Assignment:Paper no.101 Elizabeth and Restoration Period

Paper Name: 101.Literature of the Elizabeth and Restoration Periods 

Topic Name: All about the poet John Donne

Subject Code No:22392

Name: Divya Sheta 

Roll No.:06

Enrollment No.:4069206420210033

Email ID: divyasheta@gmail.com

Batch:2020-23 MA SEM-I

Submitted to : Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English, MK Bhavanagar University.  

Introduction: 

"Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time."

From The Sun Rising. By John Donne"

• His Life:

John Donne one of the prominent poets of Renaissance Literature. He also known as scholar, priest, lawyer and secretary born into a recusant family.He was born on 22 January 1572 in London, England and died 31 March 1631, London, England. He is considered as exclusive representative of Metaphysical poets. According to Edward Albert, "he entered the Inns of Court in 1592, where he mingled wide reading with the life of a dissolute man-about-town." Further he mentioned about after Donne's death that,"Donne seemed ambitious for a worldly career, but this was ruined by a runaway marriage with the niece of his patron, after which he spent several years in suitorship of the great. In 1615 he entered the Anglican Church, after a severe personal struggle, and in 1621. became Dean of St Paul's, which position he held until his death in 1631. He was the first great Anglican preacher."

• His Poetry:

First Edition of Poems, Elegies on the authors Death. 

• Love Poems:

Donne's all love poems are collected as Song and Sonnet and Elegies. According to British Library Article about Donne's poetry that, "bold, first-person speakers, mostly male but sometimes female, make the poems feel disconcertingly direct. The poems adopt different personae, and perspectives on love both sublime and disturbing. In the much-read ‘The Flea’, the speaker playfully chides his mistress-addressee for denying him her body, when their blood has already mingled in the flea that has bitten them both. These poems often combine elevated, hyperbolic reflections upon love, or the feeling of loving, with everyday, material things, such as a pair of compasses, intricately described."Other ‘love’ poems are darker, with misogynistic and cynical speakers. Both appealing and possessive is Donne’s elegy ‘To his Mistress Going to Bed’. Its speaker impatiently demands that his lover disrobe, come to bed and ‘License my roving hands’, before praising her as his ‘America’, his ‘new-found land’, his ‘kingdom’. With these metaphors his mistress becomes, like the ‘New World’ itself, a territory to be claimed and exploited.

As Michael Donkor mentions in his Article that,"Donne’s love poetry – is flashes of startling simplicity. Though thematic and ideological complexity is characteristic of the work, Donne’s personae sometimes reject the more flowery phrasing favoured by their Elizabethan predecessors in favour of a plainer style. Couplets in 'The Anniversary' attest to this. A year after first meeting his mistress, the speaker assesses their relationship and believes:

"All other things to their destruction draw,

Only our love hath no decay"

• Religious Poetry:

As Edward Albert mentions that, Donne started write religious poems after 1610 and the greatest nineteen 'Holy Sonnet' as well as the lyrics such as ' A Hymn to GOD THE FATHER' after his wife's death in 1617. Surprisingly, he wrote love poem before his wife's death and after her death his writing style was sudden changed in religious poetry. His struggle as Catholic man, which also played very vital role in his literary career. As Elbert said that, "They(he and his wife) too are intense and personal, and have a force unique in this class of literature.They reveal the struggle in his mind before taking orders in the Anglican Church, his horror of death, and the fascination which it had for him, his dread of the wrath of God, and his longing for God's love. They are the expression of a deep and troubled soul. In them are found the intellectual subtlety, the scholastic learning, and the 'wit' and 'conceits' of the love poems.Accordingly to British Library's article on John Donne,"The whole of Holy Sonnet 10 is dedicated to the Christian paradox that Death’s victims will in the end ‘die not"

"What if this present were the worlds last night?

Marke in my heart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell,

The picture of Christ crucified, and tell

Whether that countenance can thee affright,

Teares in his eyes quench the amasing light,

Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc'd head fell.

And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,

Which pray'd forgivenesse for his foes fierce spight?

No, no; but as in my idolatrie

I said to all my profane mistresses,

Beauty, of pitty, foulnesse only is

A signe of rigour: so I say to thee,

To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign'd,

This beauteous forme assures a pitious minde."

• Metaphysical Poetry and the School of Donne:  

Of the context of this type of poetry is a high intellectualize in very simple way.According to Merriam  Webster dictionary, Metaphysical Poetry is a "highly intellectualized poetry marked by bold and ingenious conceits, incongruous imagery, complexity and subtlety of thought, frequent use of paradox, and often by deliberate harshness or rigidity of expression."

There are two Conceits, one is Petrarchan Conceit and second one is Metaphysical Conceit. In Petrarchan Conceit, two objects are very nearby from each other and quite related to each other, while in Metaphysical Conceit, two particular objects are quit opposites from each other, which are not really connected in the very first view of readers. Donne was the master of Metaphysical Conceits. Samuel Johnson first identified the poetry of Donne as 'The Metaphysical poetry' and Donne as Metaphysical poet. As Edward Albert said about the features of metaphysical poetry that, "Probably the most distinctive feature of the metaphysicals is their imagery, which, in Donne, is almost invariably unusual and striking, often breath-taking, but sometimes far-fetched and fantastic. From his wide range of knowledge he draws many remarkable comparisons; parted lovers are like the legs of a pair of compasses, love is a spider "which transubstantiates all,"his sick body is a map, his physicians cosmographers, and Death his "South-west discoverie." 

In the School (followers) of Donne, included,

• George Herbert (1593-1633)
• Richard Crashaw (1612-1649)
• Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) 
• Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
• Thomas Carew (1594-1639)
•  Andrew Marvell (1621-78)

As Dr. Mandalia Sir mentions that Samuel Johnson wanted to criticized the poetry of Donne and his followers by using the term 'Metaphysical Poetry.' But with the passing of time the same term became the term of appraisal for their poetry. Dr. Johnson has passed one remarkable stating the the poetry of the Metaphysical poets stood a trial of their finger but failed in the trial of their ears. What Dr.Johnson wants states that there is no music and rhythm in their poetry. As Helen.C.White mentions that,"It was the demand of time for the Metaphysicals to differ from the poets of the previous age."

• His Other Works:
• 'Biathanatos'(1608) probably his first prose work. About the life and death. 
• 'The Pseudo-Martyr'(1610) was a defence of the oath of allegiance.
• 'Ignatius His Conclave'(1611) was a satire upon Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits.
• Juvenilia: or Certain Paradoxes and Problems (1633)
• 'Devotions'(1614,), which give an account of his spiritual struggles during a serious illness.
• 'XXVI Sermons (1661).
• Essays in Divinity (1651) 
• Letters to severall persons of honour (1651)
• Fifty Sermons (1649)

• How did Donne’s contemporaries encounter his poems?

Michael Donkor mentions in his Article that article that, "Donne did not print his poetry, but chose to share it with a small circle of readers and patrons, who read and circulated it in manuscript. This makes it difficult to date many of his works. Donne’s poems were very sought after, and his reputation was high: the first printed collection of Donne’s Poems (1633) describes them as ‘the best in this kinde, that ever this Kingdome hath yet seene’. This collection, however, omitted the well-known elegy, ‘To his Mistress Going to Bed" It's not easy to stand side by Elizabethan poets with different writing style in poetry, using the objects which are totally opposites from their. In order to express either love or their faith in Christianity, they brought their images from different fields just like, Biology, Architecture, Engineering, Agriculture, Geometry, Geography and even Political Science. This gave unique identity to their poetry. 

• Conclusion:  

Moreover, Donne make our Imagination beyond the central theme of particular subject. He introduced us to think upon the other subjects as well as in the same theme which normally we used in the life but with different references. Donne and his School teaches us that how we imagine the thing with other references.  

As Michael Donkor mentions in his Article that,"This emphasis on debate and intellectual enquiry returns us to the classification of Donne’s writing as ‘metaphysical’. Such a classification draws attention to the ‘philosophical’ leanings of Donne’s work. It also usefully makes reference to the way in which Donne’s poems are often ‘philosophical’ investigations that probe puzzling abstractions. Some might find these complex musings of Donne’s speakers bloodless. However, it might be more rewarding to see them as concerted attempts by impassioned speakers to better understand the wonder of huge ideas – God, mortality, love. Thinking is, for these personae, an act of reverence towards these ideas. It provides potentially nebulous concepts with the substance they deserve, given that they mean so much more than some ‘lovely glorious nothing’.