Imagistic progression in Donne and the metaphysicals

Our own age feels a growing affinity with another strangely similar century- that of John Donne. The common qualities which our age shares with the seventeenth century make partially understandable and, perhaps, inevitable our increasing interest in Donne, with his “modernity of outlook, and his disillusioned cynicism, and, for some, his final turning to authority….”1 Robert Hillyer feels that the similarities of the two periods – ours and the seventeenth century – are chiefly responsible for this interest in Donne