Metaphysical Poems Flashcards
(15 cards)
The Flea - John Donne Summary…
The speaker wants to have sex with his mistress but she won’t.
He says that due to the flea sucked his blood then her blood, their blood is already mingled inside the flea.
So they might as well have sex.
She wants to kill the flea, but he won’t let her because the flea represents 3 meanings; his life, her life, the fleas life. The flea is their marriage bed and marriage temple mixed in one.
The mistress kills the flea, which the speaker asks what the flea’s sin was and finalises that if she were to sleep with him then she would lose no more honour than she lost when she killed the flea.
What is the structure of The Flea?
- The stress pattern in each of the 9-line stanzas is 454545455
- The rhyme scheme in each stanza is similarly regular - in couplets with the final line rhyming with the final couplet AABBCCDDD.
What themes are in the flea?
- Sex and marriage > poem of seduction, the speaker using an unusual approach to get his lady to bed. Virginity is unimportant. In doing so he pushes against the values of his society
- Sex and The Church > poem about illicit sex, it challenges social norms and sexuality and refers to Christianity.
- Religious imagery
- seduction and persuasion
- societal constraints on female sexuality
The Good Morrow - John Donne Summary…
- Before they were in love they were like children or the other lovers were like children.
- Everything was simplistic before they were in love
- Relationships before were childish, lacking in maturity, just bodily pleasures (sex)
- Had lots of sex before but it was all a dream of you.
- Two lovers are like the two sides of the globe which have been linked together (conceit)
- last line represents unity which shows their eternal love
What is the structure of The Good Morrow?
- Rhyme scheme is quatrain and then a triplet (ABABCCC)
- Uniform structure (3 stanzas, 7 lines) - symbolises the unity shown in the poem.
- Enjambment
- Second stanza starts with a coordinating junction
Important aspects of The Good Morrow?
- Personal pronouns (‘I’, ‘my’ ‘we’)
- Sibilance (‘seven sleepers’)
- Symantic field of childhood innocence (‘weaned’, ‘childishly’, ‘sucked’, ‘snorted’)
- Sexual connotations (‘sucked on country pleasures’)
- Pleasure as a shadow of true love
- Anti-petrarchan
- Repitition (‘one’, ‘one’, ‘one’)
What is the conceit of the Good Morrow?
Between discovery and love.
True love is an act of discovery.
Link to the exploration of the new world in metaphysical poets time.
Lovers are like a whole world - two sides of the globe linked together.
What is anti-petrarchan?
- Elizabethan period, the period before the 1700s poets
- Love was all about the hunt/pursuit
- The pleasures from love weren’t explored but instead the frustration from someone who was in unrequited love.
- True love of wanting and not getting
- First stanza of a good Morrow explores this.
Themes in The Good Morrow?
- Love and relationships
- Exploration and Discovery
- Spirituality
- Innocence vs. Knowledge
- Unity
What poems can be compared to The Good Morrow?
The Sun Rising:
- Love
- Exploration
The Flea:
- Unity
What are the ‘Seven Sleepers’ (The Good Morrow)?
- Waking up to a new found Christianity
- waking up to a better life > God
- The Good Morrow > comparing the love for his mistress to the greatest love for God.
What is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (The Good Morrow)?
- Shadows of reality, once out of the Cave, sees ‘actual’ reality and realised that he was imagining and that his past ‘reality’ was fake.
- In The Good Morrow > what was before he was fake but with her is the reality.
Song - John Donne Summary…
- a man (the speaker) outlines a number of outlandish and impossible tasks.
- if the listener was born with the power to see mysterious and powerful things they should go on an impossibly long quest until he becomes an old man. On this quest, he’ll never see a women who is both faithful and beautiful.
- If the listener manages to find a beautiful and faithful women then he should tell the speaker about it. However, even if she were faithful when the speaker met her, by the time the listener got to her she’d have become a cheater.
What is the significance of the mandrake root in Song?
- Root of a mandrake plant where often given human properties
- They were said to scream when dug up
- Associated with witchcraft and were said to grow under hanged men.
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