English Literature

John Donne�s life, more than any poet�s, illustrates how the Elizabethan and Jacobean views of the world, which was based medieval world view, came to collide with the Renaissance one provided by the Copernican science. The result was confusion and scepticism. The contemporary intellectuals searched for a moral pattern that governs the world. However, in many their cases, the intellectuals fell back on to the traditional religion for ontological support as the new science could not provide at one all the answers. The same happened with Donne, who after spending a rather fiery youth, became afraid of God�s wrath and looked for His grace. However, it is to be noted that despite old age, his habit of using metaphysical conceit remained with him. But it should be pointed out that in his religious poetry, he drew his images from the Bible. Donne begins the poem in his characteristic conceited manner: �Batter my heart, three person�d God; for You As yet but knock, breath, shine, and ...

At the beginning of the 17 th century the love poetry of John Donne expressed a strong and independent spirit. He combined in his lyrics passionate emotional intensity with keen and active intelligence displayed in logical analysis and verbal wit, especially the extensive use of puns, equivocations, and the conceit or extended metaphor. All these features in some sense work in a principle of contraries. Dr. Johnson, noted Donne�s fondness for conceits, which he called �discordia concors�, the �discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike�. This kind of peculiar poetic vision and practice, however, had much to do with the kind of culture he inherited, a culture, which, based on medieval world view and ethos, suddenly seemed to change in the face of the Copernican science and new geographical discoveries. Donne faced a moral vacuum and experienced the unstable nature of the universe. So he tried to find out a resolution, first in the Neo-Platonic theory and then fina...

To His Coy Mistress Had we but World enough, and Time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk, and pass our long Loves Day. Thou by the Indian Ganges side Should'st Rubies find: I by the Tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood: And you should if you please refuse Till the Conversion of the Jews . My vegetable Love should grow Vaster than Empires and more slow. An hundred years should go to praise Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze. Two hundred to adore each Breast, But thirty thousand to the rest. An Age at least to every part, And the last Age should show your Heart. For Lady you deserve this State, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I alwaies hear Times winged Chariot hurrying near: And yonder all before us lye Desarts of vast Eternity. Thy Beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound My echoing Song: then Worms shall try That long preserv'd Virginity: An...