everything to know about Donne

the good morrow

• where can we find two better hemispheres - conceit = they are more perfect than the world

• makes one room a little everywhere = microcosm - love is more overpowering than anything

• whatever dies, was not mixed equally - soulmates

go and catch a falling star

• go, get, tell, teach - imperatives, show confidence, arrogance, yet also panic and desperation

• “strange sights, things invisible to see” - paradox, conveys the impossibility of the situation

• supernatural imagery - “mandrake, devil, mermaids” - legendary nature of woman’s fidelity, mythical

the sun rising

“this bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere” - microcosm = they are all that matters

“kings, Princes” - royal, divine imagery = blasphemous, emphasises importance

“busy old fool, unruly sun” - personification, poem addressed, blasphemous

structure - stanza begins with simple ideals yet elevates them to grand themes.

the canonisation

“were tapers too, and at our own cost die” - metaphor, their own passion will be their demise

imperatives “child, hold, take, observe” - addressing listener, to do anything else other than stop him from loving

rhetorical questions with religious imagery “what merchants ships have my sighs drowned?” “who says my tears have overflowed his ground?”

sweetest love I do not go

“he hath no desire nor sense” - personification, he had more desire and reason to return than the sun

“more wings and spurs than he” - metaphysical, sense of importance

“unkindly king” - oxymoron = her love is paining him

“but turn’d aside to sleep” - imagery = not actually separated at heart

air and angels

personification of love - questions its nature

flipped Italian sonnet = difficult to grasp concept of love

“fixed itself in thy lip, eye and brow” - personification = appears in woman

the anniversary

“is elder by a year” - personifies grand concepts, likens them to human ageing

regular rhythm = unchanging love

“souls where nothing dwells but love” = intangible concepts = no corruption, love lives on in souls, it is above fear

twicknam garden

spider love - conceit = trapped in love, spiders kill their partners

naturalistic imagery = “serpent”, “shadow” = deception. also religious imagery

repetition of tears = he is the only one that is truthful with his love

loves exchange

addressing love - “love any devil else but you” - personification = exploration of loves nature.

“can call vow’d men from cloisters, dead from tombs” - irresistible love, hyperbolic language.

Give the art of rhyming - people gaining things, places emphasis on the idea he has got nothing from love

a valedictorian of weeping

“thy tears mix’d with mine do overflow this world” - metaphor - united in love yet divided by grief

Pregnant with thee - spawns of her own being

loves alchemy

“but get a winter-seeming summer’s night” - glorified nature of love

“they are but mummy possessed” - deathly imagery, once they are enjoyed, they are dead flesh with no mind or soul

“bridegrooms play”, “marry, but the minds” - physical vs spiritual

the flea

conceit - the comparison between a flea sucking blood and sex

religious imagery “self-slaughter, sin, sacrilege” = playing on ideals originating from the catholic church

a nocturnal upon st Lucy’s day, being the shortest day

• composed at night on the shortest day

• “I am every dead thing in whom love wrought new alchemy” - personification of love - love turned him into this, villainises love

• grave, drown’d, carcasses - imagery of death.

the apparition

• “by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead” - hyperbole

• “feign’d vestal”, “sick taper” - insulting t

a valedictorian forbidden mourning

• prohibits greif about saying farewell

• “moving of the earth” “trepidation of spheres” = metaphysical conceits - earth through space= unnoticed = quieter love

• “let us melt and make no noise” - peaceful, quiet parting

• “two souls therefore, which are one” = paradoxical illusion of marriage

• “like gold to airy thinness beat” = gold expands, makes relationship more valued

the eecstasy

“did thread our eyes upon one double string” - metaphor for 2 becoming 1, marriage

“all several souls contain mixture of things” - love makes 2 souls 1

“but allay on man heaven’s influence works not so” - mixed metal works better

“yet the body is his book” - personifies love, the body informs our understanding of love

love’s deity

“that he, whom then lov’d most, sunk so love - past age love = purer, better, more reciprocal. personifies love

“falsehood is worse than hate” - dishonesty would be worse than unrequited love

end of each stanza mirroring the others = the philosophy of love

the funeral

“wreath”, “crown”, “viceroy” - royal imagery

“this should know my pain, as prisoners then are manacled”

‘since I am love’s martyr” - hyperbolic

“since you would have non of me, I bury some of you” - buried with eternal pain

the blossom

flower = analogy for relationship with woman, something hopeful being cut of in prime “see what every hour gave to thy grow”

“in a forbidden or forbidding tree” - metaphor for woman

“must with the sun and me a journey take” - metaphor = taking heart away from woman

“is to a woman but a ghost” - physicality in love, women want more

the relic

nature of spiritual love - passing judgement on superstition

“will bring up the bishop and the king to make us relics” - making fun of, not longing for

“than our guardian angels do

the dissolution

“fire, air, water, earthy” - elemental imagery to personify emotions, elements intensify in the wake of his lover’s death

“my use increased so my soul released” - soul has developed resilience in heaven due to her death

"as bullets flown before a letter bullet” - due to her death, he has had to become more, simile

farewell to love

“gave worship, as atheists at their dying hour” - irony, fear of afterlife makes them believe

“his highness sitting in a golden chair is not less cared for after 3 days” - imagery of power - held in high esteem, fickle nature of desire like child with a toy

“as well as cocks and lions” - animalistic nature of physical love, complexity of human love in contrast

“as men do when the summers sun grows great, each place can afford shadows” - naturalistic imagery, simile, women can be harmful, relief from pain

elegy: change

“women are like the arts, forced unto none, open to all searchers” - simile, the value in women lies in their accessibility to everyone, objectification.

“another fouler using these means as I may catch the same bird” - metaphor, women is open to any man with the skill to catch her

“the sea receives the rhene, Volga and po” - women for all men (sea = wild and uncontrolled)

“waters stink soon, if in one place they bide” - restricted love stagnates.

elegy: his picture

elegy: the comparison

contrasting hyperbole - emphasises perfection of mistress and disgust at the other mans

“no sweat drops, but pearl carnets” - royalty, riches,

“round as the world her heads, on every side” - divine connotations, perfection of mistress

“she and comparison are odious” - surprise, humorous ending

elegy: the autumnal

“gold oft tried and ever new” - with time has been made better and more valuable

“tolerable, tropic clime” - love = more tranquil

“if graves they were, they were loves graves” - challenges negative connotations, wrinkles and age = residence of love. love = personified as a devoted and constant companion over time

“love’s timber, youths his underwood” - metaphor. solidity and lasting nature of love

“for these not ancient but antique be” - preference for the middle ground due to realities of ageing

elegy: to his mistess going to bed

“off with the girdle, like heaven’s zones glistening but a far fairer world encompassing ” - metaphysical, microcosm - clothes are restricting

“O my America, my new found-land” - her body = microcosm. America known as the virgin land.

“all women thus array’d are mystic books, which only we must see revealed” - material, educated man = objectifying

Holy sonnet iii (oh might those sighs and tears)

“might return again” - meaning & purpose in sorrowful feelings

“holy discontent” - spiritual crisis

“what griefs my heart did rent” - metaphor - wasted greif, temporary nature

“cause I did suffer, I must suffer pain” - punished for suffering the wrong things

Holy sonner v (i am a little world)

“I am a little world made cunningly” - microcosm

“my worlds both parts, both parts must die” -

holy sonnet VI (this is my plays last scene)

• finality metaphors - obsession over fate

• “gluttonous death” - personification, greedily taking life

• “for I leave the world, the flesh, the devil” - clean, sinless state

• personification of sins - emphasises burdens

holy sonnet IX (if poisonous minerals)

• religious imagery - “fruit, serpent” - elements of christianity where the blame for sin originated

• “make a heavenly lethean flood and drown in it my sins black memory” - mythical imagery - forget lives, cleanse him of sins and need to question god

• structural, chastises himself for questioning at the start, represents state of mind.

Holy sonnet X (death be not proud)

“death be not proud” - personified as arrogant - adresses death to humble him.

peaceful imagery - “rest”, “sleep”, “delivery” - the best men deserve death to be removed from lowly world

“slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men” - cannot act alone, commanded by earthly and spiritual things.

“poison”, “war”, “sickness” - grotesque imagery = lowly companions, lack of respect

“death, thou shalt die” - will end itself when we are all awake in eternity

holy sonnet XI (spit in my face you jews)

imperatives - compares himself to Jesus, deserves punishment more than him

“I crucify him daily” - spiritually kill Jesus through sins

“kings pardon, but he bore our punishment” - incomparable

Holy sonnet XIII (what if this present)

“adjudge thee onto hell” - fear of death and judgement

imagery of death - “last night”, “soul”,

addressing soul - spiritual understanding of Jesus who’s “beauteous form assures a piteous mind” - reassures himself he will be forgiven

Holy sonnet XIV (batter my heart)

religious allusions - “make me new'“, - atonement and suffering of sins

imperatives - commanding God - desperation, blasphemy

“reason, your viceroy in me should defend” - reason is not enough, he needs empirical evidence

“betroth’d unto your enemy” - eternal connection

passionate language that conflicts with religious ideals - God = above rules

holy sonnet XVII (since she, whom I loved)

“so streams do show the head” - metaphor of rivers forming into one that meets the sea - love of her prepared his mind for God

"hath paid he last debt” - only after his wife is gone can he fully invest himself in God

blasphemous, doubting God - “a holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet” - metaphor for doubt

Holy sonnet XIX (O, to vex me)

“fantastique ague” - unthinkable fever

toying with contrasting ideas “best days, when I shake with fear”

“cold and hot” juxtaposed ideas

Good Friday 1613 riding westward

carried towards the west when my souls forme bends towards the east - soul is inclining to god in the holy land, he is being taken to the sunset

natural imagery - cowering “nature shrinks”, “Sunne winke”, “footstoole crack” - the weight of Jesus’ death

“burn off my rusts, and my deformity” - soul = corrupted and evil in the eyes of God

hymn to god the father in my sickness

metaphor - “I shall be made thy music, tun thy instruments at the door” - be what god wants him to be in heaven

metaphor of west as death “what shall my west hurt me” - death can’t hurt me.

metaphor of east as holy land “as west and east in all flat maps are one” - discovery and exploration imagery, death leads to rebirth In heaven

death as physical journey “all straights and none but straights are ways to them”

a hymn to god the father

world of sin before him, he lives his life in this and is unable to escape humanities shortcomings

made my sin their door - forced sins onto others

but wallow’d in a score - metaphor = enjoyed sin

“when I have spun my last thread I shall perish on the shore” - afraid of death before forgiveness

“thy son shall shine as he shine as he shines now” - Jesus as a symbol of forgiveness

Eliot

Combination of passion and wit

Lewis

The poetry of Donne lacks any genuine feeling

Brooks

shocking concentration of meaning and feeling in his metaphysical conceits

Eason

The metaphysical is donnes way of considering his more passionate human experiences

Pound

Donnes relevance stems from his wrestle with abstract ideas

Brooks

Dramatises contradictions in love and religion

Feminist critic (mambrol)

His attitudes to women shift so quickly, it is difficult to say exactly what Donne himself thought

Lewis

There are puzzles in his work

Bell

A wit willing to say anything for a poem

Great chain of being

Hierarchal society, with god being on top, the king, men, women, animals

Divine right of kings

To insult the king was akin to blasphemy, and would be punished as such - king James

Catholicism

Born catholic, in a time of persecution and religious turmoil, when renounced Catholicism, was ordained on the COFE, becoming a Dane

Courtly love

Men = refined, gentle, emotionally torn, chasing and yearning

Christian paradox

Only gain life by loosing it

Alchemy, science, astronomy

Shift towards search for knowledge about the world with scientific endeavours. Opposing the notion of god and the divine master

Greek mythology

Would have learnt Greek and Roman culture, mythological imagery reflects his background

Age of drama

Renaissance period full of drama e.g., Shakespeare. Arrested opening, dramatic monologues and issues reflect this

Petrarchan love poetry conventions

• mistress chaste

• Male lover constant in devotion, dying from love

• Done challenge = promiscuity in women

• Donne challenge = idolises mutual love and becoming a whole

Feminist ( Petrarchan )

The real women in the poems are a healthy contrast to those of Petrarchan