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
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
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
Donne's use of Conceit in his poems, and whether it overrides sincerity.
Donne's use of Conceit in his poems, and whether it overrides sincerity That Donne is concerned with wit is scarcely deniable. Through his use of conceit, a style in which John Donne reveled in, trying to prove his superior intellect to his literary piers of the time. But has his use of conceit become so intense that it has indeed detracted from the legitimate sincerity of his poems? In The Flea, Donne manages to make an intricate and complex argument from an ordinary occurrence. He succeeds in glorifying the importance of a flea, saying "This flea is you and I, and this/ Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is". He continues, comparing it to God ("three lives in one", referring to the trinity,) and calling it "these living walls of Jet." Here he is certainly demonstrating his wit by making his argument seem valid, although it clearly is not. The significance that attributes to the flea is undeserved. The reasons given why his mistress should not kill the flea are based on its religious importance: "three lives in one flea spare," and "w'are...cloysterd in these living walls". However, the flea only has this significance because of his argument, so it is invalid. Although he says that the flea represents God, it is not necessarily the case. Clever argument seems to recur in this poem. At the end of the poem, the persona manages to turn his mistress's reasoning on
Commentary on Donne’s “The Sun Rising”
Commentary on Donne's "The Sun Rising" John Donne was possibly the greatest metaphysical poet of the seventeenth century, and his greatness has endured. His blending of the intellectual with the emotional, and the spiritual with the physical has made him one of the most admired poets in the twentieth century. His work may be roughly divided into three groups1. The first group contains profane, often cynical love poetry in which women are treated as objects. The second is also composed of love poems, but these focus upon the spiritual aspects of love, as well as on the physical. In these poems, the lovers are united and human love is shown in its purest form. The third group comprises Donne's religious works, which deal exclusively with spirituality, divinity, and faith in association with religion. The Sun Rising, with it's assertion of the power of love over time and space, and the spiritual unity of the two lovers, belongs clearly to the second group. In The Sun Rising Donne proudly vaunts the power of love in two declarations: love creates its own time and establishes its own space. The first declaration is stated in the first stanza: "Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time." The second declaration is presented first in the second stanza, "All here in one bed lay", then repeated and clarified in the third stanza
'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
Commentary on “The Flea” by Sir John Donne.
Barbara Monteiro Commentary on "The Flea" by Sir John Donne In The Flea one encounters a poem that revolves around one exaggerated and highly decorated metaphor, a style of poetry best know as conceit. In the poem John Donne has created a persona who is trying to persuade a maiden to have sex with him. He does so by using a series of contrasts between guilt, innocence and love. The speaker tries to convince the girl that to have sex with him would be of no hindrance to her honour, but would mean the world to him. The flea has a very important role in this poem and is mainly used to show how the speaker wants to have sex with the woman. At the beginning of the poem he uses the flea to compare it to the woman losing her virginity, and how small and unimportant this would be. As the poem progresses he makes use of the flea as a symbol of how much such a small, insignificant thing to one, may men the world to another. Donne proves this concept by having the flea suck the blood out of the two personas in the poem and then and having the speaker compare his intentions to the little flea's actions. The man implies that the flea sucking the blood out of the woman is worse than him having sex with her, and that to all effects their blood has already been mingled in this flea. He then carries on to say that though blood has already mingled, and this flea has sucked it from both,
"The Good Morrow" a poem by John Donne.
"The Good Morrow" by John Donne The poem "The Good Morrow", by John Donne is one of the poems, from our readings, that caught my interest. I was perplexed with the reference to the "Seven sleepers' den" (Line 4) imagery comparing the couple lying in bed. According to a popular legend, seven young Christians of Ephesus, in the second century, took refuge from Roman persecution in a cave, and miraculously slept for some two hundred years when the entrance of their cave was walled up by their pursuers 1. In the first stanza, the narrators devoted expression of love towards the female focus is full of charm and wit. Incidentally in line 6, "If ever any beauty I did see, / Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee" illustrated the sincerity to which the speaker felt, because he spoke as if he knew he loved her even before he met her. This is very admirable to read since the narrators love is so devoted and deep it makes all other love seem insignificant by comparison. Donne writes with images of sleep, and the way in which one's eyes can be closed to what the world has to offer. This suggests that their absence of sight in the darkness, denies them from the light which holds the knowledge about the ways of love, greater than what the world has to offer. I criticize Donne's imagery by being crude yet witty, when imagery of the proverbial breast of a mother is used
Why has Donne's poetry been described as 'Metaphysical'?
Why has Donne's poetry been described as 'Metaphysical'? To answer this question one needs to define the term 'Metaphysical' because, although it can be applied to any poetry dealing with spiritual or philosophical matter, it is complicated by the fact that it is now generally only applied to a group of seventeenth century poets. Therefore as David Reid has aptly remarked it is a "particularly fuzzy term" and therefore it is "futile to try for watertight definition". The first problem is that behind the term, 'Metaphysical,' lies a history of different critical approaches - Giordano Bruno, the first critic to attempt a conceptual formulation of "concettismo", as the 'Metaphysical' style was known in Italy, concluded that 'Metaphysical poetry' was essentially concerned with perceiving and expressing the universal correspondence in his universe. However, Samuel Johnson wrote that "about the beginning of the seventeenth century [in England] there appeared a race" of Metaphysical poets and therefore the problem is that there are different descents of critical views about the term. Furthermore Johnson talks of a "race" of these poets but the problem is that there is not such a line of descent as this statement would suggest. There are connections between poets, who are classed as 'Metaphysical', like Dunne, Cowley, Hubert and Marvell, but only here and there; for example in
Choose two or three poems that you think exemplify the characteristics of Donne's poetry.
Choose two or three poems that you think exemplify the characteristics of Donne's poetry Donne's poetry is varied including, as it does, both religious and secular poems. However, much of his poetry is characterised by elaborate conceits, surprising symbols and persistent wittiness making use of paradox, puns and startling parallels. Donne's love poetry notably 'The Good-Morrow' and 'The Sun Rising' both succeed in exemplifying characteristics peculiar to Donne's poetry. In 'The Good-Morrow' Donne begins to wrestle with a question, which other lovers have faced. He is sure that the love he feels is different from any he has previously known, but lovers often feel that, and the fact remains that they have each loved others before. 'What thou and I Did, till we lov'd?' Donne ponders over the significance of this for the relationship they are about to begin. If they have loved, and left others in the past, what security can they have for the future? Although 'Good-Morrow' and 'Sun Rising' are secular poems they can be seen to share certain characteristics with the holy sonnet 'Batter my Heart'. To each of these poems Donne brings the full force of his passion and intelligence. None of the poems can be regarded as a simple cry from the heart: they neither are, nor pretend to be, raw expressions of emotion. All of the three poems are about Donne's relationship with others, both