"Then love is sin, and let me sinful be"
John Donne is considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His poetical works are noted for their metaphorical and sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, and satires. He is also known for his sermons. he was was an English poet, scholar, priest, lawyer, soldier and secretary. Donne is often considered the greatest love poet in the English language. He is also noted for his religious verse and treatises and for his sermons, which rank among the best of the 17th century. Donne is considered a master of the metaphysical conceit. He generally is known as the poet of love, obscure, and mystic poet.
Life
John Donne was born on 22 January, 1571 or 1572 in London. he was born into a recusant Roman Catholic family. Donne was the third of six children. His father, also named John Donne, his mother name was Elizabeth Heywood. His father and mother, both families were catholic. Donne lived in poverty for several years. He was Son of a rich iron merchant, at the time when the merchants of England were creating a new and higher kind of princes. His father died in 1576, when Donne was four years old, leaving his mother, Elizabeth, with the responsibility of raising the children alone. and shortly thereafter his mother married Dr. John Syminges, who raised the Donne children. his family an apartment in his large house in Drury Lane.
Education
Donne was educated privately, however, there is no evidence to support the popular claim that he was taught by Jesuits. In 1583, at the age of 11, he began studies at Hart Hall, now Hertford College, Oxford. After three years of studies there, Donne was admitted to the University of Cambridge, where he studied for another three years. Donne, however, could not obtain a degree from either institution because of his Catholicism, ( His own education could not be continued in Oxford and Cambridge University because of his religion.) since he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy required to graduate. In 1591 he was accepted as a student at the Thavies Inn legal school, one of the Inns of Chancery in London. On 6 May 1592 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, one of the Inns of Court, he studied law and called himself simply Christian. Meanwhile he wrote poetry.
Marriage
During the next four years, Donne fell in love with Anne More, and they were secretly married just before Christmas in 1601, against the wishes of both ( parents) Egerton and George More, Upon discovery, this wedding ruined Donne's career, getting him dismissed and put in Fleet Prison, along with the Church of England priest Samuel Brooke, who married them, and the man who acted as a witness to the wedding. Donne was released shortly thereafter when the marriage was proved to be valid. Anne gave birth to 12 children in 16 years of marriage, she spent most of her married life either pregnant or nursing. The 10 surviving children and after, Three died before they were ten. Donne noted that the death of a child would mean one mouth fewer to feed, but he could not afford the burial expenses. During this time, Donne wrote but did not publish Biathanatos, his defense of suicide. His wife died on 15 August 1617, five days after giving birth to their twelfth child, Donne mourned her deeply, and wrote of his love and loss in his 17th Holy Sonnet.
Characters
In 1602 John Donne was elected as Member of Parliament for the constituency of Brackley, but the post was not a paid position. In 1615 Donne was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity from Cambridge University, and he was ordained Royal Chaplain ( priest) in the same year, ( he did not want to take Holy Orders and only did so because the king ordered it.) and a reader of divinity at Lincoln's Inn in 1616, where he served in the chapel ( पुजास्थल) as minister until 1622. In 1618 he became chaplain to Viscount Doncaster. Donne did not return to England until 1620. In 1624, He appointed vicar of st. Dunstan's. In 1621, Under royal patronage, Donne was made Dean of St Paul's, a leading and well-paid position in the Church of England ( Based on his intellectual power), which he held until his death in 1631, was the greatest of English preachers in England.
Works
His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of English society. his important theme in poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often theorised. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits. ( For instance, comparing unlikely things, such as lovers to a compass or the soul to a drop of dew. These weird comparisons were called conceits ) many of his poems were written for wealthy friends or patrons, especially for MP Sir Robert Drury of Hawsted, whom he met in 1610 and who became his chief patron, furnishing him.
His notable works were Holy Sonnets, Death, Be Not Proud, The Canonization, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning ( for his wife mourn), Batter My Heart, the sunney rising, Biathanatos, ( relating to suicide) Paradoxes and Problems, Pseudo-Martyr, Songs and Sonnets, the good morrow, this is my play's last scene ( he imagined his death and he wrote about that his feeling of heaven and his feeling of hell) Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.
Donne's earliest poems showed a developed knowledge of English society coupled with sharp criticism of its problems. 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 view of a society populated by fools and knaves. His third satire, however, deals with the problem of true religion, a matter of great importance to Donne. In 1610 and 1611 Donne wrote two anti Catholic polemics: Pseudo-Martyr and Ignatius His Conclave for Morton. He then wrote two Anniversaries, An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Of the Progress of the Soul (1612) for Drury.
Donne's poetry
Donne's poetry is so uneven, at times so startling and fantastic, that few critics would care to recommend it to others. Only a few will read his works, and they must be left to their own browsing, to find what please them, like deer which, in the midst of plenty, take a bite here and there and wander on, tasting twenty varieties of food in an hours feeding one who reads much will probably bewail Donne's lack of any consistent style or literary standard. Donne's works are also witty.
John Donne's poetry represented a shift from classical forms to more personal poetry. Donne is noted for his poetic metre. For example, In Donne's love poems, he demonstrates his feeling and emotion by using precise and exact words. John Donne compares a pair of lovers to two legs of compass. Donne said, this flea is you and I and this our marriage bed and marriage temple is. It is a branch of philosophy. Theme of his poetries were love, sexuality, religion and death. Storm and calm these were famous poems.
Death be not Proud, The central theme of this poem is the powerlessness of death. According to Donne, death is but a pathway to eternal life, is one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. Batter My Heart, The speaker begins by asking God (along with Jesus and the Holy Ghost) to attack his heart as if it were the gates of a fortress town. The speaker wants God to enter his heart aggressively and violently, instead of gently. Then, in line 5, the speaker explicitly likens himself to a captured town. He tries to let God enter, but has trouble because the speaker's rational side seems to be in control.
Death
Donne was fatally ill with stomach cancer on 25, 1631. Donne died on 31 March 1631 in London and was buried in old St Paul's Cathedral, where a memorial statue of him by Nicholas Stone was erected with a Latin epigraph probably composed by himself. The memorial was one of the few to survive the Great Fire of London in 1666 and is now in St Paul's Cathedral.
Others
Donne is generally considered the most prominent member of the metaphysical poets, a phrase coined by Samuel Johnson in 1781, following a comment on Donne by John Dryden. Dryden had written of Donne in 1693, He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love. Dryden said Donne must be a great poet but he is not a good writer. Some scholars believe that Donne's literary works reflect the changing trends of his life, with love poetry and satires from his youth and religious sermons during his later years. most of his poems were published posthumously. James 6 became a king and known as James 1.
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