Incessant Change

John Donne (1572-1631), the 17th century British metaphysical poet, was influenced by the sonnets of Shakespeare and influenced in return poets like Browning and Eliot. There were praises as well as criticisms of him, making him rise and fall throughout literary history. It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that he regained recognition by the new critics. There must be certain reasons why, after the two centuries'silence, his poetry could regain its reputation.The first part is an introduction. The author of this thesis briefly illustrates the background of Doone's childhood, education and marriage, which were the sources of his inspiration.The second part, Chapter Two, is the literature review. The author of this thesis summarizes the researches on him throughout history. This part includes the studies of Donne's love poetry. Current studies mainly include analysis about realism or idealism respectively, and lack comprehensive research on the love theme of Donne. While what is creative in this thesis is that through the analysis of Donne's love poetry, the author concluded that as he was growing, his love poetry can be divided into three periods and there are different attitudes towards love in different periods. The author made a systematic analysis about the love theme of Donne, and appreciated Donne and his love poetry in the change of time and space.There are three chapters in the thesis proper. Chapters two through four discuss the love themes of Donne's poetry, respectively with different love attitudes during his different writing periods.This thesis made an overall analysis about the texts of Donne's love poetry, trying to find out some clues in the perplexity that resulted from Donne's complicated feelings and his time-consuming exhibition of his themes. The doubt of love, the satire on women's inconstancy, and the praise of sexual love will be put forward and analyzed in this thesis, and the positive praises for the greatness of love, the deep passion towards the beloved and the desire to make the body and soul perfectly united also have their positions in this thesis. What was distinguished in Donne's poetry is that his poetry was revolutionary and it initiated the writing style of a new school. His uniqueness was that he used philosophical teaching instead of strong emotional flow in expounding the topic of love. However, as is known, without emotion, it cannot be called love poetry and cannot arouse the resonance from the readers no matter how novel his tactics were, no matter how revolutionary his thoughts were. Thus his creativeness lies in that he could unite the sense and sensibility. He thought that thoughts and contradictions were not the factors that restrained the expression of emotion but, on the contrary, helped to express true feelings.Donne's love attitudes are not unchanged throughout his writing life. They changed as he was growing, from radical one to mature one, from na?ve one to profound one. There are different features in different periods. This thesis objectively analyzes the representative poems in different periods, aimed to catch Donne's changing love themes.Chapter Two researches Donne's satire and indifference of women and love in his early writing period. Donne's love theme of this period is mainly cynicism. These poems were mainly erotic ones,which were reflections of Donne's love attitude during this period.Chapter Three makes an analysis on the relationship of body and soul, and Donne thought that body love is the basis of the spiritual love. He approved of the spiritual love and pursued the unification of body and soul. This chapter sees Donne's love theme as mainly a realistic one.Chapter Four mainly discusses Donne's late works, which show an idealistic love theme towards love. This period witnessed a transition of his love attitude. He became from a rakish and indifferent lover to a constant and faithful lover. Part of the reason had something to do with his own experience. During this period, love had become a divine thing to him. He was in pursuit of a perfect love in which the two lovers loved each other both body and soul. Love had been upgraded to a certain philosophical level. During this transitional process, readers can see the trace of a painful struggle inside his heart and the sudden awakening towards love. The reason why his love theme was not stable is that his personal experiences and personality were changing all the time. So in this chapter, the author also expounds on his changeability.Without his unique writing tactics, his expression of theme would not have had the effect which is different from both the Classical and Romantic poetry. So it is inevitable to have an analysis on his writing styles when examining his love theme. In these chapters, readers can see some analyses about his usages of images, conceits and irony.The conclusion summarizes the change through Donne's early, middle and late periods, and explains that there was changeability both in his personality and his poetry writing.