John Donne : achievement in English Literature

Donne revolted against the easy, fluent style, stock imagery and pastoral
conventions of the followers of Spenser. His cynical nature and keenly critical
mind led him to write satires such as Of the Progress of the Soule (1601). They
were written in the couplet form, later to be adopted by Dryden and then by
Pope. His love poems written during 1601-1603 are intense and subtle analyses
of all the moods of a lover expressed in vivid and startling language which is
colloquial rather than conventional. His poems are dramatic and depict different
moods and emotions with the logical structure which has a beginning middle
and end. He is the first writer of dramatic monologues in which a speaker
speaks to another and situation is suggested poe. The Good Morrow is a
perfect illustration of this dramatic and syllogistic structure of his love
ms.
Dr Johnson following Dryden called him metaphysical. "He affects
metaphysics" said Dryden of Donne and the term 'metaphysical' is applied to
Donne and his followers to indicate their highly intellectualised works. These
include the use of images taken from very life or from scientific pursuits, not for
ornament but to express subtleties of thought and feeling accurately. But
Donne's poetry reveals a depth of philosophy, a subtlety of reasoning, a blend of
thought and emotion a mingling of the homely and the sublime, the light and the
serious which make it full of variety and surprise.
His characteristic love poems are Aire and Angels, Canonisation, A
Nocturnal upon St Lucies day, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, The
Extasie, The Sunne Rising, The Good Morrow, The Flea, The Relique etc.
His religious poetry was written after 1610, and the greatest the nineteen
Holy Sonnets and the lyrics such as A Hymn to God, The Father after his
wife's death in 1617. His religious poems reveal the struggle in his mind before
taking orders in the Anglican Church. They are the expressions of a deep and
troubled soul. To them we find the intellectual subtlety, the scholastic learning
and the wit and c John Donne is realistic in his attitude to love. He admits the
validity of physical relationship in love, "the body is the book" (Extasie). His
images are unconventional and effect a blended emotion and intellect, passion
and wit. Helen Gardner says that the conceits are instruments of persuasion in
an argument. In his poem, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Donne
compares the two souls of lovers to a geometrical compass, they are two things
joined by a bond that makes them one. This prosaic unfamiliar comparison
throws a good deal of light on the actual relationship of the lovers. In the Good
Morrow, the lover speaks of the self-sufficiency of their spiritual world. He
rejects the expanding geographical world and considers their spiritual world of
love superior to the physical world. Their 'hemisphere' are better because they
are close to one another, and these are no cold North nor declining West. In
spite of the intellectual vigour and wit of his poetry, the glow of emotion is
unmistakable:

"Whatever dyes, vas not mix't equally

If our two loves be one or thou and I

Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none die"

There is a grandeur of the sepulchral quality of Donne's conceits. "The

bracelet of bright hair about the bone" (The Relique). This quality of
Donne's poetry has exercised tremendous influence on post-war English
poetryonceits of the love poems