John Donne Flashcards
What poems present salvation?
Batter my heart
What poems present sexual/physical love?
The Flea
The Sun Rising
What poems present spiritual love?
The Anniversary
The Good Morrow
What poems present both physical and spiritual love?
The Ecstasy
Air and Angels
The Relic
The Canonisation
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
The Anniversary
Love’s Alchemy
What poems present partings/loss/separation?
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
A Valediction of Weeping
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s day
What poems present death?
The Apparition
The Funeral
The Relic
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day
What poems present attitudes towards women/femininity?
To his Mistress Going to Bed
The Ecstasy
Love’s Alchemy
Song: Go and catch a falling star
Twickenham Garden
Air and Angels
What poems present suffering?
Twickenham Garden
A Valediction of Weeping
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s day
Holy Sonnet XIV Batter my heart
What poems present time?
The Anniversary
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s day
What poems present Catholicism?
The Canonisation
The Funeral
The Relic
What poems present hierarchy?
The Sun Rising
The Anniversary
The Canonisation
What poems present nature/astronomy?
The Ecstasy
Twickenham Garden
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s day
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
A Valediction of Weeping
Song: Go and catch a falling star
The Sun Rising
What poems present alchemy?
Love’s Alchemy
The Ecstasy
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s day
The Good Morrow
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
Form
Sonnet form
Petrarchan sonnet
Meter
Rhyme scheme
Volta
Punctuation
Argument
Stanzas
Line length
Imagery
Conceits
Metaphors
Tone
Voice
Donne Background
Renaissance poet
Metaphysical poet
Born 1572
Roman Catholic
Brother died in 1593 for being a Catholic sympathiser (led to him questioning faith)
1615 converted to Anglicanism and appointed Royal Chaplin
Was a preacher
Anne More died in 1617
1621 appointed Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London
Died in London 1631
What poems present male rejection/ male vulnerability?
Rejection:
The Flea
Vulnerability:
Batter my heart
The Sun Rising
A Valediction Forbidding mourning
Poems for analysis
The Good Morrow
Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star
The Sun Rising
The Canonization
The Anniversary
Twickenham Garden
Love’s Alchemy
The Flea
The Apparition
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
The Funeral
The Relic
The Good Morrow
ABABCCC rhyme scheme = unification of their souls
Aubade = morning poem
Apostrophe = addresses absent person
First stanza = reflective, who was he before love
“truth” = marriage ceremony, vow, promise
“weaned” “sucked” = breastfeeding, he wasnt born until now, rebirth
“beauty did i see” = all beauty before now pales in comparison to this beauty
“twas but a dream of thee”
Second stanza
“waking souls” = religious experience, new dimension
“out of fear” = safe in their company
“one little room” = microcosm of the whole world, latin word for poetry
“sea discoverers” “maps” = time of voyage and discovery, expansive love
“one and is one” = unity, he creates an escape for them in his poetry
Third stanza
“hemispheres” = typical renaissance, ptolemaic cosmos, earth the centre of the universe pre-roman concept
“if our two loves be one” = join together
“none can die” = wins them immortality, love makes them survive
Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star
Stanza one = inconstancy of women
“go” = commands, imperatives, demanding, establishes a relationship between himself and the reader
“catch a falling star” = impossible tasks
“child a mandrake root” = vile, sexually deviant
“envy’s singing” = deceptive in light rhyme
all seems abstract and wistful but actually horrible endavers
moving himself and the reader around frantically through time and space
Stanza two
“ride ten thousand days and nights” = pushing limits, unrealistic, quest
“snow white hairs” = almost seems romantic, fairytale-like
“no where lives a woman true and fair” = misogynistic, but entirely conventional for elizabethan love poetry
Stanza three = bathos
“i would not go” = builds energy until says he isnt bothered
scrappy, wants to seem offhand, out of spite
“false” = cheat on you
syntax is scarmbled and self-correcting
shift in tone = becomes despairing, sarcastic and cynical
“ee” sound = lazy rhyme
“Donne creates a mischevious relationship with his readers” - Toby Litt
The Sun Rising
morning song = aubade
Stanza one
“unruly Sun” = personifies the sun, frustrated at it , patronising, disruptive nature
“call on us” - inutrusive
“go” = imperatives, demanding tone
“hours, days, months” = seasonal imagery, time passing
“rags of time” = wearing out unlike their love
Stanza two
“eclipse” “cloud” = cosmology, love makes them powerful enough to control space, love exists outside and beyond the common secular world, transcend nature
“not blinded thine” = compares her to the sun
“all here in one bed lay” = microcosm, whole world in his room
Stanza three
“princes do but play us” “all honours mimic” = those in power imitate them as they are perfect
“this bed thy centre is” = microcosm, they are the centre of the universe, not the sun, the sun is their dutiful follower
obvious rhyme, sense of closure
neoplatonism = human perfection and greatest happiness can be attained, for him this woman is that ultimate happiness, as if a spiritual figure
The Canonization
Stanza one
“For God’s sake” = blasphemy, expansion of frustration
“let me love” = only thing he wants to do
all these imperatives, wants to be left alone,
“so you will let me love” = love is all encompassing
stanza two
“alas!” = dramatic
“drowned” “overflow’d” = lovelorn, heartbreak, lovesick = flipping renaissance cliches
stanza three
“tapers” = light vs dark imagery
“at our own cost die” = burning flame, cause own demise
“we two being one” = is it sex that makes them reborn or is christ reborn, “us” is the congregation
“we die and rise the same” = overcome all obstacles, religious imagery
stanza four
“we can die for it” = willing o face death, rather die than survive without each other
“us canonized for love” = remembered for their love or sex so good it becomes heavenly
stanza five
given their own prayer
The Anniversary
meditates on the timelessness of the world of love
celebrates their first meeting, but also his first love
stanza one
“all kings” = his love is superior to other divine things
“glory of honours, beauties, wits” = list of positives in love
“no decay” = durable and timeless love
“running it never runs” = time always passing but not for them, beyond common nature
stanza two
“two graves” = had to be married to be buried together
“no divorce” = not even separated in death
“sweet salt tears” = light hearted
“love increased there above” = heaven
stanza three
their love is regal, like god’s currency is love
“let us” = plea
“years and years and years” = repetition, pace slows down, endless love, mimics timelessness
conceit = love doesn’t decay, timeless
The Apparition
dramatic lyric
cynical, savage, bitter tone
haunts her because she rejected him
“O mud’ress” = nameless, killed by scorn and rejection
petulant tone, sulky
“feign’d vestal” = fake virgin, taunt her
“in worse arms shall see” = sleeping with another man
“sick taper” = weak candle, darkness, hope is waining
“think thou call’st for more” = he won’t wake if she tries to wake him
“bath’d in a cold quicksilver weat wilt lie” = mercury, dull colour, sick with worry
“a verier ghost than i” = scare her to death, she haunts him with her rejection
“painfully repent” = suffering
maybe conceit of disease
“cacophony is created by the frequent plosive and t sounds”
