John Donne, Poems by John Donne. With elegies on the author's death

David Reid (University of Stirling)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1590 - 1631

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Elegy
Poetry (any)

Resources

Donne published very few of his poems and consequently dating most of them and attaching them to the stages of his life is conjectural. It is fairly certain that the Satires were written between 1591 and 1601 while Donne was a student at the Inns of Court and Secretary to Lord Egerton, because Satire 5, which one assumes to be the last written, addresses Egerton and deals with abuses of the law under Elizabeth. The address to the reader prefaced to “The Progress of the Soul: Metempsychosis” is dated 1601. As for the religious poetry, Helen Gardner has argued convincingly that most of the sonnets that make up the Divine Meditations were written during a religious crisis between 1609 and 1611. “A Litany” will belong to the same …

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6130 words

Citation: Reid, David. "Poems by John Donne. With elegies on the author's death". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 July 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2752, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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