John Donne Essay, Research Paper

Donne John. ?The Canonization.? Twentieth Century Views: John Donne. Ed. Helen

Gardner. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice – Hall, INC.,1962

Brooks finds the poem a parody of Christian sainthood taking the major themes of the poem religion and love very seriously and using them in an inevitable paradox. The person to whom Donne speaks in the beginning is a friend who epitomizes the ?world which the lovers have renounced.? A world in which their love may seem most absurd, but cares little for the ?wars? and ?lawsuits? and instead only for the love of each other. The love of the two lovers is viewed as saintly and paradoxically when they ?achieve a more intense world? by becoming ?hermits? and ?gaining the world in each other? and becoming ?the most worldly of all.?

Peck, John. How To Study A Poet. London: Macmillan Publishers LTD, 1988.

Peck finds love to be the ?central opposition? of the poem with the rest of the ?worldly cares dismissed?. To display their love the usage of ?flies? and ?tapers? creates a metaphor for the relationship existing between them. Conceits also play a role in comparing their love and relating their love to other items (phoenix and urn). The usage of the conceit is to make the reader realize ?how wide and varied the world is.? Peck views that love remains ?central? throughout the poem by using ?poetic cleverness.? As well as love remaining central, so do the saintly views of the lovers. In their love they are to be worshipped and to provide a pattern for the world view, they are to ?inspire? the world.

Unger, Leonard. ?Donne?s Poetry and Modern Criticism.? Poetry Criticism, Vol. 1, pp. 131-136.

Unger describes the poem as proceeding form the ?central contrast of two main attitudes: that of the world and that of the lover.? Donne is aware of the attitudes as being in conflict and is opposing one to the other. He believes that the canonized lover?s legends aren?t fit for a hearse or a tomb, but will be fit for verse. Wit, playing a role in the poem, ?results from a complexity of attitudes?, as does the apostrophe in the first stanza, ?exaggerations? and rhetorical questions of the second.

Halpen finds that Donne does create an incomprehensible poem of eros, but yet produces it as such. Which is represented between the second and third stanzas. Love of the poem bestows a negative environment of ?not-love?. The figures of love are seen as a ?symbolic medium of communication? which compensate for the difference in the social class system. However ?love? and ?marriage? are a ?utopian denial?, according to Halpen, in the ?pretty rooms.? The rooms represent ?neither a utopian withdrawal from society or a pseudoaristocratic refusal to engage in business? They are seen as possibly penalizing their social class of property and patronage for loving; yet it is from ?the ashes of their social death that the phoenix is born.?