Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

2022 • 352 pages

Ratings3

Average rating5

15

Enjoyable. I like the style—the author, like John, uses some high brow English (respecting stuffy old rules like not ending with a preposition) while embracing plain and sometimes surprising images (like bodies piling up). As a bio, it's an homage to the many identities of John, but the writing style makes it a super-homage!

The format was also perfect, with poems and pictures neatly arranged and thoroughly contextualized. The meal of metaphysics and deep religious questing is paired with silly, mundane anecdotes like John's distaste for dairy:

“Donne loathed milk ‘passionately' – to humour Foxe, he drank it for ten days, but stopped in disgust, declaring ‘he would not drink it ten days longer upon the best moral assurance of having twenty years added to his life.”

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April 7, 2024