Twickenham Garden

Question 1

Overview:

Answer 1

Donne satirises the petrarchan trope when reflecting on the pain of unrequited love. The garden antagonizes the pain felt by the lover subverting the petrarchan tradition of nature being a healing force, rather mocking his condition.

Question 2

Context:

Answer 2

• Twickenham Park - famous garden home of Lucy Countess of Bedford.
• patroness of Donne’s poetry.
• Subverts the typical petrachan theme of unrequited love. Donne presents a speaker who finds the beauty of nature a mocking force as he feels he has been ill0treated by his lover.

Question 3

Biblical Allusions:

Answer 3

“garden” - could be referring to the garden of eden or Gethsemene - place before Jesus’ crucifixion.
- Alludes to a sense of self doubt

Question 4

“Blasted with sighs and surrounded with tears”

Answer 4

• Speakers agony conveyed in hyperbole terms.
• Semantic field of battle employed to show how the speaker is being attacked by his won suffering.
• “Blasted” - plosive B - surrounded by his pain.
• Speaker seeks solace in the garden from the wintery weather. “balms” - suggests he is seeking relief of the garden.

Question 5

“The spider love, which transubstantiates all”.

Answer 5

• comparison of love as a spider has negative connotations.
• Elizabethans believed that spiders turned everything that they ate into poison.
• Love for Donne has also been transformed into something with lethal potential.
• “transubstantiates” - Catholic concert of wine transforming into the body and blood of christ - reference to death.

Question 6

“true paradise I have serpent brought”

Answer 6

• Reference to temptation.
• Donne represents the poetic voice as transforming the paradise of Twickenham Garden into a place of temptation and mistrust as a result of his unrequited love.
• Sibilance mirrors the hiding of the serpent.

Question 7

“Love, let me some senseless piece of this place be”.

Answer 7

• Donne presents the poetic voice as wishing to avoid the disgrace of unrequited love as he appeals to love to allow him to remain part of the garden.
• Wants to remain close to the woman he loves.

Question 8

“make me mandrake”.

Answer 8

• Belief that a mandrake would scream when pulled from the ground.
• Shows the physical pain.

Question 9

“take my tears, which are loves wine”.

Answer 9

• Suggest that there is something nourishing and valuable in the product of pure love.
• Maybe a further represent of the Eucharist - symbol of his suffering.

Question 10

“O, reverse sex, where none is true but she, who’s therefore true, because her truth kills me.”

Answer 10

• Scornful attitude towards women - commentary on women’s constancy.
• Ironic stating that no lover is faithful except for his lover - the pain of the speaker derives from the fact that the women is loyal to her husband.

Question 11

Form:

Answer 11

• Structure with the set rhyme scheme - conveys an overall sense of regularity which may represent the perpetual grief of the poetic voice.