Transcript Donne’s Poetry ENGL 203 Dr. Fike Metaphysical Poetry • Harmon and Holman: – “psychological analysis of the emotions of love and religion” – “penchant for the.

Donne’s Poetry
ENGL 203
Dr. Fike
Metaphysical Poetry
• Harmon and Holman:
– “psychological analysis of the emotions of
love and religion”
– “penchant for the novel and the shocking”
– “use of the metaphysical conceit”
– “the extremes to which they [metaphysical
poets] sometimes carried their techniques”
Further Characteristics
• #1: Linkage of opposites: (wit [fancy,
inspiration, originality, imagination],
antithesis, paradox)
– Eliot quoting Jonson: “‘the most
heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence
together’”
– Coleridge’s point: far-fetched comparisons
(next slide)
Coleridge on Opposites
With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true love knots;
Rhyme’s sturdy cripple, fancy’s maze and clue,
Wit’s forge and fire-blast, meaning’s press and screw.
Example of Linkage of Opposites
• “Batter my heart” sonnet (#10)
• Questions:
– What comparisons is Donne making?
– What is the effect of the phrase “Three-person’d
God”?
– What paradoxes do you find in the poem?
– How do you read the final line?
– Form: What is the rhyme scheme here? Do you find
any exceptions to iambic pentameter?
Interpretation
• God as lamb vs. God as ram: a kind of violence
in Christian doctrine
• Seige: speaker’s heart is a gate
• Trinity: triple strength
– Father: break instead of knock
– Holy Spirit: blow instead of breathe
– Son (Sun): burn instead of shine
• Paradoxes:
– Wrestler must fall to rise.
– Speaker must be imprisoned to be free.
– Speaker must be ravished to be chaste.
Factoid
• This was Robert Oppenheimer’s favorite
poem.
• The first nuclear test was code named
“Trinity.”
• Break, blow, and burn: like a nuclear
weapon.
Further Characteristics
• #2: Often irregular meter or rhyme
scheme.
• #3: Different voices—a metaphysical
poem is a dramatic event (the poet,
though, is not the persona/speaker). “The
Flea” is a terrific example of unfolding
drama.
• #4: The poems are anti-Petrarchan:
interest in what was novel and shocking;
images drawn from everyday life (not
idealized life).
#2 Irregular Meter and Rhyme
When I do count the clock that tells the time
What guile is this, that these her golden tresses
She doth disguise under a net of gold.
I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov’d? were we not wean’d till then?
• Questions:
– Which lines are from Donne?
– How do you scan the lines?
Scansion
When I do count the clock that tells the time
--Shakespeare, Sonnet 12
What guile is this, that these her golden tresses
She doth disguise under a net of gold.
--Spenser, Amoretti
I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov’d? were we not wean’d till then?
--Donne, “The Good Morrow”
POINT: Smooth and regular metrics (musical-sounding)
vs. the likeness of a passionate conversation.
#4: Anti-Petrarchan
• Petrarchan:
– Woman as goddess figure
– Chaste love
– Elaborate description of ideal beauty
• Anti-Petrarchan:
– Consummated love
– Interest in the novel and the shocking
– Imagery drawn from everyday life
– Unconventional imagery
Further Characteristics
• #5: Metaphysical conceits: extended metaphors
• Eliot: “a device which is sometimes considered
characteristically ‘metaphysical’; the elaboration
(contrasted with the condensation) of a figure of speech
to the furthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it” (“The
Metaphysical Poets”)
• Harmon and Holman: “A highly ingenious kind of conceit
widely used by metaphysical poets, who explored all
areas of knowledge to find in the startlingly esoteric or
the shockingly commonplace telling and unusual
analogies for their ideas.”
Conceit
• Sometimes grotesque or absurd.
• Goal: To portray the world in a way that
we have not thought of before.
Best Example of a Conceit
• “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”
• What is the conceit here?
• How do you paraphrase stanzas 3-5?
– 3:
– 4:
– 5:
Paraphrase
• How do you paraphrase stanzas 3-5?
– 3: Natural disasters can kill you, but the
motions of the spheres will not hurt you.
– 4: Earthly love is compromised by the
absence of the body.
– 5: A higher love endures despite the absence
of earthly flesh—its lack of physical proximity.
Characteristics of Donne’s Poetry
• #1: He sees the world in small things, and
man is a microcosm
– “The Good Morrow”
– “The Sun Rising”
“The Good Morrow”
• 11: “And makes one little room, an every
where.”
• 17-18: “Where can we find two better
hemispheres / Without sharp north,
without declining west?”
– Hemisphere = a symbol of perfection
• POINT: Donne likes to see the world in
small things.
“The Good Morrow”
• The poem’s organization:
– Stanza 1: The past—lust vs. love, emphasis
on the flesh (“pleasures,” “beauty”)
– Stanza 2: The present—fear vs. trust,
emphasis on the mind (“waking souls”)
– Stanza 3: The future—inconstancy vs.
fidelity, emphasis on the spirit (“west”—death;
true love cannot die)
“looking babies”
• Seeing each other in the eyes = “looking
babies,” as the English called it in the 16th
and 17th centuries.
• Line 15: “My face in thine eye, thine in
mine appears”
The Four Humours
• Line 19: “Whatever dies, was not mixed
equally”:
– Blood (hot and moist)—cheerfulness, warmth
of feeling
– Choler (hot and dry)—a quick, angry temper
– Phlegm (cold and moist)—dull sluggishness
– Melancholy (cold and dry)—fretful depression
--Source: the glossary in your anthology
Another Example of Seeing the
World in Small Things
• “The Sun Rising”:
– Sun, leave us alone—let us love. Go mess
with others. Love is timeless.
– Our love could eclipse you, sun. The world
centers on our bed.
– We are all states and all princes. We are
greater and richer than them all. We are
central:
• “the world’s contracted thus”
• “This bed thy centre is”
Characteristics of Donne’s Poetry
• #2: Fascination with death.
• Best example: “Death be not proud”
– The inevitability of physical death
– Death depends on the stuff in line 9ff.: “fate,
chance, kings, and desperate men,” etc.
– But faith in the soul’s immortality
– Belief that souls sleep until the Last Judgment
– Then Death itself will die.
More on Fascination with Death
• Emphasis on the Last Judgment
• Example: Sonnet 4
– Octave: Judgment Day, the end of the world;
Donne imagines souls reanimating their
bodies.
– Sestet: Let the dead sleep awhile longer so
that the speaker, a sinner, will have time to
repent.
– Note how the Italian sonnet structure
reinforces the turn at line 9.
Characteristics of Donne’s Poetry
• #3: Sacred elements in secular love
poems (and the reverse).
• Physical and spiritual love are bound up
together.
Best example of #3: “The Relic”
• Contraries: It is a love poem, but the context
involves digging up the corpses of two lovers!
• The grave digger will leave their bodies alone
because he will assume that the lovers will be
reunited at the Resurrection. They might even
mess around a little in the grave.
• If they are dug up in a time of “false religious
practices,” as the note puts it, people may
mistake their bones for relics and use them to
perform miracles.
• Hey, these lovers were pretty miraculous in life
as well!
More on “The Relic”
• Blasphemy?
– “A something else” = Christ?
• A mixture of the sacred (relics) and the
secular (earthly love).
• A mixture of the solemn (graveyard) and
the playful.
The Point of Characteristic #3
• This is NOT the Platonic ladder of love that we discussed in
connection with Sidney. In Donne, the physical and the spiritual are
mingled.
• The blending of sacred and secular elements signals full
participation in the human condition.
• It is hard to separate the love poems from the religious ones:
– The love poems (“The Relic”) have sacred elements in them (relics,
miracles).
– And the religious poems (Sonnet 10) contain secular material (battle,
wrestling, rape).
• There is not hard-and-fast distinction between Jack the Rake and
Dr. Donne: this is a false dichotomy.
• Instead there is a dynamic tension between Donne’s worldliness
and his religious devotion.
Categories of Poems
• Idealistic: “The Good Morrow,” “The Sun
Rising,” “The Ecstasy,” “The Canonization”
• Cynical: “The Flea,” “Woman’s
Constancy,” “The Indifferent”
• Valedictory: “A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning,” “A Valediction: Of Weeping”
• Neither cynical nor idealistic: “The Relic,”
“The Undertaking,” “The Blossome”
Activity
• Let’s read “The Flea” one stanza at a time,
and you can comment on what you
discover there.
Another Example of #3
• “The Flea”:
– It was common in poetry to have a flea walk
the woman’s body and go where the lover
wants to go.
– See the note: “…Donne’s treatment, making
the flea a symbol of the desired union of his
and his mistress’s blood, is original.”
Points About “The Flea”
• Donne sees the world in small things:
something small (a flea) encompasses the
whole of their love. “This flea is you and I”
(line 12).
• Linkage of opposites: The flea is
associated with love and seduction.
Summary of “The Flea”
• Stanza 1: If the lovers’ blood is mingled in the flea, then
copulation, the speaker implies, is not such a big deal—
they are already joined in the flea. Look what the flea
has done and compare it with what you deny me! (Note
the visual pun: “s” looked like “f” in Donne’s day. The
word “suck,” then, becomes….)
• Stanza 2: Don’t harm the flea! Since it “is you and I,”
killing it is three sins in one: murder (pun: to die = to
have an orgasm), “self murder” (pun on masturbation),
and sacrilege.
• Stanza 3: Well, whadya know? You killed the flea, and
we didn’t die! Your fears were false! Therefore, there is
little risk in going to bed with me.
END