A Valediction Forbidding Mourning Or why Geometry is

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning Or, why Geometry is sexy

John Donne

John Donne • • • Born 1572 English recusant Catholicism Donne himself converted to Anglicanism 1584 Donne entered Hart Hall, Oxford, Law student for two or more years. Secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord keeper of England. Fell in love with Ann More; secretly married 1601 Took holy orders 12 children Died 1631, probably from stomach cancer

Metaphysical Poetry • Three stages of Donne’s lyric poetry • Young “Jack Donne”: carnal (“The Flea”) • Neoplatonic ideal of love (“Valediction…Mourning”) • Dr. Donne’s religious poetry (Holy Sonnets)

Context • Biographer Izaak Walton • Donne left for a diplomatic mission to France. • Wife was pregnant and sick and asked him to stay in England urged him not to go • Donne felt an obligation to the expedition’s leader, Sir Robert Drury.

Two Days in Paris • Donne has a vision of his wife walking around with a dead child • Messenger later returned with news the child had indeed died

Syllogistic Argument • • Specific audience (here, his wife) Raises an issue Explicates issue Proceeds to explain why issue isn’t the way she sees it

Metaphysical Conceit – Extended metaphor that compares two very different things – Often accomplished through use of imagery – Two items being compared “yoked together by violence” – Love like a geometric compass

Other items of note • Use of paradox • Allusions • Complex structural forms

Color Coding • Red: definitions or parsing • Aqua: Major themes, literary devices, points of analysis

Sacred Love As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say The breath goes now, and some say, No: • die peacefully So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sightempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. • Shift in POV • Hyperbole and imagery

Hyperbolic Imagery Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. • Earthquakes • Ptolemaic astronomy— planets shook but people couldn’t feel it • Cosmic imagery and hyperbole

Proof by Contradiction Dull sublunary lovers' love • Under the moon, so variable (Whose soul is sense) cannot • Are focused on physical admit sensation Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined, That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assuréd of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. • Shift in POV; indicates their love is more spiritual and therefore more lasting • Importance of mental over physical

Logical Syllogism Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. • Logical syllogism • Paradox • Break • paradox

Metaphysical Conceit If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do. • Metaphysical conceit And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home • Donne’s trip to France; he is the roving foot that traces the circle • Part of the compass that creates the middle of the circle • pun

Metaphysical Conceit Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun. • Making conceit explicit • Circle is a traditional symbol of perfection; just as in “justified” • Speaker will return to his wife

Writing Assignment • Because metaphysical conceits draw comparisons between unrelated or oppositional things, they are very difficult to create. In a 1 -2 page response, explain how Donne uses various literary devices to successfully construct a metaphysical conceit in “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning. ” Include an introduction, applicable literary terms, and literary analysis (why/how)