The AUTUMNAL "No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace"

Question 1

What is the ‘Autumnal’ about?

Answer 1

• The speaker celebrates mature beauty and love.
• Juxaposing youth as fleeting passion with the grace, wisdom and enduring depth of age.

Question 2

What is the form of the poem?

Answer 2

• Elegy in the Ovidian style (to explore love + subjective feelings)
• Encomium= a poem written in praise of a specific person.
• Heroic couplets in iambic pentameter (symmetry/balance)

Question 3

What are the 2 ways in which the poem can be read?

Answer 3

1. Paradoxical encomium: To amuse male readers.
2. Sincere encomium: Of a real woman.

Question 4

Desribe the structure of the poem?

Answer 4

• 50 lines: Specific age reference?
• End-stopped + enjambed lines.

Question 5

What is the main conceit of the poem?

Answer 5

• Comparison between a woman’s mature beauty and autumn.

Question 6

What does autumn represent in this poem?

Answer 6

• A time of ripeness in nature
• Thus- maturity, balance, enduring grace, evolution.

Question 7

What is the context of the poem?

Answer 7

• (Potentially) written for Magdalen Herbet, the mother of Donne’s friend. (who was around 40 when Donne met her)

Question 8

What is platonic love?

Answer 8

• Non-physical, idealised love.
• (Transcending material and physical attachments)