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Donne Criticism 286 Views


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Description:

Critics started attacking Donne's works only after he had passed away. Talk about kicking a guy when he's already down.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:01

Donne: Criticism, a la Shmoop. John Donne’s one of those guys who makes

00:09

you feel like you’re not doing anything with your own life. Yeah… one of those.

00:15

He traveled across Europe and fought against the Spanish.

00:19

He was imprisoned for marrying Anne More without her dad's permission.

00:23

He transformed himself from a broke lawyer into a prominent preacher.

00:28

And, of course, he wrote poetry. The anonymous editor of a 1633 edition of

00:34

Donne's work, published two years after the poet's death, praised his ability to rhyme

00:39

the word “dead” with “discovered” and “determined.”

00:46

The editor also went on to say that Donne's poetry was the most awesome thing to happen

00:50

to English literature ever, never mind that Shakespeare guy.

00:54

Other people must have agreed with this assessment, because the poems were reprinted multiple

00:59

times during the seventeenth century. Yet, at the same time, a number of critics

01:07

and other poets turned against Donne.

01:09

The dude was dead; it's not like he could defend himself.

01:12

The anti-Donne camp disliked the irregular rhythm and weird imagery of his poetry.

01:17

Dryden, an influential seventeenth-century poet who wrote a lot of stuff you've never

01:22

heard of, spoke for many when he referred dismissively to Donne's “rough cadence”.

01:26

By the time Samuel Johnson was writing his Dictionary of the English Language in the

01:34

eighteenth century, Donne was really out of fashion… much like shoulder pads and mullets

01:38

are today.

01:40

Johnson thought metaphysical poetry like Donne's was interesting, but that it also had some

01:44

serious problems. Donne groupies remained scarce on the ground

01:49

during the nineteenth century, when free-flowing, sensuous Romantic poetry was what got people

01:54

all… hot and bothered.

01:59

Who wanted to wrestle with the irony of Donne's poetry when you could read a pretty little

02:02

lyrical sonnet about a nightingale instead?

02:08

Robert Chambers, a nineteenth-century critic, directed a particularly nasty piece of commentary

02:13

at Donne's poems.

02:14

They were, in his opinion, “cold and forced conceits, mere vain workings of the intellect.”

02:21

Chambers also concluded that the poets of Queen Elizabeth the First's time, like Shakespeare,

02:26

could out-sonnet Donne any day of the week. Oh, snap.

02:31

Then came the Victorians, a notoriously prudish bunch, who objected to the frank sexuality

02:37

in some of Donne's poetry.

02:39

Fleas and lovers in bed together? What next? Sheep? Dogs? Smoky the Bear?

02:45

It wasn't until the Scottish literary scholar and critic Herbert Grierson edited his collection

02:50

of metaphysical poetry in 1912 that Donne's reputation began to revive.

02:57

Donne was given an additional boost in 1921, when T.S. Eliot published his essay on metaphysical

03:02

poetry.

03:04

After that, Donne was well on his way to a spectacular re-evaluation as one of England's

03:10

most inventive and formative poets.

03:14

In your eye, Robert Chambers.

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