Donnes God

His contemporaries recognised John Donne (1572-1631) as a completely new kind of poet. He was, wrote one enthusiast, ‘Copernicus in Poetrie’. But in the winter of 1614-15 Donne abandoned part-time versification for full-time priestly ministry, quickly becoming one of the most popular preachers of his time. While his verse has never been short of modern admirers, his sermons have recently begun to receive their full share of serious attention. Yet there exists almost no theologically-informed criticism to assist readers with navigating, let alone appreciating, the intricacies of Donne’s religious thinking. The need for such criticism is especially urgent since many readers approach his writing today with little previous knowledge of Christian doctrine or history. This book supplies that deficiency. Starting from the assumption that theology is inevitably the product of the human imagination, a perception that is traced back to major early Christian writers (and something that Donne implicitly acknowledged), it probes the complex amalgam that constituted his ever-shifting vision of the deity. It examines his theological choices and their impact on his preaching, analysing the latter with reference to its sometimes strained relationship with Christian orthodoxy and the implications of this for any attempt to determine how far Donne may legitimately be viewed as a mouthpiece for the Jacobean and Caroline Church of England. The book argues that the unconventionality that characterises his verse is also on display in his sermons. As a result it presents Donne as a far more creative and risk-taking religious thinker than has previously been recognised, especially by those determined to see him as a paragon of conventional Christian orthodoxy.

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 17/20, , language: English, abstract: This paper analyses one of the most influential poems by John Donne, Hymn to God, My God in My Sickness. Its aim is to foreground the significance of the metaphysical conceit at the stylistic and thematic levels. One of the pivotal keywords used in this paper is the metaphysical conceit.

'Donne is perhaps the most intellectual of English poets, and John Carey is perhaps the most intelligent of contemporary English literary critics. The encounter, as one might expect, is fierce and enthralling... This book is sensitive, searching, powerful, exciting, provocative and witty. It is a superb achievement.' Christopher Hill, TLS John Donne: Life, Mind and Art is a unique attempt to see Donne whole. Beginning with an account of his life, it takes as its domain not only the whole range of the poetry, but also the sermons, the letters, the spiritual and controversial works, and such highly personal documents as the treatise on suicide. The result is a clearer picture than has hitherto emerged of one of the most intricate and compelling of literary personalities. 'The one book we have needed all along... A magnificent exercise in reappraisal. I have never read a critical work which reaches as deeply inside the mind of its subject.' Jonathan Raban, Sunday Times 'Carey's book is itself alive with the kind of energy it attributes to Donne.' Christopher Ricks, London Review of Books

From his early love poetry to his late religious writing, John Donne speaks of the human body as a book to be read and interpreted. Unlike modern thinkers who understand the body as a purely material phenomenon or post-modern critics who see in it a "text" produced by culture, Donne understands the body as a (scriptural) text written by God. In this study, McDuffie offers a comprehensive interpretation of Donne's reading of the body. In Donne's imaginative universe, the human person lies at the center of the great interconnected web of God's signs and acts. As such, he makes it the touchstone of his own theology. While his anthropology is basically orthodox, the emphasis Donne places on the body and the role it plays in his religious poetics are distinctive. Refusing to restrict God's revelation to the written words of Scripture, Donne turns habitually to the book of the human body as a collection of signs that indicate God's nature, his intent, and the human condition. He also, at times, represents the human body not as a "mere" sign but as sacrament: a seal of the promises of God that conveys his presence and grace. In his reading of the book of the body, Donne discerns the narrative of salvation history: the trajectory proceeding from creation, through fall to redemption and resurrection. He sets the body and salvation history into a dialogical relationship, always reading one in terms of the other. Donne reads in the body God's great love for the material, the ravages of the Fall, God's redemptive action in Christ and in the lives of the saints, and the literal and figurative deaths that serve as gateways to resurrection and eschatological fulfillment.

This volume of John Donne's writings begins with a biography of John Donne's life, as told by Donne's writer friend, Izaak Walton. Walton gives readers a close look at Donne's past, which was plagued with the loss of many close family members. This biographical information helps readers to make better sense of the somber devotions contained in this volume. In his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Donne concentrates on the miserable condition of man and the inevitability of death. The devotions are all structured the same, each beginning with a meditation followed by an expostulation and a prayer. These devotions serve as a preview for Donne's "Death's Duel Sermon," written near his death in 1631 as his funeral sermon. While "Death's Duel" paints a grave picture of earthly life tormented by pain and death, it hopes for a bright future in God's love through Christ's resurrection and ascension. -Emmalon Davis, CCEL Staff Writer

Collected in this volume are Achsah Guibbory’s most important and frequently cited essays on Donne, which, taken together, present her distinctive and evolving vision of the poet. The book includes an original, substantive introduction as well as new essays on the Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, the Songs and Sonnets, and the subject of Donne and toleration. Over the course of her career, Guibbory has asked different questions about Donne but has always been concerned with recovering multiple historical and cultural contexts and locating Donne’s writing in relation to them. In the essays here, she reads Donne within various contexts: the early modern thinking about time and history; religious attitudes towards sexuality; the politics of early modern England; religious conflicts within the church. While her approach has always been historicist, she has also foregrounded Donne’s distinctiveness, showing how (and why) he continues to speak powerfully to us now. Presented together here, with reflections on the trajectory of her engagement with Donne, Achsah Guibbory illuminates Donne’s understanding that erotic, spiritual, and political issues are often intertwined, and reveals how this understanding resonates in our own times.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.