...Issa Haddad Jason Sebacher ENGL102 27 November 2012 Compare/Contrast Essay In Dylan Thomas', “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, he entreats his father to not succumb quietly to death. He uses the metaphor, "the dying of the light" (3) to illustrate that he feels death to be a destructive power seeking to put out the "light" which is the human life force. That he feels this destruction should not be passively accepted is first shown when he states, "old age should burn and rave at the close of day" (2). He employs the metaphor, "close of day" (2) to show he feels death is an end to human consciousness as he knows it. He also uses "old age" (2) to personify the person/people who should fight death, and "burn and rave" (2) to indicate the fight. He uses examples of different types of men resisting death to add to his argument that life should not be given up lightly. "Wise men" (4) do not "go gentle" because "their words had forked no lightning" (5). Another metaphor, meaning that the words they speak receive no notice, therefor there is still more recognition to achieve before death's finality. "Good men" (7), realizing (with the metaphor/personification) that their "frail deeds might have danced in a green bay" (8), also fight against dying. The use of "green bay" (8) as a metaphor for the inevitable "sea" of mortality shows that they realize their actions in life may not yet be enough to secure them an illustrious place in human history and remembrance. "Wild men"...
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...John Donne, a seventeenth-century English poet, was born in London in 1572 and known for his ingenuous style of writing (Bloom 10). According to Christopher Moore, an English writer, Donne’ poetry is colloquial in diction and has the flexibility and liveliness of spoken language which imparts an energy and force perfectly capturing his mercurial jumps in thought and description; his poetry is filled with unusual images and metaphor for the fact most of it deals with love and relations between the sexes (Moore 12). Besides “The Flea,” “The Good Morrow,” and others, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is another famous masterpiece for which John Donne is recognized. Izaak Walton, a contemporary of John Donne, stated that “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” was addressed to Donne’s wife, Anne More, on the occasion of his leaving for a continental trip in 1611 (Bloom 63). Donne’s poem is a good example that shows his metaphysical wit, a term was conferred on him along with his followers, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, and others by Samuel Johnson, a critic and essayist in the eighteenth-century (Bloom12). To sum up, Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (Apr 84) is such a love and farewell speech among which he uses a series of simile, symbolism, and analogy to express his feelings and comfort his wife while he is abroad. Donne, in the first two stanzas, uses the image of virtuous men’s death as a metaphor to his separation from his wife to tell her their love is so great...
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...Through the comparative study of John Donne's poetry and Margaret Edson's play W;t we are shown the individual context of both writers and their perspectives on relationships and death. Donne represents his assurance of life after death in his Holy Sonnets. Additional to this in his earlier poetry, his valuing of deep relationship being critical to the human experience is reflected by his renaissance belief. Edson's individual post-modern context is apparent in the appropriation and rewriting of Donne's ideas to reflect her own perspective. This is further emphasized in the choices made by each composer to represent their ideas in different textual forms. Before Donne changed to his Protestant Christian faith in 1601 he believed that the meaning of life was through love. Donne ignores the reality of love and instead writes about what is outside reality, the metaphysical. In 1601 Donne secretly married a young seventeen-year-old girl by the name of Anne More. Donne wrote about how the love between him and his wife would go past this life and travel with them to the afterlife. After her death, Donne wrote “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” which describes his undying love for her. Donne made sure that his audience understood the significance of relationships, through the self-importance of "twin compasses"," thy soul, the fix'd foot", "making my circle perfect". The 17th century context is reflected in the representation of circular perfection which lifts the status of relationships...
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...change due to her disease. In particular, Ms. Bearing’s advocacy for the need of wit in language loses its importance under the influence of her experiences in the hospital. Vivian’s concept of witty language undergoes fundamental changes during her hospital stay, which results in her understanding of the role played by simplicity in the expression of real life human experience. Being a professor of English, Vivian Bearing is passionate about the subject of her life, that is, language. Her primary idea of language has cardinally changed under the influence of her experiences in the hospital, where she appeared in the result of her diagnosis of Stage IV ovarian cancer. Vivian in fact adored language in its complicacy, whereas poetry of John Donne was used by the woman as a source of the author’s wit that provided her with great examples for her students’ learning of sophisticated English. In particular, Donne’s sonnet “Death Be Not Proud” was her favorite one, as it was a manifestation of “…wit at work: not so much resolving the issues of life and God as revelling in their complexity” (Edson 39). However, Vivian reshaped her opinion of language’s beauty as triggered by its wit after her own life’s complication by the need to choose between life and death. The final exam of Vivian’s own life has shown her that language does not need wit or any other devices of complication when simple words are more than capable of getting the message across. The woman catches herself thinking...
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...British Lit / Test Two Review Essay Questions 1. The genre of “The Fairie Queen” is a romantic epic. Epic poetry is the highest form of poetry; long and episodic. It is a narrative that contains many adventures, a central character, journey to hell, gods and goddesses, and it starts in the middle (in medias res). The Fairie Queen is allegorical of the Protestant Reformation. It contains many biblical allusions supporting the Protestant faith and criticizing Catholicism. It is written in Spenserian stanza, stanzas of nine iambic lines; the first eight are pentameters and the ninth is hexameter with the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc. 2. The term Renaissance translates into “rebirth”. This was a great revival of art, literature, and learning in Europe; marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world. The Renaissance began in Europe around 1390; this was around the same time of the Canterbury Tales. The Renaissance did not begin in England until1485. It was so late coming to England because of the civil war due to the “power struggle” between the House of York and the House of Lancaster. This Civil War was called the War of the Roses. The two houses fought until they killed each other off and in 1485, King Henry took crown and this was the beginning of the Tudor Dynasty. England finally had a level of peace allowing its people to acknowledge and then take part in this renewal of life, vigor, and interest. 3. The difference in doctrine between Protestantism...
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...reciprocal values of these texts’ transcend their contextual limitations. Their meaning immortalised, they remain forever relevant to the human attempt to derive meaning. Through a comparative study of the texts, the eternal paradox of the complex journey (and process of suffering) required to realise the importance of accepting embracing values of faith, simplicity and, human mortality, in the process of achieving redemption (and forming a new identity )has been exemplified. “And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die”. This use of personification encapsulates the beginning of a journey both Vivian and Donne undertake upon reaching a state of “salvation anxiety”. Immersed in the death of his four still born children, and the plague ridden society that was in the process of forming the first cracks in what would be a paradigm shift away from blind faith, Donne initially struggled to accept his mortality, using “verbal swordplay” as a means in which to “run and hide” from a death which was no longer a mere gateway to the inevitable afterlife. He attempts to conquer death, as seen through the emotive apostrophe and personification of death in Death be not Proud, in which he claims of death, “mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so”. However, just as Vivian realises that “now is not the time for verbal swordplay, for metaphysical conceit, for wit” he to...
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...ABSTRACT John Donne is acknowledged as the master of metaphysical poetry and is admired for his talent and magnificent wit exercised in his writing. Metaphysical poetry is a special branch of poetry that deals with the pedagogic use of intellect and emotion in a harmonic manner. The basic praxis of metaphysical poetry is to highlight the philosophical view of nature and its ambience concerning human life. Despite criticisms from various corners, Donne and his other companions remained busy with their work to concentrate on metaphysical poetry to portray the feelings and sentiments of human beings by dint of their skillful and artful literary accomplishments. This paper is to address the outstanding performance of John Donne in the arena of metaphysical poetry and it endeavours to make a critical assessment of the diverse issues allembracing metaphysical poetry as well as to establish the relevance of metaphysical poetry in the literary realm. ______________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION ―Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere‖ The Sun Rising: John Donne The startling conversational lines marvellously enumerate the poet‘s intense appeal to spread the beams of sun on the lovers‘ world as a mark of illuminating the macrocosmic world and beckon the readers to enter into a new realm of poetry with a sense of attachment and belonging between different objects of nature...
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...HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE "And as I lay and lined and looked on the waters slombred into a sleeping, it swayed so murye"- From The vision on Pier’s Plowman by William Langland The wit remains too: in his last poem, written when he was dying, he bargains with God about forgiving his sins, punning in the last lines on his name: "And, having done that, Thou hast done:/I fear no more. – JOHN Donne "the proper study of mankind is man", -Alexander Pope Dryden did for English poetry what Augustus had done for the city of Rome—"he found it brick and left it marble." – Dr Johnson "the contemporary l.iterature of France was characterised by lucidity, vivacity, and—by reason of theclose attention given to form—correctness, elegance, and finish...It was moreover a literature inwhich intellect was in the ascendant and the critical faculty always in control." – by W.H. Hudson in “An Outline History of English literature” "It is almost exclusively a "town"poetry, made out of the interests of 'society' in the great centres of culture. The humbler aspects of life are neglected in it, and it shows no real love of nature, landscape, ortountry things and people." – W.H.Hudson wrote about Neo classical poetry Romanticism described by Pater, “the addition of strangeness to beauty” By Watt Dunton, “therenaissance of wonder” By Goethe, “Romanticism is disease, Classicism is health.” “Human...
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...Systems Thinking and Tools Darthula Diane Goetz MOL504A Systems Thinking and the Learning Organization Dr. Roger Martin Warner Pacific College August 31, 2012 System Thinking and Linear Thinking Systems Thinking is a process of viewing the entire entity and the paths or connections that allow each part of the entity or process connecting to the whole to be followed and analyzed as each decision affects the whole scheme of the social system/process or organization. This process of thought and understanding is different from the traditional process in that it no longer focuses on the individual piece or person, but the dynamics of the entire organization as the individual piece or person interacts and travels through the system. A system can be anything or any process. As stated by Donella Meadows in Thinking in Systems “words and sentences must, by necessity, come only one at a time in a linear, logical order. Systems happen all at once.” (Meadows, 2008, p. 5). The system being studied may be human or non-human. The concept of System Thinking is not the what is being studied but the how that something interacts with all the various other whats within the entire system. System thinking will frequently allow the individual studying any situation or process to come up with entirely different conclusions than when the same situation or process is studied using the traditional analysis of linear thinking which focuses on tracing a direct path to cause and effect...
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...COURSE # AND TITLE: ENGL 102-D11: Literature and Composition SEMESTER OF ENROLLMENT: Spring 2013 NAME: Greg Mohnkern ID: L23191458 WRITING STYLE USED: Essay of poetry (MLA style) Thesis Statement: “Death be not proud” by John Donne personifies death, as its title aptly prescribes. Giving death human traits allows the writer to blast him with colorful images full of sarcasm and a tone of defiance. The ultimate message of the author provokes the human soul to resist the fear of death. Outline: Introduction: Thesis statement Transition: Discuss the writer’s life in relationship to the subject of the poem Body: Discuss the poem’s form based on the 14-line Petrarch sonnet Evaluate the mood and tone as it changes through the thoughts expressed by the writer Review the uses of symbolism and imagery Review the poet’s theme based on mortality and hope Summary: Donne successfully encourages the reader to reevaluate the power of death The Death of the Power of Death “Death be not proud” by John Donne personifies death. The poem is an apostrophe. By giving death human traits it allows Donne to blast his vilified opponent with colorful images full of sarcasm and a strong tone of defiance. The title is drawn from the first line of the poem, as this is the tenth of Donne’s “Holy Sonnets,” according to Louis Untermeyer, in his work Lives of the Poet ( 136). The ultimate message of the author is to provoke the human soul to resist the...
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...History and anthology of English literature Analysis of poetry Holy Sonnet Death be not proud John Donne John Donne was an English poet, satirist, lawyer and a cleric in the Church of England, who is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His poems are famous for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, and so on. His poem is famous for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterized by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. He always habitually uses the dramatic or everyday speech rhythms. He is the pioneer of modern poet. In this semester, we learn a poem is written by John Donne, which gives me the deep impression. Is "Death be not proud". "Death be not proud" is his masterpiece of metaphysical poem, is written around 1610 and first published posthumously in 1633. It is the tenth sonnet of Donne's posthumously published Holy Sonnets. This poem is addressed to Death, telling him not to be proud, because death is not to be feared. This poem explains death is the moment while joy is eternal after death. Besides, it also shows sleep is a type of death, and that it is pleasurable. In addition, he uses bold description of practices; the rhythm of the poem is more powerful. In the poem imagine is newness and bolder, and it's mainly dominated by death. By means of terrorist imagination...
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...2014 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne In 1572, John Donne, an English poet was born in London, England in the year 1572.Due to his family believing in the Roman Catholic Tradition; he attended Trinity College at a very young age. Because of this tradition, John displayed the knowledge and laws of religion in majority of his works. However, in 1621, he converted to the Church of England, taking up teaching, thus becoming a famous preacher. Five years later he was appointed in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London Dean. Because of this knowledge and charismatic character, he was easily one of the most influential people in London. Throughout his works, John became known as the founder of the Metaphysical poetry; using vivid images and extended metaphors to portray thoughts and feelings. This theory also uses philosophy and religious as a platform, working in imagery from art as well. John Donne preferred to write poetry with strong rhythm, intense language, strange and bold imagination. ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ is known as one of John’s calmest and understanding poems. Considering the fact that his marriage was not accepted by his father in law, the thought of distance between two lovers really occurred in his life. That allows this poem to have a universalized personal experience that he conveyed to his readers. The principal theme of the poem is that lovers remain united even when they are physically separated. Donne proves his idea by argument, conceits, passion...
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...q) Define Metaphysical poetry answer) Metaphysical poetry is a form of poetry that has its roots in the 17th century England. The term Metaphysical poets was coined by the 18th century poet Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of English poets of the 17th century, who were not affiliated with each other in any way. These poets were generally interested in metaphysical issues and even though they never read or saw each others works but all of them had a common method of examining these issues, hence a common ground in regards to the theme or topic of their work . In simple terms, the term Metaphysics is comprised of two words: meta and physics, Meta means beyond and physical means physical nature. Thus, Metaphysical poetry means poetry that goes beyond the physical world of the senses and explores the spiritual world. Poetry which deals with correlation between the real world and the after-world, concrete and abstract, soul and being, as well as reality and perception using philosophical methodology is called Metaphysical Poetry." The work of metaphysical poets was characterized by wit and the innovative use of metaphors, known as Metaphysical Conceits (elaborate and far fetched comparisons of two dissimailar things which have very little in common) and by speculation about topics such as love, life, god, religion and afterlife. The use of conceit in this form of poetry was made to develop a comparison which is exceedingly unlikely but is nonetheless intellectually...
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...John Donne the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. noted for their strong, sensual style and includesonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of English society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism. important theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often theorized. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits *metaphysical poets: work was characterized by the inventive use of conceits, and by speculation about topics such as love or religion. The Metaphysical Poets are known for their ability to startle the reader and coax new perspective through paradoxical images, subtle argument, inventive syntax, and imagery from art, philosophy, and religion using an...
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...“reflective poets” as opposed to merely intellectual ones. Eliot says they have the ability to “feel their thought as immediately as the odor of a rose,” compared to the strictly thought-driven traditional poetry of lyrical poets. Housman’s view is significantly more harsh and critical. In reference to metaphysical poetry, he says that “poetry, as a label for this particular commodity, is not appropriate.” According to Housman, similes and metaphors, which are primary factors in metaphysical poetry, are “things inessential to poetry.” He describes the far-fetched paradoxes of metaphysical poets as “wit,” not poetry. Despite Housman’s negative claims regarding metaphysical poetry, there are several works of metaphysical poets, such as John Donne, that have proven to be very effective. In Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 14,” often referred to as “Batter My Heart,” there is a plethora of evidence of the work’s overall effectiveness as a poem in the poet’s use of poetic devices. The poem is written in first person and the speaker is someone who is struggling with sin and is desperately seeking the guidance of God, who is intended to be the recipient of the speaker’s message. “Batter My Heart” is a fixed form sonnet written in iambic pentameter. Enjambment is used in the title of the poem because it is the same as the poem’s first line. The form of the sonnet is closed and it is composed of three quatrains and one couplet. It has a regular rhyme scheme, but a half rhyme does exist in...
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