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JOHN DONNE (1572-1631)
BRIEF BIO • John Donne was born into a wealthy Catholic family in 1572 when being a Catholic in England was a bad thing; he attended both Oxford and Cambridge University without getting a degree at either. Donne eloped with Anne More, the daughter of a powerful man, and was forced to live in a state of poverty for many years due to his father-in-laws displeasure, during which time he wrote the Divine Poems in 1607.
BRIEF BIO CONT. • The Donnes’ fortunes improved when John was given a post in the church by King James after renouncing his Catholic background; unfortunately, this luck was short lived because Anne Donne died in childbirth, leaving John with seven children to raise on his own. He took this time in 1618 to write the Holy Sonnets, which declare Donne’s love for God, and for the rest of his life, the writer focused on religious pursuits rather than those of romance.
IMPORTANT TERMS • Metaphysical poetry: concerned with the whole experience of man, but the intelligence, learning and seriousness of the poets means that the poetry is about the profound areas of experience especially - about love, romantic and sensual; about man's relationship with God - the eternal perspective, and, to a less extent, about pleasure, learning and art. Metaphysical poems are lyric poems. They are brief but intense meditations, characterized by striking use of wit, irony and wordplay. Beneath the formal structure (of rhyme, meter and stanza) is the underlying (and often hardly less formal) structure of the poem's argument.
IMPORTANT TERMS CONT. • Metaphysical conceit- An elaborate or unusual comparison--especially one using unlikely metaphors, simile, hyperbole, and contradiction. • Paradox (also called oxymoron): Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Common paradoxes seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions, such as noting that "without laws, we can have no freedom."
