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SOURCE: Gorton, L. M. “Philosophy and the City: Space in Donne.” John Donne Journal: Studies in the Age of Donne 18 (1999): 61-71.
In the following essay, Gorton discusses Donne’s sense of place, use of space, and spatial imagery in “The Sunne Rising,” “Breake of Day,” “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward,” and the Anniversaries.
John Donne was a Londoner born and bred, and his poems take much of their life from the life of that city.1 His lovers think of taxes, coins, and compasses. They know boys go to school, lawyers make money, ships come in; the business of life goes on outside their rooms. His most tender poems have that satirical edge—the awareness of an outside world that has no time for love.2 It makes them seem real, and immediate. Such immediacy is all the more striking, however, because Donne's poems are rarely simply immediate...
This section contains 3,657 words (approx. 13 pages at 300 words per page) |
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