"Compare and contrast any two love poems you have read, discussing their themes, their use of language and their appeal to an audience".

"Compare and contrast any two love poems you have read, discussing their themes, their use of language and their appeal to an audience". The aims of this essay are to look at two love poems by two different authors and to show how they are similar and in what ways different. The two poems I will be looking at are "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe and "The Bait" by John Donne. The first by Marlowe for the most part, seems to deal with the joy of new-found love and seems to dwell on the positive aspects of romance and passion. The second poem by Donne by contrast is less romantic in tone than Marlowe's poem. Here Donne talks about sex, seduction and sadness; often using very suggestive images and challenging the idealised view of love. Marlowe's poem is set in a pastoral setting and the word 'shepherd' in the title is an image and this word itself tells us it is in a pastoral setting. In the first stanza of Marlowe's poem it says in the first two opening lines: "Come live with me and be my love And we will all the pleasures prove" He, the narrator tries to persuade his mistress by being very forthright and by being very bold, telling her what he is going to give her. However, in Donne's poem, which is parody of Marlowe's, Donne has the same two opening lines but the last two of the first stanza are very different. "...Of golden sands, and

  • Word count: 987
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Poetic Parallelism between Jonne Donne and Lope de Vega

Poetic Parallelism between John Donne and Lope de Vega The identification and comparison between English metaphysical poetry and Spanish poesía conceptista was suggested for the first time by James Smith, and then studied by Frank J. Warnke and Lowry Nelson. Later bibliography has focused almost exclusively on the analysis of Francisco de Quevedo's affinity with metaphysical poetry, and John Donne in particular. Critics and scholars have studied Quevedo's use of the conceit, and the metaphysical themes of some of his poems, and quite recently, the comparative study of Quevedo's and Donne's poems has been undertaken. As a contrast, only a few authors have dealt with John Donne in relationship with Lope de Vega, or viceversa, even though some of Lope de Vega's poems also belong to the conceptista vein. Frank Warnke included two sonnets by Lope de Vega in his collection of European metaphysical poems, and he pointed to the stylistic similarities between the devotional poems of Quevedo and Lope and those of Donne's (52, 59-60). Octavio Paz mentioned the existence of similarities between the passion, both amorous and religious, of Lope de Vega and Donne. Daniel L. Heiple discovered that Lope had used the term 'metaphysical' in much the same way as John Dryden and Dr. Johnson did later. Not long ago, Laurie Ann Kaplis, wrote, as her doctoral thesis, an extensive, yet not

  • Word count: 3609
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Characteristic Styles of John Donne and other Metaphysical Poets

Characteristic Styles of John Donne and other Metaphysical Poets: The poet John Donne established a different style of poetry which has become known as the Metaphysical style of poetry. Metaphysical poetry is the whole experience of man and mankind, but the intelligence, learning and seriousness of the feelings and means that poetry is about the profound areas of experience especially - about love, romantic and sensual; about man´s relationship with God - the eternal perspective, and to a less extent, about pleasure, learning and art. Metaphysical poems are lyric poems. They are some type of brief but intense meditations, characterized by striking use of wit, irony and wordplay. Beneath the formal structure, of rhyme, metre and stanza, is the underlying, and often less formal structure of the poem´s argument. Some of main characteristics in a poem by John Donne are: the abrupt opening with a surprising, a dramatic line and the usage of coloquial language. The ideas in the poems are presented as a logical and persuasive argument , the purpose of which is to aid his wooing whether for a woman or God. Donne takes metaphors from all kind of spheres of life, especially from crafts and sciences, and makes frequent use of the "conceit": a surprising, ingenious , far-fetched turn of ideas. Often a whole poem is an extended "conceit" and frequently a poem ends ends with

  • Word count: 983
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Choose two poems and show in what ways you think they demonstrate the use of argument in John Donne's poetry.

Amy Clark Choose two poems and show in what ways you think they demonstrate the use of argument in John Donne's poetry. John Donne is considered to be one of the greatest of the English Metaphysical poets. He broke away from the "decorative and flowery" verse that characterized most poetry during the Elizabethan period to develop his own unique style. His poetry is rich in metaphor, wit and honesty. These are used by Donne to describe his views on the world. Donne uses argument in his poetry for many different purposes such as an for an expression of feeling, for seduction and persuasion, a declaration for his love, to harness, console and comfort emotion. The two poems that I think demonstrate his use of argument best are The Flea and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. The Flea is a poem of seduction enticing the women in to bed with him, it exhibits Donne's metaphysical love-poem mode, his aptitude for turning even the least likely images into elaborate symbols of love and romance. This poem uses the image of a flea that has just bitten the speaker and his beloved to sketch an amusing conflict over whether the two will engage in premarital sex. A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is one if Donne's most famous and also probably his most direct statement of his ideal of spiritual love. For all his erotic sensuality in poems, such as The Flea, Donne professes a

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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John Donne's Poetry is Emotionally Intense, Full of Passionate Feelings and Opinionated Attitudes - Discuss.

Stephen Jenkins 5th December 2001 GCSE Coursework English John Donne's Poetry is Emotionally Intense, Full of Passionate Feelings and Opinionated Attitudes. Discuss "The Sunne Rising", "The Anniversary", "The Apparition" and "A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy's Day; Being the Shortest Day" are four poems written in the late sixteenth/early seventeenth century by a poet named John Donne. Around the time of William Shakespeare, when these poems were written, he was renowned for his poems about love, death, hate and many other strong emotions, which are displayed in each of the four aforementioned poems. Later on in his life, he went on to concentrate on writing poems on religion rather than love. He was a committed Catholic in a time when Catholics ruled the country. All of the poems are written for a woman and show his intense emotions towards this woman. It is unknown whether the woman in each of the poems is the same woman because of the unknown time at which each of the poems was written. The poems all show his passionate feelings, opinionated attitudes and intense emotions towards various different people and objects, mainly the woman, who is central to each poem. In this essay I will discuss John Donne's emotions and feelings present throughout his poems. His writing expresses a wide variety of expressions and feelings, opinions, emotions and attitudes. In all of the

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market is often described as a subversive poem. Do you agree?

"Goblin Market" is often described as a subversive poem. Do you agree? The definition of the word subversive means "in opposition to a civil authority or government" (Answers website 2009) and Christina Rossetti shows us how she does this in the poem Goblin Market in a lot of different ways. For a woman to be heard of in this era was hardly ever heard of in arts or literature. Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was widely known for his art collection and for the poems he wrote, and for been a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The art they produced had a lot of religious aspects mixed with modern day issues of the time. Their art was true to nature, and very detailed. The women they painted all looked very similar; Christina Rossetti was one of the models for her brother, as well as his wife Elizabeth Siddall. A lot of the PRB art had this idea of sin and redemption, the women in the pictures can easily be seen as fallen women, and some are trying to redeem themselves; but none seem to be able to do this. In the Victorian era there were lots of prostitutes or fallen women but once they had fallen they were very unlikely to ever regain the respect they had previously. I think one of the main ideas that Christina Rossetti put across in her poem is that if a perfect god is willing to give us a second chance why is an imperfect society not willing with regard to fallen

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  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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Metaphysical Poetry

Metaphysical Poetry John Donne's "The Sunne Rising" and "The Flea" and "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell Metaphysical poetry necessitates the understanding of mankind but concentrates on topics such as romantic love, sexual love, faith, loyalty and religion. The poems are very short and have a formal tone, metaphysical poems are characterised by arguments and theories yet to be proved. It was written between 1572 and 1695, these were chaotic time as there were lost of changes taking place. For instance in 1577 there was the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The "Gunpowder Plot", dissolution of parliament, civil wars and the plague followed this. These poets want to show off their intelligence and wit. The poems usually contain conceits (these are sharp and unpredicted uses of metaphors and comparisons), for example: romantic lovers are compared to "a pair of compasses" (inseparable) and a woman losing her virginity is called a "flea bite", as in, the little drop of blood women shed when they first have sex. The poems are supposed to be direct, dramatic and straight to the point. Sometimes, the poems have a "carpe-diem" theme. Metaphysical poetry was seen as "shocking" at this time, it addressed issues that were previously unmentionable, or it looked at issues in a more controversial way. In this essay I am going to compare the three poems; 'The Sunne Rising' and

  • Word count: 1558
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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