incarnational and sacramental. This conver-
gence of conflicting elements—religious and
political strife, philosophical and literary com-
petition, the clash of Petrarchan idealism and
cynical libertinism—results in the equivocal ten-
sion and the pervasive irony that mark the love
poetry of John Donne.
An historical individual named John Donne
with all his individual quirks and personal expe-
riences; literary conventions derived from ancient
elegy, from Medieval Scholasticism, from courtly
love lyric, from Renaissance Petrarchanism, and
from many other sources; ideas about love of
religious, philosophical, and social origin—all
these elements converge in the love poetry of
John Donne along with many more too numer-
ous to list. What holds them together and forges
them into a unity is wit.... The literary result is
irony: the perception of the incongruous and
contradictory suspended together in a verbal
matrix. Gracia ́n goes on to define the conceit
(concepto) as ‘‘an act of the understanding that
expresses the correspondence that is found
among objects’’—found or invented by ‘‘the arti-
fice of ingenuity’’ (242;artificio del ingenio). Lit-
erature is thus fundamentally ironic insofar as it
acknowledges the incongruousness of human
existence. Donne’s love poetry is ‘‘a well wrought
urne’’ precisely in recognizing its own heroic
insufficiency against the temporal and material
forces always threatening to overwhelm it. The
wit and irony of Donne’s poetry are very much
akin to what a modern poet, Wallace Stevens,
calls ‘‘nobility’’:
It is a violence from within that protects us
from a violence from without. It is the imagi-
nation pressing back against the pressure of
reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have
something to do with our self-preservation;
and that, no doubt, is why the expression of
it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our
lives. (36)
Source:R. V. Young, ‘‘Love, Poetry, and John Donne in
the Love Poetry of John Donne,’’ inRenascence, Vol. 52,
No. 4, Summer 2000, pp. 251–73.
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Status, England and Wales, 2003,’’ inMarriage & Cou-
ples, Research, 2AS1. http://www.2as1.net/marriage_
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Carey, John,John Donne: Life, Mind and Art, Oxford
University Press, 1981, pp. 38, 72.
Cook, Ann Jennalie, Making a Match: Courtship in
Shakespeare and His Society, Princeton University Press,
1981.
Donne, John, ‘‘Song,’’ inJohn Donne: The Complete Eng-
lish Poems, edited by A. J. Smith, Penguin, 1971, pp. 77–78.
———, ‘‘Woman’s Constancy,’’ inJohn Donne: The
Complete English Poems, edited by A. J. Smith, Penguin,
1971, p. 92.
‘‘Mandrake,’’ inThe Natural Path. http://www.theherbprof.
com/hrbMandrake.htm (accessed November 12, 2009).
Redpath, Theodore, ed.The Songs and Sonnets of John
Donne, 2nd ed., St. Martin’s Press, Penguin, 1983, p. xx.
Rollin, Roger B., ‘‘‘Fantastique Ague’: The Holy Sonnets
and Religious Melancholy,’’ inThe Eagle and the Dove:
Reassessing John Donne, edited by Claude J. Summers
and Ted-Larry Pebworth, University of Missouri Press,
1986, p. 131.
Shakespeare, William,Much Ado About Nothing,editedby
R. A. Foakes, Penguin, 1981, Act 2, scene 3, lines 60–63, p. 64.
———,Antony and Cleopatra, edited by M. R. Ridley,
Methuen, 1981, Act 4, scene 12, line 13, p. 166.
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Funk & Wagnells, 1970, pp. 66, 67.
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Series, No. 444, Twayne, 1987, pp. 31, 36.
Further Reading
Guibbory, Achsah, ed.,The Cambridge Companion to
John Donne, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
This collection of essays is to date the most
comprehensive guide on all aspects of Donne’s
work.
Nelson, Nicolas H.,The Pleasure of Poetry: Reading and
Enjoying Poetry from Donne to Burns, Greenwood, 2006.
This is a clearly written, accessible guide to Eng-
lish poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Nelson explains themes, devices, styles,
language, imagery, and other literary elements as
he discusses poets, including Donne, Ben Jon-
son, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, William
Cowper, Robert Burns, Oliver Goldsmith, Rob-
ert Herrick, Andrew Marvell, John Dryden and
others. Nelson discusses Donne’s ‘‘Song’’ as well.
Picard, Liza,Elizabeth’s London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan
London, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2005.
Drawing on diaries and contemporary docu-
ments, Picard aims to give a picture of what life
was like in London for the average person during
the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558–1603), which
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