Study Of John Donne’s Poetry From The Perspective Of The Relationship Between Science And Literature

John Donne is the leading metaphysical poet in the history of British Literature. Since the end of the nineteenth century, he has occupied a solid position in the British literary canon.This doctorate dissertation studies John Donne’s poetry in the historical context of the rise of the new science and the fall of the traditional scholastic theology, and it tries to reveal the underlying reason for which John Donne was interested in the assimilation of scientific concepts and principles into the composition of his own poetry to a great degree.This dissertation is composed of four chapters as follows.The first chapter traces the critical heritage of John Donne from the seventeenth century to the present, both at home and abroad, and gives a detailed analysis of the significant changes in John Donne’s critical history. Furthermore, some new research trends in China are dealt with in more detail.The second chapter is the core of this dissertation. This part foucuses on the details of John Donne’s concrete assimilation of scientific knowledge into his lyric poetry, with the historical background that the world was then experiencing a transform from the dominace of theology to the rise of new science. In this chapter, a large number of John Donne’s poems are interpreted from the perspective of the relationship between science and literature and they constitute the foundation for the subsequent chapters’discussion of the corresponding poetic functions and the hidden cultuals causes.The third chapter deals with the poetic function of abundant scientific allusions characteristic of John Donne’s poetry. The defamiliarization theory, which is a key part of the Russian formalism theory, is employed to interprete the poetic functions of scientific allusions in John Donne’s literary composition, which proves to be an effective approach to a better understanding of John Donne’s poetry. The fourth, also the last, chapter delves into the hidden causes why John Donne was so interested in bringing the scientific concepts and even scientific principles to his writing of poetry. It discusses this topic both from John Donne’s personal life experience and the whole atmosphere of the historical period when Donne lived, and the research results provide an alternative tool for a better understanding of John Donne’s way of thinking about the relationship between faith and reason and can help literary critics of John Donne to establish a more proper frame of reference in interpreting the poetry of John Donne, or even the whole metaphysical poetry.