“Charitable Extasie” and Prayer for the Dead in Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

This essay offers a new reading of the famous sequence in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions wherein John Donne hears bells tolling for an anonymous neighbor. Donne effectively doubles himself, I argue, so that we can simultaneously observe his charity as the dying and his charity toward the dying. In the process, Donne also engages with the controversy over prayer for the dead, artfully satisfying the competing demands of charitably thinking well of the dead already and of charitably interceding on their behalf.