John Donne Critics Flashcards
TS Eliot
Donne’s process of expressing his passion through image and metaphor was a ‘dissociation of sensibility in which emotional sensitivity is expressed in logically understandable ways - fresh images creating New perspectives.’
T.S. Eliot
Appreciated Donne’s ability to select images of absolute necessity
Stevie Davies
The stated Intent of such poems is the dehumanisation is women
Unknown
For Donne love is heat, fire, growth, unity, alchemy - a living organism.
Samuel Johnson
He violently brings together heterogeneous ideas
Bredvoid - about elegy change
Nature as a guide and a norm, substitute for authority of society and accepted code of morality
Toby Lift - go and catch a falling star
Mischievious tone established. As soon as Makes a demand he undoes it by making it impossible
Christopher Ricks - go and catch a falling star
Ending is uncharitable and seems false to itself and the rest of the poem.
Stephanine Burt - The Rising Sun
Traditionally aubades about lovers who awaken at dawn, often adulterous or illicit lovers that don’t want to separate but don’t want to get caught.
In the rising sun Donne and Ann feel right at home. No chance either of them will go anywhere - been place where they belong and everything must revolve around them!
The guardian - The Rising Sun
He places himself and his lover at centre of the universe with the sun as their suffering servant.
“Busy old fool, unruly sun” =
Unimpressed invocation. Sets the scene for Donne’s own lyrical revisionism creating his own cosmology placing himself and lover at centre.
Heliocentric universe (planets rotate around the sun)
John Carey - The Apparition
There’a no telling whether the poem’s scabrous, clever tone is adopted as a weapon to hurt her or as a shield to hide his own incoherent feelings
Richard Sugg
Poems often use an amorous playground where Donne can safely act of a Successful rebellion and revenge denied to him in his years of social insecurity and secret defiance.
In his fantasy world charm, looks, grace and cunning all triumph over a rigid, grey conformity.
