John Donne's religious imagination

the long version

Donne's religious life ... - and the imaginative works that his religion inspired - are among the most troublesome sets of paradoxes and problems to emerge from the English Renaissance. Donne was born into one of the most visible and influential of Catholic families, yet he concluded his life as one of the most visible and influential spokesmen for the Anglican compromise. The author of poems of extraordinary interiority and of prose meditations that betray a pained self-scrutiny, Donne was fascinated by the conversion experiences of Saints Paul and Augustine, but, paradoxically, he left little conclusive evidence by which the modern reader or biographer may chart his spiritual progress. He has, alternately, been accused of guilt-ridden recusancy, condemned for gross political expediency, and lauded for maintaining an extraordinary integrity in a religiously volatile age. Every scholar who believes he has defined Donne's religious life is, ultimately, undone: there is always more.