英美文学：部分作家的介绍和评论—John Donne

　　John Donne,the founder of Metaphysical school of poetry; lived and wrote during the successive reigns of Elizabeth to Charles I. His poems are usu. divided into 2 categories:

　　A. the youthful love lyrics, published after his death as Songs and Sonnets in 1633.

　　B. Sacred verse, published in 1624 as Devotions Upon Emergent Occasion

　　the poet of peculiar conceits, far-fetched comparisons

　　Metaphysical poets----a term used to group together certain 17th-century poets, usually Donne, Marvell, Vaughan and Herbert who are marked by their wit, inventiveness, and a love of elaborate stylistic manoeuvres.

　　Main characteristics of Metaphysical poetry:

　　1. The use of the conceit---a witty comparison between things at first sight utterly unlike each other (Emphasizing thought by fantastic metaphors and extravagant hyperboles, strange imageries and obscure language)

　　2. Argumentative or logical structure

　　3. compressed and difficult; there is very little writing which is purely ornamental or descriptive

　　4. vivid and colloquial language, suggestive of the rhythms of ordinary speech

　　Song

　　The persona in this poem, which is also a dramatic monologue, is telling his listener about the fickleness and inconstancy of women. His use of mythological charactes and situations suggests that a constant woman is also just a figment of the imagination. In the second stanza, he tells his listener that if they were to ride for an age they would still never be able to find a woman who is "true, and fair". And, he continues in the thrid stanza, even if he did, by the time the persona meets her, she will have shown her true colours.

　　Donne takes time to get his point accross and it is not until he says No where Lives a woman true, and faire that we understand his line of argument about the fickleness and inconstancy of women.

　　A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

　　Stanza 1: a deathbed scene; the image and sounds create a solemn, quiet and even holy atmosphere, an atmosphere of hush.

　　Stanza 2: Our love is too significant to be spoken of loudly.

　　In the first two stanzas, the poet argues that the appropriate response to their parting is a solemn hush, because the moment is too sacred to be spoken of .

　　Stanza 3:  trepidation of spheres—an image from ancient astronomy started by Ptolemy, the geocentric theory. Their parting is too momentous for such trivial display of emotions.

　　Stanza 4: A commentary on the ordinary love; based on the senses, the physical experience of each other. secular love physical or sensual love

　　Stanza 5: Their love has reached such high level at which it becomes a mystery of which even themselves cannot give an account.

　　Stanza 6: a new argument ; their seeming separation is not a separation at all, because their souls are united as one and cannot really be separated.

　　Stanza 7: a famous conceit which gives further support to the argument that the two lovers are spiritually connected while they are physically separated.

　　Stanza 8: though the two legs are separated, they lean against each other and attend each other.

　　Stanza 9: the importance of the firmness of the fixed foot in the drawing of a complete circle.

　　Summary of the argument: The poet first magnifies and then diminishes the significance of their separation . A paradox: our parting is too significant and too insignificant for the display of mourning.

　　Written in iambic tetrameter, abab

　　Questions

　　1. What are the main features of “metaphysical poetry?”

　　2. What is a metaphysical conceit?