But this was true in Donne the poet, as well, whose penchant for ironic oppositions shines through in late devotional verses and in love lyrics, too - and even in the copious correspondence and longer prose of his youth:

As Rundell reminds us, Donne’s creative pilgrimage was less a stark shift from one mode to another than a blossoming of creative genius long present.Ĭertainly, Donne the preacher was a singular master of gripping, knotty language where faith, love, and death - always, for him, the ground of human existence - tangle in a three-way cage match of late-Renaissance paradox. But this foreshortened angle is more conveniently biographical than artistic, and it’s misleading. To be sure, the historical Donne is a dazzlingly ironic love poet, a contemporary of Shakespeare and Jonson who - at age 41 - seemed to shift gears abruptly, becoming a sermonizing priest and writer of the celebrated Holy Sonnets. The author sets out to overturn the narrow angle on Donne that many of us have picked up like a subtle classroom virus. Humble because John Donne’s life and work lie on a path well-trodden by scholars flashy because Rundell is a playful, incandescent stylist who brings scintillating insight to her subject. Super-Infinite is both humble and flashy. In this new critical biography, Katherine Rundell brings us a fresh take on the poems, prose, and protean identities of a 17th-century master of the English language.

Super infinite john donne