Donne, John

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John Donne

1572–1631

Poet
Priest

Catholic Upbringing.

Of all the forces that shaped the life and writing of John Donne, his Catholic upbringing was certainly the most important. His family traced their origins back to Wales, although his father was a successful ironmonger in London, who died when the young John was still a baby. Donne's mother married a Catholic physician, and the family saw that Catholic tutors initially schooled the young boy at home. When he was eleven, he entered Hertford Hall at Oxford University, an institution that Catholics often attended at the time. Later, he may have also attended Cambridge, although his Catholicism prevented him from receiving a degree. In the years following his education, Donne played the "man about town" on the London scene. He was not known for leading a wild and dissolute life, but instead for being a careful dresser who enjoyed the company of prominent London ladies. In these years he studied law at the Inns of Court, the medieval guild charged with representing clients in the royal courts and the center of legal education in the English capital. In 1593, he renounced his Catholicism not, as some formerly claimed, in a calculated maneuver to receive important professional positions, but after careful study of the differences between the teachings of Catholicism and Anglicanism. He continued to remain at odds with some groups in the Church of England; he was never drawn toward Puritanism, but instead envisioned Anglicanism's benefits as consisting of a compromise between the hard-edged doctrinal religions of radical Protestants and Catholics.

Adventure and an Unfortunate Marriage.

In the mid-1590s, Donne embarked on a short period of adventure in the company of Sir Walter Raleigh and his "Sea Dogs." In the years following the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, these sailors continued their efforts to discourage Spanish trade by conducting raids against the country's ports and trading outposts. Donne accompanied Raleigh on at least two missions, first to storm the port of Cadiz in Spain in 1596, and one year later to track down Spanish galleons laden with New World gold in the Azores. He soon retired from these exploits and, returning to London, he accepted a position as a secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, an important royal official. In 1601, Egerton saw to it that Donne was elected to Parliament from a district he controlled in the north of England. Donne's patron became displeased with his young charge, however, when he discovered that Donne had secretly married his wife's niece, Ann More. For contracting the illegal marriage (More had been a minor), Egerton had Donne imprisoned for a time. Eventually, he was released, and although the union with More survived, he was politically disgraced. During the years that followed, he continually tried to rehabilitate himself, but was always unsuccessful. He and More survived on the gifts and patronage of friends. Finally, in 1615, Donne took a suggestion of King James I to heart and he entered the church. James also saw to it that Cambridge University awarded Donne his degree, and he gave him a position as a chaplain. In the years that followed, Donne also received other appointments in the Church of England, eventually rising to serve as dean of the Cathedral of St. Paul's in London, one of the most important ecclesiastical positions in the English capital. In this capacity, Donne became one of the country's most famous preachers and he helped to establish a following for his particular brand of Anglican spirituality. That religion was opposed to what it perceived as "doctrinal hairsplitting" among the Puritans; churchmen like Donne instead promoted an ideal of Christian holiness. They counseled their audiences to search their lives to unearth sins, amend their paths, and concentrate their attentions on the great Christian drama of redemption.

Works.

Donne had been a poet since his earliest years on the London scene, and in the period of his disgrace he had written works for his patrons. He did not publish these, apparently preferring to remain aloof from the public world of poetry that was at the time dominated by figures like William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other playwrights anxious to turn a profit. In his years as dean of the St. Paul's Cathedral, he continued to write poetry, and at his death his son John collected and published his works. Even before his death, his style was credited with producing changes in English poetry. In contrast to the melodic lines favored by poets of the Elizabethan years, Donne's verse was recognized for its forceful style that bristled with intellectual insights. His poems were difficult to understand, yet filled with rewarding conceits and metaphors for those that struggled to excavate their meanings. In this regard they have remained a significant source of inspiration for later writers of English, although works like his Holy Sonnets (1609–1611) still prove vexing to literary critics. These works were undertaken during a period of illness. Like most of Donne's greatest literary endeavors, they display a fascination with death and the life that lies beyond the grave. In his popular sermons delivered at St. Paul's he continued to call his audience to meditate on these themes. One of his greatest literary achievements were the Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions he published in 1624. That book contains his celebrated Meditation XVII, where Donne develops his famous observations on the themes "No man is an island" and "never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Such rhetoric was a significant force in attracting greater devotion to the Church of England on London's scene in the 1620s, although the country's religious divisions grew wider in the years following Donne's death in 1631. His reputation as a poet and a devotional writer continued to be considerable, although by the eighteenth century critics like Samuel Johnson had less regard for the puzzling and quixotic nature of his poetry. Johnson identified Donne as the source of inspiration for a school of "metaphysical poets" in early seventeenth-century England. Although modern literary critics have come to discount this notion of a school, they have continued to see Donne's influence as important in fashioning one direction followed by other early Stuart poets and writers of prose.