The Conversion of Astrophil: The Adaptation of Love Poetry Tradition in the Religious Poetry of John Donne and George Herbert

Abstract

The tradition of love poetry since Francesco Petrarca was imported to England and Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare’s sonnet series in the sixteenth century follows the Italian poet. John Donne in the seventeenth century was also a master of innovative and provocative love poems. This paper analyzes the works of the two poets, John Donne, who composed religious works both in poetry and prose, including the Holy Sonnets, after becoming an Anglican priest, and George Herbert whose religious poetry shows his piety and literary achievement. As in his past experiments of numerous inventive love poems, Donne dynamically reveals the relationship between God and man in his religious poetry, while Herbert strives to emphasize the value of religious poetry in contrast to secular poetry. In Donne’s poems, the poetic persona usually speaks in exaggerated and histrionic but in some of his later works such as “Since she whom I loved” his religious feelings are expressed in more subtle and sophisticated ways. Herbert emphasizes controlling his ambition as a poet by ultimately giving up decorative language to show God’s love in human language. God’s simple but beautiful language stands as the goal his poetry is directed as is shown in his “Jordan (I)” and “Jordan (II).”