'Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day,
Shall we for this v
ain bubble's shadow pay?'
Love's Alchemy

title
/
donne.gif

AGREG 2002-03 NOMINEE

JOHN DONNE
initiator of the metaphysical poetry

tball

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt
at
self-understanding : it is the deepest
part of autobiography
.
- Robert Penn Warren,
(1905-1989)

MAIL > S'ils voulaient vraiment être s.lauds
comme l'an dernier avec Crime, nous servir Donne en
2003 conduirait à une nouvelle "hécatombe annoncée".
Pas mal de candidats ont choisi de travailler très
superficiellement le poète mystique par manque
de temps, on l'a un peu mis sur la touche un peu partout...
But beware, "l'impasse ne paye pas!" - candidate.

911, or Lord of the Rings premonition ?
"With new diseases on ourselves we war,
And with new physic, a worse engine far"
(The anatomy of the world", l.159-160).

"As though heaven suffered earthquakes, peace or war, When new towers rise, and old demolished are ."(ibid., l. 261-262).

Metaphysical poetry,
in the full sense of the term,
is a poetry which has been inspired by a
philosophical conception of the universe and
the role assigned to the human spirit in
the great drama of existence.ÿ
Herbert J.C. Grierson.


ESSAY on Donne for the 2002 agreg externe : "Exaltation de la poésie et Poésie de l'exaltation " - a splendid chiasmus... ! F.L.

Agreg interne 2003 PROGRAMME OFFICIEL - extrait:

2. John Donne. Choix de poèmes dans "The Complete English Poems" (1633), Penguin Classics, þd. A. J. Smith (1996) :

Songs and Sonnets (pp.41-92) ;
Elegies :
Elegy 5 "His Picture", pp. 100-101,
Elegy 9 "The Autumnal", pp.105-106,
Elegy 16 "On His Mistress", pp.118-119,
Elegy 19 "To his Mistress Going to Bed", pp.124-126 ;
Satires :
Satire 3 ("Kind pity chokes my spleen") pp.161-164 ;
The Progress of the Soul (Metempsychosis), pp. 176-193 ;
The Anniversaries :
"An Anatomy of the World : The First Anniversary", pp.269-285
Divine Poems :
"Divine Meditations", pp. 309-317, "A Litany", pp. 317-325,
"A Hymn to Christ, at the Author's last going into Germany", pp.346-347,
"A Hymn to God my God, in my Sickness", pp.347-348
"A Hymn to God The Father", pp.348-349.


> Pour ceux qu'effraie ce poète venu d'ailleurs, lire en premier ses poèmes d'amour (Elegies), abordables, voire même agréables, voire même...! - Christine Minetto.

"calculated to perplex the minds of the fair sex with the nice speculations of philosophy" (Dryden)
.

Love and Sex in Donne


Donne to Dryden

Bibliomania's Historical Background (important Themes in Government and Politics - 1603-88, in Religion - 1603-88, England and the World - 1603-88).


DONNE Sites
:


Atlanta's Balls by Donnextatic admirer Darren Rigby.

Global-language.com

Longman - biography, critical overview, bibliography and links.

Poetry scanned in from 1601 edition:

Metempsychosis

from 1631 edition:

Songs and Sonnets

Elegies

Epigrams

Epithalamia

Latin poems

from the 1624 edition:

Devotions

Encyclopedia Britannica article on Metaphysical Poetry.

A brief biographical sketch of Donne, full text of many a poems.

Metaphysical poetry .org


Luminarium : Donne lu avec des accents diffþrents...

Essays/Donne

http://www2.wku.edu/~vanzekm/frames.htm

Bibliography

  • > Janv. 002 - le Donne du cned avec Colin (fini Didier Erudit...) vient de paraître la couverture est maintenant bleue et rouge, il vaut autour de 15 euros. L'auteur, H. Suhamy, habituellement le spécialiste shakespearien. Fait le point sur les thèmes principaux, le style et la prosodie...

  • Clair et 'basic', m'a t il semblé, mais la signature Suhamyenne en soit est en soi une garantie de sérieux... FB.
  • Carey, John. John Donne: Life, mind and Art. London Faber, 1981 (recommandþ).

  • Recueils d'articles critiques: Gardner, Helen, John Donne: A selection of critical essays. Englewood Cliffs, Spectrum, 1962,1986.

  • Lovelock, Julian, Donne: Songs and Sonnets. London, Macmillan, 1973.

  • Partridge, A.C. John Donne: Language and Style. London: Deutsch, 1978.

Metaphysical Poetry

The Collected Poems - Study Guide

Characteristics of Metaphysical Poetry.
Metaphysical poetry, in the full sense of the term, as
Grierson writes, is a poetry which has been inspired by a philosophical conception of the universe and the role assigned to the human spirit in the great drama of existence.

Grierson's introduction to Metaphysical poetry
in Herbert J.C. Grierson, ed. (1886É1960),
Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the 17th C.  

Read Donne online with notes
Metaphysical and Cavalier Poets, contrasts, style...

'Both rebeled against pictorial fluidity, decorative
rhetorical patterns, and half-medieval idealism...'

The Poetry Archives
- the Donne page, 35 odd poems of his online.
There is supposed to be discussion and interpretation apparently, but that hasn't been done yet, if ever...


Historical context
: important issues for the Renaissance.

Metaphysical Poetry: Definition
Neo-Platonism and Platonic love, History.

Donne and Herbert
analysis and discussion of Metaphysical poetry.

In depth metaphysical Poetry
A standard device of Metaphysical poetry -

a paradoxical conceit

worked out so that it makes sense in some unexpected way...

T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
evokes the metaphysical poetry of John Donne.
Makings of Literature in English: The Sonnet Tradition

Donne Sonnets
extrait : Examine the stresses in the following line from "Oh my black Soule! now thou art summoned", a poem in iambic pentameter by John Donne

'Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke'

This clearly illustrates the way the stresses alternate on the line... Donne had a clear purpose every time he broke the rules of strict sonnet form...
"The distinguished mark of Metaphysical poetry, as initiated by Donne, was its
use of imagery not obviously connected with the immediate subject of the poem ; this imagery might be drawn from any sphere of interest, familiar and domestic on the one hand, remote and scientific on the other." -James Reeves, A short history of English poetry.

your suggestions

.

MOTS-BALISE en vrac

mundane love/eroticism, divine love/devotion, dislocation, death, puns,body/soul-core-self, metaphysical, poetic innovation, microcosm / macrocosm, permanence / change
love, death, woman, religion, Eros/Thanatos, holy/profane, soul/body,metaphysics paradox, metaphor, pouvoir/rapport de forces; pouvoir poétique, evocation, suggestion,
paradox, conceit, wit...

1. 'La poésie de la présence'
2. Self-consciousness
3. Wit and passion
4. Body and soul
5. Time in Donne's poetic experience
6. The dramatic element
7. Donne's irony
8. Cynicism and beauty
9. 'The anguish of the marrow' (T.S Eliot) in Donne's poetry
10. Donne as a devotional poet
11. Ambiguity (traitþ cned)

COPI(N)ES D'AGREG...

DISSERTATION D'AGR'EXT 02

"Poésie de l'exaltation et exaltation de la poésie
dans The Complete English Poems de John Donne
"

J'ai eu 7/20 avec mon plan plutôt sans grande originalité - que voici :

Exaltation :

dépassement des limites, élévation, aller au-delà du commun


1 - exaltation de quoi ?

- du genre (exaltation du Pétrarquisme dont on prend les bases et dont on repousse les limites) (ex. de Shakespeare, My Mistresses eyes ...) avec une vague référence à la métrique = exaltation de la poésie

- des images et des thèmes du Pétrarquisme : reprise des thèmes et exaltation, re-définition du Cosmos comme étant centré sur les amants - les thèmes et termes de la religion et de l'amour s'interchangent et se confondent = poésie de l'exaltation

2 - Exaltation : comment ?

- dans le lexique : vocab religieux pour l'amour physique, amoureux pour la ferveur religieuse - images cosmiques, de totalisation (la sphúre, les amant forment un tout) = poþsie de l'exaltation

- dans les conceits et paradoxes : étude d'un conceit (le compas), d'un paradoxe (Death be not Proud) pour montrer que c'est une exaltation des formes poétiques utilisées jusqu'è lors = exaltation de la poésie

3 - Exaltation : pour quoi ?

- Pour aller au-delà du commun de la poésie (Pétrarquisme), et de l'univers qui l'entoure : il prend les éléments de son commun et les exalte par et dans sa poésie - exaltation de l'amour qu'il rend hors du commun

- Pour aller au-delà de la mort : cherche à transcender la mort par l'amour (les bracelets de cheveux autour des poignets- Book of Rev.) et par la religion (Métempsychose) - remise en cause de la mort

- Pour finalement se rapprocher de Dieu : les "métaphysiques" sont à la recherche de l'origine des choses, dans ce cas de Dieu, cherche la rédemption

Georgina, agrégée (ext. 02), Nouvelle Calédonie

DISSERTE EN FAC

Amiens : Private and public worlds in John Donne's poetry.


.

'A poem begins with a lump in the throat.'
- Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)

HUMEURS : APPROCHE...

> Légèrement allergique

à la poésie en général, je me suis dit en abordant Donne qu'il fallait que je m'y prenne bien sinon il n'y aurait aucune manière pour moi de travailler dessus pendant un an.

Je me suis procuré les cassettes enregistrées 'Selected Poems' de Penguin Audiobooks (ISBN : 0-14-086568-3) qui m'ont coüté 12 euros.

Franchement, je ne les regrette pas ces euros. J'ai écouté ces K7 dans le bus, le métro, on se familiarise avec la musique et les thèmes des poèmes avec une facilité surprenante.

Certains poèmes sur la cassette sont hors-programme, tous n'y figurent pas, mais c'est déjà bien.

Et honnêtement, on découvre à l'écoute que ces poèmes sont remplis d'humour, parfois assez cochon d'ailleurs (le mari d'une amie avait été soudain très intéressé par son programme d'agreg!)

> Mes poèmes préférés de Donne sont :

To His Mistress Going to Bed : me fait rire par son ton osé, et pour la métaphore géographique

A Flea : pour l'humour, comment un homme cherche à convaincre une femme par tous les moyens logiques à sa disposition de venir dans son lit, et pour l'exemple de conceit qu'on y trouve.

The Sun Rising : un poème d'amour superbe : on s'en rend compte à l'écoute de la cassette. Comment le poète réussit à restreindre l'univers à la sphère de leur lit, création d'un nouvel ordre universel avec les amants au centre. Drôle, et un exemple bien utile de détournement/renversement du Pétrarquisme (Silly old fool, unruly sun)

Holy Sonnet 10 : Death Be Not Proud : encore pour le ton, le "bravado" qu'on y sent, et le paradoxe de la dernière ligne "death thou shalt die"

A Valediction : of my Name in the Window : la superbe image de son nom gravéþ mais dans du verre, une écriture à la fois éternelle et transparente.

> Lis-toi, ami, š haute voix "To his Mistress Going to Bed",

et tu verras par toi-même... - Georgina

> Tout cela est très encourageant...

Je trouve l'idée de lire à haute voix et/ou de les écouter tout à fait excellente.

Après tout, il est bien d'essayer d'y prendre un plaisir peut-être
plus esthétique. J'avoue que j'ai tendance à vouloir aller tout de suite dans la réflexion et l'vétude, bref dans "l'utilitaire", vu qu'il y a le concours.

Mais il faut en effet sans doute y "pénétrer" par petites touches.
Je vais peut-être m'attacher au plaisir de la lecture dans un premier temps,même si je ne comprends pas tout... - Jé-Rhum

> J'ai par hasard abordé Donne...

...sur le site luminarium trouvé sur la page d'agreg, et le premier poème que j'y ai lu était Elegy XIX, to his mistress going to bed

Je dois dire que j'ai été très surprise de savoir qu'on pouvait avoir une telle chose à l'agreg, et puis plutôt ravie. C'est devenue une blague toute l'année à la fac, je pouvais citer de grands passages à tout bout de champ et dès que le prof faisait référence à ce poème et cherchait péniblement la page, je la lui rappelais du fond de la salle.

En règle générale les poèmes d'amour du début sont très abordables.

Les Divine Poems le sont moins à mon sens.

Je conseille de lire Donne à doses homéopathiques, un ou deux poèmes par jour, c'est plus digeste, en tout cas ce que j'ai fait pendant toutes mes révisions.

- Chris, Bulles-City.

> It took me about two months

to really *do* Donne. I read each poem aloud once or twice.

Then I read each one line by line, with the notes on the back and The Advanced York Notes, and noted down the main ideas.

If you go on the
Longman site you'll find York Notes and Advanced York Notes on Gulliver's Travels, including in the e-version.

Once that was finally over I took a break and did something else.

When I came back to Donne, I re-read each poem and made notes on my notes.

I then made notes on each of the themes I found with refs and quotes.

Finally, a bit before the written exams, I made even more condensed notes on my notes;

I ended up with about 10 pages.

The Advanced York Notes, albeit not up to agreg level, ARE a good start!

I found the Suhamy book VERY difficult to get to grips with!

The Selected Poems (Penguin Audiobooks) are helpful too - bits of biographical info in-between the readings.

And don't forget this extremely useful certified Donne
site.

- Catherine Duffau, agrégée interne, 2002.

> Really awesome!

The fact that they have MP3 audio files on a lot of poems is great.

I downloaded a couple and it worked. It is SO convenient.

I've got way enough to start from there for now.

I'll keep working on it then. - Jþ Rhum

Débroussailler...

> Les York Notes Advanced (Longman) sur Donne sont excellents.

A mon avis, ils permettent de très bien débroussailler à la fois les poèmes principaux et le contexte.

Je trouve que c'est une excellent moyen de commencer l'étude. Cela dit, bien entendu, ce n'est pas suffisant et ensuite il faut passer au "niveau supérieur", mais cela permet en tout cas de bien mettre les choses en place.

Ils ont quelques analyses de poèmes très intéressantes, ainsi qu'une revue des critiques.. un glossaire des termes de poésie, et une présentation du contexte religieux, historique et littéraire pertinente

For those poems not covered by the notes, I try to gather information from reading critics.While reading, I underline the titles of the poem and see what sort of information I have. (then I also have organized my notes by themes). It's good to see that things become a lot clearer after a while, and I'm also able to make some connections between poems myself;.

The hard part is the paradoxes and the changes of moods, which can alter the meanings... but I like that he expresses his struggles so well, and the ambivalence of human existence.

What I also find very helpful is the translation in French that I borrowed called "John Donne, Poésie", ed. Imprimerie Nationale as
most poems are indeed translated. It just helps me a great deal since some phrases, words, and uses of syntax can be obscure.


Bref, c'est 8.23 euros chez Gibert et c'est bien dépensé, je pense... Je vous le conseille à tous...  JéRom
.

> I agree 100% with Jþ - that's how I started off with Donne.

Those who haven't bought it yet - do so now!The difficult part was writing detailed notes on the poems NOT covered by the Notes!

I took more time, read the ;notes at the back of the book - and tried to suss out things for myself.

The only other book I read was the one by Suhamy.

Good luck with all the work. - Catherine.

DEVELOPING THE AUTONOMOUS POETRY READER

Some wonderful Word.doc documents on this theme by Adele Raemer can be downloaded from this page.

The explanatory section, which SHOULD be read first, is the one titled : Literature is the Question.

.

SONGS AND SONNETS - classification

- d'après Helen Gardner

Ils peuvent se diviser en 3 groupes importants.

I . Le monde des Elégies, de la poésie érotique latine.

On n'y trouvera pas l'idéalisation de la femme dont la volonté décide et qui
laisse soupirer l'amant.

Le partenaire masculin reste le maître libre de rabrouer l'obstinée.

On en compte 23 parmi lesquels

a) 6 sont des 'cynical generalizations' :

  • Go and Catch a falling star
  • Community : arguing for male prosmiscuity
  • Confined Love : same argument by a woman
  • The Indifferent to a particular woman
  • Love's Usury: freedom to range while young
  • Love's Diet: boasting on how to keep free

b) Monologue dramatique: Woman's Constancy

'Can I have no way but falsehood to be true?' (l.13)

c) 3 poèmes où la maitresse est infidèle et l'amant lui en fait reproche :

  • Jet Ring Sent
  • The Message
  • The Legacy : conceit familiar in sonneteers of an exchange of hearts

d) The Apparition : feigned vestal (l.5)

e) 4 poèmes pour persuader une maitresse de cée;der :

  • The Prohibition
  • The Damp (la mofette = a poisonous fume) :
  • Let the enchantress Honour, next be slayn (l.12)
  • The Flea
  • The Dream } (2 monologues mis en forme de drame)

f) incidental to love affairs :

  • The Bait (parodie de Marlow)
  • The Curse: to attack that bugbear of the medieval lover, the tale-bearer
  • The Computation : it seems ages since I saw you

g) 5 poèmes sur la séparation des amants :

  • Break of Day
  • The Expiration
  • Witchcraft by a Picture
  • Sweetest Love, I do not go
  • Valediction: Of Weeping

These 5 poems assume a passionate relation that is serious and whole-hearted
on both sides. They treat it passionately and unphilosophically.


II. 10 Poems of unrequited love
(amour non partagþ). The mistress is the lady.
It is not implied that she is feigning chastity and is cold merely to him.

  • The Paradox
  • Love's Exchange
  • Love's Deity
  • The Broken Heart
  • The Tripple Fool
  • The Will
  • Image and Dream (Elegy 10 p106)
  • Twickenham Garden
  • The Blossom
  • The Funerall

They are alike in that they all treat the situation of the lover who does
not speed. Wholly unpetrarchan as they are in mood, tone and style, they
handle the classic Petrarchan situation, some accepting the Petrarchan
concept of the lady who is too true to be kind.


III. 21 poèmes d'amour mutuel
(union, miracle, hors de l'ordre naturel)

- 2 poèmes platoniques :

  • The Undertaking
  • The Relic

- 4 célébrant l'union:

  • The Good Morrow,
  • The Anniversary,
  • The Sun Rising,
  • The Canonization

- 4 analysent l'amour comme union:

  • Air and Angels,
  • Love's Growth,
  • Love's Infiniteness,
  • A Lecture on the Shadow

- The Extasie

- 3 adieux : V. Forb. Mourning, V. Of my Name, V : Of the Book
- La mort fin de l'union :

  • A Nocturnall,
  • The Dissolution

- A Fever

- 2 bitter palinodes (= palinodie, un poéme dans lequel l'auteur rétracte ce
qu'il a dit dans un poème antérieur) :

  • Love's Alchemy,
  • Farewell to Love

- The Primrose : entertains though it rejects the idea of a woman above all
thought of sex (l.15/16)

- Negative Love : a perfect lover does not know what it is that he loves.



strate


COLLOQUE DONNE - TOURS, JANVIER 2002

Titres et résumés des communications du Colloque.

- a kind courtesy of Damzelle Claudine Reynaud.

-
Voici un extrait du très intéressant article de
M Guillaume FOURCADE (Univ PARIS VIII)
-
'A COPY, TO LEARNE BY' - JOHN DONNE'S "WRITING DEATH"
-
Death is everywhere in Donne's wor
k and there is no need to demonstrate anew to what extent it haunts an outstanding number of his texts (Ellrodt, 1973, 1:146-52 and in particular n.63, 146).

Donne's deep fascination with death is indeed amply evidenced in his poetry as well as in his prose works amongst which was his brave treatise on suicide, Biathanatos (1608), although that particular work was never published in his lifetime.
-
Donne, who was an expert in self-dramatization, loved to imagine himself dead, to contemplate his own corpse and to give pride of place in his poems to voices coming literally from the grave.

Quite conspicuous too, was the pleasure he took in describing his own dissolving or putrefying flesh and in discussing the problematic recompaction of his scattered atoms at the Resurrection (Himy, 1995, 37-50).
-
Such an overabundant display of death in Donne's writings is well nigh teratomorphic and certainly challenges interpretation.

Should it be regarded as an attempt to conjure up the fear aroused by death (Carey, 1990, 184)?

In such a case it would be necessary for Donne to voice such a fear repeatedly but from one text to the other and sometimes within one self-same text he deftly blurs his reader's perception.
-
In the Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), perceiving his doctor's alarm in the face of his impending death, does he not assert

"I see his fears, and I fear with him"à

only to reassess his judgement shortly after,

"and if I should say I feared death, I should belie God"
(Donne, 1999, 32-3)?

Such contradictions abound.

One single permanent feature seems to crop up though, and it has often been underlined: the Donnean dead never keep still and nothing is more alien to Donne than a desire for absolute annihilation (Carey, 1990, 186-90 and Ellrodt, 1973, 1: 147).

Fascination, real or counterfeit fear, but also a genuine desire to die in Christ in order to enjoy the endless sight of God are the jarring voices of Donnean death.
--
É l'article intégral est paru au premier trimestre 2002 dans
GRAAT num. 25, "La Poésie de John Donne : Lectures critiques/ Critical Approaches"
sous la direction de Claudine Raynaud.
--
Onn peut commander le volume pour 10 euros au lieu de 14
en se recommandant de la Page d'agreg à:

-
Claudine Raynaud,
UFR d'Anglais et de LEA,
Université de Tours,
3 rue des Tanneurs
37041 Tours cedex 01.
Chèque à M. l'Agent Comptable de l'Université de Tours,
Frais de port : 2 euros.


DONNE EN FRANCAIS

Antoine Berman : Pour une critique des traductions :
John Donne; Paris, Gallimard, 1995, 276 p.
There is a review of this book.
Some interesting comments which relate to segment/traductologie.
Do have a read if you've nothing to do tonight... -
Darig.

> The Gallimard édition bilingue in Collection Poésie, Poèmes de John Donne presents many poems from our curriculum - 4 elegies, nearly all the songs and sonnets, the holy sonnets and the hymns to Christ and to God - , and a very helpful introduction by a Sire Poisson. B. Friss.

> What I also find very helpful is the translation in French that I borrowed called "John Donne, Poésie", ed. Imprimerie Nationale, as most poems are indeed translated. It just helps me a great deal since some phrases, words, and uses of syntax can be obscure...

-Page visitor.


VOITURER JOHNNY :

> SELECTED POEMS

en 2 cassettes (135 min) John Donne, Penguin, vendu sur le site choices direct - pas d'actions chez eux!

Sélectioner TALKING TAPES et entrer les titres vendus è de bons prix... env. £7.64 respectivement port gratuit inclus)
.

> A VELO COMME A CHEVAL

J'ai acheté pour pas très cher les 2 cassettes (2h1/4) de Selected Poems de Donne (Penguin audiobooks ISBN0 14 086568 3). Il y a pratiquement tous ceux du programme avec pour chacun une intro le remettant dans l'histo-bio contexte de l'auteur.

Je les écoute en voiture (j'ai 2 fois par semaine 60 kms aller-retour è faire pour le boulot, étant à cheval sur 2 sites) et c'est tràs efficace, à la fois pour la musique du texte, la mémorisation...

Il y a un extrait à télécharger sur le site de
Penguin Classics - Freddy.


DONNE IN CONCERT :
all's fair in love and war!

    • Sujet d'agreg interne : "Ambiguity in the Poems of Joh Do."

    • Sujet de dissert proposþà Tours en Déc. 02 : "Mutuality and mutability in JD's poetry" (sic).

    • Amiens : "Private and public worlds in JD's poetry."

    • Reims, agr'int : A Dr Johnson wrote that in Donne's poetry 'the most heterogenous ideas are yoked by violence together'. Comment: The person who gave out this dissertation subject for Donne at a Fac might just have been inspired by this web page.


DIS-LOCATION... in more than ten places

...le motif de la dislocation (auquel peuvent être rattachés "dissection" et "dissolution") est présent dans l'ensemble de Donne.

Dislocation thématique que l'on retrouve dans les images anatomiques, dans le rapport amoureux, que celui-ci soit envisagé avec le sexe opposé ou avec Dieu, dislocation et dissolution dans la mort physique ou symbolique...

On retrouve ce même principe au niveau stylistique dans le morcellement des concepts qui peut conduire à l'élaboration de conceits (dislocation sémantique, esprit analytique), mais aussi dans les rythmes saccadés et parfois abrupts du poète, son utilisation de la rime et de l'écho...

Ces formes de dislocation, per&ccdil;ues tout d'abord comme destructrices, sont ainsi élevées au rang de principes créatifs et poétiques : régénération de la figure du poète, production d'analogies, de rythmes souvent novateurs en leur temps, de textes poétiques dans leur ensemble.
..

- Pascal Caillet.


A DISTORTER AND A TWISTER

> Donne liked to twist and distort not only images and ideas,
but also traditional rhythmic and stanzaic patterns...


MORE - your own
contributions


MISC. WEB PARA'DONNALIA

By a Gorton, Lisa : John Donne's Use of Space "Early Modern Literary Studies 4.2 / Special Issue 3 (September, 1998): 9.1-27

Here is the conclusion:

" Donne's poetry presents the conflict between love and time in the conflict between his spatial imagery and his narrative style.

A scenario is non-discursive.

But Donne's poems are
emphatically discursive.

Though his speakers claim to be safe from time, the evolution of their argument reminds us time is passing as they speak.

His lovers must find their place in a world of time, and they must defend their space against that world of time; a world that threatens to break into their spatial enclaves and break up their perfect moments.

We feel the conflict between space and time as a premonition of failure or decline.

The confidence of Donne's lovers is edged by our fear and we feel the brave, defiant brilliance of their arguments with the inevitable."

sorbonne
Sur le site de Sorbonne Paris IV


Conseils pour la préparation aux concours

écrit / oral
, par Dame Professeure Guyonne Leduc, Univ.Lille




III

Vérifiez votre connaissance des allitérations et des assonances en anglais, différentes des franÐaises, les syllabes o¶ la consonne ou bien la voyelle est répétée doivent s'accentuer.

Entrainez-vous à scander des vers... et pas seulement des pentamètres iambiques.



Rappels de principaux types de pieds
(feet) :

. iambe (iamb): / u - /

. trochþe (trochee): / - u /

. spondþe (spondee): / - - /

. dactyle (dactyl): / - u u /

. anapeste (anapaest): /u u - /

- pentamútre iambique (iambic pentameter / blank verse):

/ u u - / u u - / u u - / u u - / u u - /

Schémas des rimes (rhyme patterns/schemes) les plus courants

- rimes plates/suivies (rhyming couplet): a a

- rimes croisées/alternées (alternate rhymes): a b a b

- rimes embrassées: a b b a rhyme scheme

- rime pour l'oeil/l'oreille (rhyme for the eye/ear)

- rime masculine/féminine (masculine/feminine rhyme)

Poetry & Drama : Useful Definitions

Prosody

= metrics - study of metre (pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in the lines). Line divided into feet (2 or 3 syllables, one of which must be stressed)

Metrical Feet

- iamb (adj. Iambic) - 2 syllables - unstressed / stressed (x /) (ti tum)

- trochee (trochaic) - 2 syllables - stressed / unstressed (/ x) (tum ti)

- spondee (spondaic) - 2 syllables - stressed / stressed (/ /) (tum tum)

- pyrrhic (pyrrhic) - 2 syllables - unstressed / unstressed (x x) (ti ti)

- anapaest (anapaestic) - 3 syllables - unstressed / unstressed / unstressed (x x /) (ti ti tum)
(light and rapid)

- dactyl (dactylic) - 3 syllables - stressed / unstressed / unstressed (/ x x) (tum ti ti)
(jaunty)

Rythms

- binary - based on 2 syllable feet

- ternary - based on 3 syllable feet (more dancing, speed up rhythm)

- falling rhythms - feet end on unstressed syllables (trochee, dactyl)

- rising rhythms - feet end on stressed syllables (iamb, anapaest)

The line

1 foot - monometer
2 feet - dimeter
3 feet - trimeter
4 feet - tetrameter
5 feet - pentameter (considered as the basic English verse pattern)
6 feet - hexameter (or alexandrine)
7 feet - heptameter
8 feet - octameter

There can a BREAK at end of line (END-STOPPED), pause in middle of line (CAESURA) or carry over from one line to next (ENJAMBEMENT)
Iambic pentameter ending with stressed syllable (as usual) - MASCULINE ending. If extra unstressed syllable added at end - FEMININE ending.

Consonant or vowel repetition

RHYME - phonemic parallelism between 2 stressed syllables (good and wood)

ALLITERATION - initial consonants are same (fish and fowl)

CONSONANCE - final consonants are same (odds and ends)

ASSONANCE - vowels are same (free and easy)

True (perfect) rhyme (tries / eyes)

Half (partial) rhyme (rot / put; rose / buzz)


Useful definitions related to John Donnes's poems

metaphysical poetry

Poetry dealing with the philosophy of being and knowing, exploring human existance beyond material world. In DonneŠs time concerned itself with questions such as the nature of the soul and the relation of soul to body.

Poets used eccentric chains of reasoning, unusual verse forms and complex figures of speech. Vocabulary was often intellectual rather than sensuous - moral and evalutive rather than descriptive or evocative.

Frequent use of conceits. Metaphysical poets - Donne, Marvell, Milton. Criticised by Dryden and Johnson. Revived by TS Eliot.

wit

Used in 17th century to link or combine ideas in new and original ways. Criticised later in 18th and 19th centuries as superficial cleverness and simply as being a means of showing off of intellectual ingenuity.

conceit

Unexpected or improbable comparison of two or more apparently dissimilar things or ideas. Often extended over several lines of verse.

Good examples include comparisons of :

- the parting of two lovers to the legs of a pair of compasses (A Valediction: forbidding m.)

- love being stretched to gold being beaten (A Valediction: forbidding mourning)

- lover's tears to the world (A Valediction: of weeping)

- the body to a book (The Extasie)

- bodies of two lovers to blood sucked by the flea (The Flea)

- deluded lover to mistaken alchimist (LoveŠs Alchymie)


'Every man supposes himself
not to be fully understood or appreciated'.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson,

writer and philosopher (1803-1882),

Divine Meditations, 5

l.4 "parts": le mot renvoie à body and soul ?

Selon l'édition Norton, le dernier vers est une allusion à la Bible : Psalms 69

7. [...] for thy [God's] sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face.

8. I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children.

9. For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.

Le dernier vers se rapporte-t-il š la flamme purificatrice? (on peut noter par ailleurs le rythme et le redoublement eat/heal)

JMC

THE MATHIS - DONNE CONNECTION

EXPLICATION DE TEXTE par Sire Gilles MATHIS,
envoyþe par Mimi, mise en ligne par
Johnny
.

The text of John Donne's poem "Love's Growth"
can be found on line, amongst other Donne material
here.

Explication de texte datant de 1987 (de Mathis...alem !)

Loves Growth or Spring (Songs and Soneta}

Both sub-title and main title are more or less misleading.

The poem is obviously not about the return of spring as in descriptive poetry, the season being here only an agent of transformation in the physics (and perhaps, metaphysics) of love.

Similarly, the main title evokes some kind of general, abstract, meditation on Love whereas Donne is speaking of his own love ("my love", as early as tine one) and his reflection is firmly grounded on personal experience and anchored in the concrete, present, situation: noticing that his love has grown with the return of spring Donne re-examines the problem of the nature of love, which he had always thought infinite and timeless but which he now discovers as being just as "natural", substantial ("elemented") as "an else" (line 13).

But the poem is not a condemnation of love, quite the contrary.

In his own tortuous, sophistical, manner Donne tries to reconcile opposites and to make sense of two closely interrelated paradoxes:

Love grows and yet does not grow
Love is pure and yet impure


although this is an oversimplification of Donne's more complex thought.

This reflection on the contradictory nature of (his) love which rests on the fallacious identification of personal love and Love, fairly common among lovers, takes the form of a monologue, possibly uttered in the presence of the mistress or beloved (see line 24), which could explain this impression of listening to a double language when reading the poem.

The tone, reflective but less dialectical and analytical than many other "songs and sonets", is predominantly assertive.

This is due, presumably to the shock of discovery and even gets (grows?) emphatic in the last tine. A serious tone therefore but also constantly witty as we shall see.

The structure is dual: the poem clearly falls into two parts, perfectly balanced (1-14 and 15-28) with a strong articulation "And yet no.." which sounds like a refutation, so that the poem seems at first sight to be marred by an inner contradiction, and those two parts can themselves be subdivided into two smaller parts corresponding in each section to two stanzas of unequal length in the order sextet/octet, using different rhyme schemes for their first four lines: alternate rhymes for the sextets (a b a b) and enclosed rhymes (a b b a) for the octets, but both sextets and octets shut on couplet rhymes ( a a, b b), so that the two parts, structurally, reflect each other... though there seems to be a shift in the reflection!

Also there is a striking contrast between the first part which is purely analytical (the two brief comparisons of lines 4 and 13 are hardly literary similes at alt) and the second part which is exclusively analogical, with a rather unusual high density of images in 14 lines. Moreover, whereas in the first part the similes rather followed the argument or proposition, it is the reverse in the second part, lines 15-6 serving as a transition, so that a shift in method seems to accompany the shift of thought.

The overall movement of the poem is primarily circular and secondarily (and illusively) linear: from growth to growth (the poem's last word is "encrease"), from personal to personal (the last line, coming after "...unto thee" obviously refers to his own love), so much for the circular; linear in a way since we pass from the past (winter) to the present and to the future.

But this is an illusion: the poem is neither a recollection nor a projection (an escape) into the future ("shall" is more than a grammatical future of course, in the last line); Donne is entirety immersed in the present: the past is only appraised for the light it casts on the present and the future valued in anticipation in so far as it will repeat the intensity of the present.

Donne's basic method of composition in poetry being mainly analytical and his subtle linguistic effects often requiring careful reading I propose to proceed in like analytical manner, taking each part one after the other without adopting, however the line-by-line method of the so called 'running commentary". A final synthesis will bring the main points together.

The first part (1-14), though serious has something to do with 'the comedy of love" as Donne discovers that he has been self-deluded and, relating the personal to the general in his own characteristic manner, he also exposes the idealists' imposture (lines 11-12 refer to platonic and petarchan poets, presumably).

So there is both self-mockery (humour?) and irony in this first part.

It is perceptible in the sextet, in the prosodic effect of lines 4 and 5, where the enjambment suggests an ironic play on the two senses of "endure" (to undergo and to last. evoking permanence and eternity.

Irony again in the low simile "as the grasse" which brings his love back to earth, if I may say. Irony perhaps in the possible double syntax of the last line where, I think, "more" can be taken absolutely or as the modifier of "infinite", in which case it is doubly ironical:

first because of the oxymoronic tone, "more" and "infinite" being incompatible),

second because it would seem to mean that Donne is repeating his mistake of last winter by declaring his spring love "infinite" and that he is even a bigger liar because he claims that this new love is "more infinite".

The ironic discovery leads to a reappraisal of his scientific and philosophical knowledge concerning the nature of love in the octet where the two quatrains are logically linked: "But if.......Love's not so pure.."

The first introduces a contrast between two conceptions of medicine (via the metaphor: love is a medecine ) the homeopathic school and the Paracelsian doctrine of cure by quintessence, with the ironic rediscovery of the truth of the more ancient view.

Characteristically enough in metaphysical poetry and in Donne's, lines 7 and 8 are packed with meaning and need explaining, especially as the syntax again is doubtful: "with more..." can mean either "with more sorrow" (homoepathic view) or "with more love", in keeping with the idea of a spring increase.

But why introduce the notion of "sorrow" at all?

I think it is connected to the previous stanza in two ways: he feels sad because he has discovered the finite nature of his love and also because he has "lied".

Now, apart from the witty and outrageous poems on the theme of inconstancy, one knows the importance of sincerity and truth in love, both in courtly love and in Donne's, which accounts for part of his sorrow (see, for instance, the end of "The Token" on this subject)

Let us note in passing that the "lie" is fallacious since he was himself self-deluded.

Line 10 deals with an objective fact but takes up a theme already found in "The Sunne Rising".

The idea of a "non quintessential" nature of love naturally leads him to a refutation of the idealistic thesis in the next quatrain, and the first part doses on a reconciliation of opposites according to which love is both spiritual and physical, but the phrasing "sometimes...sometimes" rather suggests an alternation than a fusion. Let us mention that "do" may also be slang for "make love".

Be it as it may, the tone of finality in line 14 seems to bring the reflection and the poem to an end.

The main unifying element of the two stanzas in the first part is of course the theme of purity in which "pure" covers two realities: timelessness and quintessence, as the echo "love...so pure" (1. 11) underlines.

With the next line and "And yet no greater..." the reflection gets a fresh start which seems to contradict the theme of growth, at least as proposed previously, for it is in fact "growth" again with a variance, as we move from the quantitative to the visual plane, through a witty shift of use of the word "more", no longer used absolutely (if it js. absolute, remember) but as the modifier of "eminent" (conspicuous), a shift which the syntactic inversion masks the better to reveal.

Two images illustrate the idea: one is drawn from cosmography, in which "firmament" can refer to the sphere of fixed stars in the Ptolemaic system, or more generally to the sky, according to contemporary usage; another taken from nature, in which "tenor" and "vehicle" dovetail through the double metaphor "root" and "bud" applied to love. In the first, as all critics have noted, the meaning of "by" is ambiguous: does it mean "nearest to the sun" or simply "by the action of the sun"?

What Donne means here is that active love (physical, sexual) does not necessarily argue an increase of love but makes visible the invisible essence of love, and it is characteristic of Donne that the abstract should be evoked through a very concrete image: that of the root. and that root is "one".

Indeed the two images introduce the theme of multiplicity through the grammatical plurals which abound in the last three lines of the sextet ("starres". "deeds", "blossomes"), suggesting perhaps that the multiple is only the "one" made visible. In which case the contrast functions as a transition for the octet in which it recurs in various forms in the imagery, in particular in the first two similes:

"water circles...ProducŠd by one ,
"so many spheares. but one heaven make",
"all...concentrique unto thee";

both are variations on the explicit and implicit meanings of the blossomes/root image.

The second simile (spheares/heaven) is the opportunity for Donne to pay a courtly compliment to the beloved, belying the "lying" suggestion of line 5.

Note that both images are again taken from nature and cosmography but presented in reverse order as compared with the previous couple in the sextet. At the same time. firmament is now replaced by heaven, which is a qualitative addition prompted by love. I presume, if I may wittily (?) refer to line 22.

The compliment is also hyperbolical, for if the mistress is occupying the centre of the spheres, she is filling the place of the earth, at least in the Ptolemaic system, but we know that the beloved and the world are constantly identified in Songs and Sonets.

With the next simile, taken from governmentship, we come back to earth literally, if I may say. and the contrast between the multiple and the one seems forgotten in favour of the thane of growth resumed, this time in terms of continuity.

The image comes as a surprise and may be a piece of satire in this lyric (but such detachment is a constant in Donne's poetry). And yet. love and sovereign-ty is a frequent association in Songs and Sonets. Donne's fancy, like other poets, functions through the law of association of ideas: sometimes the link is obvious as in the passing from the water circles to the spheres, sometimes it is less visible as in the present case.

Nevertheless, taken all together, the images in this octet present a dazzling variety but they have one thing in common: they draw their value not from their pictorial but from their logical quality; their justification (if Poetry needs to be justified) lies in the logical relationships established between the attributes of the vehicles which make them fit to illustrate mutatis mutandis the same tenor or truth.

It is perhaps what H. W. Wells meant by "radical image" in his poetic imagery (no punning intended of. course with the root image in this passage!).

The poem closes on an enigmatic and emphatic (due attention must be paid to the modal "shall" in this tine) statement which needs commenting, especially as the last words sea, to introduce a new contradiction which takes us back where we started, as if Donne had failed to solve the initial paradox:

"No winter shall abate the springs encrease"

Various interpretations may be proposed which must take into account the double characteristic of the statement, both general and personal, or perhaps in Donne's mind, general because personal.

It could be, for instance, a courtly compliment in disguise;

I shall love you more and more eternally",

or a witty invitation to active love ("to do"), or possibly a gentle threat with the same end in view (everyone knows that the modal "shall" can express promise or threat); then "winter" and "spring" must be taken metaphorically as referring, respectively, to the protests of a frigid or "coy mistress" (if I may quote Marvell), to the "winter of (her) discontent" (Shakespeare), in a way. and to Donne's growing physical desire, with a possible bawdy allusion to the penis' tumescence which needs "abating".

The last remark would not shock a contemporary of Shakespeare's famous line, with its sexual overtones:

"the expense of spirit in a waste of shame" (sonnet 129). or simply a Donne reader of "Farewell to Love" (see last line) or of some elegies by the same poet.

On the other hand, "encrease" could look back not so much to the "greater" of line 15 as to "love's deeds", in which case Donne would be claiming, after all, that the growth of love ultimately depends on physical love, which may be taken as another appeal to the mistress or as a more general statement.

If those interpretations are correct and complementary, the ambiguous last line would knit together the two leading threads of the poem's argument: the idea of a growth in love and its dual nature, with perhaps the balance slightly tilted in favour of the senses?

The final claim, after all, is that love is a continuous growth - in which the physical plays, in all senses of the term an "active" part - , enjoying some sort of "eternal spring" (perhaps the ironic counter-part of the pastoral cliche, although Donne avoids direct reference to the convention), so that springtime is not really a renewal or renewing of love ("new" in line 23 is not merely "novel"), making up, so to speak, for wintry losses; it is rather a "creation continuee", paradoxically perfect from the start and yet for ever growing.

Thus the last line, with its clenching virtue, provides a fit close for a poem far less disconnected than it seems, at a first reading. In addition to other elements already mentioned, the vocabulary plays its part in securing the lyric's unity, in two ways:

the technique of verbal echoes linking the two parts ("love", of course, but also "winter", "spring", "sunne", "do/deeds", and possibly an ironic interplay between the lexical words-"do", as verbs in lines 14 and 26 - and the expletives - "do" and "doe" in 20 and 25, given more resonance by their being used with active and evocative verbs like "bud" and "adde", recalling the complementary themes of growth and quantity-);

unity, also, through the development throughout the poem of a semantic field which, remembering some other poems by Donne, I should like to call, love's arithmetic: "infinite", "more" (6,8,15,21), "greater", "all", "growne", "inlarg'd" , "one", "no", "many", each", "additions", "adde", "encrease", and possibly, in this context of quantity "abstract" (tine 11, perhaps ironical), a semantic field which plays the same structural function as the legal vocabulary in other poems.

The prosodic plane calls for just a few remarks:

the hexameters in the two sextets seem to be introduced just for the sake of variety, in the pentameters more adapted perhaps to the predominantly reflective tone of the poem, with which they interlock through the rhyme scheme, instead of standing apart and through the syntax (enjambment, line 3; beginning of a new sentence, line 17).

Apart from the six run-on lines (1, 3, 6, 11, 21, 26), there is no real counterpoint between metre and syntax: most of the time the end of the line corresponds with a syntactic unit. Great variety is also observed in the handling of the caesura which, in the 24 lines or so including commas, can fill any place, that is to say can be found after any syllable, from the first to the tenth, except for the ninth, in the pentameters.

Such variety contributes to the conversational tone of the poem

When all is said, "Loves Growth" is very representative of Donne's and metaphysical poetry in many ways which I shall attempt to sum up:

- reflection born of a direct and singular experience which tends to be exclusive of all previous experiences: only the present counts.

- the sometimes fallacious grounding of the argument (using words in different senses at the same time, fusing of the literal and figurative or jumping from one to the other; see the passage from the "growth" of the title to the "growne" of line 16, for instance).

- the dialectical and logical turn of mind which explains the use of the "radical image" from which truth is 'abstracted" through the intellect's alchemy and a subtle use of the language.

- wide range of imagery: nature, science, cosmography, politics, a variety which perhaps precluded over-analysis, contrary to what happens in other poems.

- the density of meaning in a few words generating either ambiguity or wit, the latter verging sometimes on the obscene.

But most characteristic of a11 perhaps in this poem: the subtle balance of analysis and illustration, thought and feeling, wit and emotion, found in Donne's best poetry and perhaps more typical, after all, than the few extravagant conceits for which he is sometimes remembered.



Poetry should please by
a fine excess and not by singularity.
It should strike the reader as a
wording of his own highest
thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance.

É John Keats, poet (1795-1821)


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