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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
The most notable literary device Donne uses in this poem is personification. Personification is when an author attributes human characteristics to non-human things. He carries personification of...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
In "Holy Sonnet VI," which begins “This is my play's last scene,” John Donne uses the metaphor of a play and of a race for the course of his life on earth. He represents “heaven” as the desired...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
The representation of the divine in Donne's "Holy Sonnets" presents us with a picture of God as a stern, unbending taskmaster who places considerable demands on the devout believer. And in many of...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
Donne begins the poem by noting that many have called Death (using capitalization to personify death as a being) "mighty and dreadful," although he is not. Lines 3-4 relate that the people who...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
Although each of John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” is by definition a unique and distinctive poem, the “Holy Sonnets” as a group nevertheless often share common traits. Among these traits are the...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
Donne's 17th "Holy Sonnet" can be paraphased to determine its obvious "meaning," but it can also be analyzed to explore its effectiveness as a poem. The poem was almost certainly written in...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
In Sonnet 17, the speaker talks about the loss of his loved one (perhaps his/Donne's wife). He says she has "paid her last debt to Nature" and this means she has died. Evidently, she has died young...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
The poem usually presented as the first of the Holy Sonnets -- the poem beginning "Thou hast made me" -- exemplifies many of the thematic and stylistic traits of the sequence as a whole. Such...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
John Donne (1572-1631) although a contemporary of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) did not adhere to Elizabethan conventions of smooth metre and classical allusions. Rather, he introduced contrasts...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
Donne's Sonnet XIV takes the strict form of a sonnet and plays with the form and the meter to help the reader to understand the themes presented. Instead of using a pure iambic pentameter...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
Some of the traits often found in John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” are already apparent in the sonnet usually printed as the first in the collection – the sonnet beginning “Thou Hast Made Me.” Here are...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
In Sonnet IV Donne is aware of death coming in the form of illness. He rails at mankinds weakness and sinful nature and speaks of being lost to the joy of Heaven. He ends this sonnet by saying...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
In the work 'Meditastion 17' the English metaphysical poet John Donne writes the words 'Affliction is a treasure and scarce any man hath enough of it' John Donne, in this piece, is discussing the...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
The Holy Sonnets all express something about the importance of faith and discuss the speaker's or man's relationship with God. Sonnet 7 discusses the importance of repentance of one's sins during...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
The two poems “Death, Be Not Proud” and “Batter My Heart, three-person'd God” are part of a series of nineteen poems called the Holy Sonnets, published in 1663, two years after John Donne’s death....
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
Are you feeling a bit controversial? How about this one: In his "Holy Sonnet 14," John Donne uses sexual imagery to portray his seduction by both heaven and hell. Obviously, it's hard to ignore...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
John Donne's Divine Meditations, sometimes also known as his "Holy Sonnets" were published posthumously, rather than during his lifetime, and seem to be private reflections on God and God's...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
This is a splendid question. The short answer is a resounding "yes." The longer answer is more complicated. It is possible to enjoy Donne's religious poetry even if one disagrees with his religious...
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John Donne's Holy Sonnets
The best recent one-volume edition of Donne’s poems (The Complete Poems of John Donne, ed. Robin Robbins [Harlow: Longman/Pearson, 2010]) suggests a date for the composition of the poem from August...