Two Poems by John Donne

The early 1600s, when Donne was writing his most important poems, was a time of rapid scientific development in the Western world. Many of the scientific discoveries of that period were shocking in terms of the traditional beliefs of the Catholic Church. One of the most shocking discoveries of that time was in the field of astronomy. In the early 1500s, Nicolaus Copernicus developed a model of the universe which sharply contrasted that of ancient tradition. The ancient model of the universe was known as the Ptolemaic model, because it was named after Ptolemy, an astronomer of ancient Greece. According to Ptolemy's view of the universe, which was adopted by the official Church in medieval times, the earth stands still at the center of the universe, with the sun and planets revolving around it. Nicolaus Copernicus contested this point of view by introducing a new model of the universe, which also happens to be the true scientific model. According to Coper

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age of an aging sun was becoming a common theme in Donne's poetry by that time. In his earlier works, such as "A Valediction: Of the Book," Donne does not refer to the sun in this way. It is in his relatively later poems, such as "The Rising Sun" and also "The Anatomy of the World" (in the First Anniversary) that Donne begins to take this point of view. Thus, whereas in "A Valediction: Of the Book" "the depth of love was gauged by viewing its sun at zenith; in the later poems, the sun is senescent, an affront to love, hardly an adequate index to love's powers" (Hughes 113). The fact that Donne's images of the sun changed over time, with the sun become aged in the later poems, reflects Donne's awareness of the revolutionary changes in astronomical views which were taking place during his time. The shocking changes caused by Copernicus' views become more predominant in Donne's later poems, such as The Anniversaries, written around 1610. In the section of the First Anniversary called "The Anatomy of the World," Donne makes a clear reference to the new developments in science and astronomy which were occurring during his time. There, he writes: "The new philosophy calls all in doubt, / The element of fire is quite put out;
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Approximate Word count = 3119
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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