5 - The Sun Rising Flashcards
intro
- The poet persona endeavours to argue that love is not subject to time, yet his acknowledgment of its presence in the poem supports the very structures he hoped to undermine.
- Do we treat the voice with amused indulgence, or view it as overly naïve as it extends the cliché of only needing one another in a relationship?
- Euphoria of post-coital bliss, presents conflict of two types of being: real vs. ideal.
- Poem is a parody of an aubade: lovers do not separate at dawn.
…… Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
- Busy old fool = plosive b – explosion of energy and exuberance. Apostrophising sun, male arrogance, direct address to sun. Conversational register and varied syntax – drama as dom form of literature
- Unruly sun = temporal marker for contemporaries. Contemporary political debate – heliocentric model, pronounced contrary to Scripture (hence ‘unruly’)
- Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run? = Rhetorical qs, indignation. Run is a dynamic verb, time passes too fast. Wants to savour intense moment.
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour pretences,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time
- Saucy pedantic wretch = provocative, egotistical argument
- Late schoolboys (…) harvest offices = brief glimpse of outside world. Progresses from ‘court huntsmen’ to ‘ants’ – different levels of Chain of Being. Manipulates space, visually enacts hierarchy, taken down to level of an ant. Local geography allows real and ideal to coexist.
- Love, all alike, (…) which are the rags of time = depicts love as not subject to time. Idealistic, euphoric love renders microcosm extreme. Young lover is idealistic vs. indicates age of personified sun. Rhyming couplet separated from rhyme scheme – separates lovers from world
Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
- Beams = etymology, only just been discovered and named in scientific theory
- I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink = metaphysical paradox. Needs the sun to see his lover, if he closes his eyes, he cannot see her. Can’t dismiss power of sun. Cartesian philosophy of subjective reality is revealed, as the p.p poses the question that the world may cease to exist outside of the individual mind.
- Wink, sight, eyes, look, saw’st = ocular imagery. Eyes = essential to birth and continuance of love
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
Whether both th’Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.
- If her eyes have not blinded thine – Petrarchan idealised love. Product of society, despite metaphysical aspects. Luxuriates in contemporary ideas.
- Indias of spice and mine = Lover is the wealth he covets. Even India is not as exotic as her. R voyages
- Lie here with me = still in bed, erotic locus. Parody of aubade
- Thou shalt hear, all here in one bed lay = Play on words. Euphoric celebratory tone, emphatic placement of bed, dramatic pause. Man microcosm – all importance framed in one bed.
She’s all states, and all princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus.
She’s all states = sexual innuendo, orgasm. Absent listener – follows paradigm of female inferiority, can’t escape social trappings. Figures woman as a feminised land mass that needs to be conquered, perhaps revealing undertones of colonial penetration. Sexual pun as JD suggests he has taken her through all physical states of enjoyment.
- Nothing else is = poem pivots on short line
- Princes do but play us = wealth and exoticism is inferior to his lover
- Alchemy = science
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us = sun does not need to warm them
- This bed thy centre is = post-coital, they epitomise warmth of sun. rejects all space excluding lover and bedroom. Microcosm of love is a defence mechanism against change in society
- Sphere = Renaissance
THEMES
Love and Relationships, Time, real vs. Ideal, Youth vs. Maturity, unusual arguments
language general
• Sexual pun, S3
• Temporal lexicon (Ironic; rejects bounds of time yet cannot deny Its presence)
• Direct address and apostrophe to sun (masculine arrogance)
• Plosive ‘B’ consonants S1
• Dynamic verb ‘run’ S1 (Indicative of rapid change, time passing quickly)
• Provocative language (e.g Saucy Pedantic Wretch)
• Ocular Imagery S2
• Exotic Imagery (lover Is the wealth he covets: microcosmic world of love becomes bigger than the microcosm of larger world as she Is the only thing of value)
• Dramatic Interaction of two modes of being (Ideal and real, euphoric post-coital and real world)
• Sense of argument
• Theme of time
o Sustained argued: obsession vs. ironic as he rejects the laws of the physical universe, yet language reveals how time-bound he is
language, pronouns
o Personal Pronouns (ego of p.p: increased interest In psychological states vs. drama)
o Collective Pronouns (proliferate final stanza to give building sense of unity. Focus is on the couple and the erotic locus of the bed. Creates building sense of relationship)
language, space
• Spatial manipulation – whole world contained in room
o Local geography
o Court huntsman collapses to ant – descends Great Chain of Being
o India = R space
o Collapsed into one bed
o Sphere (unites all 3 worlds of the poem; lover, mistress and sun.)
title
Phallic pun, as post-coital poem set within the erotic locus of the bed. It builds on Petrarchan imagery, as the sun is viewed as a symbol of virility and masculine energy. Sun = chronological marker
structure
• Rejects the sonnet form (JD’s poems are not all about one woman)
• Varied line length and meter, no definite rhyme scheme lends a conversational register and syntax that rejects the smooth cadences of Elizabethan love poetry in favour of more intimacy – Drama as dom form of literature
• Rhyming couplet in S1: ‘Clime’ ‘Time’, separated from ABAB lines that precede it, structure mimics lovers distance from the world, intensify theme of retreat
o Microcosm of lovers separates the from macrocosm of outside world – couplet physically enacts separation
• Rhetorical questions (craft tone of indignation and bitter cynicism)
o Sense of resolution at the end of poem, less questions = resolved anxiety
• Caesura (verse 2, end)
best quotes - ‘Late schoolboys and sour prentices, Go tell court huntsmen that the King will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices’
- Description of the local geography shows an awareness of the world outside, and the ability for the real world and ideal world of the lovers to coexist. Donne attempts to use language to assert the superiority of the lovers to the external world, but time limits and social spheres undermine this.
best quotes - ‘I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so long’
- A paradox is established, as he needs the sun to see his lover yet attempts to dismiss its power. Moreover, plays upon the Renaissance idea of the eyes being integral to the birth and continuance of love to illustrate the perfection of his union. Furthermore, a contemporary interest regarding the Cartesian philosophy of subjective reality is revealed, as the p.p poses the question that the world may cease to exist outside of the individual mind.
