Super-Infinite

Super-Infinite The Transformations of John Donne

From standout scholar Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite presents a sparkling and very modern biography of John Donne: the poet of love, sex, and death. Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. In his myriad lives he was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, an MP - and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Along the way he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year old girl without her father’s consent; struggled to feed a family of ten children; and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from black surges of misery, yet expressed in his verse many breathtaking impressions of electric joy and love.
Sign up to use

Reviews

Photo of Stephen Schenkenberg
Stephen Schenkenberg@schenkenberg
4 stars
Feb 22, 2023

Highlights

Photo of Stephen Schenkenberg
Stephen Schenkenberg@schenkenberg

He wanted to wear his wit like a knife in his shoe.

Page 52
Photo of Stephen Schenkenberg
Stephen Schenkenberg@schenkenberg

Many of Donne's readers who came after him have, for this reason, disliked his work in the way you would dislike a tooth in a basket of flowers.

Page 49