffered greatly but has achieved some peace of soul. His youthful portraits show black hair, clear skin, intense eyes, an ample brow, and a pointed, bearded chin. His later pictures reveal the same intensity and alertness.
His Character
Donne's was a complex personality, an unusual blend of passion, zeal, and brilliance; God and women were his favorite themes, but his subject matter otherwise ranged over the pagan and the pious, the familiar and the esoteric, the cynical and the sincere, the wittily bright and the theologically profound.
Largely because of Izaak Walton's charming but somewhat unreliable Life of Dr. John Donne (1681) and because of the risqué elements in Donne's secular poetry, a myth grew up contrasting a youthful Jack Donne the rake with a pious and repentant Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's. That in his younger days he was an attractive conversationalist, socialite, and courtier is undeniable, but his works reveal that he was always a serious student and a seeker after truth; and there is no sound evidence to support the myth. Certainly after his ordination he dedicated his remarkable genius wholeheartedly to the service of God and thus became one of the most brilliant stars in that hierarchy of extraordinary Anglican priests - among them, Robert Herrick, George Herbert, and Robert Burton - whose exceptional literary genius was dedicated to the glory of God and the welfare of man.
Further Reading
Biographies of Donne written before 1960 are unreliable. Robert C. Bald's definitive John Donne: A Life (1970) supersedes all previous biographies. The frequently reprinted work by Izaak Walton, Life of Dr. John Donne (many editions) should be read as great literature, more imaginative than accurate. Edward LeComte, Grace to a Witty Sinner: A Life of Donne (1964), is written for the general reader.
Among the studies of Donne's work, K. W. Gransden's concise John Donne (1954; rev. ed. 1969) and Frank Kermode, John Donne (1957), are introductions for beginners. James B. Leishman, The Monarch of Wit (1951; 6th ed. 1962), and Clay Hunt, Donne's Poetry (1954), provide solid foundations for interpreting the poems. Arnold Stein, John Donne's Lyrics (1962), emphasizes Donne's style and wit. Varied approaches are collected in Helen Gardner, ed., John Donne (1962), and Leonard Unger further illuminates such approaches in Donne's Poetry and Modern Criticism (1950). Judah Stampfer, John Donne and the Metaphysical Gesture (1970), is impressionistic but stimulating. Far more reliable is Donald L. Guss, John Donne, Petrarchist (1966), which relates Songs and Sonnets to their Italian influences; N. J. C. Andreasen, John Donne, Conservative Revolutionary (1967), also relates the poetry to tradition. Evelyn M. Simpson, A Study of the Prose Works (1924; 2d ed. 1948), is fundamental. Also excellent are William R. Mueller, John Donne, Preacher (1962), and Joan Webber, Contrary Music: The Prose Style of John Donne (1963). For the scientific background, Charles M. Coffin, John Donne and the New Philosophy (1937), and Marjorie Hope Nicolson, The Breaking of the Circle (1950; rev. ed. 1960), still have value. Wilbur Sanders, John Donne's Poetry (1971), is a judicious survey. Among the more general works relating to Donne are George Williamson, The Donne Tradition (1930); Helen C. White, The Metaphysical Poets (1936); Joseph E. Duncan, The Revival of Metaphysical Poetry (1959); and, of outstanding importance, Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century (1945; rev. ed. 1962), and Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation (1954; rev. ed. 1962).
| British History: John Donne |
Donne, John (1572-1631). Metaphysical poet and churchman. Having been a volunteer on the 1596 Cadiz expedition, he became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, but marriage to Anne More (1601) led to dismissal and unemployment. He had by then written much of his passionate, witty poetry and begun to reject catholicism. Even as an Anglican, his deep, personal religious struggle continued. He was ordained in 1615. Preferment was then rapid and he became famous for his powerful sermons. Despite uncertain health, he was installed as dean of St Paul's cathedral (1621).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: John Donne |
Life and Works
Reared a Roman Catholic, Donne was educated at Oxford, Cambridge, and Lincoln's Inn. He traveled on the Continent and in 1596-97 accompanied the earl of Essex on his expeditions to Cádiz and the Azores. On his return he became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton (later Baron Ellesmere), lord keeper of the great seal, and achieved a reputation as a poet and public personage. His writing of this period, including some of his Songs and Sonnets (others were written as late as 1617) and Problems and Paradoxes, consist of cynical, realistic, often sensual lyrics, essays, and verse satires.
Donne's court career was ruined by the discovery of his marriage in 1601 to Anne More, niece to Sir Thomas Egerton's second wife, and he was imprisoned for a short time. After 1601 his poetry became more serious. The two Anniversaries-An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Of the Progress of the Soul (1612)-reveal that his faith in the medieval order of things had been disrupted by the growing political, scientific, and philosophic doubt of the times. He wrote prose on religious and moral subjects; a polemic against the Jesuits; Biathanatos (not published until 1644), a qualified apology for suicide; and the Pseudo-Martyr (1610), an argument for Anglicanism.
After a long period of financial uncertainty and desperation, during which he was twice a member of Parliament (1601, 1614), Donne yielded to the wishes of King James I and took orders in 1615. Two years later his wife died. The tone of his poetry, especially the Holy Sonnets, deepened after her death. After his ordination, Donne wrote more religious works, such as his Devotions (1624) and sermons. Several of his sermons were published during his lifetime. Donne was one of the most eloquent preachers of his day. He was made reader in divinity at Lincoln's Inn, a royal chaplain, and in 1621, dean of St. Paul's, a position he held until his death.
Poetry
All of Donne's verse-his love sonnets and his religious and philosophical poems-is distinguished by a remarkable blend of passion and reason. His love poetry treats the breadth of the experience of loving, emphasizing, in such poems as "The Ecstasie," the root of spiritual love in physical love. The devotional poems and sermons reveal a profound concern with death, decay, damnation, and the possibility of the soul's transcendent union with God.
Original, witty, erudite, and often obscure, Donne's style is characterized by a brilliant use of paradox, hyperbole, and imagery. His most famous poems include "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," "Go and catch a falling star," "Hymn to God the Father," and the sonnet to death ("Death be not proud"). Neglected for 200 years, Donne was rediscovered by 20th-century critics. His work has had a profound influence on a number of poets Including W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden.
Bibliography
See biographies by R. C. Bald (1970, repr. 1986) and J. Stubbs (2007); studies by R. E. Hughes (1968), R. S. Jackson (1970), W. Sanders (1971), M. Roston (1974), T. Spencer, ed. (2d ed. 1986), C. J. Summers and T.-L. Pebworth, ed. (1986), F. J. Wamke (1987), D. A. Larson (1989), J. Carey (rev. ed. 1991), A. L. Clements, ed. (2d ed., 1991), E. W. Tayler (1991), A. F. Marotti (1986 and as ed. 1994), A. J. Smith (2 vol., 1975, repr. 1996), P. M. Oliver (1997), J. Johnson (1999), A Mousley, ed. (1999), D. L. Edwards (2002), B. Saunders (2006), and D. R. Dickson, ed. (2007); centenary volumes edited by P. A. Fiore (1972) and A. J. Smith (1972).
| History 1450-1789: John Donne |
Donne, John (1572–1631), English poet and divine. Donne was born in London sometime between 24 January and 19 June 1572, the son of John Donne, an ironmonger, and Elizabeth, daughter of the epigrammatist and playwright John Heywood and the great-niece of Sir Thomas More. Donne's mother's family were staunch Roman Catholics: his maternal uncle Jasper headed a Jesuit mission to England in 1581–1583, and was imprisoned and later exiled; Donne's younger brother Henry died from the plague in 1593 while being held in Newgate Prison, accused of harboring a seminary priest.
Donne entered Hart Hall, Oxford, in October 1584, and according to some accounts, also studied at Cambridge. He may have spent time on the Continent with Jasper Heywood. In May 1592 he entered Lincoln's Inn after a period of preliminary study at Thavies Inn. He took part in the English expeditions to Cádiz and the Azores in 1596 and 1597 and worked as secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, lord keeper of England. Most of his Satires and a number of other poems, including the Elegies, are thought to have been written in the 1590s, although the dating of most of Donne's poetry is extremely slippery. The Satires and Elegies play with the image of a young man in a glittering but seedy London and present Donne's poetic personae in a variety of social and sexual situations.
Donne served as M.P. for Brackley in the Parliament of October–December 1601, but his public career was irrevocably damaged by his secret marriage in December 1601 to Anne More, daughter of Egerton's brother-in-law, Sir George More. More seems to have objected to his new son-in-law's Catholic background, to his presumptuous behavior, and possibly to Donne's own rakish reputation. When the marriage became publicly known, Donne and the friends who had helped him were briefly imprisoned, and Donne lost his employment with Egerton. His subsequent attempts to find state employment were consistently unsuccessful, although he accompanied Sir Robert Drury to the Continent in 1611–1612, and served as M.P. for Taunton in 1614. He had earlier converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism, avowedly as a result of sustained intellectual consideration, but the prohibitions against Catholics in English society may also have had a contributory effect. The majority of his verse letters, occasional poems, and holy sonnets date from these years of frustration, and he also produced a series of religious tracts: The Pseudo-Martyr (published 1610), in which he urged English Catholics to submit to the oath of allegiance, Ignatius His Conclave (1611), and the study of suicide, Biathanatos (not published until 1647). Two of his poems, the disjunctive and often disturbing Anniversaries, written to commemorate the life of Drury's daughter Elizabeth, were printed in 1611–1612.
On 23 January 1615 Donne was ordained in the Church of England. This decision clearly met with favor from the king, and he was appointed as a royal chaplain only a few weeks after his ordination. He was presented with a series of lucrative livings, and held the divinity readership at Lincoln's Inn from October 1616. Anne Donne died in August 1617, and in May 1619 Donne went to Germany as chaplain to Viscount Doncaster, returning in January 1620. On 22 November 1621 he was elected dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, an office that he held until his death. He was widely regarded as the most eloquent and learned of preachers. Reflecting this fame, his sermons were printed from 1622, and in 1624 he published Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, inspired by a recent illness. Although his prose works are not today as familiar to readers as his poems, the Devotions and Sermons display a similar controlled power, stylistic experimentation, and intellectual focus.
Donne's best-known sermon is his last, "Death's Duel," preached at court only a month before his death. "Death's Duel" is a typically brilliant piece, drawing its power from its combination of biblical exegesis, linguistic control, and the quasi-theatrical display of the dying preacher's body. Donne died on 31 March 1631, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. His tomb, for which—according to his early biographer Izaak Walton—he posed in the months prior to his death, wearing his shroud and standing on a funeral urn, survived the fire of 1666 and can be seen in Christopher Wren's cathedral, completed in 1710.
Donne's public reputation during his lifetime was based mainly on his church career and the wide circulation of his prose works, especially his sermons. He began to be reconfigured as a poet, however, after his son John collected his poems in print for the first time in 1633. The volume was prefaced with elegies on the author; these elegies and Walton's biography, published with LXXX Sermons (1640), disseminated two images of Donne, the youthful, rakish poet "Jack Donne" and the older and wiser Reverend Dr. Donne, dean of St. Paul's. Close examination of his career and writing does not fully sustain these starkly divided personae. Donne was already publishing religious polemic before his ordination, and he continued to compose poetry until at least 1625. His career in fact demonstrates the impossibility of maintaining clear divisions between the secular and the sacred in early modern England.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Donne, John. Biathanatos. Edited by Ernest W. Sullivan. Newark, N.J., and London, 1984.
——. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. Edited by Anthony Raspa. Montreal, 1975.
——. The Divine Poems. Edited by Helen Gardner. Oxford, 1952.
——. The Elegies and The Songs and Sonnets. Edited by Helen Gardner. Oxford, 1965.
——. The Epithalamions, Anniversaries and Epicedes. Edited by W. Milgate. Oxford, 1978.
——. Ignatius His Conclave. Edited by T. S. Healy. Oxford, 1969.
——. Paradoxes and Problems. Edited by Helen Peters. Oxford, 1980.
——. Pseudo-Martyr. Edited by Anthony Raspa. Rev. ed. Montreal, 1993.
——. The Satires, Epigrams and Verse Letters. Edited by W. Milage. Oxford, 1967.
——. Selections. Edited by John Carey. Oxford, 1990. Complete poems and selected prose.
——. The Sermons of John Donne. Edited by George R. Potter and Evelyn Simpson. 10 vols. Berkeley, 1953–1962.
——. The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne. Edited by Gary A. Stringer. Bloomington, Ind., 1995–. Vols. 2, 7, and 8 published by 2002.
Secondary Sources
Bald, R. C. John Donne: A Life. Oxford, 1970.
Carey, John. John Donne: Life, Mind and Art. Oxford, 1981.
Davies, Stevie. John Donne. Plymouth, U.K., 1994. An introductory account of Donne's poetry with a helpful annotated bibliography.
Docherty, Thomas. John Donne, Undone. London and New York, 1986.
Flynn, Dennis. John Donne and the Ancient Catholic Nobility. Bloomington, Ind., 1995.
Marotti, Arthur F. John Donne, Coterie Poet. Madison, Wis., 1986.
—LUCY MUNRO
| Quotes By: John Donne |
Quotes:
"I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease."
"Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven."
"Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet."
"As he that fears God hears nothing else, so, he that sees God sees every thing else."
"Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right, by these we reach divinity."
"When I died last, and, Dear, I die as often as from thee I go though it be but an hour ago and lovers hours be full eternity."
See more famous quotes by
John Donne
| Wikipedia: John Donne |
| John Donne | |
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 John Donne |
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| Born | 1572 London, England |
| Died | 31 March 1631 |
| Occupation | Poet, Priest, Lawyer |
| Nationality | English |
| Genres | Satire, Love poetry, Elegy, Sermons |
| Subjects | Love, Sexuality, Religion, Death |
| Literary movement | Metaphysical Poetry |
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John Donne, pronounced /ˈdʌn/ "dun" (21 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English Jacobean poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period. His works are notable for their realistic and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially as compared to those of his contemporaries.
Despite his great education and poetic talents, he lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. In 1615 he became an Anglican priest and, in 1621, was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Contents |
John Donne was born on Bread Street in London, England, into a Catholic family at a time when Catholicism was illegal in England.[3] Donne was the third of six children. His father, also named John Donne, was of Welsh descent, and a warden of the Ironmongers Company in the City of London. Donne's father was a respected Catholic who avoided unwelcome government attention out of fear of being persecuted for his religious faith.[4][5] Donne's father died in 1576, leaving his wife, Elizabeth Heywood, the responsibility of raising their children.[5] Elizabeth Heywood, also from a noted Catholic family, was the daughter of John Heywood, the playwright, and sister of Jasper Heywood, the translator and Jesuit. She was a great-niece of the Catholic martyr Thomas More.[6] This tradition of martyrdom would continue among Donne’s closer relatives, many of whom were executed or exiled for religious reasons.[7] Despite the obvious dangers, Donne’s family arranged for his education by the Jesuits, which gave him a deep knowledge of his religion that equipped him for the ideological religious conflicts of his time.[6] Donne's mother married Dr. John Syminges, a wealthy widower with three children, a few months after Donne's father died. In 1577, his mother died, followed by two more of his sisters, Mary and Katherine, in 1581.
Donne was a student at Hart Hall, now Hertford College, Oxford, from the age of 11. After three years at Oxford he was admitted to the University of Cambridge, where he studied for another three years.[8] He was unable to obtain a degree from either institution because of his Catholicism, since he could not take the Oath of Supremacy required of graduates.[6] In 1591 he was accepted as a student at the Thavies Inn legal school, one of the Inns of Chancery in London. In 1592 he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, one of the Inns of Court[6], where he held the office of Master of the Revels.[3] His brother Henry was also a university student prior to his arrest in 1593 for harbouring a Catholic priest, William Harrington, whom Henry betrayed under torture.[3] Harrington was tortured on the rack, hanged until not quite dead, and then was subjected to live disembowelment.[3] Henry Donne died in Newgate prison of bubonic plague, leading John Donne to begin questioning his Catholic faith.[5]
During and after his education, Donne spent much of his considerable inheritance on women, literature, pastimes and travel.[4][6] Although there is no record detailing precisely where he traveled, it is known that he traveled across Europe and later fought with the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh against the Spanish at Cádiz (1596) and the Azores (1597) and witnessed the loss of the Spanish flagship, the San Felipe.[1][5][9] According to Izaak Walton, who wrote a biography of Donne in 1640:
| “ | ... he returned not back into England till he had stayed some years, first in Italy, and then in Spain, where he made many useful observations of those countries, their laws and manner of government, and returned perfect in their languages. | ” |
By the age of 25 he was well prepared for the diplomatic career he appeared to be seeking.[9] He was appointed chief secretary to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton, and was established at Egerton’s London home, York House, Strand close to the Palace of Whitehall, then the most influential social centre in England.
During the next four years he fell in love with Egerton's niece Anne More, and they were married just before Christmas [3] in 1601 against the wishes of both Egerton and her father, George More, Lieutenant of the Tower. This ruined his career and earned him a short stay in Fleet Prison, along with the priest who married them and the man who acted as a witness to the wedding. Donne was released when the marriage was proven valid, and soon secured the release of the other two. Walton tells us that when he wrote to his wife to tell her about losing his post, he wrote after his name: John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done. It was not until 1609 that Donne was reconciled with his father-in-law and received his wife's dowry.
Following his release, Donne had to accept a retired country life in Pyrford, Surrey.[6] Over the next few years he scraped a meagre living as a lawyer, depending on his wife’s cousin Sir Francis Wolly to house him, his wife, and their children. Since Anne Donne had a baby almost every year, this was a very generous gesture. Though he practised law and worked as an assistant pamphleteer to Thomas Morton, he was in a state of constant financial insecurity, with a growing family to provide for.[6]
Anne bore him 12 children in 16 years of marriage (including two stillbirths - their eighth and then in 1617 their last child); indeed, she spent most of her married life either pregnant or nursing. The 10 surviving children were named Constance, John, George, Francis, Lucy (after Donne's patroness Lucy, Countess of Bedford, her godmother), Bridget, Mary, Nicholas, Margaret and Elizabeth. Francis, Nicholas and Mary died before they were ten. In a state of despair, Donne noted that the death of a child would mean one less mouth to feed, but he could not afford the burial expenses. During this time Donne wrote, but did not publish, Biathanatos, his defense of suicide.[7] His wife died on 15 August 1617, five days after giving birth to their twelfth child, a still-born baby. Donne mourned her deeply, including writing the 17th Holy Sonnet.[6] He never remarried; this was quite unusual for the time, especially as he had a large family to bring up.
Donne's earliest poems showed a developed knowledge of English society coupled with sharp criticism of its problems. His satires dealt with common Elizabethan topics, such as corruption in the legal system, mediocre poets, and pompous courtiers. His images of sickness, vomit, manure, and plague assisted in the creation of a strongly satiric world populated by all the fools and knaves of England. His third satire, however, deals with the problem of true religion, a matter of great importance to Donne. He argued that it was better to examine carefully one's religious convictions than blindly to follow any established tradition, for none would be saved at the Final Judgment, by claiming "A Harry, or a Martin taught [them] this."[7]
Donne's early career was also notable for his erotic poetry, especially his elegies, in which he employed unconventional metaphors, such as a flea biting two lovers being compared to sex.[9] In Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed, he poetically undressed his mistress and compared the act of fondling to the exploration of America. In Elegy XVIII, he compared the gap between his lover's breasts to the Hellespont.[9] Donne did not publish these poems, although he did allow them to circulate widely in manuscript form.[9]
Donne was elected as Member of Parliament for the constituency of Brackley in 1602, but this was not a paid position and Donne struggled to provide for his family, relying heavily upon rich friends.[6] The fashion for coterie poetry of the period gave him a means to seek patronage and many of his poems were written for wealthy friends or patrons, especially Sir Robert Drury, who came to be Donne's chief patron in 1610.[9] Donne wrote the two Anniversaries, An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Of the Progress of the Soul, (1612), for Drury. While historians are not certain as to the precise reasons for which Donne left the Catholic Church, he was certainly in communication with the King, James I of England, and in 1610 and 1611 he wrote two anti-Catholic polemics: Pseudo-Martyr and Ignatius his Conclave.[6] Although James was pleased with Donne's work, he refused to reinstate him at court and instead urged him to take holy orders.[5] Although Donne was at first reluctant, feeling unworthy of a clerical career, he finally acceded to the King's wishes and in 1615 was ordained into the Church of England.[9]
Donne became a Royal Chaplain in late 1615, Reader of Divinity at Lincoln's Inn in 1616, and received a Doctor of Divinity degree from Cambridge University in 1618.[6] Later in 1618 he became chaplain to Viscount Doncaster, who was on an embassy to the princes of Germany. Donne did not return to England until 1620.[6] In 1621 Donne was made Dean of St Paul's, a leading (and well-paid) position in the Church of England and one he held until his death in 1631. During his period as Dean his daughter Lucy died, aged eighteen. It was in late November and early December of 1623 that he suffered a nearly fatal illness, thought to be either typhus or a combination of a cold followed by the seven-day relapsing fever. During his convalescence he wrote a series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and sickness that were published as a book in 1624 under the title of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. Meditation XVII later became well known for its phrase "for whom the bell tolls" and the statement that "no man is an island". In 1624 he became vicar of St Dunstan-in-the-West, and 1625 a Royal Chaplain to Charles I.[6] He earned a reputation as an eloquent preacher and 160 of his sermons have survived, including the famous Death’s Duel sermon delivered at the Palace of Whitehall before King Charles I in February 1631.
| “ | ... any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. | ” |
His numerous illnesses, financial strain, and the deaths of his friends all contributed to the development of a more somber and pious tone in his later poems.[9] The change can be clearly seen in "An Anatomy of the World" (1611), a poem that Donne wrote in memory of Elizabeth Drury, daughter of his patron, Sir Robert Drury. This poem treats Elizabeth's demise with extreme gloominess, using it as a symbol for the Fall of Man and the destruction of the universe.[9]
The poem "A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy's Day", being the shortest day of the year, concerns the poet's despair at the death of a loved one. In it Donne expresses a feeling of utter negation and hopelessness, saying that "I am every dead thing...re-begot / Of absence, darkness, death". This famous work was probably written in 1627 when both Donne's friend Lucy, Countess of Bedford and his daughter Lucy Donne died. Three years later, in 1630, Donne wrote his will on Saint Lucy's day (December 13), the date the poem describes as "Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight."
The increasing gloominess of Donne's tone may also be observed in the religious works that he began writing during the same period. His early belief in the value of skepticism now gave way to a firm faith in the traditional teachings of the Bible. Having converted to the Anglican Church, Donne focused his literary career on religious literature. He quickly became noted for his sermons and religious poems. The lines of these sermons would come to influence future works of English literature, such as Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, which took its title from a passage in Meditation XVII, and Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, which took its title from the same source.
Towards the end of his life Donne wrote works that challenged death, and the fear that it inspired in many men, on the grounds of his belief that those who die are sent to Heaven to live eternally. One example of this challenge is his Holy Sonnet X, from which come the famous lines “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” Even as he lay dying during Lent in 1631, he rose from his sickbed and delivered the Death's Duel sermon, which was later described as his own funeral sermon. Death’s Duel portrays life as a steady descent to suffering and death, yet sees hope in salvation and immortality through an embrace of God, Christ and the Resurrection.[7][9][11]
It is thought that his final illness was stomach cancer. He died on 31 March 1631 having written many poems in his lifetime [though only in manuscript - his poems would not be printed and published until two years after his death]; but having left a body of work fiercely engaged with the emotional and intellectual conflicts of his age. John Donne is buried in St Paul's, where a memorial statue of him was erected (carved from a drawing of him in his shroud), with a Latin epigraph probably composed by himself.
John Donne was famous for his metaphysical poetry in the 17th century. His work suggests a healthy appetite for life and its pleasures, while also expressing deep emotion. He did this through the use of conceits, wit and intellect — as seen in the poems "The Sun Rising" and "Batter My Heart".
Donne is considered a master of the metaphysical conceit, an extended metaphor that combines two vastly different ideas into a single idea, often using imagery.[7] An example of this is his equation of lovers with saints in "The Canonization." Unlike the conceits found in other Elizabethan poetry, most notably Petrarchan conceits, which formed clichéd comparisons between more closely related objects (such as a rose and love), metaphysical conceits go to a greater depth in comparing two completely unlike objects, although sometimes in the mode of Shakespeare's radical paradoxes and imploded contraries. One of the most famous of Donne's conceits is found in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" where he compares two lovers who are separated to the two legs of a compass.
Donne's works are also witty, employing paradoxes, puns, and subtle yet remarkable analogies. His pieces are often ironic and cynical, especially regarding love and human motives. Common subjects of Donne's poems are love (especially in his early life), death (especially after his wife's death), and religion.[7]
John Donne's poetry represented a shift from classical forms to more personal poetry.[12] Donne is noted for his poetic metre, which was structured with changing and jagged rhythms that closely resemble casual speech (it was for this that the more classically-minded Ben Jonson commented that "Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging").[7]
Some scholars believe that Donne's literary works reflect the changing trends of his life, with love poetry and satires from his youth and religious sermons during his later years. Other scholars, such as Helen Gardner, question the validity of this dating - most of his poems were published posthumously (1633). The exception to these is his Anniversaries which were published in 1612 and Devotions upon Emergent Occasions published in 1623. His sermons are also dated, sometimes specifically by date and year.
His work has received much criticism over the years, especially concerning his metaphysical form.[7] Donne's immediate successors in poetry tended to regard his works with ambivalence, while the Neoclassical poets regarded his conceits as abuse of the metaphor. He was revived by Romantic poets such as Coleridge and Browning, though his more recent revival in the early twentieth century by poets such as T. S. Eliot tended to portray him as an anti-Romantic.[13]
John Donne is commemorated as a priest in the calendar of the Church of England and in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on March 31.[14]
Sylvia Plath, interviewed on BBC Radio in late 1962, said the following about a book review of her collection of poems titled The Colossus that had been published in the United Kingdom two years earlier: "I remember being appalled when someone criticized me for beginning just like John Donne but not quite managing to finish like John Donne, and I felt the weight of English literature on me at that point."[15]
The memorial to John Donne, modeled after the engraving pictured above, was one of the few such memorials to survive the Great Fire of London in 1666 and now appears in St Paul's Cathedral, where he is buried.
Donne has appeared in several works of literature:
Cleanth Brooks,(2004) "The Language of Paradox" in Julie Rivkan, Michael Ryan (eds) Literary Theory: An Anthology 2nd ed. pp.28–39
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