John Donne (1572-1631), English metaphysical poet, Anglican divine, and pulpit orator, is ranked with Milton as one of the greatest English poets. He is also a supreme artist in sermons and devotional prose. John Donne's masculine, ingenious style is...

John Donne is now recognized as one of the great originals in the history of English poetry and as an equally accomplished master of English prose. The twentieth century has restored him, in fact, to a place in the literary pantheon much like the one...

John Donne's standing as a great English poet, and one of the greatest of all writers of English prose, is now assured. However, it has been confirmed only in the present century. The history of Donne's reputation is the most remarkable of any major...

A love letter from Napoleon to his mistress Josephine sold for $557,000, more than five times its estimate, at a London auction that attracted spirited bidding for several rare items.The letter is one of only three known to have survived from the future emperor's passionate...

History hovers nearby at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where John Adams' ambitious but uneven work about the creation of the atom bomb is being staged just a few miles from the site of the world's first controlled nuclear chain reaction."Doctor Atomic," which had its...

The worst role any performer can be saddled with is that of Greatest Actor of his Generation. It may look easy to play from the outside-it is, after all, the role of a lifetime-but in reality it requires that a strict set of rules be...

Opera, the most multilayered art form, loves war for its multiplicity of passions. Opera also fears war—or at least the direct depiction of it onstage. Most opera composers have sensibly realized that the fury of battle is better conveyed by the sound of clashing instruments...

In the following essay, Raman analyzes s Donne's complex use of money, gender, and colonialist discourse in three erotic poems—“Loves Progress,” “Going to Bed,” and “The Bracelet.”

In the following essay, Sabine discusses the importance of Donne's wife to his love poetry.

In the following essay, originally published in 1986, Marotti examines the conflicts revealed in Donne's poetry and letters as he seeks employment and advancement in the court. Marotti finds that pieces such as “A Litanie” and “Hymn to God the Father,” which he sent to potential patrons to obtain positions, are “politically encoded” religious poems that “transpose public forms into private devotions.”

The essay explores the work of the poet John Donne and how he used conceits in his metaphysical poetry

Both John Donne's "The Funeral" and "Holy Sonnet 3" are undeniably similar in their discussions of death and afterlife, with death referred to more as a beginning to a new life than an ending, particularly for the soul. Each poem reflects the soul being released from the body as a way of cleansing the spirit, while allowing the mind to rid itself of things that might have troubled the speaker while alive.

This essay explores the type of love that John Donne's poetry evokes.