The Canonization By John Donne Summary and Analysis

 ➥THE CANONIZATION – DONNE

About the Author

John Donne (24 January 1572 — 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary. He is considered the most prominent member of the metaphysical poets, with his works noted for their metaphorical and sensual style. His works include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, and satires. Donne became a cleric in the Church of England as well as Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London (1621–1631) and is known for his sermons. His poetry work often covers the theme of religion, something about which he often theorised, as well as showing a great knowledge of English society, which he often criticised. Donne married Anne More and had twelve children. Donne and his family lived in poverty for many years, and he was not really celebrated as a writer until the 20th century. Donne died in 1631, at the age of 59.

Summary of the Text

Introduction: 

“The Canonization” makes the case that love’s ability to bring people together is better than the world’s tendency to divide and fight. People like the pictured outsider, courtiers, soldiers, and lawyers trade peace for trouble when they want to reach their own goals in business or at court. And the speaker says this poem proves his point. He says that an ideal love that is both physical and mental can help clear up the world. Some scholars connect the song to the coronation of James I in 1604 because it talks about the king in the first line. Donne had put an end to his plans to become a courtier three years before when he ran away with Ann More, who was the ward of his boss, Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Seal. For several years, Ann More’s father effectively “blackballed” Donne, and the couple was in a lot of financial trouble.

So, this poem could be seen as an explanation or even an excuse for the way he seemed to act without thinking. It must have been a disappointment for Donne that King James didn’t respond to his song because it would be another ten years before his luck changed. But it looked like they had a good marriage, and Ann Donne had nine children before she died in 1617. John Donne didn’t get married again. An Outline of the Text This person tells the other person to be quiet and let him love. The speaker tells the addressee to blame the other person for things other than his tendency to love: his palsy, his gout, his “five gray hairs,” or his lost fortune. (“Observe his Honor, or his Grace, / Or the King’s real, or his stamped face /Consider.”) He tells the person he is writing to focus on himself, his money, and his place, and to copy the other nobles. 

As long as the other person loves him, the speaker doesn’t care what he says or does.“Who’s hurt by my love?” the speaker asks in a rhetorical way. His sighs and tears have not sunk ships, flooded land, or cooled the spring. He also says that the heat in his veins has not added to the number of people who have died from the plague. No matter how the speaker and his lover feel, soldiers still find wars and lawyers still find guys who sue them. They tell the other person, “Call us what you will,” because love makes them that way. He says, “Call her one, me another fly,” and that they are also like candles (“tapers”) that burn by eating themselves (“and at our own cost die”). 

The lovers find the eagle and the dove in each other, and together (“we two being one”) they solve the phoenix’s puzzle because they “die and rise the same,” just like the phoenix, but love kills and raises them. He tells them that love can kill them if it can’t save them. If their story isn’t good enough for “tombs and hearses,” he says, “it will be good enough for poetry, and we’ll build pretty rooms in sonnets.” A well-made urn is just as proper for a dead person’s ashes as a huge tomb. In the same way, the songs about the speaker and his lover will make them “canonized,” or elevated to the status of love saints. Invoking the lovers, everyone who hears their story will say that countries, towns, and courts “beg from above/A pattern of your love!”

“The Canonization” is one of Donne’s best-known papers. It has been criticized by Cleanth Brooks and others, which has made it a central point of the debate between formalist and historicist critics. Formalist critics say the poem is what it seems to be: an anti-political love poem; historicist critics say it is actually a kind of coded, ironic reflection on the “ruined fortune” and dashed political hopes of the first stanza, based on events in Donne’s life at the time it was written. It’s mostly up to the person making the decision which case to follow. The poem is a funny and passionate speech-act that defends love against the corrupting values of politics and power. Unless you are only interested in Donne’s life, this is probably the best way to understand it.

Critical Analysis

“The Canonization” is technically atypical of Donne because it isn’t based on a brilliant, extended premise that dominates the poem as a whole, as is so often the case with him.Instead, Donne gives us a bunch of short, less important metaphors, kind of like a random collection. In quick order, Donne and his mistress are two bugs, two tapers, an eagle and a dove, and the Phoenix. He says of their love, “We can die by it, if not live for love.” In the Italian Renaissance, writers often used the word morire, which means “to die,” to mean “sexual climax.” The English took this metaphor and used it in their own language. And if we can’t prove a piece of history, we’ll build pretty rooms in sonnets. In Italian, “stanza” means “room.”

There are more quick-fire metaphors, like comparing a “well-wrought urn” to “these hymns” (the poems Donne and his love will “build”). Finally, Donne uses a figure he has used before, where the eyes reflect the outside world and create a personal microcosm: Love used to bring you peace, but now it brings you anger. You made the world’s soul shrink and drove into the glasses of your eyes (so they could be mirrors and spies for you). Places, cities, and courts. As always, Donne thinks that his love for one person is more important than everything else in the world. In this and other works by him, he seems like a bit of a snob. 

No matter how he says what he’s thinking, the content of the song makes it clear that Donne is at least “protesting too much.” He often acts defensive and angry about love and sexual issues, and he gets angry when people say mean things about him. Or maybe he’s making fun of this stance as the way most men act: “For God’s sake, hold your tongue, and let me love,” or “Don’t criticize my palsy or my gout.” In other places, he makes funnier comments about the big, impersonal force that he thinks is against his wants and needs when it gets in the way of them: A busy old fool and a wild sun, Why do you act this way? We can hear you through the windows and the blinds. He might also be criticizing the person he loves, and get angry when she doesn’t seem to be able to follow his reasoning: “Mark but this flea, and mark but well in this, How little that which thou deniest me is.”

While Donne seems sarcastic and even aggressive, he often comes across as a slightly (or more than slightly) arrogant man who talks too much about how great his love is. The same theme shows up in “The Canonization,” though maybe not as strongly as in other songs. That most of his peers wrote very differently is interesting, even though we can partly write that off as a sign of the times. The Cavalier poets, like Lovelace, tried to bring back a more courtly approach to women. Other Metaphysical poets, like Marvell, may have been just as obsessed with love (or sex) as Donne, but they wrote in a much more playful way, without the angry or defensive tone. There is one thing we can say about “The Canonization” and Donne in general: he is honest, and his writing is always incredibly clear and powerful. 

Makes the case that love’s ability to bring people together is better than the world’s tendency to divide and fight. People like the pictured outsider, courtiers, soldiers, and lawyers trade peace for trouble when they want to reach their own goals in business or at court.And the speaker says this poem proves his point. He says that an ideal love that is both physical and mental can help clear up the world. Some scholars connect the song to the coronation of James I in 1604 because it talks about the king in the first line. Donne had put an end to his plans to become a courtier three years before when he ran away with Ann More, who was the ward of his boss, Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Seal. For several years, Ann More’s father effectively “blackballed” Donne, and the couple was in a lot of financial trouble. So, this poem could be seen as an explanation or even an excuse for the way he seemed to act without thinking. It must have been a disappointment for Donne that King James didn’t respond to his song because it would be another ten years before his luck changed. 

But it looked like they had a good marriage, and Ann Donne had nine children before she died in 1617. John Donne didn’t get married again. An Outline of the Text This person tells the other person to be quiet and let him love. The speaker tells the addressee to blame the other person for things other than his tendency to love: his palsy, his gout, his “five gray hairs,” or his lost fortune. (“Observe his Honor, or his Grace, / Or the King’s real, or his stamped face / Consider.”) He tells the person he is writing to focus on himself, his money, and his place, and to copy the other nobles. 

As long as the other person loves him, the speaker doesn’t care what he says or does. “Who’s hurt by my love?” the speaker asks in a rhetorical way. His sighs and tears have not sunk ships, flooded land, or cooled the spring. He also says that the heat in his veins has not added to the number of people who have died from the plague. No matter how the speaker and his lover feel, soldiers still find wars and lawyers still find guys who sue them. They tell the other person, “Call us what you will,” because love makes them that way. He says, “Call her one, me another fly,” and that they are also like candles (“tapers”) that burn by eating themselves (“and at our own cost die”). The lovers find the eagle and the dove in each other, and together (“we two being one”) they solve the phoenix’s puzzle because they “die and rise the same,” just like the phoenix, but love kills and raises them. He tells them that love can kill them if it can’t save them. If their story isn’t good enough for “tombs and hearses,” he says, “it will be good enough for poetry, and we’ll build pretty rooms in sonnets.” A well-made urn is just as proper for a dead person’s ashes as a huge tomb. In the same way, the songs about the speaker and his lover will make them “canonized,” or elevated to the status of love saints. Invoking the lovers, everyone who hears their story will say that countries, towns, and courts “beg from above/A pattern of your love!”

“The Canonization” is one of Donne’s best-known papers. It has been criticized by Cleanth Brooks and others, which has made it a central point of the debate between formalist and historicist critics. Formalist critics say the poem is what it seems to be: an anti-political love poem; historicist critics say it is actually a kind of coded, ironic reflection on the “ruined fortune” and dashed political hopes of the first stanza, based on events in Donne’s life at the time it was written. It’s mostly up to the person making the decision which case to follow. The poem is a funny and passionate speech-act that defends love against the corrupting values of politics and power. Unless you are only interested in Donne’s life, this is probably the best way to understand it. Explain why you think “The Canonization” by John Donne is interesting. Technically, “The Canonization” isn’t really Donne because it doesn’t have a long, clever idea that drives the whole poem, which is usually the case with his work. Instead, Donne gives us a bunch of short, less important metaphors, kind of like a random collection. In quick order, Donne and his mistress are two bugs, two tapers, an eagle and a dove, and the Phoenix. He says of their love, “We can die by it, if not live for love.” In the Italian Renaissance, writers often used the word morire, which means “to die,” to mean “sexual climax.” The English took this metaphor and used it in their own language. And if we can’t prove a piece of history, we’ll build pretty rooms in sonnets. In Italian, “stanza” means “room.” There are more quick-fire metaphors, like comparing a “well-wrought urn” to “these hymns” (the poems Donne and his love will “build”). Finally, Donne uses a figure he has used before, where the eyes reflect the outside world and create a personal microcosm: Love used to bring you peace, but now it brings you anger. You made the world’s soul shrink and drove into the glasses of your eyes (so they could be mirrors and spies for you). Places, cities, and courts. 

As always, Donne thinks that his love for one person is more important than everything else in the world. In this and other works by him, he seems like a bit of a snob. No matter how he says what he’s thinking, the content of the song makes it clear that Donne is at least “protesting too much.” He often acts defensive and angry about love and sexual issues, and he gets angry when people say mean things about him. Or maybe he’s making fun of this stance as the way most men act: “For God’s sake, hold your tongue, and let me love,” or “Don’t criticize my palsy or my gout.” In other places, he makes funnier comments about the big, impersonal force that he thinks is against his wants and needs when it gets in the way of them: A busy old fool and a wild sun, Why do you act this way? We can hear you through the windows and the blinds. He might also be criticizing the person he loves, and get angry when she doesn’t seem to be able to follow his reasoning: “Mark but this flea, and mark but well in this, How little that which thou deniest me is.”

While Donne seems sarcastic and even aggressive, he often comes across as a slightly (or more than slightly) arrogant man who talks too much about how great his love is. The same theme shows up in “The Canonization,” though maybe not as strongly as in other songs. That most of his peers wrote very differently is interesting, even though we can partly write that off as a sign of the times. The Cavalier poets, like Lovelace, tried to bring back a more courtly approach to women. Other Metaphysical poets, like Marvell, may have been just as obsessed with love (or sex) as Donne, but they wrote in a much more playful way, without the angry or defensive tone. There is one thing we can say about “The Canonization” and Donne in general: he is honest, and his writing is always incredibly clear and powerful.