THE AUTUMNAL (THEMES) Flashcards
What are the main themes of the ‘Autumnal’?
- Celebration/encomium of mature beauty and love.
- Neo-platonic love.
- Transience and mortality.
- Critique of youthful passion.
How does Donne celebrate mature love and beauty?
- Donne celebrates the enduring qualities of mature beauty.
- Rejecting Renaissance idolisation of youth instead of cultivated grace and wisdom.
- Aliging with humanist emphasis on inner qualities over external apperances.
“That was her torrid and inflaming time, This is her tolerable tropic clime”
“You may at revels, you at council, sit”
How does Donne explore neo-platonic love?
- Donne elevates spiritual love
- Critiques conventional expressions and ideals surronding love (fleeting pleasures and youth)
- To suggest love exists beyond physical and material attachments
Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were/ They were Love’s graves, for else he is no where
How does Donne explore transience and mortality?
- The imagery of autumn inherently suggests a meditation on time, decay, and the inevitability of death.
- However, Donne presents this passage as natural and even desirable.
I hate extremes, yet I had rather stay
With tombs than cradles, to wear out a day.
How does Donne critique youthful fleeting passions?
- Represents it as impulsive and excessive.
- Likening it to an inflaming, feverish state.
“Young beauties force our love, and that’s a ra**
“That was her torrid and inflaming time, This is her tolerable tropic clime” (meaning/symbolism)
- The speaker is greatful that his beloved has shaken of the passions of youth.
- Tranforming into something moderate and mature. (juxaposition)
Torrid-hot and dry
“Were her first years the golden age? That’s true/ But now she’s gold oft tried and ever new.” (meaning/imagery)
- (Metaphor) alludes to the process of refining gold through fire.
- Implying her maturity has been tested by time and experience making it more valuable.
“Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were/ They were Love’s graves, for else he is no where” What is this conciet suggesting?
- if one insists calling her wrinkles ‘graves’ then these graves would be the resting place of Love or Cupid himself,
- thus associating her wrinkles with idealized, platonic spiritual love indicative of a passionate life.
graves= connotes disintegration
Anachorit meaning?
- A religious recluse.
Sojourn meaning?
- Travelling
‘Here dwells he; though he sojourn ev’rywhere’ meaning?
- although love ‘sojourns’ everywhere, his permeant place (temple) is in the ‘wrinkles’ of his beloved.
The enjambment reinforces the idea of love freely wondering and travelling
Seasinabliest meaning?
- Most appropate/ timely
“Xerxes’ strange Lydian love, the platan tree”- what does this conciet refer to?
- The myth of Xerxes
- who was a Persian ruler who fell in love with a plane tree which he reportedly adorned with gold and jewels.
- The speaker parallels Xerxes unusual love with his own admiration and devotion to this ‘autumnal beauty’.
The myth of Xerxes?
Refers to a Persian ruler who fell in love with a plane tree which he reportedly adorned with gold and jewels.
“This is Love’s timber, youth his underwood” (Meaning/imagery)
- Mature love= timber (strong, old tree used for building)
- Youthful love= underwood (small trees growing beneath timber)
one love is more favourable, developed
“which then comes seasonabliest when our taste and appetite to other things is past”. (meaning)
- Seasonabliest- referring to something arriving aliging with the natural rhythms of time.
- Thus, the speaker implies that mature love comes at the most ideal time. (especially when the ones ‘youthful’ appetite has fade allowing the development of a richer, mature emotional and intellectual pallet.
“But name not winter faces, whose skin’s slack/ Lank as an unthrift’s purse, but a soul’s sack”
- The speakers likens old skin that has loosened and wrinkled to a “slack” empty purse.
- Creating an image of someone who has wasted their resources, and not lead a meaningful life, leading to a lack of vitality.
