Air and Angels

Question 1

Poem Overview:

Answer 1

• Donne explores the connections between spiritual and physical love.
• The speaker though the poem ponders on what form love should take.
• Initially thinks that it should take the form of his beloved - ship conceit later dispels the idea.
• The speaker then decides that love deserves something more ethereal - uses the comparison of Angels apparel to love taking on a physical form.
• Eventually the speaker resolves that the speakers love will embody the angel and his lover will be the air that gave him his apparel.

Question 2

20 Marker 2 points:

Answer 2

• Speaker searching for the perfect vessel for love.
  ( consider the quote about the shapeless flame and the boat image).
• Then consider the overall conceit of the Angels - Donne’s presentation of a level an equality within love.

Question 3

Form:

Answer 3

• Made up of two somewhat inverted sonnets.
• Complexity of the strict reflects the complexity of the speakers sonnets.
• Two sonnets also imply some sort of equality in their love.

Question 4

” I bid Love ask”.

Answer 4

• Apostrophises to love by capitalising it.
• metaphysical conceit - like the soul, which is its source, love should also take on a physical element.

Question 5

“whilst thus to ballast love I thought”.

Answer 5

• Love would be made steady or more permanent by taking on a physical dimension.
• ballast being used to stabilise a ship.
• the fact that it has been ‘overfraught’ - sunken - dispels this idea.

Question 6

“Then as an angle. face and wings/ of air not pass as it yet pure, doth wear”.

Answer 6

• Reference to the Christian belief that angels adopt their physical forms through air.
• The conceit may be read as suggesting a disparity between air and angels making the implication that women’s love is inherently inferior to mens.
• It also suggests that there is a mutual dependency - men’s love unable to exist without the women’s.

Question 7

“So thy may be my loves sphere”.

Answer 7

• Her love is like a hollow sphere - a vessel for him to occupy/
• Potential reference to the medieval belief that concentric spheres, which supposedly helps the stars had a governing angel of its own.

Question 8

Context:

Answer 8

• Renaissance idea that angels are pure of thought and appear by taking on bodies that are made up of air.