John Donne
King of Wit
John Donne (1572-1631)
• Roman Catholic in a Protestant
England
• Studied at Cambridge and Oxford
• Imprisoned for marrying Anne More,
his employer’s 16 year old niece.
• 1615 becomes Anglican priest
John Donne
• Scientific mind: Post-Copernican
man of intellect
• Dominant figure of a school of 17th
century English writers known as the
metaphysical poets.
• As one of the first modern writers,
the construction of a historical self
becomes crucial to the texts and
their interpretation.
Wit
• “Scholar Louis Marz describes wit as
‘intellect, reason, powerful mental
capacity, cleverness, ingenuity,
intellectual quickness, inventive and
constructive ability, a talent for
uttering brilliant things, the power of
amusing surprise.’”
Donne’s Wit
• During the Renaissance, the term
"wit" referred to intelligence or
wisdom.
• Connotation of intellectual and
verbal ingenuity.
• Achsah Guibbory: "involves surprise,
a desire to startle readers, to make
them look at things in a new,
unconventional way."
Donne’s Wit
• Development of a metaphysical
conceit--an insightful use of analogy,
metaphor or inventive joining of
dissimilar images to make a point in a
poem.
• Helen Gardner: "close-packed and
dense with meaning, something to be
'chewed and digested,' which will not
give up its secrets on first reading."
Metaphysical
• By itself, metaphysical means
dealing with the relationship
between spirit to matter or the
ultimate nature of reality.
• Use of ordinary speech mixed with
puns, paradoxes and conceits
• The exaltation of wit, which in the
17th century meant a nimbleness of
thought; a sense of fancy
(imagination of a fantastic or
whimsical nature); and originality in
figures of speech
Metaphysical Conceit
• will use some sort of shocking or unusual
comparison as the basis for the metaphor.
• has a startling appropriateness that makes
us look at something in an entirely new
way.
• The classic metaphysical conceit is
Donne's comparison of the union between
two lovers to the two legs of a compass in
"A Valediction Forbidding Mourning."
• In Holy Sonnet 14, there are other
surprising metaphors--comparing God to a
violent invader and a rapist, for instance.
Metaphysical Poetry
• implies a highly intellectual approach
to poetry
• Relied on scientific ideas
• Metaphysical concerns are the
common subject of their poetry,
which investigates the world by
rational discussion of its phenomena
rather than by intuition or
mysticism.
Metaphysical Poets
• Reacting against the deliberately
smooth and sweet tones of much
16th-century verse, the
metaphysical poets adopted a style
that is energetic, uneven, and
rigorous.
• T. S. ELIOT argued that their work
fuses reason with passion; it shows a
unification of thought and feeling
which later became separated into a
'dissociation of sensibility'.”
The Holy Sonnets
• None were published during Donne's
life and they were known only by a
small circle.
• No manuscripts in Donne's hand exist
today: scholars have only numerous,
differing versions transcribed by
others to work with.
The Holy Sonnets
• Helen Gardner writes, "The image of
a soul in meditation which the Holy
Sonnets present is an image of a soul
working out its salvation in fear and
trembling."
• Biographer R.C. Bald: “Donne's
sonnets were the ruminations of a
man in spiritual crisis, the product of
his innate melancholy temperament,
his reduced circumstances and lack
of direction in his professional life.”
Holy Sonnets
• The Donne of the Holy Sonnets
wrestles with questions about faith,
God's mercy and judgment, human
mortality and the immortality of the
soul, sin, damnation, absolution and
salvation.
• Donne expresses despair about his
own salvation, and reveals his fear of
death.
• The Holy Sonnets are the product of
a doubter, one who has not yet found
inner peace.
Credits
• Audience Guide © August 21, 2000, Madison Repertory
Theatre by Carol Cohen, PhD University of WisconsinMadison & Associate Academic Dean at Edgewood College in
Madison, where she also teaches drama.
http://faculty.smu.edu/tmayo/witguide.htm
• Thomas Docherty’s John Donne Undone.
• The Luminarium. http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/metaintro.htm
• Dr. Rosemary Allen, Georgetown College
http://spider.georgetowncollege.edu/english/allen/donne2.
htm
• Dr. Marguerite Connor,
http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/English_Literature/period/meta
physicals.html