Memento gloriae: a new reading of the sermons of John Donne

Gale, Colin Stuart (2023) Memento gloriae: a new reading of the sermons of John Donne. MRes thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The sermons of John Donne are widely regarded as being fixated on human mortality, and making a major contribution to the Western tradition of memento mori as a consequence. This study argues that this is a distortion of his thought; that the preoccupation of his sermons was not with death per se, but with life (specifically, with the particulars of Christian doctrine within which death is subsumed by resurrection); and that, as a result, Donne’s was a radically orthodox voice within seventeenth-century English Protestantism. This thesis is advanced in three chapters devoted to Donne’s sermons on I Corinthians 15, then buttressed by chapters on Donne’s deployment of 1 Corinthians 15 in other sermons, and on how his perspective on the resurrection compares and contrasts with that of near-contemporary representatives of Laudianism and Puritanism respectively.

• Item Type: Thesis (MRes)
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BR Christianity; B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BS The Bible; P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies
• Supervisor's Name: Elliott, Professor Mark
• Date of Award: 2023
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2023-83484
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 16 Mar 2023 11:15
• Last Modified: 23 Mar 2023 09:58
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.83484
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/83484