A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z


John Donne (1572-1631)

LINKS

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=247

This link connects you to the Academy of American Poets. Here you will find an exhibit on John Donne including a biography, online primary texts, criticism, bibliographic information, and additional links.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/

This link will connect you to the Luminarium web site on John Donne. It provides examples of Donne's quotations, his poetry and prose, his biography, and other scholarly resources.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in London to a Roman Catholic family, John Donne lived at a time when Catholics were persecuted in England. Although Donne studied at Oxford and Cambridge, he did not receive a degree from either university owing to his refusal to subscribe to Anglicanism. After his brother was convicted of Catholic loyalties and died in prison, Donne converted to avoid his brother's fate. Donne emerged as a spokesperson for a new poetic style that Samuel Johnson would later characterize, writing in the eighteenth-century, as "metaphysical poetry"—a poetics that defines the work of George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and John Cleveland. Through highly ironic, extended metaphors—or metaphysical "conceits"—such verse possessed wit in the use of puns, fresh and arresting insights from sharply conceived paradoxes, subtle turns of argument, and startling insights drawn from the everyday world of things observed closely. Donne composed much of his metaphysical love lyrics and erotic poetry during the 1590s before becoming Sir Thomas Edgarton's private secretary in 1598. In 1601, Donne secretly married the sixteen-year-old niece of Lady Edgarton, Anne More. Disapproving of the marriage when it became public, Edgarton imprisoned Donne briefly and withheld his dowry, leaving the poet to struggle in raising what would become his rather large household of children. After Anne's death during childbirth in 1617, Donne was appointed four years later by King James to the post of Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, a position he would hold until he died in 1631. In addition to breaking fresh ground in the metaphysical love lyric, Donne also explored the theological and existential implications of death and spirituality in the Holy Sonnets and Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624).

SECONDARY SOURCES

Cousins, A.D. and Damian Grace, Eds. Donne and the Resources of Kind. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 2002.

DiPasquale, Theresa M. Literature & Sacrament: The Sacred and the Secular in John Donne. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1999,

Edwards, David L. John Donne: Man of Flesh and Spirit. London: Continuum, 2001.

Hodgson, Elizabeth. Gender and the Sacred Self in John Donne. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999.

Johnson, Jeffrey. The Theology of John Donne. Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 1999.

Marotti, Arthur F., Ed. Critical Essays on John Donne. New York: G.K. Hall, 1994.

SECONDARY SOURCES BY CHAPTER