Holy Sonnets (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Donne
- First Published: 1633
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Genres: Poetry, Sonnet, Meditation
- Subjects: Sin or Original sin, Religion, Poetry or poets, God, Spiritual life or spirituality, Ministry or ministers, England or English people, Seventeenth century, Christianity, Death or dying, Faith, Clergy, Jesus Christ, Devils or demons, Priests, Religious life, Satan or Satanism, Reason or reasoning
Critical Evaluation:
It is generally agreed that the nineteen “Holy Sonnets” were written over a period of several years in John Donne’s life, the first of them as early as 1609 and some after the death of Donne’s wife in 1617. The poems fall into various groups according to the way they are read. One authority sees them as disconnected pieces; another sees four distinct groups, two of six poems each, one group of four, and one of three. Other readers find a unifying principle that makes all nineteen poems a sequence. The fact that at their first appearance they were...
[The entire page is 2081 words long]
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