In Our Time: Culture cover image

John Donne

In Our Time: Culture

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The Prodigious Reader, a Calling Card

There's just a sheer faculty there for language, which is very evident from early on. The other driver, I think, for him to become a writer is it's a calling card. Throughout his writing there's a strong sense of loss and valediction and parting. We find that throughout his early writing he often adopts a pose of somebody who is either grieving for somebody who's died or he himself has died. So he was setting this scene for himself out of this Catholicism in this Protestant country - England.

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