However Donne’s poetry isn’t defeatist – he was famous in his time for his unusual, intelligent and imaginative work, which used fleas to talk about sex and violence to talk about God. In particular, the tragic death of his younger brother who, aged just nineteen, was thrown into prison for hiding a Jesuit priest and subsequently caught the plague. Born into a grand Catholic family who had suffered persecution under Protestant monarchs, he was intimately acquainted with the cruelty of sixteenth-century England. John Donne led many lives, from a young rake in his early years to archdeacon of St Paul’s in his old age. We visit playhouses, bear-fighting pits and the poet’s marital bed to better understand Donne’s life and work. This week we head back to Renaissance England to immerse ourselves in the world of John Donne, one of Britain’s most ingenious poets.
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