Donne's poetry embraces a wide range of secular and religious subjects. He wrote cynical verse about inconstancy, poems about true love, Neoplatonic lyrics on the mystical union of lovers' souls and bodies and brilliant satires and hymns depicting his own spiritual struggles.
Whatever the subject, Donne's poems reveal the same characteristics that typified the work of the metaphysical poets: dazzling wordplay, often explicitly sexual; paradox; subtle argumentation; surprising contrasts; intricate psychological analysis; and striking imagery selected from nontraditional areas such as law, physiology, scholastic philosophy, and mathematics.
Expertly recited by Richard Burton, John Donne's love poetry stands alone as one of England's greatest ever love poets.
John Donne, poeta, prosista y clérigo inglés, es considerado el más importante de los poetas metafísicos de la literatura universal. A excepción de Sonetos sagrados (1618), la mayor parte de su obra no se publicó hasta después de 1633, año en que falleció. En 1621 Jacobo I le nombró deán de la catedral de San Pablo, puesto que ocupó hasta sus últimos días.
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