Explore the various arguments used by John Donne to achieve his aim. In what ways does the language and style of the poem make the arguments persuasive and effective?
Explore the various arguments used by John Donne to achieve his aim. In what ways does the language and style of the poem make the arguments persuasive and effective? Graham Ross 9/02/2004 Donne's main aim in the poem is to persuade his lover to go to bed with him, to do this he uses various techniques and arguments throughout the poem to tempt her into doing so. We see Donne trying to lure his partner into sleeping with him, "And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee" By use of this conceit he suggests that as their bloods have already been mixed by the flea, they have been joined. This implies that when the blood mixes it is the same result as if they had had sex nevertheless as their bloods would have united. This is a very weak argument on behalf of Donne as the blood does not actually pass from one person to another during sexual intercourse; it is only bodily fluids. We can see that in "The Sunne Rising" that Donne suggests ideas that are unrealistic. "goe childe" and "goe tell court-huntsmen" This is obviously not thought about, because if the sun was to go away, life could not continue as the sun is vital to survival. Donne knows that his partner is religious, and so uses this to his advantage by exploiting her weaknesses. "This flea is you and I, and this our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;" Donne compares the flea to being a temple, which
In What Respects is Twicknam Garden a Metaphysical Poem? How Does Donne Use Imagery Related to Nature? Comment on Donne's Different Attitudes to Love in One or Two Other Poems.
2CA 5th May 2003 a) In What Respects is Twicknam Garden a Metaphysical Poem? b) How Does Donne Use Imagery Related to Nature? c) Comment on Donne's Different Attitudes to Love in One or Two Other Poems a) The term metaphysical poetry was first used to group Donne's poetry, and the poetry of his contemporaries, together because of their similar characteristics. Metaphysical poetry seeks to communicate difficult ideas as concisely as possible to the reader. Donne's poem "Twicknam Garden" can be regarded as metaphysical poetry because it contains many difficult ideas expressed concisely. For example the lines "The spider love, which transubstantiates all, and can convert manna to gall" compares love to a spider, which were thought at the time of Donne's writing to be poisonous. The lexeme "transubstantiates" refers to the change from bread and wine to the blood and body of Christ. Manna simply means soul or spirit and gall, anger. Translated into modern English, the lines mean that love, poisonous like a spider, changes something positive and spiritual into something negative and bitter. The religious reference simply elevates the poem, giving it deeper meaning. Such a complex idea expressed in few lines is typical of metaphysical poetry. Metaphysical poetry is also characterised by a line of argument being pursued throughout
Explore the theme of 'love' within the poems written by John Donne. Examine how his approach, his views and his style of verse may have changed as subsequent poets have examined this same theme and the issues which accompany it.
Explore the theme of 'love' within the poems written by John Donne. Examine how his approach, his views and his style of verse may have changed as subsequent poets have examined this same theme and the issues which accompany it. John Donne describes love as a binding force, and one which completes both the persona's and his lover's lives. The Romantic poets, such as Keats' and Wordsworth's style of verse is much more descriptive of the physical reality with which they deal, whereas Donne ignores the reality and writes about what is beyond reality; the metaphysical. In 'The Good Morrow', one of Donne's abstract love poems, he describes love as something which flourishes to provide immortality and eternal being. To him, love enraptures its beholders and devours their senses before enhancing them and turning them around completely. Using the 'two halves' description, he can convey one of the most sage and discerning statements in his works; that both of their halves join together as a singularity and are then immortal and a complete state of euphoria is gained between them. In the first verse, Donne says that what they have done before they are in love was only pretence and untrue to what their lives' purposes really are, and that is to find happiness in someone else forever. "I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then, But
What I like and/or don’t like about John Donne
Literature: Donne Melissa Cheng Bing 02 01A06 PJC 270602 sorry...I tried my best...but face it Mel, you're not funny.(not that I WAS trying to be funny.) Essay Assignment: What I like and/or don't like about John Donne From what I know, which is not a lot, John Donne is a metaphysical poet who reigned in the 16th century. Metaphysical poetry is, so-defined-in-my-notes, the study of abstract and immaterial things; which is something I find quite so pointless. Like the people in that era have so much time to explore such stuff with such detail. Like they got nothing better to do. Basically, these people are real losers, especially Mr. Donne. He is such a prick and he sucks in innumerable ways. I dislike him to bits! Firstly, his parents suck for bringing him into this world. I mean. What were they thinking? Did they hate society so much that they decided to have a kid and punish us all through his works? I mean. Do we really deserve all this? I'm not saying that they can't enjoy their love-making, but at the expense of all of mankind? That's awfully selfish of them. I mean. I know there wasn't birth control, but they could use the classic rhythm method, no? Oh well, no use crying over spilt milk now. Anyway, his life seems so drama mama, it's almost not real. Like what Roman Catholic family would be in the right mind to send their son to study in Oxford and
Love in Donne's Songs and Sonnets.
Jennifer McCarthy 4/26/02 Renaissance Literature Love in Donne's Songs and Sonnets The presence of love is thematically interwoven into all of John Donne's Songs and Sonnets. Confronting the ideas of both the eroticism of physical love and the purity and intellectualism of spiritual love, Donne creates a world in which the reader is able to glimpse into the psyche of the poet. It is significant to understand that Donne does not attempt to describe a single and unchanging view of love. Rather, his poetry expresses a variety of emotions and attitudes. Throughout his Songs and Sonnets, Donne toys with the conflicting concepts of love, its flaws, as well as inherent values to humanity. Love can be an experience of the body, the soul, or both; it can be a religious experience, or merely a sexual one, resulting in emotions ranging from ecstasy to despair. Therefore, taking any one poem in isolation will give us a limited view of Donne's attitude towards love. The reader must treat each poem as part of a collectivity of the maturation process; represented by all the Songs and Sonnets, the poems give insight into the complex range of experiences that can be grouped under the single heading of "love". The ideal of the spiritual love is one in which Donne consistently utilizes in his poetry. By implementing metaphors of religious iconography into his verse, he creates a
'poetry, the word at its most eloquent, is one medium which could concentrate our attention on our worst experiences without leaving us with the feeling, as other media can, that life in this century has had its affirmative spirit burnt out'
Text and Context Assignment (VI) Discussing this statement; 'poetry, the word at its most eloquent, is one medium which could concentrate our attention on our worst experiences without leaving us with the feeling, as other media can, that life in this century has had its affirmative spirit burnt out' Word count 1,766 . . Baudrillard argues that 'art is everywhere, since artifice lies at the heart of reality' and Warhol claimed art can become a reproduction machine1, Tony Harrison, the Leeds born poet, captures this art that lives not only the everyday situations, as in the train journey described within Initial Illumination, but also the art that the machine called War produces, as we see in A Cold Coming, Harrison's poem about the first gulf war. Tony Harrison has been described as having a quicksilver imagination for ideas, images, and unusual connections, and, for reasons he makes explicit in his poetry, like Warhol with art, he [Harrison] has come to see the actual production of verse as a quasi-industrial process2. Increasingly, the British political environment is said to be having a direct and recognisable effect upon poets3. Harrison, vocalising his opposition to the first Gulf War, has produced two very successful and interesting pieces of work in his disagreement to the destruction of Iraq. Both poems chosen for this essay, Initial Illumination and A Cold
By careful examination of ‘Ode to Evening’ by William Collins and two other poems of your choice, consider how appropriate you find this definition of poetry written before 1770.
25th March 2002 "Pastoral: any work which represents a withdrawal from ordinary life to a place apart, close to the elemental rhythms of nature, where a person achieves a new perspective on life in the complex social world." [Abrams, 1988] By careful examination of 'Ode to Evening' by William Collins and two other poems of your choice, consider how appropriate you find this definition of poetry written before 1770. Abrams' definition of pastoral is a relatively modern one, and moves away from the classical interpretation of pastoral. In ancient times, pastoral poetry, as prominently practised by Virgil, was about shepherds in a utopian idyll known as Arcadia. Some of these conventions can still be found in modern poetry, as well as those written before 1770, but not all poetry has been influenced in this way. Ballads, for example, depict rural life, but it is more realistic than the traditional pastorals, and do not show the new perspective on the world that Abrams demands. Metaphysicals, such as Donne's 'The Sun Rising', are very much metropolitan, urban poetry, and satires, whilst they critique the complex social world around them, the poets are very much a part of that world and have no desire to withdraw from it. William Collins' 'Ode to Evening' does not follow the pastoral conventions to the same extent 'The Passionate Shepherd to his Love' by Christopher Marlowe
The Florist's at Midnight.
The Florist's at Midnight (Analyse paying attention to language and imagery) 'The Florist's at Midnight' is a poem concentrating on the superfluous trade of flowers, making us appear almost murderous while we 'nail', 'cloister' and tear flowers 'up from their roots'. Maguire uses bold, contrasting and religious imagery to assist in conveying her thoughts and making us question our actions. Aggressive imagery is extended throughout the poem (the 'stems bleed', they are 'cloistered in cellophane', have a 'wax shawl curl(ing) round (their) throat' and they are 'stood in zinc buckets' in 'clouding dank water') to emphasise the reality that these flowers were once growing, had a 'promise of pollen' and were ultimately alive, but have now been brutally 'torn up from their roots' and turned into 'cargo', merchandise, for us to buy. Personification of the flowers is another technique used, parallel to this one of aggressive imagery, to further highlight the fact that we have murdered these flowers that were once alive, as we are ~ the 'dark mouth' of a lily, once full of 'breath', has now been suffocated by its own 'wax shawl curl(ing) around its throat' and 'packed' in 'buckets'. The use of enjambment at the start of the poem reinforces the flow of the plants breathing, again granting them a human-like quality and reminding us that they too, were living beings. After we hear
A Woman’s Perspective.
Christopher Williams IHUM: Literature in Crisis Joel Slotkin October 20, 2003 A Woman's Perspective Donne's affinity for writing about the opposite sex is well known. Throughout many of his works, he portrays the image of a male as a figure to be wanted after, but what is the female's perspective in all of this? In his poem "Break of Day", Donne gives us a glimpse of what he believes it feels like to be the woman that is the object of these affections, and how that contrasts with his own, more masculine, poetry. Throughout the litany of Donne's earlier works, the male was the instigator, the protagonist, the connoisseur of women if you will, in the poem "Break of Day" we get to see the other side of the fence. We know that this is a female voice by the use of the pronoun "him", "That I would not from him, that had them, go" ("Break of Day" 12). By using literary devices and selective usage of pronouns, we are led to believe that this is a woman speaking about a particular man. In the last lines of the poem, we also get a clue as to the gender of the speaker, "The poor, the foul, the false, love can / Admit, but not the busied man" ("Break of Day" 15-16). These last few lines also reinforce the notion that the speaker has apathy for people who perform their lives in the way that Donne portrays in his earlier poems; one in which males are either expected or even encouraged
Choose a poem typical of John Donne's love poetry - Discuss its methods and concerns and explain why you have chosen it as particularly representative.
Choose a poem typical of John Donne's love poetry. Discuss its methods and concerns and explain why you have chosen it as particularly representative. Look closely at effects of its language/imagery/verse form. Comment on how the poem relates to other poems in the studied selection. There are a variety of factors which exist in Donne's collection of 'songs and sonets', which serve to make his poems quite unique, in terms of both style and content. This originality is emphasised by a number of common themes, many of which are evident in his poem 'A Valediction forbidding mourning', which I have chosen to analyse. As a metaphysical poet, Donne focuses a particular line of argument around a central theme. In this case, it is the idea that 'Though I must goe', 'Our two souls, which are one' will remain joined in a similar way to 'stiffe twin compasses'. This conceit (described by Helen Gardiner as 'a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness') is somewhat typical of Donne, keen to comply with the fashion at the time for difficulty in thought. In belonging to a cultured and politically aware society, and thus being keen to write for a select audience, Donne is able to interweave intellectually superior ideas in his poems, sometimes in the form of expanded epigrams. An example of this in 'A Valediction forbidding mourning' would be the theme of