2014 Theses Bachelor's

Meditations Upon Grief

Grimm, Christie

In Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, an ill John Donne, believing himself on the very edge of death, takes to chronicling his newfound physical and spiritual awareness through this almost ritualistically repetitive series of meditations, expostulations, and prayers. Only once in the whole of Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions does the word ‘grief’ appear. So how is it then that this text, which makes no direct connections or statements, is in a sense, completely concerned with and driven by grief?