John Donne’s poems are some of the most challenging and stimulating in the English literary heritage. One of the Renaissance’s most human voices, his reputation as a poet has grown steadily since his death in 1631, fuelled by his great influence on later poets such as Coleridge, Browning and T.S. Eliot. This course looks at the entire range of his poetic output, from the erotic to the divine and finally from satires to sonnets.