John Donne

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John Donne

• (1572-1631)

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John Donne

• was the most outstanding of the English
  Metaphysical Poets and a churchman famous for his
  spellbinding sermons.
• born in London to a prominent Roman Catholic
  family but converted to Anglicanism during the
  1590s.
• At the age of 11 he entered the University of
  Oxford, 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.
• He began the study of law at Lincoln's Inn,
  London, in 1592, and he seemed destined for a
  legal or diplomatic career.
• 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. During the
  next few years Donne made a meager living as a
  lawyer.

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John Donne

• 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.

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John Donne

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

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Conceit

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

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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

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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"

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Characteristic of Donne's Poetry

• It is sharply opposed 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 the
  rough give-and-take of 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.

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John Donne

• Donne's poetry marks sharp stylistic and thematic
  breaks from the sort of verse written by his
  predecessors and indeed most of his
  contemporaries.

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Donne's Holy Sonnet 14

• The sonnet is a highly conventional art form, and
  one would expect a smooth iambic pentameter
  line.  But notice all the stressed syllables in
  the first lines of this poem, and how hard it is
  to read them in the conventional iambic
  pentameter pattern
• Batter my heart, three-personed God, for YouAs
  yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to
  mendThat I may rise,  and stand, oe'erthrow me,
  and bendYour force, to break, blow, burn, and
  make me new.

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George Herbert (1593-1633)

• Considered the finest of the religious
  metaphysicals,
• was an Anglican poet who struggled for years
  between choosing a religious life or one that was
  both academic and public.
• His collection of religious poems, The Temple
  Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1633),
  shows him both
• Expressing his own sense of the conflict between
  the claims established on man by worldly wit and
  sophistication and those of true Christian
  devotion and
• Exploring the significance of the main symbols
  and beliefs of Protestant Christianity

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George Herbert

• Like Donne, Herbert writes poetry which grabs the
  reader's attention by its opening statement of
  theme, but unlike Donne, he maintains interest
  and excitement by the unexpected ways he
  transforms traditional Christian material.

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George Herbert

• Herbert's poetry is marked by alternating modes
  of shock and repose conflict is balanced by calm
  trust, disturbed speculation by simple faith,
  ingenious language by simplicity of statement.
• The ultimate struggle or conflict in Herbert's
  poetry is between the world and complete
  surrender to God.

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George Herbert

• Herbert's poetry differs from Donne's in four
  essential ways
• his work combines religious autobiography with
  presentation of great Christian themes,
• he uses musical devices and analogies to a
  greater extent than any other metaphysical poet,
• he does not focus on the struggle for a "right"
  faith or a true religion, because he professes to
  have found it and
• he produced shaped or pattern poetry.

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George Herbert

• perhaps best known for his technique of exploring
  analogies between emblematic objects--such as the
  human body or parts of the church building and
  its furniture--and religious truths.
• He does so primarily through the use of shaped
  verse.

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George Herbert

• Shaped verse is a poem so constructed that its
  printed form suggests its subject matter or its
  theme.

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Richard Crashaw (1612/13-1649)

• A Catholic convert, Crashaw very nearly lived the
  last part of his life exiled among the religious
  metaphysicals.
• Although like Herbert he is considered a
  religious metaphysical, Crashaw's poetry reveals
  a sensibility and a technique markedly different
  from that of either Herbert or Donne.
• His collection of poetry entitled Steps to the
  Temple (1646) clearly refers to Herbert's earlier
  work, which he is said to have admired. Crashaw's
  poetry, however, is far removed stylistically
  from Herbert's.

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Richard Crashaw

• poetry is characterized by a deliberate search
  for startling and paradoxical expression meant
  specifically to shock and excite the reader. He
  achieves this goal in three related ways
• he presses all of the senses into the service of
  the expression of religious passion,
• he uses erotic and other images of physical
  appetite and desire in a paradoxical way, and
• he utilizes extravagant paradox involving the
  secular and the divine, tears and ecstasy, the
  sensuous and the spiritual.

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Robert Herrick

• Carpe diem" means "seize the day"
• This Latin term was coined by the Roman poet
  Horace, and in general it refers to all those
  works in which one is reminded to eat, drink, and
  be merry, for tomorrow we may die.

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Robert Herrick

• In lyric love poetry, the tradition sometimes
  becomes a bit of a game, as the lover tries to
  encourage the woman to enjoy love while they are
  young and beautiful.  We will be reading several
  versions of the carpe diem poem--including
  Donne's "The Flea" and "The Ecstasy," as well as
  Andrew Marvell's marvelous argument, "To His Coy
  Mistress."