The Life of John Donne | John Donne Biography

Biography:

John Donne was an English poet of metaphysical school and cleric in the Church of England. He was born in 1572 into a recusant Roman Catholic family when practice of that religion was illegal in England and died in 1631 at the age of 59. He was the third of six children. His father died in 1576 when he was four. His mother Elizabeth Heywood was the daughter of John Heywood (the playwright) and sister of the Jasper Heywood ( a Jesuit priest and translator).

A few months after her husband died, Donne's mother married Dr. John Syminges, a wealthy widower with three children of his own. Donne thus acquired a stepfather. Donne was educated privately. In 1583, at the age of 11, he began studies at Hart Hall, now Hertford College, Oxford. After three years of studies there, Donne was admitted to the University of Cambridge, where he studied for another three years. However, Donne could not obtain a degree from either institution because of his Catholicism, since he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy required to graduate. In 1591 he was accepted as a student at the Thavies Inn legal school, one of the Inns of Chancery in London. On 6 May 1592 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, one of the Inns of Court. 

During and after his education, Donne spent much of his considerable inheritance on women, literature, pastimes and travel. In 1597, Donne became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, lord keeper of the great seal, in whose employ Donne remained for almost five years. While in Egerton’s service, Donne met and fell in love with Anne More, niece of Egerton’s second wife and the daughter of Sir George More, who was chancellor of the garter. Knowing there was no chance of obtaining Sir George’s blessing on their union, the two married secretly, probably in December 1601. For this offense Sir George had Donne briefly imprisoned and dismissed from his post with Egerton as well. He also denied Anne’s dowry to Donne. Because of the marriage, moreover, all possibilities of a career in public service were dashed, and Donne found himself at age 30 with neither prospects for employment nor adequate funds with which to support his household. Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. 

Despite the miseries he studied and wrote prose on theology, canon law, and anti-Catholic polemics and composing love lyrics, religious poetry, and complimentary and funerary verse for his patrons. He was ordained deacon and priest on Jan. 23, 1615, and preferment soon followed. He was made a royal chaplain and received, at the king’s command, the degree of doctor of divinity from Cambridge. On Nov. 22, 1621, Donne was installed as dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, at which he carried out his duties with efficiency and integrity. But this turnabout in Donne’s professional life was accompanied by searing personal grief. Two years after his ordination, in 1617, Anne Donne died at age 33 after giving birth to a stillborn child. Grief-stricken at having lost his emotional anchor, Donne vowed never to marry again, even though he was left with the task of raising his children in modest financial circumstances at the time.

Donne died on 31 March 1631 and was buried in old St Paul's Cathedral, where a memorial statue of him by Nicholas Stone was erected with a Latin epigraph probably composed by himself.

 Memorial to John Donne, St Paul's Cathedral [3]

Poetry:

Common subjects of his poetry are love, death and religion. His poetry is metaphysical because he combined diverse ideas into a single idea; for example nature was combined with philosophy, he is considered a master of metaphysical conceit, an extended metaphor that combines two different ideas into a single idea by using imagery. John Donne wrote many poems. Most of his poems were preserved in manuscript copies made by and passed among a relatively small but admiring coterie of poetry lovers. Most current scholars agree, however, that the elegies (which in Donne’s case are poems of love, not of mourning), epigrams, verse letters, and satires were written in the 1590s, the Songs and Sonnets from the 1590s until 1617, and the “Holy Sonnets” and other religious lyrics from the time of Donne’s marriage until his ordination in 1615. He composed the hymns late in his life, in the 1620s. Donne’s Anniversaries were published in 1611–12 and were the only important poetic works by him published in his lifetime.

Some scholars believe that his literary works reflect the changing trends of his life. He wasn't spiritually at peace. He wrote Anniversaries (two poems) on the death of his patron's daughter. In the first poem he concludes that in contemporary word men are loosing the wisdom that connects them to God while in the second one he ultimately regains the wisdom that connects him to eternal life. In his poem No Man is an Island he says that all humans are connected, when someone dies something dies inside us too. No man is complete in his own personality. Each individual is a part of a larger humanity. The Dream is very abstract and intellectual poem in which he dreams of his beloved and further says that it was not imaginary and fanciful but have basis in reality. She then arrives and interrupts his dream. In other words the abstract has turned into reality. It was the bright and dazzling light of her eyes that woke him up.   

Legacy:

In 20th century several novels appeared whose subject was various episodes of Donne's life e.g his courtship of Anne is the subject of Take Heed of Loving Me: A novel about John Donne (1963) by Elizabeth Gray Vining and The Lady and the Poet (2010) by Maeve Haran.

The first two editions of Donne’s Poems were published posthumously, in 1633 and 1635, after having circulated widely in manuscript copies. The Poems were sufficiently popular to be published eight times within 90 years of Donne’s death, but his work was not to the general taste of the 18th century, when he was regarded as a great but eccentric “wit.” The notable exception to that appraisal was Alexander Pope, who admired Donne’s intellectual virtuosity and echoed some of Donne’s lines in his own poetry. From the early 19th century, however, perceptive readers began to recognize Donne’s poetic genius. Robert Browning credited Donne with providing the germ for his own dramatic monologues. By the 20th century, mainly because of the pioneering work of the literary scholar H.J.C. Grierson and the interest of T.S. Eliot, Donne’s poetry experienced a remarkable revival.

Credits:

1. Wikipedia
2. Britannica 
3. By 'Shakespearesmonkey' - Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43450899
5. No Man Is An Island Meaning, Summary And Analysis By John Donne