...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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...The issue of life and death is the central theme of Margaret Edson’s play “Wit”; whereas the main character’s (Vivian Bearing) finding of her misconception of witty language’s significance is used by the author for representation of Vivian’s 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...
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...a Narrator and a Scholar In literature throughout history, we often find similarities between two texts. Though the works seem very different, there are many minor details in writing that can link two very different pieces together. In the book Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk we see a young Narrators life, described through his own eyes, as we discover the truth of his false reality. In the book Wit by Margaret Edson we follow the life and death of a scholar faced with the battle of cancer. Though the two works sound very different, there are many similar elements that connect the two writings. We can see the similarities in ways, such as the layout of the book, and the main characters development in both....
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