John Donne lived from 1572 to 1631. He was contradictory in that he wrote both clever love poems when young and serious meditations and sermons when older. He was raised Catholic but later abandoned Catholicism for the Church of England, though it is debated if this was a true conversion or to advance socially. He also secretly married his employer's niece in 1601, leaving questions if this was out of love or to promote his career. Donne was an intellectual concerned with philosophy, law, science and other subjects. He was known for using poetic devices like conceits and paradoxes in his writing.

2.  1572-1631
 Contradictory
 Wild, young = clever love poems
 Serious, older = meditations and sermons
 Religious conflict
 Raised Catholic
 Abandoned Catholicism for Church of England
 True conversion or advancing in society?
 Secret marriage
 Anne More: employer’s niece  1601
 Love or promoting career?

3.  Intellectual,
concerned with philosophy, law,
science, etc.
 Poetic devices = conceits and paradoxes
 Conceits: extended metaphors that link objects
or ideas not commonly associated
 Ex.: “All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances”
-Shakespeare, As You Like It
 Paradoxes: images or descriptions that appear
self-contradictory but reveal a deeper truth
 Ex.: “Death, thou shalt die.”
-Donne, “Holy Sonnet 10”

4. Written by John Donne
p. 438-439

5. 2 Paradoxes
1 Conceit
2-3 Sentence Summary per Slide
(3 slides total)

6. As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, No;
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

7. Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

8. If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do;
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

9. Written by John Donne
p. 442-444

10.  Analyze
the conceit that compares
mankind to a volume
 Mankind = Volume
 God = _________________
 Individual men = _________________
 Death = _________________
 Sickness, war, justice =
_________________
 Library = _________________
 Explain the conceit that states “no man is
an island.”
 For whom does the bell toll and what does
Donne mean?

11. p. 439: #s 2, 3, 5
p. 444: #s 4, 5, 6