Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel: With the Life of Dr. John Donne by Izaak Walton

by John Donne, Andrew Motion (Preface by)

Overview

John Donne (1572-1631) is best known as the greatest English metaphysical poet. But there was another dimension to Donne's life and writing that, if less well known, is no less profound and beautiful.

Born into an aristocratic Catholic family, Donne joined the Church of England at the age of twenty-one out of fear of persecution. At the age of forty-three, he gave up his preoccupations with secular prestige and devoted himself utterly to religion. It was eight years later when, battered with fever, the deaths of his beloved wife, several of his children, and many dear lifelong friends, he composed Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. There is both trauma and great drama in this extended meditation on the meaning of mortality, the possibility of salvation, and the true nature of the passage of eternal life. With a new introduction by poet and biographer Andrew Motion, one of the most revered books of Christian devotion speaks to us again of the higher aspirations of man and the always-present possibility of a relationship with God.

This long out of print edition also contains Donne's last sermon, "Death's Duel" as well as the short colorful biography of him written by his contemporary Izaak Walton.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375705489
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/07/1999
Edition description:	1 ED
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

John Donne was born into a Catholic family in 1572. After a conventional education at Hart Hall, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn, he took part in the Earl of Essex's expedition to the Azores in 1597. He secretly married Anne More in December 1601 and was imprisoned by her father, Sir George More, in the Fleet two months later. He was ordained as a priest in January 1615 and took a doctorate of divinity at Cambridge the same year. He was made dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London in 1621, a position he held until his death in 1631. He is famous for the sermons he preached in his later years as well as for his poems.

Andrew Motion is the author of three biographies and a number of books of poetry. He served as Poet Laureate of Great Britain from 1999 to 2009, and is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Motion serves as head of the literature panel of the Arts Council of England and frequently broadcasts on the BBC.

Table of Contents

	About the Vintage Spiritual Classics	vii
	Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition	xi
	Chronology of the Life of John Donne	xxiii
	Note on the Texts	xxxiii
	Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
	The Stations of the Sickness	1
1.	The First Alteration, the First Grudging, of the Sickness	3
2.	The Strength and the Function of the Senses, and Other Faculties, Change and Fail	8
3.	The Patient Takes His Bed	13
4.	The Physician Is Sent For	19
5.	The Physician Comes	26
6.	The Physician Is Afraid	32
7.	The Physician Desires to Have Others Joined with Him	39
8.	The King Sends His Own Physician	46
9.	Upon Their Consultation They Prescribe	52
10.	They Find the Disease to Steal on Insensibly, and Endeavor to Meet with It So	58
11.	They Use Cordials, to Keep the Venom and Malignity of the Disease from the Heart	64
12.	They Apply Pigeons, to Draw the Vapors from the Head	71
13.	The Sickness Declares the Infection and Malignity Thereof by Spots	78
14.	The Physicians Observe These Accidents to Have Fallen upon the Critical Days	83
15.	I Sleep Not Day nor Night	91
16.	From the Bells of the Church Adjoining, I Am Daily Remembered of My Burial in the Funerals of Others	97
17.	Now, This Bell Tolling Softly for Another, Says to Me: Thou Must Die	102
18.	The Bell Rings Out, and Tells Me in Him, That I Am Dead	108
19.	At Last the Physicians, After a Long and Stormy Voyage, See Land: They Have So Good Signs of the Concoction of the Disease, as That They May Safely Proceed to Purge	116
20.	Upon These Indications of Digested Matter, They Proceed to Purge	125
21.	God Prospers Their Practice, and He, by Them, Calls Lazarus out of His Tomb, Me out of My Bed	132
22.	The Physicians Consider the Root and Occasion, the Embers, and Coals, and Fuel of the Disease, and Seek to Purge or Correct That	139
23.	They Warn Me of the Fearful Danger of Relapsing	145
	Death's Duel	153
	The Life of Dr. John Donne (1640)	179
	Notes	225
	Suggestions for Further Reading	233