Biography of John Donne

Biography of sewer Donne commode Donne was an English poet, satirist, police forceyer and priest. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works ar noned for their strong, sensual way of liveness and include sonnets, love verse, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is nonable for its sonorousness of language and inventiveness of metaphor, specially comp atomic number 18d to that of his contemporaries. Donnes style is characterised by abrupt springs and mixed paradoxes, ironies and dislocations.These features, along liquid body substanceh his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his try syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of courtly Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early c arer was marked by poetry that gage immense k instantlyledge of British society and h e met that knowledge with frizzy criticism. An early(a) outstanding theme in Donnes poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering and theorising about.He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits. Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in p overty for some(prenominal) years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. He spent much of the cash he inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes, and travel. In clx1, Donne secretly unify Anne Moore, with whom he had twelve children. In 1615, he became an Anglican priest, although he did not want to take Anglican orders.He did so because King mob I persistently ordered it. In 1621, he was appointed the doyen of St Pauls Cathedral in London. He to a fault served as a fraction of parliament in 1601 and in 1614. Biography Early Life Donne was born(p) in London, into a Roman C atholic family when practice of that religion was culpable in England. Donne was the third of six children. His father, alike named stern Donne, was of Welsh phone landmark and a warden of the Ironmongers Company in the City of London. Donnes father was a prize Roman Catholic who avoided unwelcome government attention out of attention of persecution.Donnes father died in 1576, leaving his married woman, Elizabeth Heywood, the responsibility of raising their children. Elizabeth was also from a recusant Roman Catholic family, the daughter of John Heywood, the playwright, and sister of the high-fl avouch Jasper Heywood, a Jesuit priest and translator. She was a great-niece of the Roman Catholic martyr doubting Thomas to a greater extent. This tradition of martyrdom would continue among Donnes impending relatives, many of whom were executed or exiled for religious reasons. Donne was educated privately however, thither is no evidence to support the popular claim that he was taug ht by Jesuits.Donnes mother married Dr. John Syminges, a wealthy widower with troika children, a few months after Donnes father died. Two more of his sisters, bloody shame and Katherine, died in 1581. Donnes mother, who had lived in the Deanery after Donne became Dean of St. Pauls, survived him, dying in 1632. Donne was a student at Hart Hall, now Hertford College, Oxford, from the age of 11. later on three years at Oxford he was admitted to the University of Cambridge, where he studied for another(prenominal) three years.He was unable to obtain a degree from either entry because of his Catholicism, since he could not take the Oath of Supremacy required of graduates. In 1591 he was accepted as a student at the Thavies hostel legal school, one of the Inns of Chancery in London. On 6 whitethorn 1592 he was admitted to Lincolns Inn, one of the Inns of Court. His brother Henry was also a university student prior to his arrest in 1593 for harbouring a Catholic priest, William Harrin gton, whom Henry betrayed under torture. Harrington was tortured on the rack, hanged until not quite dead, so was subjected to disembowelment.Henry Donne died in Newgate prison of bubonic plague, leading John Donne to begin inquiring his Catholic faith. During and after his education, Donne spent much of his considerable inheritance on women, literature, pastimes and travel. Although thither is no record detailing precisely where he travelled, it is cognize that he travelled across Europe and later fought with the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh against the Spanish at Cadiz (1596) and the Azores (1597) and take careed the loss of the Spanish flagship, the San Felipe. According to Izaak Walton, who wrote a biography of Donne in 1658 .. he restorationed not back into England till he had stayed some years, first off in Italy, and then in Spain, where he made many useful observations of those countries, their laws and manner of government, and re cancelled perfect in their la nguages. Izaak Walton By the age of 25 he was well prepared for the diplomatic career he appeared to be seeking. He was appointed primary(prenominal) secretary to the manufacturer Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton, and was established at Egertons London home, York House, Strand close to the castling of Whitehall, then the more or less influential social centre in England.Marriage to Anne More During the next four years, he fell in love with Egertons niece Anne More. They were married just before Christmas in 1601, against the wishes of both Egerton and George More, who was Lieutenant of the Tower and Annes father. This hymeneals ruined Donnes career and earned him a short stay in Fleet Prison, along with Samuel Brooke, who married them, and the man who acted as a witness to the wedding. Donne was released when the marriage was proven valid, and he soon secured the release of the other two.Walton tells us that when Donne wrote to his wife to tell her about losing his p ost, he wrote after his name John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done. It was not until 1609 that Donne was reconciled with his father-in-law and received his wifes dowry. After his release, Donne had to accept a retired countrified life in Pyrford, Surrey. Over the next few years, he scraped a meagre living as a lawyer, depending on his wifes cousin Sir Francis Wolly to house him, his wife, and their children. Because Anne Donne bore a new baby some every year, this was a very generous gesture.Though he practised law and may allow worked as an assistant pamphleteer to Thomas Morton, Donne was in a constant state of financial insecurity, with a growing family to provide for. Anne bore twelve children in sixteen years of marriage (including two stillbirthstheir eighth and then, in 1617, their last child) indeed, she spent most of her married life either pregnant or nursing. The ten surviving children were Constance, John, George, Francis, Lucy (named after Donnes patroness Lucy, Countess of Bedford, her godmother), Bridget, bloody shame, Nicholas, Margaret, and Elizabeth.Francis, Nicholas, and Mary died before they were ten. In a state of despair, Donne noted that the finish of a child would mean one less mouth to feed, but he could not afford the burial expenses. During this time, Donne wrote, but did not write out, Biathanatos, his defence of suicide. His wife died on 15 August 1617, five days after heavy(p) birth to their twelfth child, a still-born baby. Donne mourned her deeply, and wrote of his love and loss in his seventeenth Holy praise. Career and Later Life Donne was elected as element of Parliament for the constituency of Brackley in 1602, but this was not a paid position.The demeanor for coterie poetry of the period gave him a means to seek job and many of his poems were scripted for wealthy friends or patrons, especially Sir Robert Drury, who came to be Donnes chief patron in 1610. Donne wrote the two Anniversaries, An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Of the Progress of the Soul, (1612), for Drury. In 1610 and 1611 he wrote two anti-Catholic polemics Pseudo-Martyr and Ignatius his Conclave. Although James was pleased with Donnes work, he refused to reinstate him at court and instead urged him to take holy orders.At length, Donne acceded to the Kings wishes and in 1615 was ordained into the church service of England. Donne was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity from Cambridge in 1615 and became a royal Chaplain in the same year, and was made a Reader of Divinity at Lincolns Inn in 1616. In 1618 he became chaplain to Viscount Doncaster, who was on an embassy to the princes of Germany. Donne did not return to England until 1620. In 1621 Donne was made Dean of St Pauls, a leading (and well-paid) position in the church building of England and one he held until his death in 1631. During his period as Dean his daughter Lucy died, aged eighteen.In late November and early December 1623 he suffered a nearly fatal illness, co nception to be either typhus fever or a combination of a cold followed by a period of fever. During his convalescence he wrote a series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and illness that were published as a book in 1624 under the human action of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. integrity of these meditations, Meditation XVII, later became well known for its phraseology for whom the bell tolls and the statement that no man is an island. In 1624 he became vicar of St Dunstan-in-the-West, and 1625 a prolocutor to Charles I.He earned a reputation as an eloquent preacher and 160 of his sermons have survived, including the famous Deaths Duel sermon delivered at the Palace of Whitehall before King Charles I in February 1631. Death It is thought that his final illness was stomach cancer, although this has not been proven. He died on 31 March 1631 having written many poems, most only in manuscript. Donne was inhumed in old St Pauls Cathedral, where a memorial statue of him w as erected (carved from a drawing of him in his shroud), with a Latin epigraph probably composed by himself.Donnes monument survived the 1666 fire, and is on display in the present building. Writings Early Poetry Donnes soonest poems showed a developed knowledge of English society coupled with sharp criticism of its worrys. His satires dealt with common Elizabethan topics, such as corruption in the legal system, mediocre poets, and pompous courtiers. His images of sickness, vomit, manure, and plague reflected his strongly satiric consume of a world populated by all the fools and knaves of England. His third satire, however, deals with the problem of true religion, a matter of great importance to Donne.He argued that it was better to take apart carefully ones religious convictions than blindly to follow any established tradition, for none would be saved at the Final Judgment, by claiming A Harry, or a Martin taught them this. Donnes early career was also notable for his erotic p oetry, especially his elegies, in which he employed unconventional metaphors, such as a flea biting two lovers being compared to sex. In Elegy XIX To His cyprian Going to Bed, he poetically undressed his mistress and compared the act of petting to the exploration of America.In Elegy XVIII, he compared the gap between his lovers breasts to the Hellespont. Donne did not publish these poems, although did allow them to circulate widely in manuscript form. any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in macrocosmkinde And therefore never embark to know for whom the bell tolls It tolls for thee.. Donne, Meditation XVII Some have speculated that Donnes legion(predicate) illnesses, financial strain, and the deaths of his friends all con tributed to the development of a more somber and sanctimonious tone in his later poems.The change can be clearly seen in An Anatomy of the World (1611), a poem that Donne wrote in retrospect of Elizabeth Drury, daughter of his patron, Sir R obert Drury of Hawstead, Suffolk. This poem treats Elizabeths demise with extreme gloominess, using it as a symbol for the Fall of Man and the destruction of the universe. The poem A nocturnal upon S. Lucys Day, Being the Shortest Day, concerns the poets despair at the death of a love one. In it Donne expresses a feeling of utter negation and hopelessness, saying that I am every dead thing re-begot / Of absence, darkness, death. This famous work was probably written in 1627 when both Donnes friend Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and his daughter Lucy Donne died. Three years later, in 1630, Donne wrote his will on Saint Lucys day (13 December), the date the poem describes as Both the years, and the days deep midnight. The increasing gloominess of Donnes tone may also be observed in the religious works that he began indite during the same period. His early belief in the value of scepticism now gave way to a firm faith in the traditional teachings of the Bible. Having born-again to the A nglican Church, Donne focused his literary career on religious literature.He rapidly became noted for his sermons and religious poems. The lines of these sermons would come to influence future works of English literature, such as Ernest Hemingways For Whom the Bell Tolls, which took its title from a passage in Meditation XVII of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Thomas Mertons No Man is an Island, which took its title from the same source. Towards the end of his life Donne wrote works that challenged death, and the fear that it exalt in many men, on the grounds of his belief that those who die are sent to Heaven to live eternally.One example of this challenge is his Holy Sonnet X, Death Be Not Proud, from which come the famous lines Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. Even as he lay dying during Lent in 1631, he rose from his sickbed and delivered the Deaths Duel sermon, which was later described as his own funeral se rmon. Deaths Duel portrays life as a ravisher descent to suffering and death, yet sees hope in salvation and immortality by means of an embrace of God, Christ and the Resurrection. StyleHis work has received much criticism over the years, especially concerning his metaphysical form. Donne is generally considered the most prominent member of the metaphysical poets, a phrase coined in 1781 by the critic Dr Johnson, following a comment on Donne by the poet John Dryden. Dryden had written of Donne in 1693 He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where constitution only should reign and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should run their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love. In Life of Cowley (from Samuel Johnsons 1781 work of biography and criticism Lives of the most(prenominal) Eminent English Poets), Johnson refers to the beginning of the seventeenth century in which there appe ared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets. Donnes immediate successors in poetry therefore tended to regard his works with ambivalence, with the Neoclassical poets regarding his conceits as horror of the metaphor. However he was revived by Romantic poets such as Coleridge and Browning, though his more recent revival in the early ordinal century by poets such as T.S. Eliot and critics like F R Leavis tended to portray him, with approval, as an anti-Romantic. Donnes work suggests a healthy appetite for life and its pleasures, while also expressing deep emotion. He did this through the use of conceits, wit and intellectas seen in the poems The Sun Rising and Batter My meaning. Donne is considered a master of the metaphysical conceit, an extended metaphor that combines two immensely different ideas into a single idea, often using imagery. An example of this is his equating of lovers with saints in The Canonization.Unlike the conceits found in other Elizabethan poetry, most notably Petrarchan conceits, which formed cliched comparisons between more closely link up objects (such as a rose and love), metaphysical conceits go to a greater depth in comparing two completely unlike objects. One of the most famous of Donnes conceits is found in A Valediction pertinacious Mourning where he compares two lovers who are separated to the two legs of a compass. Donnes works are also witty, employing paradoxes, puns, and subtle yet remarkable analogies.His bits are often ironic and cynical, especially regarding love and human motives. Common subjects of Donnes poems are love (especially in his early life), death (especially after his wifes death), and religion. John Donnes poetry represented a shift from classical forms to more personal poetry. Donne is noted for his poetic metre, which was structured with changing and jagged rhythms that closely resemble insouciant speech (it was for this that the more classical-minded Ben Jonson commented that Donn e, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging).Some scholars regard that Donnes literary works reflect the changing trends of his life, with love poetry and satires from his young and religious sermons during his later years. Other scholars, such as Helen Gardner, question the rigour of this datingmost of his poems were published posthumously (1633). The exception to these is his Anniversaries which were published in 1612 and Devotions upon Emergent Occasions published in 1624. His sermons are also dated, sometimes specifically by date and year. LegacyDonne is commemorated as a priest in the calendar of the Church of England and in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on 31 March. Sylvia Plath, interviewed on BBC Radio in late 1962, said the following about a book analyze of her collection of poems titled The Colossus that had been published in the United ground two years earlier I remember being appal when someone criticised me for beginning ju st like John Donne but not quite managing to finish like John Donne, and I felt the saddle of English literature on me at that point. The memorial to Donne, modelled after the inscribe pictured above, was one of the few such memorials to survive the Great fervour of London in 1666 and now appears in St Pauls Cathedral where Donne is buried. Donne in books In Margaret Edsons Pulitzer prize-winning play Wit (1999), the main character, a professor of seventeenth century poetry specialising in Donne, is dying of cancer. The play was adapted for the HBO photograph Wit starring Emma Thompson. Donnes melodys and Sonnets feature in The Calligrapher (2003), a saucy by Edward Docx.In the 2006 unfermented The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox, Donnes works are frequently quoted. Donne appears, along with his wife Anne and daughter Pegge, in the award-winning novel Conceit (2007) by Mary Novik. Joseph Brodsky has a poem called Elegy for John Donne. The love story of Donne and Anne More is the subject of Maeve Harans 2010 historical novel The noblewoman and the Poet. An excerpt from Meditation 17 Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions serves as the opening for Ernest Hemingways For Whom The Bell Tolls. Marilynne Robinsons Pulitzer prize-winning novel Gilead makes several references to Donnes work.Donne is the favourite poet of Dorothy Sayers fictional detective Lord Peter Wimsey, and the Wimsey books include numerous quotations from, and allusions to, his work. Donnes poem A Fever (incorrectly called The Fever) is mentioned in the penultimate paragraph of the novel The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. Edmund Bunny Corcoran writes a paper on Donne in Donna Tartts novel The Secret History, in which he ties together Donne and Izaak Walton with help of an imaginary philosophy called Metahemeralism.Donne plays a significant consumption in Christie Dickasons The Noble Assassin (2011), a novel based on the life of Donnes patron and putative lover, Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford. Donne in Popular Culture John Renbourn, on his 1966 debut album John Renbourn, sings a version of the poem, nisus Go and Catch a Falling Star. (He alters the last line to False, ere I count one, two, three. ) Tarwater, in their album Salon des Refuses, have put The Relic to song.The plot of Neil Gaimans novel Stardust is based upon the poem Song Go and Catch a Falling Star, with the fallen star turned into a major character. Bob Chilcott has arranged a choral piece to Donnes Go and Catch a Falling Star. Van Morrison pays tribute to the poet on Rave On John Donne and makes references in many other songs. Lost in Austen, the British mini series based on Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice, has Bingley refer to Donne when he describes taking Jane to America, John Donne, dont you know? indorse my roving hands, and so forth. Las