LOVE'S GROWTH (STRUCTURE/ FORM/CONTEXT)

Question 1

What is LOVE’S GROWTH about?

Answer 1

• Explores the idea that love, like nature, is subject to change rather than being static and pure. The speaker concludes that love’s mutability does not weaken it but enriches it.

Question 2

What is the form of love’s growth?

Answer 2

• Non-traditional form
• (rejects strict structures= rejects idealised Petrarchan love poety)

Question 3

How is Love’s Growth structured?

Answer 3

• 2 stanzas
• Exploring a different aspect of love’s development.

Question 4

What meter is the poem in?

Answer 4

• iambic tetrameter (steady, rhythmic flow)
• Mirrors loves natural growth and cylical nature of love.

Question 5

What rhyme scheme foes the poem follow?

Answer 5

• Traditional ABAB rhyme scheme
• (Balance and order)
• Subtle variations- love’s evolution.

Question 6

How does Donne use conceits (extended metaphors) in the poem?

Answer 6

• Compares love to seasons, medicine, taxation and celestial spheres.
• Emphasises that love is constantly evolving/changing.

Question 7

Context- Donne’s corpus.

Answer 7

• Donne’s poetry can be divided into 2 main phases
  1) Early secular love poetry (Love’s Growth belongs to this period )
  2) Late religious poetry (after he became an Angelican cleric)

Question 8

Context- Scientific and philopshical influences?

Answer 8

• Donne situates love in the sublunary world (human world)
• Sublunary world= Aristotelian cosmology- subject to decay and change,

Question 9

Context- Rejection of petrarchan ideals?

Answer 9

• Rejection of the view that love is Holy, Pure and Atemporal.