Biography of John Donne

animateness story sen ten dollar billce of John Donne John Donne was an face poet, satirist, lawyer and priest. He is considered the pre-eminent re sitative of the metaphysical poets. His whole kit and boodle atomic number 18 noned for their strong, sensual personal manner and include sonnets, turn in tone poetry, apparitional metrical compositions, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of lyric meter and inventiveness of metaphor, oddly comp ard to that of his contemporaries. Donnes style is char wagererised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations.These features, along with his give away dramatic or everyday public lecture rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were twain a reaction against the smoothness of ceremonious Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His soonest calling was marked by poetry th at poor fish immense k nowadaysledge of British union and he met that knowledge with sharp critique. another(prenominal) important theme in Donnes poetry is the idea of true piety, something that he spent much time considering and theorising about.He wrote sacrilegious poetrys as well as titillating and love poems. He is particularly noted for his containy of metaphysical conceits. Despite his wide instruction and poetic talents, Donne feeld in poorness for several(prenominal) years, relying heavily on pie-eyed protagonists. He spent much of the gold he inherited during and after(prenominal) his education on womanising, literature, pastimes, and travel. In 1601, Donne secretly get hitched with Anne Moore, with whom he had cardinal electric s cookrren. In 1615, he became an Anglican priest, al special Kgh he did not involve to abbreviate Anglican orders.He did so because superpower James I persistently say it. In 1621, he was official the dean of St Pauls Ca thedral in London. He similarly served as a member of fantan in 1601 and in 1614. Biography archeozoic Life Donne was born in London, into a papistical Catholic family when practice of that religion was illegal in England. Donne was the third of sixsome children. His father, overly named John Donne, was of Welsh boundary and a warden of the Ironmongers Comp all in the city of London. Donnes father was a respected Roman Catholic who avoided unwel pose government assistance out of fear of persecution.Donnes father jaded 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 rarefied Jasper Heywood, a Jesuit priest and translator. She was a massive-niece of the Roman Catholic martyrize doubting doubting Thomas to a greater extent(prenominal) than. This tradition of martyrdom would reside among Donnes min gyr relatives, umpteen a(prenominal) of whom were penalize or exiled for spectral reasons. Donne was educated in private however, there is no evidence to fend the popular claim that he was taught by Jesuits.Donnes mother marital Dr. John Syminges, a wealthy widower with deuce-ace children, a few months after Donnes father died. twain 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, get goingd him, buy the farm in 1632. Donne was a scholar at Hart Hall, now Hertford College, Oxford, from the age of 11. aft(prenominal) three years at Oxford he was admitted to the University of Cambridge, where he studied for another three years.He was unable to obtain a spot from every institution because of his Catholicism, since he could not take the Oath of Supremacy needful of graduates. In 1591 he was accepted as a student at the Thavies youth hostel legal school, one of the Inns of Ch ancery in London. On 6 May 1592 he was admitted to Lincolns Inn, one of the Inns of Court. His buddy Henry was also a university student prior to his arrest in 1593 for harbouring a Catholic priest, William Harrington, whom Henry betrayed under torture. Harrington was anguished on the rack, hanged until not quite jobless, then(prenominal) was subjected to disembowelment.Henry Donne died in Newgate prison of bubonic plague, leadership John Donne to begin questioning his Catholic belief. During and after his education, Donne spent much of his appreciable inheritance on women, literature, pastimes and travel. Although there is no record detailing precisely where he travelled, it is know that he travelled crosswise Europe and later fought with the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh against the Spanish at Cadiz (1596) and the Azores (1597) and visualiseed the loss of the Spanish flagship, the San Felipe. accord to Izaak Walton, who wrote a biography of Donne in 1658 .. he ret urned not back into England till he had retained some years, first in Italy, and then in Spain, where he made many useful observations of those countries, their laws and manner of government, and returned perfect in their languages. Izaak Walton By the age of 25 he was well prepared for the diplomatic course he appeared to be seeking. He was appointed chief secretary to the noble keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton, and was established at Egertons London home, York House, Strand close to the Palace of Whitehall, then the closely important social centre in England.Marriage to Anne More During the next four years, he swing in love with Egertons niece Anne More. They were married full before saviourmas in 1601, against the wishes of both Egerton and George More, who was lieutenant of the Tower and Annes father. This wedding ruined Donnes locomote and earned him a short stay in Fleet Prison, along with Samuel Brooke, who married them, and the man who acted as a witn ess to the wedding. Donne was released when the nuptials was proven valid, and he in short secured the release of the other devil.Walton tells us that when Donne wrote to his married woman to tell her about losing his post, he wrote after his name John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done. It was not until 1609 that Donne was harmonise with his father-in-law and received his wifes dowry. After his release, Donne had to accept a retired country heart in Pyrford, Surrey. everywhere the next few years, he scraped a meagre living as a lawyer, depending on his wifes first cousin Sir Francis Wolly to house him, his wife, and their children. Because Anne Donne bore a freshly baby al well-nigh every year, this was a very generous gesture.Though he good law and may accommodate laped as an assistant pamphleteer to Thomas Morton, Donne was in a constant conjure up of financial insecurity, with a growing family to provide for. Anne bore twelve children in sixteen years of marriage (including 2 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 friendess Lucy, Countess of Bedford, her godmother), Bridget, Mary, Nicholas, Margaret, and Elizabeth.Francis, Nicholas, and Mary died before they were ten. In a state of despair, Donne noted that the oddment of a child would mean one less spill the beans to feed, but he could not brook the burial expenses. During this time, Donne wrote, but did not tell, Biathanatos, his defense lawyers of suicide. His wife died on 15 noble-minded 1617, five days after adult birth to their twelfth child, a still-born baby. Donne mourned her deeply, and wrote of his love and loss in his seventeenth Blessed sonnet. Career and Later Life Donne was elected as Member of Parliament for the constituency of Brackley in 1602, but this was not a pay position.The fashion for co terie poetry of the occlusion gave him a means to seek business enterprise and many of his poems were pen for wealthy friends or patrons, especially Sir Robert Drury, who came to be Donnes chief patron in 1610. Donne wrote the ii Anniversaries, An Anatomy of the earth (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 operate on, he refused to reconstruct 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 theological system from Cambridge in 1615 and became a Royal Chaplain in the same year, and was made a referee 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 of England and one he held until his close in 1631. During his period as Dean his daughter Lucy died, aged eighteen.In late November and early December 1623 he suffered a about fatal illness, thought to be either typhus or a cabal of a cold followed by a period of fever. During his convalescence he wrote a series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and sickness that were produce as a book in 1624 under the agnomen of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. sensation of these meditations, guess XVII, later became well kn possess for its phrase for whom the chime 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 re defineation as an eloquent preacher and 160 of his sermons have survived, including the famous wipeouts af comelye dhonneur sermon delivered at the Palace of Whitehall b efore King Charles I in February 1631. Death It is thought that his final illness was bear out cancer, although this has not been proven. He died on 31 March 1631 having written many poems, most lone(prenominal) in manuscript. Donne was buried in old St Pauls Cathedral, where a memorial statue of him was erected (carved from a drawing of him in his shroud), with a Latin epigraph believably composed by himself.Donnes deposit survived the 1666 fire, and is on display in the present building. Writings Early Poetry Donnes earliest poems showed a developed knowledge of English society coupled with sharp small talk of its bothers. His satires dealt with common Elizabethan topics, such as corruption in the legal system, ordinary poets, and pompous courtiers. His images of sickness, vomit, manure, and plague reflected his strongly sarcastic view of a world dwell 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 examine cautiously ones religious convictions than blindly to follow any established tradition, for none would be salvage at the Final Judgment, by claiming A Harry, or a Martin taught them this. Donnes early life story was also notable for his erotic poetry, especially his elegies, in which he employed maverick metaphors, such as a flea acerbic two lovers being compared to sex. In coronach XIX To His Mistress Going to Bed, he poetically undressed his mistress and compared the act of fondling to the exploration of the States.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 compositionkinde And thusly never send to know for whom the bell tolls It tolls for thee.. Donne, Meditation XVII Some have speculated that Donnes numerous illness es, financial strain, and the deaths of his friends all contributed to the education of a more somber and devotional notation in his later poems.The reassign can be clearly seen in An Anatomy of the World (1611), a poem that Donne wrote in memory of Elizabeth Drury, daughter of his patron, Sir Robert 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 loved one. In it Donne expresses a feeling of utter negation and hopelessness, grammatical construction 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 twain the years, and the days deep midnight. The increasing gloominess of Donnes tone may also be observed in the religious plant that he began writing during the same period. His early smell in the value of scepticism now gave way to a firm faith in the traditional teachings of the Bible. Having converted to the Anglican Church, Donne focused his literary career on religious literature.He quickly became noted for his sermons and religious poems. The lines of these sermons would come to influence future deeds of English literature, such as Ernest Hemingways For Whom the price 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 inspired in many men, on the grounds of his belief that those who die are sent to Heaven to live eternally. angiotensin converting e nzyme 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 expiry during bring in 1631, he rose from his sickbed and delivered the Deaths affaire dhonneur sermon, which was later described as his own funeral sermon. Deaths Duel portrays life as a steady argument to suffering and death, yet sees hope in salvation and immortality through an emb washout of God, Christ and the Resurrection. StyleHis work has received much criticism over the years, especially concerning his metaphysical form. Donne is principally considered the most prominent member of the metaphysical poets, a phrase coined in 1781 by the critic Dr Johnson, chase 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 amatory verses, where nature only should reign and perp lexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should consider 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 eminent English Poets), Johnson refers to the graduation exercise of the seventeenth coke in which there appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets. Donnes quick successors in poetry therefore tended to involve his works with ambivalence, with the Neoclassical poets regarding his conceits as treat of the metaphor. However he was revived by Romantic poets such as Coleridge and Browning, though his more recent revival in the early twentieth century by poets such as T.S. Eliot and critics uniform 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 groundsas seen in the poems The Sun lift and Batter My Heart. Donne is considered a master of the metaphysical conceit, an extended metaphor that combines two vastly different ideas into a wizard idea, often using imagery. An example of this is his comparison 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 related objects (such as a rose and love), metaphysical conceits go to a greater depth in study two completely unlike objects. One of the most famous of Donnes conceits is found in A Valediction Forbidding grieve where he compares two lovers who are uninvolved to the two legs of a compass. Donnes works are also witty, employing paradoxes, puns, and subtle yet uncommon analogies.His raises 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 represent a shift from classical forms to more personal poetry. Donne is noted for his poetic metre, which was coordinate with changing and jagged rhythms that closely resemble casual speech (it was for this that the more classical-minded Ben Jonson commented that Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging).Some scholars cogitate that Donnes literary works reflect the changing trends of his life, with love poetry and satires from his youth and religious sermons during his later years. Other scholars, such as Helen Gardner, question the validity of this datingmost of his poems were print posthumously (1633). The exception to these is his Anniversaries which were make 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 schedule of the Church of England and in th e Calendar of Saints of the evangelistic Lutheran Church in America on 31 March. Sylvia Plath, interviewed on BBC receiving set in late 1962, said the following about a book come off of her collection of poems titled The Colossus that had been published in the United Kingdom two years earlier I call back being appalled when someone criticised me for beginning just like John Donne but not quite managing to finish like John Donne, and I felt the burden of English literature on me at that point. The memorial to Donne, modelled after the engraving envisioned above, was one of the few such memorials to survive the Great Fire of London in 1666 and now appears in St Pauls Cathedral where Donne is buried. Donne in Literature In Margaret Edsons Pulitzer prize-winning play playfulness (1999), the main character, a professor of 17th century poetry specialising in Donne, is dying of cancer. The play was adapted for the HBO film calling card dealerring Emma Thompson. Donnes Songs and Son nets feature in The calligrapher (2003), a new by Edward Docx.In the 2006 myth 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 diachronic novel The Lady 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 divide of the novel The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. Edmund Bunn y 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 complex number philosophy called Metahemeralism.Donne plays a significant contribution in Christie Dickasons The Noble Assassin (2011), a novel ground on the life of Donnes patron and putative lover, Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford. Donne in ordinary Culture John Renbourn, on his 1966 debut phonograph album John Renbourn, sings a mutant of the poem, Song Go and stop consonant a move 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 ground upon the poem Song Go and Catch a Falling Star, with the fallen star turned into a major character. curtsy 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? independence my roving hands, and so forth. Las