John Donne

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John Donne
John Donne

John Donne (pronounced Dun; 1572 – March 31, 1631) was a Jacobean poet and preacher, representative of the metaphysical poets of the period. His works, notable for their realistic and sensual style, include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and immediacy of metaphor, compared with that of his contemporaries.

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[edit] Early life

John Donne was born in London sometime between January and June in 1572. His father, also called John Donne, was a warden of the Ironmongers Company in the City of London and an influential Roman Catholic who somehow avoided unwelcome government attention. His mother, Elizabeth Jones, also from a powerful Catholic family, was the daughter of John Heywood, the playwright, and sister of Jasper Heywood, the translator and Jesuit. One of Donne's maternal great-grandmothers was a sister of Thomas More, the Catholic martyr and author of Utopia, whom Henry VIII had beheaded for his refusal to accept Henry as the leader of his faith. One of Donne's uncles, who was a Jesuit, was also executed for his Catholicism (the precise method of execution used was hanging, castration, disembowelment, and quartering).[1] Donne's brother Henry was convicted of harboring a Catholic priest and sent to prison, where he died of bubonic plague. Despite the obvious dangers, Donne’s mother ensured he was educated by the Jesuits, from whom he acquired a profound understanding of his faith that equipped him for the ideological religious conflicts of his time.

Donne was a student at Hart Hall, now Hertford College, Oxford. He lived as a young man in the fashionable intellectual quarter of the City called Lincoln's Inn and although there is no record detailing precisely where he traveled, we do know he fought with the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh against the Spanish at Cadiz and witnessed the loss of the Spanish flagship, the San Felipe, and her crew. By the age of 25 he was well prepared for the glittering diplomatic career he appeared to be seeking. 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, close to the Palace of Whitehall, then the most influential social centre in Europe.

[edit] Career

In spite of securing a post as MP for the constituency of Brackley in the same year, Donne struggled to provide for his family and relied heavily upon rich friends. 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. Around this time the two Anniversaries, An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Of the Progress of the Soul, (1612) were written. It is not known how Donne grew to abandon the faith he had been educated to defend, but he certainly was 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. Although James was pleased with Donne's work, he refused to reinstate him at court and instead urged him to take holy orders. After a long period of financial uncertainty and difficulty, spent seeking profitable employment, during which he was twice a member of Parliament (1601, 1614), Donne finally acceded to the King's wishes and was ordained into the Church of England in 1615.

Although Donne suffered from depression, experiencing suicidal feelings for much of his life (as well as writing the first defence of suicide in the English language, the prose work Biathanatos), he remains one of the most vibrant, exciting and intellectually challenging of all English poets. In a life largely devoted to state affairs, religion, and other matters considered more respectable in the culture of the day, he seems to have regarded writing as a tawdry habit he could never quite shake off, but his wide ranging output includes sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satirical verses and sermons. In 1621 Donne was made Dean of St Paul's, a leading position in the Church of England and one he held until his death in 1631. He earned a reputation as an impressive, eloquent preacher and 160 of his sermons have survived, including the infamous Death’s Duel sermon delivered at the Palace of Whitehall before King Charles I in February 1631. He died on March 31, 1631 having never published a poem in his lifetime but having left a body of work fiercely engaged with the emotional and intellectual conflicts of his age.

[edit] Style

John Donne is considered a master of the conceit, an extended metaphor that combines two vastly unlike ideas into a single idea, often using imagery. 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. 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 remarkably witty, employing paradoxes, puns, and subtle yet remarkable analogies. His pieces are often ironic and cynical, especially regarding the motives of humans and love. Common subjects of Donne's poems are love (especially in his early life), death (especially after his wife's death), and religion.

John Donne was famous for his metaphysical poetry in the 17th century. He came from a Catholic background, and was a very religious man. His work also indicated he was an individual with a healthy appetite for life and its pleasures. John Donne used his poetry to express the depth of his emotion. He did this through the use of conceits, wit and intellect – as seen in the poems “The Sunne Rising” and “Batter my Heart.” His work has received much criticism over the years, with very judgemental responses about his metaphysical form. His recent revival in the early twentieth century by poets such as TS Elliot, indicates a new found appreciation for his thought and feeling in a modern context.

[edit] Personal Life

In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, the niece of Lord Egerton's wife. Her father had Donne imprisoned for several weeks at Fleet Prison. Donne later wrote of this experience as "John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone."

He and Anne had twelve or thirteen children (it is not known for certain how many) of whom seven survived. Anne died in 1617 giving birth to their twelfth or thirteenth child.

[edit] Bibliography

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[edit] Poetry

  • Poems (1633)
  • Poems on Several Occasions (2001)
  • Love Poems (1905)
  • John Donne: Divine Poems, Sermons, Devotions and Prayers (1990)
  • The Complete English Poems (1991)
  • John Donne's Poetry (1991)
  • John Donne: The Major Works (2000)
  • The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne (2001)

[edit] Prose

  • Six Sermons (1634)
  • Fifty Sermons (1649)
  • Paradoxes, Problemes, Essayes, Characters (1652)
  • Essayes in Divinity (1651)
  • Sermons Never Before Published (1661)
  • John Donne's 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon (1996)
  • Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel (1999)

[edit] See also

[edit] Trivia

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton anthology of English literature Eighth edition. W. W. Norton and Company, 2006. ISBN 0393928284. pages 600–602

[edit] Critical Works

  • John Carey, John Donne: Life, Mind and Art, (London 1981)
  • A.L. Clements (ed.) John Donne's Poetry (New York and London, 1966)
  • G. Hammond (ed.) The Metaphysical Poets: A Casebook, (London 1986)
  • T.S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical Poets", Selected Essays, (London 1969)
  • Joe Nutt, John Donne: The Poems, (New York and London 1999)
  • C.L. Summers and T.L. Pebworth (eds.) The Eagle and the Dove: Reassessing John Donne (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986)
  • John Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination, (Oxford, 1991)
  • Stevie Davies, John Donne (Northcote House, plymouth, 1994)

[edit] External links

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