Death Of The Proud
Name- Janvi Nakum
Paper-Literature of the Elizabethan and Restoration Periods
Roll no-11
Enrollment number- 4069206420210020
Email id- janvinakum360@gmail.com
Batch- 2021-2023 (M.A Sem – 1)
Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
John Donne
Poet Introduction
The English writer and Anglican cleric John Donne is considered now to be the preeminent metaphysical poet of his time. He was born in 1572 to Roman Catholic parents, when practicing that religion was illegal in England. His work is distinguished by its emotional and sonic intensity and its capacity to plumb the paradoxes of faith, human and divine love, and the possibility of salvation. Donne often employs conceits, or extended metaphors, to yoke together “heterogenous ideas,” in the words of Samuel Johnson, thus generating the powerful ambiguity for which his work is famous. After a resurgence in his popularity in the early 20th century, Donne’s standing as a great English poet, and one of the greatest writers of English prose, is now assured.
The history of Donne’s reputation is the most remarkable of any major writer in English; no other body of great poetry has fallen so far from favor for so long. In Donne’s own day his poetry was highly prized among the small circle of his admirers, who read it as it was circulated in manuscript, and in his later years he gained wide fame as a preacher. For some 30 years after his death successive editions of his verse stamped his powerful influence upon English poets. During the Restoration his writing went out of fashion and remained so for several centuries. Throughout the 18th century, and for much of the 19th century, he was little read and scarcely appreciated. It was not until the end of the 1800s that Donne’s poetry was eagerly taken up by a growing band of avant-garde readers and writers. His prose remained largely unnoticed until 1919.
In the first two decades of the 20th century Donne’s poetry was decisively rehabilitated. Its extraordinary appeal to modern readers throws light on the Modernist movement, as well as on our intuitive response to our own times. Donne may no longer be the cult figure he became in the 1920s and 1930s, when T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats, among others, discovered in his poetry the peculiar fusion of intellect and passion and the alert contemporariness which they aspired to in their own art. He is not a poet for all tastes and times; yet for many readers Donne remains what Ben Jonson judged him: “the first poet in the world in some things.” His poems continue to engage the attention and challenge the experience of readers who come to him afresh. His high place in the pantheon of the English poets now seems secure.
Over a literary career of some 40 years Donne moved from skeptical naturalism to a conviction of the shaping presence of the divine spirit in the natural creation. Yet his mature understanding did not contradict his earlier vision. He simply came to anticipate a Providential disposition in the restless whirl of the world. The amorous adventurer nurtured the dean of St. Paul’s.
Metaphysical Poetry
What Does Metaphysical mean?
The word ‘meta’ means ‘after’, so the literal translation of ‘metaphysical’ is ‘after the physical’. Basically, metaphysics deals with questions that can’t be explained by science. It questions the nature of reality in a philosophical way.
Here are some common metaphysical questions:
• Does God exist ?
• Is there a difference between the way things appear to us and the way they really are? Essentially, what is the difference between reality and perception?
• Is everything that happens already predetermined? If so, then is free choice non-existent?
• Is consciousness limited to the brain ?
Metaphysics can cover a broad range of topics from religious to consciousness; however, all the questions about metaphysics ponder the nature of reality. And of course, there is no one current answers to any of these questions. Metaphysics is about exploration and philosophy, not about science and math.
Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
About Poem
“Death, be not Proud,” also referred to as Sonnet X, is a fourteen-line sonnet written by John Donne, an English metaphysical poet, and Christian cleric. It is one of the nineteen Holy Sonnets which were published in 1633 within the first edition of Songs and Sonnets. It was written probably in 1609 when Donne was working for the English church as an anti-Catholic advocate. This poem is an ecclesiastical lyric that looks at death in the context of John’s religious beliefs and socio-political situation of seventeenth-century England.
“Death, not be Proud” is written in England of the seventeenth century. It was the time when the British were expanding across the world. Also, it had been a time of great religious turmoil. Life at that time in England was uncertain, violent, and unstable. Donne was living in the time of the anti-Catholic environment. People were imprisoned for their Catholicism. They were killed as well. During that religious tension, Donne converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism. Later, he became a cleric. His religious experience and beliefs are the main subject of this poem.
Summary
“ Death be not proud” is a well-known holy sonnet by John Donne . This sonnet is addressed by the poet to death to it. The aim of the poet behind writing this sonnet east to nullify the fear of death. The poet has presented altogether a different picture of death in the percent sonnet.
The sonnet opens with poet’s instruction to death that their need for death to proud anything focus their people who consider death mighty and dangerous bad the poet believes that death is neither mighty nor dangerous death believes that. It has a capacity to kill people but the poet is of the option that death is neither mighty nor dangerous. It has no capacity to kill and body if the poet is asked draw a picture of death. What poet who draw a picture of a man enjoying sound sleep and taking rest if death offers rest and sound sleep to the people pleasure should out of death and nobody should be afraid of death.
The poet gives one examples to nullify fear of death. Even the best of the human beings have gone with death the soonest one can gave a numbers of examples to prove that the best people go with death without getting disturbed and many of them have gone the examples of Keats and kalapi who left this world very soon.
According to the poet death is a slave those four elements are feat, chance, kings and man in distress. Their three residential places or for death to live those places are poisons, war and sickness. The meaning is who so ever invites sickness or poisons of war, such a person invites death always live in poisons, sickness and nor. The poet finds own remarkable difference between how death causes sleep and haw sleep is causered by a mother death causes sleep in stroke but mother and her motherly affection arose sleep very slowly and jauntily.
The poet confounds this sonnet saying that death is nothing nor than they short sleep after one short sleep we getup eternally and this stements of John Donne indicates that Donne believed the theory of rebirth if death is treaded in this manner on body will be afred of the death. This how end of the poem John Donne tries 10 convince all that their we be no fear of death and death it self with will died because no body will be afread of the death.
Theme
The Major theme in the poem is the powerlessness of death. The poem comprises the poet’s emotions, mocking the position of death and arguing that Death is unworthy of fear or awe. According to him, death gives birth to our soul. Therefore, it should not consider itself mighty, or superior as “death” is not invincible. The poet also considers death an immense pleasure similar to sleep and rest. For him, the drugs can also provide the same experience. The poem foreshadows the realistic presentation of death and also firmly believes in eternal
Conclusion
The poet once again says that death is a kind of sleep, after which the soul will wake up to live forever and becomes immortal. Thus Donne degrades death and declares happily the impotence of death. So we should not fear death as it has power over our souls.
Reference
John Donne poetry foundation
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/johndonne
Poem summary is view Mandaliya sir video
Theme- https://literarydevices.net/death-be-not-proud/
word:1552
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