11 - Seventeenth-century poetry 1: poetry in the age of Donne and Jonson

Summary

By calling this chapter ‘Poetry in the age of Donne and Jonson’ rather than Jacobean or Stuart poetry, which might seem an appropriate sequel to what is often referred to as Elizabethan poetry, I mean to underscore a simple set of related literary observations: that John Donne and Ben Jonson were the two most original and influential poets writing in the earlier seventeenth century; that they were recognised as such by many, although not all, of their peers, which included other important poets of ‘the age’; and that, as a sign of their significance, at least some of these poets gathered together to help form the sizeable outpouring of elegies that appeared in the immediate aftermath of each man’s death: Donne’s in 1631, and Jonson’s in 1637.

Their impact was thus quickly recognised, their poetry much imitated, adapted and occasionally resisted. But in both cases, too, their achievement in verse, while differing significantly from each other in subject and manner – Donne is one of the great love poets in English, Jonson is England’s first important neo-classicist – was only a part of their larger cultural and artistic legacy. Donne would eventually become one of the most recognised preachers of his era once he rose to the eminent position of Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1621; and the notoriety of his early erotic verse, which circulated widely in manuscript, would combine with his later fame as a preacher to create a unique place for him in English poetry – a sort of poet’s corner of his own in St Paul’s, where his statue still stands.