John Donne

1. John Donne (1572-1631)

2. Metaphysical Poets • Metaphysics • the study of the ultimate reality beyond our everyday world, including questions about God, creation, and the afterlife • These poets are known for using symbols and images from the "physical" world to spin complicated arguments about such "metaphysical" concerns. • They are known especially for the use of wit, which involves a lot of wordplay

3. John Donne • the most outstanding of the English Metaphysical Poets • born in London to a prominent Roman Catholic family but converted to Anglicanism during the 1590s • entered the University of Oxford at age 11 where he studied for three years • According to some accounts, he spent the next three years at the University of Cambridge but took no degree at either university. • began the study of law at Lincoln's Inn, London, in 1592, and he seemed destined for a legal or diplomatic career.

4. John Donne • was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal, in 1598 • His secret marriage in 1601 to Egerton's niece, Anne More, resulted in his dismissal from this position and in a brief imprisonment. • principal literary accomplishments during this period were Divine Poems (1607) and the prose work Biathanatos (c. 1608, posthumously published 1644), in which he argued that suicide is not intrinsically sinful. • became a priest of the Anglican Church in 1615 and was appointed royal chaplain later that year. • In 1621was named dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. • attained eminence as a preacher, delivering sermons that are regarded as the most brilliant and eloquent of his time.

5. John Donne • poetry embraces a wide range of secular and religious subjects • wrote • cynical verse about inconstancy • poems about true love • lyrics on the mystical union of lovers' souls and bodies • satires and hymns depicting his own spiritual struggles

6. Conceit • a figure of speech which makes an unusual and sometimes elaborately sustained comparison between two dissimilar things.

7. Petrarchan Conceit • imitate the metaphors used by the Italian poet Petrarch. • used in love poetry, exploits a particular set of images for comparisons with the despairing lover and his unpitying but idolized mistress. • the lover is a ship on a stormy sea, and his mistress "a cloud of dark disdain“ • the lady is a sun whose beauty and virtue shine on her lover from a distance • The paradoxical pain and pleasure of lovesickness is often described using oxymoron • uniting peace and war • burning and freezing

8. Metaphysical Conceit • characteristic of seventeenth-century writers influenced by John Donne • noteworthy specifically for their lack of conventionality. In general, the metaphysical conceit will use some sort of shocking or unusual comparison as the basis for the metaphor.  • When it works, a metaphysical conceit has a startling appropriateness that makes us look at something in an entirely new way. • draws upon a wide range of knowledge, mainly using highly intellectual analogies; its comparisons are elaborately rationalized. • "The Flea" compares a flea bite to the act of love • In "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" separated lovers are likened to the legs of a compass, the leg drawing the circle eventually returning home to "the fixed foot"

9. Characteristic of Donne's Poetry • It is opposite to the rich melodies with smooth rhythm and flow and the idealized view of sexual love which constituted the central tradition of Elizabethan poetry • especially in writers like the Petrarchan sonneteers and Spenser • It adopts a diction and meter modeled on actual speech. • It is usually organized in the dramatic or rhetorical form of an urgent or heated argument. • first drawing in the reader and then launching the argument • It puts to use a subtle and often outrageous logic. • It is marked by realism, irony and often a cynicism in its treatment of the complexity of human motives. • It reveals a persistent wittiness, making use of paradox, puns, and startling parallels.

10. A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning • Stellar example of Donne’s use of the conceit • Belief he wrote poem to his wife before he went away on a long holiday with his friends. • Theme: • true, spiritual love vs. physical love

11. A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning • Imagery: • Parting of two lovers is likened to death of a virtuous man. • Lovers are likened to planetary bodies. • Lovers are likened to the two points of a compass.

12. Holy Sonnet 10 • No one’s sure when Holy Sonnets were written. • Many people think that Donne composed them after the death of his wife in 1617 • weren’t published until 1633, two years after his death.