John Donne

Question 1

What poems present salvation?

Answer 1

Batter my heart

Question 2

What poems present sexual/physical love?

Answer 2

The Flea
The Sun Rising

Question 3

What poems present spiritual love?

Answer 3

The Anniversary
The Good Morrow

Question 4

What poems present both physical and spiritual love?

Answer 4

The Ecstasy
Air and Angels
The Relic
The Canonisation
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
The Anniversary
Love’s Alchemy

Question 5

What poems present partings/loss/separation?

Answer 5

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
A Valediction of Weeping
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s day

Question 6

What poems present death?

Answer 6

The Apparition
The Funeral
The Relic
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day

Question 7

What poems present attitudes towards women/femininity?

Answer 7

To his Mistress Going to Bed
The Ecstasy
Love’s Alchemy
Song: Go and catch a falling star
Twickenham Garden
Air and Angels

Question 8

What poems present suffering?

Answer 8

Twickenham Garden
A Valediction of Weeping
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s day
Holy Sonnet XIV Batter my heart

Question 9

What poems present time?

Answer 9

The Anniversary
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s day

Question 10

What poems present Catholicism?

Answer 10

The Canonisation
The Funeral
The Relic

Question 11

What poems present hierarchy?

Answer 11

The Sun Rising
The Anniversary
The Canonisation

Question 12

What poems present nature/astronomy?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

What poems present alchemy?

Answer 13

Love’s Alchemy
The Ecstasy
A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s day
The Good Morrow
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

Question 14

Form

Answer 14

Sonnet form
Petrarchan sonnet
Meter
Rhyme scheme
Volta
Punctuation
Argument
Stanzas
Line length

Question 15

Imagery

Answer 15

Conceits
Metaphors
Tone
Voice

Question 16

Donne Background

Answer 16

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

Question 17

What poems present male rejection/ male vulnerability?

Answer 17

Rejection:
The Flea

Vulnerability:
Batter my heart
The Sun Rising
A Valediction Forbidding mourning

Question 18

Poems for analysis

Answer 18

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

Question 19

The Good Morrow

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star

Answer 20

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

Question 21

The Sun Rising

Answer 21

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

Question 22

The Canonization

Answer 22

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

Question 23

The Anniversary

Answer 23

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

Question 23

The Apparition

Answer 23

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”

Question 23

The Flea

Answer 23

convince woman to sleep with him
Roman poet Ovid inspired
risque metaphor

stanza one
“mark” = command, stressed syllable, logical argument, conceit
“little” = losing her virginity, the sex, means nothing
“sucked” = explicitly allude
“our two bloods mingled be” = blood mingles during sex
“a sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead”
“swells” = pun
“more than we would do” = trying to persuade her

stanza two
“oh stay” = dont kill the flea, stay with his rain of thought
“three lives” = holy trinity?
“the flea is you an i” = joined
“marriage bed” “marriage temple” = biblical allusions, catholic sacrament

stanza three
“cruel and sudden” = killed the flea, strong rejection
turns his argument around
“just so much honour” = now she has killed the flea, losing her virginity wouldnt be a loss of honour

Question 23

Twickenham Garden

Answer 23

About Lucy, Countess of Bedford
Rhythm = dramatic, disordered

stanza one
“sighs and surrounded by tears” = sibilant sounds, hopeless and dismayed, anguish, flood like in the Bible
“eyes” “ears” = bodily imagery
“O” = ecphonesis
“spider love” = conceit , deceit, entrapment, secrete acidic digestive juices over prey
“manna to gall” = sweet to bitter, body of christ
“serpent brought” = garden of eden, he ruins the peace of the garden

stanza two
“winter” “grave frost” = dark, morbid
“love” = direct address
“make me a mandrake” = associated with medicine and magic, ugly and upset
“stone fountain” = unfeeling, yet cannot hold his emotions
like a graveyard, ruined paradise

stanza three
“tears” = don’t believe a woman’s tears, they conceal their true nature and thoughts
“O perverse sex” = resort to misogyny
“her truth kills me” = she doesn’t love him back, kills hi, her fidelity is killing him with grief

“wholly typical Donne poem” - Joe Nutt
“conventional spurned lover” - Joe Nutt
“from 15th century Neapolitan love lyric through petrarchanism to an acid-spotted modern Arcadia” - Carol Rumens

Question 23

Love’s Alchemy

Answer 23

AABBCDEEFFGG rhyme scheme = couplets mean joining (like chemicals) or like a spell, lyrical lull

stanza one
“centric happiness doth lie” = love
“hidden mystery” = cannot explain love
“tis imposture all” = all a cheat, illusion
no chemist has found the chemicals for love (yet)
“dream” = futile
“winter-seeming summer’s night” = bleak, brief love

stanza two
“endure the short scorn of a bridegroom’s play?” = have wedding to have sex, humiliation, denouncing role, scathing mocking tone
“wretch” = common street urchin
“mummy, possess’d” = dead bodies, dire objectification, woman brings no joy unless its sex
1. female is the devil and tempts someone into marriage for sex
2. sexually possessed

Question 24

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

Answer 24

more romantic
saying farwell
“cogne de amour” = recited by departing military force

stanza one
“virtuous men” = compassionate, morally good
“whisper” = lulling, gentle s sounds

stanza two
“so let us melt” = bond, warmth, become one
“tear-floods” = pathetic fallacy, crying

stanza three
“moving of the earth” = tectonic phenomenon, earthquake, shake world
“spheres” = idealised personality
“innocent” = their love is so pure

stanza four
“dull sublunary lovers” = other lovers belong to this world whilst their love is better and spiritual

stanza five
“a love so much refined” = love is perfect, purified
“inter-assured” = souls combine, closeness

stanza six
“which are one” = joined, married, true
“expansion” = love will grow

stanza seven
“stiff twin compass” = linked across the world, symbolises their relationship, their souls stay connected

stanza nine
“run” = distance only temporary
“makes my circle just” = spans universe, never-ending love
affirmation

“Donne successfully creates a harmonious mood which reflects the genuine affection of the lovers depicted”

Question 25

The Funeral

Answer 25

witty, dry, sardonic
apostrophe
ABAB rhyme scheme

stanza one
“shroud me” = wrap him up for burial, tradition
“wreath of hair” = last things to decompose, hair connected to the soul
“wreath” “crown” = regal, rulers, governance
“outward soul” = will keep him from decomposing
“viceroy” = she controlled his life, dominated it
“from dissolution” = hair will preserve bodies from decay as their souls will live on

stanza two
“one of all” = joined
“grew, and strength and art” = image of growth, they become better together
“know my pain” = men imprisoned by expectations of love in the renaissance
“manacled” = shackled by these expectations

stanza three
“love’s martyr” = die for a purpose, suffer
“idolatry” = wants his sacrifice to be worshipped
“since you” = abrupt, repetition of you is fast paced
“I bury some of you” = last laugh, bitter tone, punishes her
unrequited love/rejected

Question 26

The Relic

Answer 26

stanza one
“my grave” = light-hearted, envisages own grave
“woman head” = womanhood or maidenhead
“to be more than one a bed” = sexually promiscuous
“little stay” = plea, wants one last meeting

stanza two
“to make us relics”
“ mary magdalen” = addresses woman, evoking sexuality
“something else thereby” = jesus?

stanza three
“perchance we might kiss” = chaste love
“a miracle she was” = she becomes a miracle, divine

“critique of that religion” (catholicism) - Helen Wilcox

Question 27

Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter my heart

Answer 27

stanza one
“batter my heart” = he is in a place of lack of devotion, vulnerable, needs his walls broken down
“mend” = paradoxical with batter, uncertainty
“rise” = Jesus, rebirth
“o’erthrow me, and bend” = wants to become closer to God, bends to his will
“break, blow, burn” = plosive repetition, mimics battery
“make me new” = wants all his sin removed
“labour to admit you” = act of faith OR admit wrong OR let someone in
“reason” = reason defends his faith, soul corrupted by logic and reason
“captiv’d” = military language, soul has been seiged
“dearly i love you” = longing, soft, switch of tone
“betroth’d unto you enemy” = married to the devil, damsel in distress (feminine role)
“divorce me” = shock
“imprison me” = wants to be a slave to God, devotion, solitude OR imprisoned by the devil
“enthrall” = sexual devotion
“chaste” = Virgil, restraint from sex, abstinence, married to God
“ravish” = paradox, shock for the audience

violent, sexualised language = desires intensity in the experience
plea out of agony, poetic flagellation, want the pain but from God

Question 28

CS Lewis

Answer 28

“The love of hatred and the hatred of love”

Question 29

Izaak Walton

Answer 29

“There are two Donnes: Jack Donne; and Dr John Donne”

Question 30

Samuel Jonson

Answer 30

“Genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found, buried in the grossness of expression”

Question 31

William Kerrigan

Answer 31

“Donne’s love poetry stems from a frustrated sense of power”

Question 32

Dr Hannah Crawforth on Donne poetic form

Answer 32

“Form depicts how poets think”

Question 33

Dr Hannah Crawforth on rhyme

Answer 33

“There is still a big debate over whether the rhyme was to speak in auditory form or to see in visual rhyme”

Question 34

Dr Hannah Crawforth on language

Answer 34

“Donne’s work often reflects upon how language can capture life/love/faith as at times he sees it restrictive”
(when he is verbose is because he cannot actually put down the word that describes his feelings which can link to how his faith is just as abstract as the language he uses)

Question 35

Dr Hannah Crawforth on Donne’s use of sonnet form

Answer 35

“’Sonnet thinking’ pervades other poetic forms”
(sonnet form permeates all of his work, this idea of a stanza (Italian room) which he gives to somebody like a part of himself which is very intimate)
“Sonnet playfulness”

Question 36

Judith Hertz on Donne’s use of synonyms

Answer 36

“Pile up synonyms”
(he is constantly trying to be perfect, never satisfied)

Question 37

How was Donne effected by his knowledge of law?

Answer 37

Legal culture very important to Donne “lawyers”, and he studied as a lawyer so wrote often for that scene, men engaging in witty banter (perhaps why his poems are misogynistic as he wished to show off to them)

Question 38

What was London like?

Answer 38

London only the size from Covent Garden to the Bridge for Donne (concentrated space, his education was close to Lincoln’s Inn which was close to his Church etc)

Question 39

How did Donne work with others?

Answer 39

Manuscript culture – confusion over who wrote what as they shared work around and used peoples ideas as their own

Question 40

Dr Samuel Johnson

Answer 40

“He’s so sensual, yet his sensuality can collide in such fascinating ways with his more serious religious concerns.”