1. John Donne and Andrew Marvell
Metaphysical Poetry on Love
John Donne and Andrew Marvell

2. General Theme: Love of Body/Soul vs. Mortality
Metaphysical Poetry on Love
General Theme:
Love of Body/Soul
vs. Mortality

3. Outline Going back in Time (& Misnomers)
Metaphysical Poetry: Definition & Historical Context
John Donne:
“Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (1611 or 12) – Spiritual union (Neo-Platonic Love)
“The Flea” -- Physical Love
Andrew Marvell “To His Coy Mistress” – Physical Love vs. Death
John Donne Holy Sonnet 10 “Death, Be Not Proud” (1609) – Death

4. British/American Literature
Art as a Religion
Modern Technologies
Social Fragmentation
Modern Period
( )
Progress & Invention
Earnestness & Respectability
Decline of Faith
Age of Novel
Victorian Age
( )
Nature; Freedom
Imagination
Industrialism vs. Romantic Hero
Romantic Period
( )
Pygmalion (1913)
Tennyson
Browning
Arnold
Jane Austen ( )
MP 1814
The Victorian Dreams and Nightmares 6:30
Naughty Nineties 54:00

5. The Old & Medieval English
British Literature
logic, common sense, properness and adequate performance in society. 
Neo-Classical
( )
“Re-Birth” of arts and humanism
the Baroque
Love poetry
Renaissance
(late 15th –early 17th )
Old English epic
Religious texts
Oral literature
Arthurian legends
The Old & Medieval English
( )
Aphra Behn
( )
Metaphysical Poetry
Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
John Donne (1572 – 1631)
Folk Ballads
Shakespeare (1564~ 1616)

6. The Long 18th Century (1660 to 1790)
Restoration Drama
Augustan Poetry
The Rise of the Novel

7. Misnomers 17th century poetry (1603-1660)
18th century literature (1660 – 1798)
“Metaphysical” – witty, philosophical, but not necessarily abstract and metaphysical

8. Metaphysical Poetry in Context
the seventeenth century in England: a time of radical changes in politics (e.g. Puritan revolution, Civil war, execution of Charles I  Restoration ) and modes of literary expression. For a while during the Commonwealth Period ( ), drama disappeared, public theaters closed because of fears of immoral influences, and incendiary (煽動者 ) political pamphlets circulated.
Part 2” 11:15

9. Since the 16th Century: Between Anglicanism and Catholicism
KINGS & QUEENS OF ENGLAND, WALES AND IRELAND
Henry VIII
Anglicanism
Edward VI
Mary I
Bloody Mary Back to Catholicism
Elizabeth I
Martin Luther
--Germany
& John Calvin
--France
Part 2: 8:17

10. 17th Century: Religious & Political Upheavals
KINGS & QUEENS OF ENGLAND, WALES, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND
James I (King of Scotland as James VI )
Anglicanism 
Puritan Rev.
Charles I
Civil War and execution of Charles I
Commonwealth
Oliver Cromwell
Richard Cromwell
1660
Charles II
Restoration

11. Metaphysical Poetry in Context (2)
2. Europe:
Science and Technologies: Experimentalism, Navigation, Exploration and Geographical Expansion.
The European baroque period (1580 to approximately 1680): extravagance, psychological tension, theatricality, eccentricity, and originality of its creations (in all artistic media), as well as for the quirkiness and intricacy of its thought
Seize the day
Literary Example?

12. Metaphysical Poetry Defined
Spirit + Matter
The exaltation of wit, which in the 17th century meant a nimbleness of thought; a sense of fancy (imagination of a fantastic or whimsical nature); and originality in figures of speech
Often poems are presented in the form of an argument (proposition composed of comparison; as …so; therefore]
In love poetry, the metaphysical poets often draw on ideas from Renaissance Neo-Platonism [later] to show the relationship between the soul and body and the union of lovers' souls
They also try to show a psychological realism when describing the tensions of love through some physical matters.
Seize the day
Literary Example?

13. Metaphysical Poetry Defined
5. Use of ordinary speech mixed with puns, paradoxes and conceits
Metaphysical Conceit:
a paradoxical and extended metaphor
causing a shock to the reader by the strangeness of the objects compared; e.g: departure and death, beating of gold foil, lovers and a compass)
Abstruse terminology often drawn from science or law
Seize the day

14. Metaphysical Poetry in Context
Peter Paul Rubens Garden of Love c.  1638 Museo del Prado, Madrid
-- The colors are soft and warm, light, gay, ripe, and sensous. 
-- The figures melt into each other in a soft, flowing rhythm.  ...
-- The courtly man in the broad-brimmed hat

16. John Donne
(1572 – 1631)
Shahriar Bolour
(2): 3 Lives -- 2:03

17. John Donne ( )
Having inherited a considerable fortune, young "Jack Donne" spent his money on womanizing, on books, at the theatre, and on travels.
A Roman Catholic
Secret marriage in 1601, with Ann Moore, which got him imprisoned and impoverished.
video: Jason Tondro 3:00
Donne had refused to take Anglican orders in 1607, but King James persisted, so finally Donne gave in. (source)
Started to write holy sonnets after the death of his wife in 1617.
Jack Donne
Doctor Donne

18. Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
This poem is intended as a leave-taking from the speaker’s lover. How does the speaker ask his lover to deal with his absence? 
What metaphysical conceits (witty & extended metaphors) does the speaker use to explain and describe his love?
Why does the speaker open the poem by describing “virtuous men” who accept death with calmness and restraint? What is the effect of the discussion of death here?
What is the “profanation” the speaker warns of in line 7?
What is the significance of the circle the speaker describes in the closing line of the poem? Why does he say it “makes me end where I begun”? 

19. A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING
Simile
AS virtuous men pass mildly away,      And whisper to their souls to go,  Whilst some of their sad friends do say,     "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."                     
So let us melt, and make no noise,       No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ; 'Twere profanation of our joys      To tell the laity our love. 
(1) What does “so” mean?
Seize the day
Proposition
Melt: disappear as if by dissolving

20. A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING
Metaphor
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. 
Dull sublunary lovers' love      —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit  Of absence, 'cause it doth remove  
The thing which elemented it. 
But we by a love so much refined,     That ourselves know not what it is,  Inter-assurèd of the mind,      Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.                          
Explanation

21. A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING
Our two souls therefore, which are one,      Though I must go, endure not yet  A breach, but an expansion,      Like gold to aery thinness beat. 
If they be two, they are two so    
    As stiff twin compasses are two ;  Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show      To move, but doth, if th' other do. 
And though it in the centre sit,      Yet, when the other far doth roam,       It leans, and hearkens after it,      And grows erect, as that comes home. 
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.
(2) Conceit on this page?
Elaboration and Conclusion
Seize the day
Obliquely:
not straight,
devious

22. "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" : Platonic Love
Form: nine four-line tetrameter stanzas, rhyming abab, cdcd, and so on.
Metaphors: central – metaphysical love vs. that of "laity" (l. 8) or "dull sublunary lovers" (13) stanza 3 -5
Seize the day
Mundane/physical lovers
Metaphysical/Spiritual lovers
Departure like earthquake
(with tear-floods, sigh-tempests)
Departure like movement of heavenly spheres
Why?
Out of sight, out of mind
-- Our souls are one; our departure is an expansion (like gold foil), love made truer through trials
-- Our souls are two like twin compasses, while the wandering like making a full circle with the center foot.

23. Summary: "Valediction“ (告別辭) = farewell utterances
Parting compared to –
death of virtuous men,
movement of heavenly spheres,
the beating of gold foil
The two feet of a compass What do you think about the idea of having one foot fixed in the center, while the other making a circle around?
Seize the day

24. Ref. Donne’s Neo-Platonic Love
the preeminence of soul over body, the distinction between love and lust, and the goodness of striving for perfection through devotion to a woman's beauty.
Source (1) Plato–
beauty proceeds in a series of steps
from the love of one beautiful body
to that of two,
to the love of physical beauty in general, and ultimately to beauty absolute “the source and cause of all that perishing beauty of all other things." 

25. Donne’s Neo-Platonic Love
Source (2) the Renaissance Platonic lover–
[from abstract beauty to divine beauty]
Christianized by equating this ultimate beauty with the Divine Beauty of God,
move in stages through the desire for his mistress, whose beauty he recognizes as an emanation of God's, to the worship of the Divine itself. 
embraces sexuality (the mystical union of souls) which is directed to an ideal end.

26. The Flea: Starting Questions
(Use of the flea as a metaphysical conceit) How is the flea used in the speaker’s persuasion of his lady to go to bed?
Why does the speaker say that to kill the flea would be "three sins in killing three"?
(the structure of its argument) Describe the speaker's tone and argument. Is there anything special about Donne’s argument?
In the third stanza, the woman has killed the flea. What is the speaker's response to that? Does he change his position?
How would you argue against the speaker if you were the lady?
Seize the day

27. The Flea
MARK but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is ; It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;     Yet this enjoys before it woo,     And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;     And this, alas ! is more than we would do.
Look at this flea, which represents what you refuse to give me!!!
1. The flea –where two bloods mingle; before wooing; pregnancy before marriage; no sin, shame or loss of virginity

28. The Flea (2)
O stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, yea, more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. Though parents grudge, and you, we're met, And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.     Though use make you apt to kill me,     Let not to that self-murder added be,     And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
(use = habit) Don’t kill it!
2. The flea = (after biting us both) three lives in one; = one marriage bed and temple killing the flea = refusing sex = self-murder, killing me and sacrilege = and 3 sins

29. The Flea
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee? Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now. 'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ; Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.
(after killing the flea)
3. Killing the flea = we are not hurt It doesn’t hurt; our honor is not lost!
taking the flea’s life = yielding to me

30. The Flea -- Notes:
the 17-century idea was of sex as a "mingling of the blood“: It was believed that women became pregnant when the blood of the man (present in his semen) mixed with her blood during sexual intercourse.
The Flea -- "Fleas were a popular subject for jocose [humorous] and amatory [love] poetry in all countries at the Renaissance". Their popularity stems from an event that happened in a literary salon (a place where poets and others came to recite poetry and converse). The salon was run by two ladies, and on an occasion a flea happened to land upon one lady's breast. The poets were amazed at the creature's audacity, and were inspired to write poetry about the beast. (source)

31. The Flea -- as a Metaphysical Conceit
The Flea: Flea= sex as no loss > Flea = Church, etc. > Flea = no loss
this mingling of blood, causing a “swell”  3 lives
more than married  the flea as their temple and bed; we “cloister'd in these living walls of jet”
Killing the flea:
1) kill three lives, a "sacrilege" ;
2) kill/lose nothing, just as your losing your virginity

32. The Flea -- the other poetic device
Rhyme & Meter: Iambic, three nine-line stanzas, identical in form. (The first six lines alternate, tetrameter, then pentameter, rhyming aabbcc. The seventh line is tetrameter, the eighth and ninth, pentameter. ddd).
Direct address and Casual tone: Mark but this flea...
Repetition: And mark in this
Imagery: religious (church, cloysterd, sacrilege, three sins in killing three - more holy trinity imagery blood of innocence ) and sexual (mingle)
Argument: sophistry-- Circular argument. The flea starts and ends as nothing.

33. Andrew Marvell

34. Andrew Marvell ( )
engaged in political activities, taking part in embassies to Holland and Russia and writing political pamphlets and satires.
A controversial person (one with a sense of balance and fairness; a bad-tempered, hard-drinking lifelong bachelor) and an unclassifiable poet
Marvell wrote politically charged poems that would have cost him his freedom or his life had they been made public. He was a secretary to John Milton, and once Milton was imprisoned during the Restoration, Marvell successfully petitioned to have the elder poet freed. (source)

35. Premise 1: time and space enough
“To his Coy Mistress”
HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
India
England

36. Premise 1: time and space enough
“To his Coy Mistress”
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
100 – eyes
200 –each breast
30,000 – “the rest”
An age –each part

37. Mycroft lectures Tone: 29:36
“To his Coy Mistress”
But at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song: then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust: The grave 's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.
Mycroft lectures Tone: 29:36

38. “To his Coy Mistress” Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

39. Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life

40. though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

41. To His Coy Mistress: Questions
What is the main argument and how is it developed?
What conceits and other poetic devices are used?
Why is the title “To his Coy Mistress” but not “my”?
What does the last four lines mean?
Is the poem just about sex? That is, is the message “Seize the day to have sex” or can it also be about other activities?
Seize the day

42. Argument: carpe diem or "seize the day" --
a very common literary motif in poetry.
emphasizes that life is short and time is fleeting as the speaker attempts to entice his listener, a young lady usually described as shy (coy) or a virgin.
frequently use the rose as a symbol of transient physical beauty and the finality of death.
e.g. “Gather ye rosebud while ye may.”

43. Argument: carpe diem To Virgins, To Make Much Of Time Robert Herrick
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,     Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today,     To-morrow will be dying.
[. . .]

44. Argument and Imagery
Argument -- If we lived forever there would be no need to hurry. However, we do not live forever. Therefore we must seize the day.
Imagery:
Hyperbole: praising the lady “forever” and slowly –images of space and time alternate with each other.
“mortality” –marble vault; images of sterility, rotting corpses, tombs, and a shocking denial of the procreative activity of sex.
Seize the day– images of transience and aggressive and daring action (next slide)

45. Imagery of aggressive (sexual) action
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life
Devour –eat up time quickly and at a large amount each time.
Like birds of prey (hawks) eat up their prey (rabbits) unthinkingly and instinctively
Rolled into one Ball –sexual act
Tear our pleasure …gates of life – embrace the inevitable aging process and difficulties which lead us to death.

46. Passion Balanced with Wit: Metaphors and Conceits
vegetable love –slow and quiet.
Time’s wing’d chariot
Iron Gates of life
Paradox -- tearing "pleasures“ with "strife"
Conceit & Hyperbole –
the use of large space and time to woo slowly.
Marble vault as both the grave and the sexual organ.
The ball of sun/son
Pun—sun/son; run (go faster, run away)

47. Passion Balanced with Wit: “His” Mistress.
Convention:
e.g. Donne’s – 1) ELEGY XVII. ELEGY ON HIS MISTRESS
2) VALEDICTION TO HIS BOOK
3) ELEGY V. HIS PICTURE. “HERE take my picture ; though I bid farewell, ...”
e.g. Marvell –
To his Noble Friend, Mr. Richard Lovelace, upon his Poems
2) To his worthy Friend Doctor Witty upon his Translation of the Popular Errors
Rhetoric Implication
The Lady – coy in appearance, but calculative as the speaker,
“His” -- Exhibited and desired by whom?
Praised – bodily parts to be conquered as if the New World to be discovered.

48. Imagery of aggressive (sexual) action
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life
Devour –eat up time quickly and at a large amount each time.
Like birds of prey (hawks) eat up their prey (rabbits) unthinkingly and instinctively
Rolled into one Ball –sexual act
Tear our pleasure …gates of life – embrace the inevitable aging process and difficulties which lead us to death.

49. Andrew Marvell ( 1621 – 1678)
an English metaphysical poet, satirist and
A politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678.
During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton.
Sympathetic with Puritan revolution, supportive of Oliver Cromwell.  Does this influence of interpretation of “To His Coy Mistress” which is epicurean?

50. Different Views of Death
Death Be Not Proud; Ozymandias
General View: Different Kinds and Death in Time
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
One’s Own Death
Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
Stop all the Clocks, Turn Off the Telephones
My Last Duchess
Father’s Aging or Lover’s Death
Many –Bright Star, To His Coy Mistress, Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer’s Day…
Love Poems: Lover’s or One’s Own Mortality

51. John Donne
Holy Sonnet 10
Death, Be Not Pround (Holy Sonnet 10) (1633)

52. You provide rest & sleep
“Death, Be Not Proud”
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,  
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,1 
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.  
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,          
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest 2 our best men with thee do go,  
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.   .
They die not
Note 1 : To monogamous Christians, they are only dead until the Judgment day and the resurrection of Jesus. They compare the time before that to a period of “sleep.”
Note 2 : When the time has come, faithful Christians who died will wake up and be led into heaven.
You provide rest & sleep

53. You are replaced/killed by eternity
“Death, Be Not Proud”
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,  
And better then thy stroke; 3 why swell'st thou then; 4  
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
You are slave
Poppy works better
3. Stroke: strike （打擊、撫摸、鐘響）
4. swell, swell with pride
You are replaced/killed by eternity

54. Possible Views of Death: Christian or Otherwise
How Christians view “death”:
They are only dead until the day of Judgment comes and Christ returns to earth.
A period of “Sleep”
“Time ends, eternity begins.”
A non-religious view of Death:
Death cannot kill humans; it is “Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men, …with poison, war, and sickness” that does it.
Death should be more pleasurable than sleep, but we “wake eternally.”

55. Punctuation & Capitalization
The last line of the poem,
“And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die!”
“And Death shall be no more, death thou shalt die.”
Do the punctuation and the capitalization make a difference?
Wit
, a small break
; a radical break

56. Wit
Wit (2001), Dir.  Mike Nichols; starring Emma Thompson, based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning play, Wit, by Margaret Edson.
Plot: Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson) is a professor of English literature known for her intense knowledge of metaphysical poetry, especially the Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Her life takes a turn when she is diagnosed with metastatic Stage IV ovarian cancer. (source: Wikipedia)
Clips: 1) just a comma; 2) doctor treatments (2); 3) nurse; 4) ending

57. Final Exam 2 Text-Analysis Q’s 2 Essay Questions
1. which workstation did you learn the most from and what have you learned?
2. choose a theme to compare two poems, in explaining the differences and similarities, you should consider the historical background, or that of the poets’.
3. on The Death of a Salesman