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Re-reading 'Death' in Selected Poems by John Donne | ||
| مجلة آداب البصرة | ||
| Article 1, Volume 12, Issue 78, 2016, Pages 1-18 PDF (0 K) | ||
| Author | ||
| Ali Ahmad Allaham | ||
| Abstract | ||
| This paper investigates some of the different notions and attitudes of 'death' in selected poems by John Donne; and these poems include, but they are not restricted to, the following poems: “Holy Sonnets”, “The Relic”, “The Second Anniversary”, “The Legacy”, “The Damp”, “The Will”, “The Canonization”, “The Indifferent”, and “The Funeral”. Death is one of the prominent themes highlighted in Donne's poetry and sermons, and it could be argued that he was obsessed by the nature of death. His fascination with death manifests itself in his works. Hence, the present paper attempts to tackle that obsession and reveal some of its hidden concepts. Being so concerned with religion due to the disasters that struck his family members, which were crowned by the death of his brother, Donne made a decision that shaped the rest of his life; he converted to Anglicanism around 1592. The resultant guilt of abandoning the Catholic faith into which he was born, as Targoff discusses, explains the poetry’s central preoccupation with “betrayals, infidelity, and impermanence; Donne’s political and social ambition, itself responsible for his apostasy, produced both the agitation and egotism that suffuses” his poetry (Targoff, 2008: 4). Nevertheless, one should not also forget the other deaths of his son, daughter, some of his friends' children, and the most important one of his wife while giving birth to their son in 1617. This preoccupation with death led Donne, the poet and the preacher, to look for ways which could grant him superiority over, and immunity against, the horrible reality of death. Donne’s imagination, his philosophy as well as his ego equipped him with the necessary tools to activate and ridicule death, and hence take his revenge on death and its ensuing decay. | ||
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