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”
The Flea
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
Twickenham Garden
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
Love’s Alchemy
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
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
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”
The Funeral
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
The Relic
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
Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter my heart
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
CS Lewis
“The love of hatred and the hatred of love”
Izaak Walton
“There are two Donnes: Jack Donne; and Dr John Donne”
Samuel Jonson
“Genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found, buried in the grossness of expression”
William Kerrigan
“Donne’s love poetry stems from a frustrated sense of power”
Dr Hannah Crawforth on Donne poetic form
“Form depicts how poets think”
Dr Hannah Crawforth on rhyme
“There is still a big debate over whether the rhyme was to speak in auditory form or to see in visual rhyme”
Dr Hannah Crawforth on language
“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)
Dr Hannah Crawforth on Donne’s use of sonnet form
“’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”
Judith Hertz on Donne’s use of synonyms
“Pile up synonyms”
(he is constantly trying to be perfect, never satisfied)
How was Donne effected by his knowledge of law?
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)
What was London like?
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)
How did Donne work with others?
Manuscript culture – confusion over who wrote what as they shared work around and used peoples ideas as their own
Dr Samuel Johnson
“He’s so sensual, yet his sensuality can collide in such fascinating ways with his more serious religious concerns.”
