In the second episode of 'On Satire', Colin and Clare look at the dense, digressive and often dangerous satires of John Donne and other poets of the 1590s. It’s likely that Donne was the first Elizabethan author to attempt formal verse satires in the vein of the Roman satirists, and they mark not only the chronological start of his poetic career, but a foundation of his whole way of writing. Colin and Clare place the satires within Donne’s life and times, and explain why the secret to understanding their language lies in the poet's use of the ‘profoundly unruly parenthesis’.
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Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.
Read more on John Donne in the LRB:
Catherine Nicholson: Who was John Donne?
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n...
Blair Worden: Donne and Milton's Prose
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n...
Tobias Gregory: Lecherous Goates
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n...
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Running in 2024:
ON SATIRE with Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell
HUMAN CONDITIONS with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards
AMONG THE ANCIENTS II with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones
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MEDIEVAL LOLS with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
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MODERN-ISH POETS: SERIES 1 with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
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