Biography donne john reformed soul
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I have long had a bit of a fascination with John Donne. A poet and eventual clergyman who lived from , Donne&#;s poems are among my favorites. His Holy Sonnets have given me much cause to think and his early works, so often sexual and vulgar, have shown a man who underwent a clear and profound transformation in his life. From writing poetry which described forbidden and clandestine affairs that involved bribing servants, hushing siblings, and sneaking past parents in order to consummate love, Donne progressed to poetry celebrating Christ and his triumph over death.
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those, whom thou think&#;st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.…
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Donne was born into an English Roman Catholic family at a time when belonging to the Roman church could and often did carry grave consequences. Though his father died while Donne was only a young boy, he still received a good education and soon learned of his ability to mold language. He also learned of his ability as a lawyer and a statesman and soon converted to the Anglican Church in order to enhance his career prospects. Proudly profligate, Donne spent his youth and early adulthood attempting to satisfy every lust of his flesh. Yet in an age where marriages were strictly arranged by fathers to further their own ends, Donne secretly married for love and was to suffer the consequences of such an uncouth arrangement for the rest of his life. After trying unsuccessfully to rise through the ranks in government service, he eventually became a priest and spent much of his career as Dean of St Paul&#;s Cathedral in London. Though a number of his sermons and works of prose has survived, Donne is known today as being one of the greatest English poets. He is remembered in common phrases he coined su I studied the poetry of John Donne for A Level, and loved it: how could a seventeen year old not love a poet who writes about sex as Heaven and Hell, and berates and begs his God with the fury of a lover? Who argues his girl into bed, and talks his way into his deity&#;s heart, titles a poem &#;The Canonization&#;, then begins it, For God&#;s sake hold your tongue and let me love? I remember being told at school that the libertine lawyer-in-training ended his days as the Dean of St Paul&#;s, but not that he began life as a recusant Catholic in the last, ferocious, paranoid years of Queen Elizabeth, saw his brother die in jail for helping a priest escape, and his mother self-exiled to the Continent. Nor, I think, did I realise that he was born and lived a Londoner, and yet his poetry is utterly urban as well as urbane: quarrelsome, energetic, ever-active, sometimes blasphemous; contemplative of man&#;s relationship to woman and other men, and to God; rarely about nature in the manner of his metaphysical heirs such as Vaughan and Herbert. I discovered all these things in John Stubbs&#;s masterly biography, Donne, The Reformed Soul, which in was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. &#;Reformed&#; as in &#;become virtuous&#; would be the conventional idea, or left his childhood faith to join the Reformed church as the only route to advancement and gentlemanly status, and was eventually ordained in it. It&#;s true that his sermons, written at the end of his life, are some of the greatest arguments &#; &#;statements&#; would be too flat a word &#; that the soul of the Anglican church has ever had made on its behalf. But I wonder if the title also means &#;re-formed&#;, not just in his faith and his morals but in the uses to which he put his astonishing mind, heart and ear. And if Stubbs does intend these two meanings, it would be only appropriate: the double-meanings of sense and metaphor, the &#;both-and&#; Poetry Week: John Donne, The Reformed Soul
John Donne: The Reformed Soul
So why three stars? I usually try to respect an author's own terms and intentions and not play the "This book isn't good because I wish it were something else" game. BUT I kinda sorta wanted more about the poetry. Stubbs has English lit degrees from Oxford and Cambridge but he doesn't seem to think that poetry requires interpretation or that it matters at all. He has a rather naive assumption about poems just being about an author's feelings, and those feelings are usually "I like this girl" or "I wish I had a better job" or "The people around me are ridiculous." Granted, there are a lot of poems, including poems by John Donne, that carry one or both of those messages. But they're also, y'know, POEMS. They have lots of meanings and patterns and require interpretive work. Stubbs doesn't do that. He has precious little to say about Donne's poetry and instead takes his religious pamphleteering more seriously. And by "seriously" I don't mean that Stubbs cares too much about the ideas in Donne's pamphlets--he cares about how Donne is trying to advance his career by pleasing various political factions while not offending others more than he has to. Because that's why anybody writes anything.
What I guess I'm saying is that this biography is, like the biographies of Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt and James Shapiro, operating on the assumption that the men of early modern England were motivated almost entirely by careerism, the purpose of which is for a man of intelligence but middling status to rise in society, own nice things, and associate with powerful people. That is to say, early modern poets are exactly like contemporary elite-university professors. They work hard to please the right people and their overriding a John Donne: The Reformed Soul
Donne was a celebrated 17th century English poet. He often wrote sexually explicit and crude poems. His early poems cover scenarios such as bribery, forbidden love affairs, defying parents, and sexual relationships. However, when Donne later joined the clergy, his poems centered around Christ, devotion, and the meaning of life.
The book is divided into three major sections. Each section covers a significant period in Donne’s life. The first section, “,” examines his formative years, from birth to early adulthood. The section part, “,” looks more closely at his married life. The final section, “,” explores his devotion to Catholicism and his life as a clergyman.
In the first part, Stubbs highlights the role that religion played in Donne’s upbringing. His parents were Roman Catholics. They practiced their religion secretly, because Catholicism was illegal in England at the time. Although Donne was not a dedicated Catholic like his parents and extended family, his Catholic heritage affected him in many ways. It made it impossible for him to graduate from the University of Cambridge, and he often experienced discrimination. Unsurprisingly, Donne spent his early adulthood questioning his faith.
Donne rebelled against his upbringing by traveling across Europe, bedding women and mingling in various literary circles. He networked extensively and he refused to return to England and m