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John Donne

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Donne (1573-1631), known now as one of England’s finest poets of love and notable in his own time as an astonishing preacher. He was born a Catholic in a Protestant country and, when he married Anne More without her father's knowledge, Donne lost his job in the government circle and fell into a poverty that only ended once he became a priest in the Church of England. As Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, his sermons were celebrated, perhaps none more than his final one in 1631 when he was plainly in his dying days, as if preaching at his own funeral.

The image above is from a miniature in the Royal Collection and was painted in 1616 by Isaac Oliver (1565-1617)

With

Mary Ann Lund
Associate Professor in Renaissance English Literature at the University of Leicester

Sue Wiseman
Professor of Seventeenth Century Literature at Birkbeck, University of London

And

Hugh Adlington
Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham

Available now

52 minutes

Last on

Thu 12 Jan 2023 21:30
ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4

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LINKS AND FURTHER READING

CONTRIBUTORS








READING LIST

R. C. Bald, John Donne: A Life (Clarendon Press, 1970)

John Carey, John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (Faber and Faber, 1990)

David Colclough (ed.), John Donne's Professional Lives (D. S. Brewer, 2003)

Julie Crawford, Mediatrix: Women, Politics and Literary Production in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2014), especially '"His Factor for our loves": The Countess of Bedford and John Donne'

John Donne (ed. John Carey), The Major Works (Oxford World’s Classics, 2008)

John Donne (ed. Robin Robbins), The Complete Poems of John Donne (Pearson Longman, 2010)

John Donne (ed. Timothy Healy), Ignatius His Conclave (Clarendon Press, 1969)

John Donne (ed. Anthony Raspa), Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1975)

John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Together with Death's Duel (University of Michigan, 1959)

John Donne (ed. Evelyn Simpson), Sermons on the Psalms and Gospels (University of California Press, 1963, repr. 2003)

Katrin Ettenhuber, Donne’s Augustine: Renaissance Cultures of Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Achsah Guibbory (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Donne (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Mary Ann Lund, β€˜Donne’s Convalescence’ (Renaissance Studies 31, 2017)

Arthur Marotti, John Donne, Coterie Poet (University of Wisconsin Press, 1986)

Peter McCullough (ed.), The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne (16 vols, Oxford University Press, 2013 onwards)

George Potter and Evelyn Simpson (eds.), The Sermons of John Donne (10 vols, University of California Press, 1953–1962)

John R. Roberts (ed.), John Donne: An Annotated Bibliography of Modern Criticism, 1912–2008 (4 vols, University of Missouri Press, 1973-2018)

Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Faber and Faber, 2022)

Jeanne Shami, Dennis Flynn, and M. Thomas Hester (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of John Donne (Oxford University Press, 2011)

A.Β J. Smith (ed.), John Donne: The Critical Heritage (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975)

Gary Stringer, Jeffrey Johnson et al. (eds.), The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne (8 vols, Indiana University Press, 1995 onwards)

John Stubbs, Donne: The Reformed Soul (Penguin, 2007)

Ramie Targoff, John Donne: Body and Soul (University of Chicago Press, 2008)

M. Thomas Hester (ed.), John Donne’s β€œDesire of More”: The Subject of Anne More Donne in His Poetry (University of Delaware Press, 1996)


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  • Thu 12 Jan 2023 09:00
    ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
  • Thu 12 Jan 2023 21:30
    ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4

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