John Donne

John Donne – 1573 – 1631 (London)

• Alma mater: Oxford and Cambridge
• Parents – Roman Catholics
• 1621 – Dean of St. Pauls
• First great Anglican Preacher
• Revolted against the easy, fluent style, stock imagery, and pastoral conventions of followers of Spenser.
• His poetry: Vigorous, forceful, with faults of rhymes, strangely harmonious, reality of thoughts, vividness of expressions.
• Psychological poet, whose primary concern is feeling.
• “He affects the metaphysics” – Dryden of Donne
• Metaphysical poets who followed Donne.
• Metaphysical means – “based on abstract general reasoning”
• Striking feature – imagery
• Was born in Bread Street, London in 1572. In a prominent Roman Catholic family.
• Converted to Anglicanism during 1590
• Educated in University of Oxford. Then University of Cambridge,  but received no degree a he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy required at graduation.
• Donne began to study law in Lincoln’s Inn, London, in 1592.
• Donne was appointed as Chief Secretary to Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton. During these years he fell in love with Egerton’s niece, Anne More and secretly married her without his patron’s permission in 1601. Egerton displeased and dismissed Donne from his post and he got a brief imprisonment. After his release he accepted a country life in Pryrford, Surrey and worked as a lawyer.
• Jesus Core Alonso divided Donne’s poetry into three main groups:
• Satires and cynically anti-petrarchan love poems
• sincere, deeply-felt neoplatonic amatory poems and philosophical complimentary verses to influential female friends.
• His devotional poems.
• Donne became a priest of the Anglican Church in 1615.
• And was appointed royal chaplain later the year.
• he was made the Dean of St. Paul’s cathedral.
• Died on 31st march and buried at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
• Works:

1. 1. 1. Divine Poems (1607)
      2. The Flea
      3. The Good morrow
      4. The Sun rising
      5. the Canonisation
      6. A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
      7. The Ecstacy
      8. Elegy XX To His Mistress Going to Bed.
      9. Holy Sonnet X Death Be not proud
      10. Holy Sonnet XIV better my heart-three person’d
      11. Holy Sonnet XIV Batter My Heart-three person’d  God
      12. Hymn to God, My God, In My Sickness
      13. Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward.
   2. Biathanatos (1607)
   3. An Anatomy of the World (1611)
      1. Written for his chief patron MP Sir Robert Drury.
   4. Of the Progress of the Soul (1612)
      1. Written for his chief patron MP Sir Robert Drury.
   5. Wrote two anti-Catholic Polemics
      1. Pseudo-martyr
      2. Ignatius his Conclave
   6. Devotions upon Emergent Occassions (1624)
      1. A prose work dedicated to Charles I.
   7. Death’s Duell or A Consolation to the Soul.
      1. His last Sermon.
   8. Of the Progres of the Soule – 1601: written in couplet form, later to be adopted by Dryden and Pope
   9. Songs and Sonnets
   10. Aire and Angels
   11. A Nocturall upon S. Lucas Day
   12. A Valediction: forbidding mourning
   13. The Extasie: Religious poems – Written after 1610
   14. Holy Sonnets : 19 in number
   15. A Hymn to God The Father – 1917: Prose
   16. The Pseudo Martyr – 1610: Defence of the oath of allegiance.
   17. Ignatius His Conclave – 1611: Satire upon Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits.
   18. Devotions – 1614: An account of his spiritual struggle during his illness.
   19. Sermons – 160 in number: Finest- Death’s Duel- 1630