His lifespan is 1573 to 1631. He was the son of a wealth merchant. He was born in London. His parents were Roman Catholics. He was educated in his parent’s faith before going to Oxford and Cambridge.

In 1615, he entered the Anglican Church, after a severe personal struggle, and in 1621 became Dean of St. Paul’s, which position he held until his death in 1631. He was the 1st great Anglican preacher.

His Poetry –
John Donne was the most independent of the Elizabethan poets. He revolted against the easy, fluent style, stock imagery, and pastoral conventions of the followers of Spenser. He aimed at reality of thought and vividness of expression. His poetry is forceful, vigorous and in spite of faults of rhythm, often strangely harmonious.

Satire –
1)”Of the Progress of the Soule”(1610) – It show clearly Donne’s dissatisfaction with the world around him.

Love Poems –
1)”Songs and Sonnets” – It is also written in 1601. There are intense and subtle analyses of all the moods of a lover, expressed in vivid and startling language, which is colloquial rather than conventional.
A vein of satire runs through these also.
The rhythm is dramatic and gives the illusion of excited talk.
He prefers to arrest attention rather than to lull the senses. His great variety of pace, his fondness for echoing sounds, his deliberate use of shortened lines and unusual stress contribute also to this effect of vivid speech, swift thought, and delicate emotional responses.
He is essentially a psychological poet whose primary concern is feeling. His poems are all intensely personal and reveal a powerful and complex being. The best known and most typical poems of this group are – “Aire and Angels”, “A Nocturnal upon S. Lucies day”, “A Valediction : forbidding mourning” and “The Extasie”.

His religious poetry was written after 1610. The greatest, the 19 “Holy Sonnets” and the lyrics such as “A Hymn to GOD THE FATHER”, written in 1617.

They are intense, personal and have a force unique in this class of literature. They reveal the struggle in his mind before taking orders in the Anglican Church, his horror of death, and the fascination which it had for him, his dread of the wrath of God, and his longing for God’s love. They are the expression of a deep and troubled soul. In them are found the intellectual subtlety, the scholastic learning, and the ‘wit’ and ‘conceits’ of the love poems.

Dryden said of Donne, “He affects the metaphysics”. The word ‘metaphysics’ means, ‘based on abstract general reasoning’. But the poetry of Donne shows more than this. The poetry of Donne reveals a depth of philosophy, a subtlety of reasoning, a blend of thought and devotion, a mingling of the homely and the sublime, the light and the serious, which make it full of variety and surprise.

It is to the many characteristics, so widely different yet often brought together in a startling fusion, that the general term ‘wit’ is applied.

Imagery is a distinctive feature of the metaphysical. In Donne, this feature is unusual and striking, often breath-taking, but sometimes far-fetched and fantastic. He has made remarkable comparisons – parted lovers are like the legs of a pair of compasses, love is a spider “which transubstantiates all, his sick body is a map, his physicians cosmographers, and Death his “South-west discoverie”.

His Prose –

1)”The Pseudo-Martyr”(1610) – It was a defence of the oath of allegiance.
2)”Ignatius His Conclave”(1611) – It was a satire upon Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits.

3)”Devotions”(1614) – The best introduction to Donne’s prose. The strong power of his imagination and the mask of learning are the features of his work.

4)”Sermons” – They are his finest prose works. They are 160 in numbers.

5)”Death’s Duell”(1630) – The finest of his sermons. It contain many of the features of his poetry. His Influence –
Donne’s influence is strongly felt in both the courtly and religious poetry of the following generation.