John Donne's Sermons on the Psalms and Gospels With a Selection of Prayers and Meditations

“John Donne’s verse and prose have had a remarkable renaissance in the twentieth century ad have been a vital influence on this century’s poets and prose writers. The glory of his prose at its best is very different from that of his verse, but is equal to it; and there can be no questions that his best prose is in his sermons.This selection of Donne’s sermons on the Psalms and Gospels has been made by Evelyn M. Simpson, one of the editors of the ten-volume collected sermons of John Donne, to introduce to a wider audience the majesty and power and variety of the poet’s sermons. Sometimes Donne preached as a poet, sometimes as a pastor, sometimes as a theologian, sometimes as a controversialist, and to many different types of congregations – to the parishioners of St. Dunstan’s, to the King and Court at Whitehall, to the citizenry of London at St. Paul’s – and wonderfully showed his power to adapt himself to each.Donne’s sense of form, his arrangement of his materials, his common sense, his shrewdness, his psychological insight, and his real religious fervor are readily apparent in these sermons. The differences of mood and emphasis within the rigid framework of the formal sermon make this selection interesting to the attentive reader. Donne was an artist in prose, and he knew the value of contrast and surprise, of imagery and literary artifice. He was a poet who did not lose his poetical imagination when he entered the pulpit. The impression of an amazingly vital personality, rich in mental and spiritual power will abide with the reader.” – Publisher