Summaries Flashcards
(39 cards)
The Sun Rising:
Donne challenges the authority of time and the external world, portraying romantic love as self-contained and superior to the sun’s cosmic power. Through hyperbole and wit, the speaker repositions the lovers’ bedroom as the true center of the universe, elevating private passion above public duty.
The Flea:
Using a witty conceit, the speaker argues that since a flea has mingled their blood, the act of physical union is already symbolically complete. The poem playfully undermines moral and religious objections to premarital sex, showcasing Donne’s persuasive and irreverent style.
Elegy: To His Mistress going to Bed
This overtly erotic poem blends sensuality with metaphysical wit, as the speaker urges his mistress to disrobe, likening her body to uncharted territory ripe for exploration. It critiques societal modesty while elevating erotic love through playful, imperial imagery.
The Good Morrow
A celebration of mature, awakened love that dismisses past trivial passions. Donne presents lovers as soulmates discovering a new, complete world within each other, a central theme of metaphysical intimacy.
Song: Go Catch a Falling Star
Through fantastical imagery and irony, the speaker expresses skepticism about the possibility of finding a faithful woman. The poem juxtaposes romantic idealism with bitter cynicism, typical of Donne’s complex views on love.
The Canonisation
A defiant declaration of love’s sanctity in the face of social judgment. Donne’s lovers are immortalised not through death but through poetry, suggesting that love can transcend mortality and achieve spiritual elevation.
Song: Sweetest Love, I do not Go
Combining tenderness with philosophical reflection, this poem assures a lover that departure is not abandonment. Donne reflects on mortality, time, and emotional resilience in the face of inevitable separation.
Air and Angels
Donne explores the ethereal nature of love through angelic imagery, suggesting that love must take form, like angels taking on bodies, to be fully understood. It’s a meditation on the tension between ideal and physical beauty.
The Anniversary
A celebration of enduring love, this poem suggests that while time erodes physical things, true love is eternal. Donne uses anniversary imagery to contemplate constancy and spiritual companionship beyond earthly decay.
Twickenham Garden
Set in a place of beauty turned bleak, the speaker laments unrequited love and becomes a self-conscious martyr to his own sorrow. The garden becomes a metaphor for emotional sterility caused by betrayal and grief.
Love’s Exchange
This poem depicts love as a harsh marketplace of emotional transactions, with lovers suffering in a cycle of cruelty and sacrifice. Donne critiques both divine and earthly love for their capriciousness and imbalance.
Love’s Alchemy
A disillusioned critique of idealised love, where romantic pursuit is likened to the fruitless science of alchemy. Donne’s speaker is bitterly aware of the gap between love’s promise and its physical reality.
A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy’s Day
A haunting meditation on death, loss, and spiritual desolation, set on the darkest day of the year. The speaker experiences emotional annihilation, seeking to transcend love by becoming a ‘nothing’ and contemplating cosmic voids.
The Apparition
A bitter, vengeful speaker imagines haunting his indifferent lover after death. Blending gothic imagery with psychological intensity, the poem plays with fear, guilt, and ghostly revenge to express emotional torment.
Valediction Forbidding Mourning
One of Donne’s most famous poems of parting, it offers a metaphysical consolation that true love remains undisturbed by physical distance. The compass conceit symbolises emotional constancy and refined spiritual connection.
Love’s Deity
The speaker accuses the god of love of injustice, longing to love freely without being loved in return. This poem reveals tensions between desire and autonomy, invoking classical imagery to critique divine interfere
The Funeral
The speaker ironically imagines a lock of his lover’s hair buried with him as a relic or charm. The poem flirts with ideas of martyrdom, objectification, and the preservation of emotional power beyond death.
The Blossom
A conflicted expression of desire and self-loathing, in which the speaker addresses his own heart and mocks its emotional vulnerability. The poem wrestles with unfulfilled longing and emotional instability.
The Dissolution
Using physical and chemical imagery, this poem mourns a lover’s death and imagines the speaker’s soul melting away in grief. Donne blends spiritual longing with scientific metaphors to convey loss and union.
Farewell to Love
A deeply cynical rejection of love and its false promises, contrasting youthful romantic pursuits with the speaker’s aged disillusionment. Love is portrayed as deceptive and destructive, leading to emotional weariness
Elegy: To His Picture
The speaker sends an image of himself to his absent lover, using the act of representation as a metaphor for presence in absence. Donne explores themes of constancy, memory, and the power of art to preserve love.
Elegy: The Comparison
A brutally satirical comparison between two women, one beautiful and one grotesque. The poem exposes the speaker’s misogyny and objectification, revealing the darker, judgmental side of Donne’s erotic poetry.
Elegy: The Autumnal
Donne praises an older woman, arguing that maturity enhances her spiritual and sensual appeal. This poem inverts conventional ideas of feminine beauty and age, celebrating wisdom and depth over youthful charm.
Holy Sonnet II: ‘O Might Those Sighs and Tears’
The speaker laments his sinfulness and longs for divine grace. Donne reflects on the internal struggle between repentance and spiritual despair, revealing the raw vulnerability of the penitent soul.
