John Donne

• He was born in London in a Catholic family

• Oxford and Cambridge

• Linconln’s Inn

• He travelled through the Continent

• Cadiz and the Azores

• He was known at Court for his witty, cynical yet

passionate love poems Songs and Sonnets

Early Life

• In 1601 he secretly got married

• He was dismissed from his

employment and imprisoned

• The Anniversary pessimism and disillusion

• Poems on the decay and falling

apart of the world

The Dark Years

• He renounced to the Catholic Church for the Anglican Church (1615)

• He became Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1621

• The King’s favourite preacher

• Sermons deep reflections on death, sin and salvation

• Holy Sonnets distressed by the thought of his past errors

• In 1631 he delivered a memorable sermon on death Death’s Duel

The Conversion

• It is a collection of love elegies and love songs

• Donne’s love is physical as well as spiritual

• The poem reflects a passionately tender attitude to love and women

• He believes that the union of the souls is stronger than that

of the bodies lovers are compared to

the connected legs of a compass

Songs and Sonnets (1633)

Donne’s poetry is characterized by wit:

• a particular kind of skill with words

• the ability to create unusual, unexpected images and join them in

complex chains of thought

This style was called Metaphysical

Donne’s poems put together

• irony

• serious reflections

• philosophical thoughts

• unexpected metaphors

Donne’s Metaphysical Style

• The poem starts abruptly

• The sun is no more the object of reverence and admiration

Busy old fool, (l 1)

Saucy pedantic wretch (l 5)

• The lover, then, can only think about his woman

he reduces the outside world to his own smaller world

centrality of the two lovers

the sun must revolve around the lovers’ bed

The Sun Rising