John Donne Criticism
John Donne's poetry and prose have long been subjects of scholarly debate, with critics divided over the merits of his complex metaphysical style and the depth of his thematic explorations. Renowned for his intricate wordplay and exploration of human emotion and spirituality, Donne's work is a focal point for literary criticism that examines both his personal life and broader cultural impacts.
Figures like T. S. Eliot and Cleanth Brooks have praised Donne for his ability to capture the intricacies of the human experience, highlighting his innovative approach to poetic form and content. However, this admiration is not unanimous. C. S. Lewis and Stanley Fish have critiqued Donne's structures and themes, pointing out perceived weaknesses in his compositions. Achsah Guibbory offers insight into Donne's Elegies, positing that his depiction of the female body reflects underlying masculine anxieties. Meanwhile, Maureen Sabine provides a contrasting viewpoint, suggesting that Donne's poetry shows a profound attachment to his wife, Anne More.
Stanley Fish's exploration of Donne's linguistic prowess presents another layer to the discussion. In his essay on Donne’s manipulation of language, Fish argues that the poet's mastery of verbal persuasion is central to his enduring appeal. For those interested in how Donne's personal life intertwines with his literary output, such analyses offer a rich tapestry of interpretations that continue to stimulate scholarly discourse. To delve deeper into Donne's complex oeuvre, these critical perspectives present invaluable gateways for understanding the multifaceted dimensions of his work.
Contents
- Principal Works
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Donne, John (Literary Criticism (1400-1800))
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‘Oh, let mee not serve so’: The Politics of Love in Donne's Elegies
(summary)
In the following essay, first published in 1990, Guibbory focuses his discussion of Donne's love poetry on the poet's often grotesque or negative images of the female body.
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No Marriage in Heaven: John Donne, Anne Donne, and the Kingdom Come
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In the following essay, Sabine discusses the importance of Donne's wife to his love poetry.
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John Donne's Use of Space
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In the following essay, Gorton employs contemporary theories of cosmology and physics as a context for understanding Donne's poetry. Donne's writing shows he was fascinated by new discoveries. He took up the modern idiom of maps and discovery with delight. But he was also deeply attached to the past, and his assumptions about space belonged to an old tradition: a cosmographic rather than cartographic way of imagining space. This paper is about Donne's spatial imagination: its cosmographic assumptions, and its many contradictions—between old and new ways of imagining the cosmos, between cosmographic and cartographic ways of imagining the world, and between his spatial imagination itself and his narrative voice.
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Sapho to Philaenis: Donne Writes Back: His Dialogue With Ovid and Sappho
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In the following excerpt, Meakin discusses Donne's poem about the lesbian poet Sappho as example of how Donne was able to transcend seventeenth-century conceptions of sex and gender.
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Masculine Persuasive Force: Donne and Verbal Power
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In the following essay, Fish argues that in his poetry Donne exercises the power of language to dominate and control.
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The Cunning Elements of ‘I am a little world’ and ‘The Three Sonnets of ‘Goodfriday, 1613.’
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In the following excerpt, DiPasquale explores the spiritual anxiety that she perceives in Donne's religious poetry, using La Corona, “I am a little world,” and “Goodfriday, 1613” as a basis for the discussion.
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John Donne and Scholarly Melancholy
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In the following essay, Trevor examines Donne's lifelong melancholy, or depression, as an integral part of his religious beliefs.
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Donne and Secrecy
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In the following essay, Everett reflects on the history of Donne scholarship, contending that overemphasis on Donne as a public, active man has been misguided.
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Donne and Christ's Spouse
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In the following essay, Erne focuses on the poem “Show me deare Christ” as evidence of Donne's feelings about Catholicism.
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‘Forget the Hee and Shee’: Gender and Play in John Donne
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In the following essay, Mintz discusses gender ambiguity in Donne's poetry.
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‘That spectacle of too much weight’: The Poetics of Sacrifice in Donne, Herbert, and Milton
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In the following essay, Schoenfeldt considers the theme of sacrifice as developed by post-Reformation religious poets, including Donne, suggesting that seventeenth-century writers imagined sacrifice as an interior experience rather than a physical event.
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‘Oh, let mee not serve so’: The Politics of Love in Donne's Elegies
(summary)
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Donne, John (Poetry Criticism)
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‘Darke Texts Need Notes': Versions of Self in Donne's Verse Epistles
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In the following essay, originally published in 1978, Aers and Kress examine Donne's representation of self in several verse epistles from Letters to Severall Personages. The epistles studied are “You Refine Me,” addressed to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, who was his patroness after Donne secretly married and lost his professional position; “To the Countess of Salisbury”; and two poems not addressed to patrons.
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Donne as Social Exile and Jacobean Courtier: The Devotional Verse and Prose of the Secular Man
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In the following essay, originally published in 1986, Marotti examines the conflicts revealed in Donne's poetry and letters as he seeks employment and advancement in the court. Marotti finds that pieces such as “A Litanie” and “Hymn to God the Father,” which he sent to potential patrons to obtain positions, are “politically encoded” religious poems that “transpose public forms into private devotions.”
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Donne and the Wonderful
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In the following essay, Klause examines how Donne uses the concept of miracles and alchemy—the science of changing matter into gold—in his elaborate, sometimes satirical metaphysical conceits in poets such as “Loves Alchymie,” “The Canonization,” “The Extasie” and “A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day,” as well as in religious essays.
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Donne and the Prince D'Amour
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In the following essay, Cain examines Donne's Satyres in historical context to shed light on Donne's political and religious coming of age.
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The Predicament of the Westward Rider
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In the following essay, Halewood provides a detailed reading of Donne's poem, “Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward” and suggests that the poem does not achieve closure, but remains concerned with the conflict between Protestant and Catholic ways of understanding humanity's relationship to God and salvation.
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Sexual Calvinism in Donne's ‘Communitie’
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In the following essay, Shifflett provides a historically grounded reading of Donne's poem “Communitie” from Songs and Sonnets, suggesting that Donne explicitly rejected the Calvinist definition of community in his poetry and sermons.
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Talking to a Silent God: Donne's Holy Sonnets and the Via Negativa
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In the following essay, Beaston examines the tension between modern readers' expectations and Donne's intent in the Holy Sonnets, arguing that the Sonnets dramatize the medieval concept of via negativa, or the experience of God's presence and mystery even in His apparent absence.
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Donne and Feminist Critics
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In the following essay, Beliles provides an introduction to several feminist responses to Donne's Songs and Sonnets and Elegies, especially “Confined Love,” “Breake of Day” and “Sapho to Philaenis”— three poems that have a female narrator.
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The Things Not Seen in Donne's ‘Farewell to Love.’
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In the following essay, DiPasquale explores the theme of atheism in Donne's poem, “Farewell to Love,” from Songs and Sonnets. Donne's “Farewell to Love” is based on an analogy between religion and love. The speaker traces his history as a lover, looks back on the time when he had yet to experience love and was a naive believer in its divinity, and professes his current rejection of such faith. His perspective is that of a disillusioned atheist who is all the more scornful toward religion because he once believed in a divinity only to conclude, on the basis of experience, that his creed was false and his god a non-entity. In describing his former, naive self, however, the speaker uses a simile—that of the dying atheists—which undercuts his current attitude of unbelief; and as he goes on to denigrate “the thing which lovers so / Blindly admire, and with such worship wooe” (14-15), his profane allusions to scripture do not so much support his case against the religion of love as cast an ironic light on his worldly-wise stance. Indeed, both the opening simile and the witty echoes of scriptural language throughout the poem imply that in the realm of love, as in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, only “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Ps. 14: 1).
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Philosophy and the City: Space in Donne
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In the following essay, Gorton discusses Donne’s sense of place, use of space, and spatial imagery in “The Sunne Rising,” “Breake of Day,” “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward,” and the Anniversaries.
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Love, Poetry, and John Donne in the Love Poetry of John Donne
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In the following essay, Young examines Donne's complex and ironic treatment of love in his poetry, focusing on “The Bracelet,” “Loves Growth,” “The Sunne Rising,” and the Elegies.
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Can't Buy Me Love: Money, Gender, and Colonialism in Donne's Erotic Verse
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In the following essay, Raman analyzes Donne's complex use of money, gender, and colonialist discourse in three erotic poems—“Loves Progress,” “Going to Bed,” and “The Bracelet.”
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‘Darke Texts Need Notes': Versions of Self in Donne's Verse Epistles
(summary)
- Further Reading