John Donne

Biographical Notes:

Born 1572; family of Roman Catholic Faith; mother relative of Catholic martyr Sir Thomas More.

• Grew up experiencing religious discrimination; may explain why he did not complete studies at Oxford.
• Studied Law and received degree in 1596;
• Seeking adventure, sailed with English expeditions against the Spanish, and his experiences inspired "The Storm," "The Calm," and "The Burnt Ship."
• Returned 1601 to London and became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. Later secretly married his sixteen-year-old niece, Ann More. More's father tried to annul the marriage; could not but did manage to arrange that Donne be imprisoned for a short time.
• 1602, released from prison, tried to find a way to support family; later converted from Roman Catholicism to Anglicism, and was enlisted by Sir Thomas Morton to aid him in writing anti-Catholic pamphlets. In 1610 he published his first work, Pseudo-Martyr, which attempted to induce English Catholics to repudiate their allegiance to Rome and take an oath of allegiance to the British crown.

Style:

In A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Donne constructs nine four-line stanzas, called quatrains, using a four-beat, iambic tetrameter line. The rhyme scheme for each stanza is an alternating abab, and each stanza is grammatically self-contained. This simple form is uncharacteristic for Donne, who often invented elaborate stanzaic forms and rhyme schemes. Its simplicity, however, permits the reader more readily to follow the speaker's complicated argument.

Lines 1-4:

Read the "as" as "in the way that"; how is an extended simile introduced between virtuous men and departing lovers?

Lines 5-6:

Donne avoids the cliche of lovers departing; what are some cliche moments for this? Focus on the word melt.

Lines 9-12:

How are joys of lovers holy? What extended metaphor is completed with the use of the word laity?

In ancient and medieval astronomy, trepidation of the spheres referred to the vibration of the outermost sphere of the Ptolemaic universe, causing each sphere within to move accordingly.

Lines 13-16:

Let's notice the speaker moving from his contrast of earthly with heavenly events to a contrast of earthly love with the experience he and his lover share.

Lines 17-20:

What are the qualities that make their love unique? What will help these lovers with their physical separation?

Intellectual Themes:

• Death:
• Love:
• Religious Faith:
• Science: Science is a prevalent theme throughout Donne's work; note that Galileo invented the compass two years before Donne wrote A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. Note also the scientific admiration for the circle and its infinite, perfect qualities.

Links:

• http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/243
• http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/ Great site for Donne; also be a digital detective and check out the main page for Luminarium: http://www.luminarium.org/

Historical Context:

• Puritans

• Plague

• Royal Patronage

• Machiavelli

• Protestantism

NB: the above was copied and gleaned from Literary Movements for Students; David Galens, Project Editor, Gale Publishing. I highly recommend this work and the other works in the series.