Best Selling Books by John Donne

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this new edition of Donne''s Essayes in Divinity Anthony Raspa demonstrates how Donne reconciles the destiny of Christians, who arose out of divine creation, with the turbulent state of the Renaissance world. Raspa argues that the purpose of Donne''s work is to explain how Genesis and Exodus capture the essence of existence for a person who must deal with life as both an individual and a member of a community. Completed late in 1614, Essayes, Donne''s only theological and philosophical treatise, casts considerable light on his ideas about his own future. Donne entered the Anglican priesthood soon after completing it and Raspa reveals that, particularly because of its treatment of time and destiny, Essayes is crucial to our understanding of the development of Donne''s ideas about the turbulent religio-political state of the Renaissance world and how he came to see his own life within it. Raspa contends that Essayes is a peculiarly modern work and that Donne, as a Renaissance humanist, was profoundly shaken by the development of empirical thinking and the seemingly endless political conflicts among Christian denominations. He shows that Donne drew on the entirety of Renaissance humanist learning in an attempt to reconcile the state of contemporary knowledge with the destiny of humanity prophesied in the bible.

This classic edition of Donne''s Divine Poems contains an extensive and invaluable critical apparatus by Helen Gardner.

John Donne published Pseudo-Martyr in 1610, at a moment of extreme political tension between London and Rome. It was an attempt to convince English Roman Catholics that they could remain loyal to the spiritual authority of Rome and still take the oath of allegiance to the British Crown and avoid persecution. Donne, brought up as a Catholic and trained as a lawyer, argued his case by appealing to precedents from the body of canon and civil law in existence since the beginning of Christian civilization. Pseudo-Martyr is thus a vast survey of relations between church and state from the days of the early church to 1600. Donne also drew detailed historical parallels between crises in medieval and contemporary times and the particular dilemma of Catholics in England to prove that a compromise of loyalties was possible and acceptable.

This book is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.