A famous
poet and
theologian, John Donne was born in
London in 1572 to a wealthy
Catholic family. When he was 11 years old, Donne began study at the
University of Oxford, and later was a student at
Cambridge, though he did not receive degrees from either school. Though Donne was born into Catholicism, he grew to
criticize it later in life, converting to
Anglicanism in the 1590s and developing a very personal, nontraditional approach to
theology.
In 1592 he began to study law at Lincoln's Inn in London. The following year, his brother Henry died in prison after being convicted of harboring a Catholic priest in his home. This event caused Donne to question his acceptance of Catholicism, and also led him into a reckless period where he spent a good amount of his inheritence. He and his roommate at Lincoln's Inn, Christopher Brooke, became part of a larger literary circle in London which included other such writers as Ben Jonson. After a short naval expedition with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, led against Spain, Donne returned to England and began to work as a secretary for Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal, in 1598. His marriage in 1601 to Sir Egerton's 17 year old niece Anne More led to him being fired from the position and led into a life as a poor lawyer. During this time in his life, he was able to fully develop his critical position on English society. He struggled to support his large family (Anne had 12 children before she died at age 33), and in 1609 an agreement with Anne's family was finally reached and they provided the Donnes with enough funds to help them survive.
In his struggle to be accepted in having renounced Catholicism, Donne got to work on the piece Pseudo-Martyr in 1610. This work maintained that a compromise could be struck between English Roman Catholics and King James I, by the Catholics pledging an oath of allegiance to the crown. This work won him the favor of the court, and he became a priest in the Anglican church in 1615 and became royal chaplain later in that year. In 1621 he became dean of St Paul's Cathedral. His sermons were known for their power and brilliance.
John Donne wrote the following works during his life:
Essays:
Poetry:
Later in life, Donne's work evolved from the more passionate style he exhibited in his youth to a more idiosyncratic style, yet maintaining his earlier critical positions. As he grew into old age, Donne grew deeply concerned with his own mortality. In A Hymn to God my God in my Sickness, Donne depicts himself lying on his deathbed as a map pointing the way to the next world. Several days before his death, Donne delivered Death's Duel, a sermon which detailed an analysis of life as a mere decline to death and destruction. On his deathbed, according to contemporary biographer Izaak Walton, Donne had a portrait created of himself in his shroud and he meditated on it constantly. Also, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, written in 1624, includes the popular reflection on the significance of the distant funeral bell: "No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; ... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee." This was written in contemplation of his death, which would come 7 years later in 1631.
Donne's various religious and moral pursuits in his life gave rise to an extremely diverse body of works. His Songs and Sonnets, which detail his idea that love and religion should be tied together in the mind, continue to be his most influential collection of writing. This body of work is characterized by Donne's thought that physical and spiritual love must be bound together, and the speaker in his poems is always in the throes of experiencing this union. Breaking from the Petrarchian traditions of cataloging the physical attributes of a woman, Donne focuses on describing the private world of two lovers as being something trancscendent and highly spiritual. He came to this understanding through his youthful abandon when he experienced lust and sexuality constantly combined with his religious endeavors as a mature man.
Grouped with the so-called "Metaphysical Poets," Donne's reputation has since changed from this early classification. The name was initially granted to him by his critics, who thought that focusing on the self and the lover in such a detailed way took away from simplistic poetic sincerity. T.S. Eliot most notably sought to defend Donne against such criticism, by describing his work as a unique unity of thought and emotion which was necessary in understanding romantic love. An excellent example of such imagery can be seen in The Ecstasy:
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm 1 which thence did spring,
Our eye-beams 2 twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string; 3
In this piece, Donne creates an intimate world of two lovers gazing at each other, connecting through the physical holding of hands but entranced further by what they see in the other's eyes. Donne maintains this sort of flavor throughout his poems dealing with love, while maintaining a different, critical stance in his Satires and more religious pieces.
1 perspiration
2 Invisible shafts of light, thought of as going out of the eyes and thereby enabling one to see things.
3 Excerpt from poem, and previous footnotes from: The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Julia Reidhead. p. 1248. © 2000.
Sources:
List of Works from: http://www.online-literature.com/donne/
Some biographical information from The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Julia Reidhead. pp. 1233-1235. © 2000