Duns employed mottos in his life, and I think there are key, in some sense, to some of the things that we've been talking about. The motto that he wrote in his books was a line from Petra, per Rachael which is from Genesis about Rachel and Leia. And what we tend to take from that motto is that although an active life was forced upon him, you would have preferred a contemplative one. He's inventive with new language, and often that would include putting prefixes on things, super infinite,. Of course, is the title of Catherine Rundell's biography, writing on him. So, it's done, but not by Duns
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Donne (1573-1631), known now as one of England’s finest poets of love and notable in his own time as an astonishing preacher. He was born a Catholic in a Protestant country and, when he married Anne More without her father's knowledge, Donne lost his job in the government circle and fell into a poverty that only ended once he became a priest in the Church of England. As Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, his sermons were celebrated, perhaps none more than his final one in 1631 when he was plainly in his dying days, as if preaching at his own funeral.
The image above is from a miniature in the Royal Collection and was painted in 1616 by Isaac Oliver (1565-1617)
With
Mary Ann Lund
Associate Professor in Renaissance English Literature at the University of Leicester
Sue Wiseman
Professor of Seventeenth Century Literature at Birkbeck, University of London
And
Hugh Adlington
Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham