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English Literature 1590 – 1798 1 UGC MHRD ePGPathshala Subject: English Principal Investigator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad Paper 02: English Literature 1590 – 1798 Paper Coordinator: Dr. Anna Kurian, University of Hyderabad Module No 12: John Donne: The Sun Rising Content Writer: Mr. Rakesh Ramamoorthy; St. John’s College; Anchal Content Reviewer: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee; University of Hyderabad Language Editor: Dr. Anna Kurian, University of Hyderabad 2 Lesson Plan for John Donne’s “The Sun Rising” Introduction John Donne is perhaps the most well-known non-dramatic poet of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Donne is nothing if not complex and for a nuanced understanding of his work, one needs to be aware of the various religious, socio-political and literary contexts from which they have emerged. This lesson will briefly explain these contexts and then go on to provide a detailed analysis of the poem “The Sun Rising”. Life and Background A brief look at Donne’s life would be in order: He was born in 1572 into a Catholic family. Now, that is something that is worth emphasizing: Donne was born a Catholic in a nation that was predominantly Anglican (the context here is of course, the English Reformation) which, as will be explained below, made him something of an outsider during the early years of his life. Donne had illustrious ancestors: His mother was the daughter of the playwright John Heywood and was a descendant of Sir Thomas More himself who was beheaded because he steadfastly held onto Catholicism and refused to accept King Henry VIII as the head of the Church of England. Donne’s Catholic faith caused him difficulties in his early life. He attended both Oxford and Cambridge but he did not take a degree from either university because that would have required him to take the oath of allegiance to the monarch and thus relinquish Catholicism. After taking a short break from his studies to travel to Spain and Italy, he studied law at Thavies Inn (1591) and then at Lincoln’s Inn (1592–94). This should explain the preponderance of legal metaphors in his poetry. Eventually Donne did convert to Protestantism; there are no exact dates available but many scholars date the conversion c.1593. Given this background, it is only to be 3 expected that Donne’s writings would reflect this religious turmoil and they do. Thus critics such as AchsahGuibbory have noted that even though his poetry seems to endorse the Protestant version of Christianity, some Catholic influences are visible in his poetry. For instance, the poem “Airs and Angels” has the speaker worshipping his lover as an angel even though the Reformation had rejected the worship of angels. Interpretation of such poems has become complicated as it is impossible to accurately date those poems and hence it is not known whether they were written before or after Donne’s conversion. At the same time his later prose writings reveal a radically different position: His Psuedo-Martyr (1610) is critical of the Catholics who had refused to swear the Oath of Allegiance to the King. In 1597, Donne became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, was elected an MP, and seemed all set for a bright career at the court; but in 1601 he eloped with Anne More, Sir Egerton’s niece and thus fell into disfavor with both his employer and with the royal establishment in general. For the next decade, Donne lived in poverty and had to depend on the generosity of friends and patrons. One such patron was Sir Robert Drury whose deceased daughter Elizabeth was celebrated in Donne’s Anniversaries. The King steadfastly refused to appoint Donne to a post at his court and maintained that Donne should enter the Church which he eventually did in 1615. He was appointed to the prestigious position of the Dean of the St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1621 and he gradually became the most well-known preacher of his time. He died of stomach cancer in 1631. Donne’s Works & the Major Themes Now, let us turn to Donne’s works. None of Donne’s poetic works – other than Anniversaries – were published during his lifetime and hence it is difficult to date his works. It is 4 widely believed that during the 1590s, he wrote his satires (which are indebted to Juvenal and Horace as well as the English satirists of the 1590s) in which he makes fun of a wide range of people including Puritans, courtiers, corrupt politicians and licentious women. His “elegies” (mostly love poems and not mourning poems) belong to the same period and they are indebted to Ovid. His Songs and Sonnetsconsists of 53 poems dealing with diverse themes. Anniversaries – written as elegies lamenting the death of Elizabeth Drury, the daughter of his patron Sir Robert Drury – were the only poetical works of Donne to be published during his lifetime. After Donne’s death, two major editions of his poetry appeared: the first in 1633 and the second in 1635. It should be remembered that Donne was also a prose writer of some importance. His major prose writings include Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1623) and his published sermons, the most famous of the latter is “Death’s Duell”. Donne’s poetry mostly revolves around three themes: religion; erotic love; and travel, exploration and colonialism. His Elegies are mostly love poems and his Holy Sonnets deal with religion. But with Donne, these boundaries are very porous. His religious poetry can have erotic imagery. The best example is the Holy Sonnet XIV in which the narrator addresses God and laments that he is “betrothed” to God’s enemy (which can be seen as a reference to either the everyday world or the Satan). He announces that he cannot be “chaste” unless he is “ravished” by God. Alternately one can think of “The Canonization” in which the speaker wants him and his beloved to be “canonized for love”. In his erotic poetry, the man-woman relationships are often expressed in imagery that evokes colonial conquest. This can be best explained by briefly discussing a few lines from his “To His Mistress Going to Bed”, License my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below. 5 O my America! my new-found-land, My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned, My mine of precious stones, my empery, How blest am I in this discovering thee! These lines are obviously part of an erotic poem in which the speaker is addressing his mistress and seeking her permission to caress her body. Here, the woman’s body is likened to America (Remember that America was ‘discovered by Columbus in 1492 and was a popular destination of European explorers throughout the 16th century. Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement or colony in America was established in 1607). The rhetoric of colonial domination is taken further when the man claims sovereignty over the woman’s body and his physical exploration of her body is likened to the quest for riches. This merging of two apparently diverse worldviews (that of love, and that of travel, discovery and colonialism) is typical of Donne’s poetry. Before explaining the poem itself, we must discuss the form most commonly associated with Donne’s poetry, which is of course, “Metaphysical Poetry”. Metaphysical Poetry The label “metaphysical poetry” is commonly attached to the poetry of Donne and other seventeenth century poets such as George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, Richard Crashaw, Abraham Cowley, and Thomas Traherne. What are the characteristics of Metaphysical poetry? It is the poetry of “wit”, in the seventeenth century sense of wit which meant the ability to see similarity between radically different things. The metaphysical poets displayed their wit through the use of conceits. Chris Baldick defines the conceit as, “an unusually far-fetched or elaborate metaphor or simile presenting a surprisingly apt parallel between two apparently dissimilar things or feelings”. Conceits often employ such devices as hyperbole (exaggeration) 6 and paradox. The most common example of a metaphysical conceit is Donne’s comparison of lovers to two arms of a compass in his “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”. While the comparison seems far-fetched, it does make sense: Donne explains that just like the two legs of a compass are connected to each other even when they separate, lovers do not ever really move apart from each other. Metaphysical poetry mostly dealt with themes of religion and love. As opposed to the mellifluous Elizabethan lyric, metaphysical poets adopt a colloquial, often argumentative tone. For instance Donne’s “The Canonization” opens with the line, “For God’s sake hold your tongue and let me love”. This style will be discussed further below while explicating the “The Sun Rising”. Now, while the idea of metaphysical poetry is useful in reading the poetry of Donne and others, it should be used with caution. For one, these poems are not more “metaphysical” or philosophical than other poems of the period. Even their ornate style is common in the baroque poetry of Europe and some critics prefer to use the term “baroque” to characterize Donne. So when we use the term metaphysical poetry, we should keep in mind that we are dealing with poetry of wit and not poems that are literally, “metaphysical”. Moreover, the characteristics attributed to the metaphysical poets do not apply in equal measure to all these poets. So it is far more useful to understand “metaphysical poets” as a loose label and to specify the characteristics of the particular poet’s works. The term “metaphysical poetry” itself has its origin in disparaging remarks made by Dryden and others in the seventeenth century, who criticized these poets for trying to display their learning (or “metaphysicks”) in their poem.
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