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

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

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He traveled across Europe and fought against the Spanish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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to English literature ever, never mind that Shakespeare guy.

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

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

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and other poets turned against Donne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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are today.

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

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serious problems. Donne groupies remained scarce on the ground

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

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all… hot and bothered.

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

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lyrical sonnet about a nightingale instead?

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

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at Donne's poems.

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

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

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

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

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in some of Donne's poetry.

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

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

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

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

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poetry.

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

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most inventive and formative poets.

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In your eye, Robert Chambers.

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