John Donne (1572-1631)

Here's a little bit on my chosen subject, John Donne. And I quote the introduction from Neil Rhodes's John Donne: Selected Prose (Penguin Classics, 1987):
John Donne was born into a Catholic family in 1572. After a conventional education at Hart Hall, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn, he took part in the Earl of Essex's expedition to the Azores in 1597. He secretly married Anne More in December 1601, and was imprisoned by her father, Sir George, in the Fleet two months later. He was ordained priest in January 1615, and proceeded to a Doctorate of Divinity at Cambridge in April of that year. In 1622 he was made Dean of St Paul's in London, a post that he held until his death in 1631. He is famous for the sermons he preached in his later years as well as for his poems.
Pretty nifty, huh? Doesn't that just make you want to run right out and pick up a huge volume of his complete works? Ok, enough of the sarcasm. I have a fault in that I tend to ridicule the things that are really important to me, just so that others won't know how to get at my soft spots. But, there we are!
I am focusing on one of his prose works, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, which he wrote in 1624 when he was seriously ill. He was not expected to pull through, and Devotions represents his own reflections upon life and death. In Meditation 9 he says of Devotions, "I have cut up mine own Anatomy, dissected my selfe," -- these writings represent his own intellectual processes while he was watching his body decay before him. Pretty fascinating, no?

Here are some books I have been reading lately:

Carey, John. John Donne: Life, Mind and Art. London: Faber & Faber, 1990.

Rhodes, Neil. John Donne: Selected Prose. London: Penguin Books, 1987.

Bald, R. C. John Donne: a Life. London: 1971?.

Raspa, Anthony, ed. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.
Ok! I can hear you! So what if it's only a few books! It's not all I've been reading -- jeez! Give me a break! You'll have to check out my other links to see more wonderful literature and sites.

Glorious Links

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, a la
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library Marvellous!
Donne Donne Donne!(This one might be a little testy)
Bibliomania
Some Donne poems and resources
Probably the best Donne site listed here
Luminarium - Medieval, Renaissance and 17th-C. Literature
UCSB's Voice of the Shuttle/Renaissance & 17th-C. Lit
Some links to other Donne sites
A Donne thesis by someone who took a degree at Oxford
Selected poetry from Univ. of Toronto
The complete works of Shakespeare
The English Server
Think you're a lit buff? Check out First Lines.
A literary calendar.

Maxine's Axiom: "Only foolish mouse make nest in cat's ear." --Charlie Chan.

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Here's a little bit on my chosen subject, John Donne. And I quote the introduction from Neil Rhodes's John Donne: Selected Prose (Penguin Classics, 1987):
John Donne was born into a Catholic family in 1572. After a conventional education at Hart Hall, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn, he took part in the Earl of Essex's expedition to the Azores in 1597. He secretly married Anne More in December 1601, and was imprisoned by her father, Sir George, in the Fleet two months later. He was ordained priest in January 1615, and proceeded to a Doctorate of Divinity at Cambridge in April of that year. In 1622 he was made Dean of St Paul's in London, a post that he held until his death in 1631. He is famous for the sermons he preached in his later years as well as for his poems.
Pretty nifty, huh? Doesn't that just make you want to run right out and pick up a huge volume of his complete works? Ok, enough of the sarcasm. I have a fault in that I tend to ridicule the things that are really important to me, just so that others won't know how to get at my soft spots. But, there we are!
I am focusing on one of his prose works, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, which he wrote in 1624 when he was seriously ill. He was not expected to pull through, and Devotions represents his own reflections upon life and death. In Meditation 9 he says of Devotions, "I have cut up mine own Anatomy, dissected my selfe," -- these writings represent his own intellectual processes while he was watching his body decay before him. Pretty fascinating, no?