Whereas many people experience love only as different mental, as well as emotional states in contemporary times, John Donne’s Songs and Sonnets do not simply characterise one constant view of love, but include a vast variety of attitudes and emotions. One could almost think that Donne tried to depict his knowledge of love with the help of his poetry. Love is able to be experienced with the soul, the body, or even both. Moreover, it can also be a religious experience, it can further increase the emotions and reach from an ecstasy like state to total despair, or is perceptible as a merely sensual experience. When analysing poems of his Songs and Sonnets individually, one will face a limited prospect of John Donne’s attitude towards love. On the
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By reading through his Songs and Sonnets I try to find similarities between the poems and maybe discover patterns. Once I am done reading one of the poems for a couple of times, I consult secondary literature to see if my interpretations match the ones that can be found in different online resources, such as, JStor, or our library’s archive. One really protruding secondary article I found was written by Hans Osterwalder and is called "Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me": The Love Imagery in John Donne's Secular and Religious Poems. The author analyses “some of the most salient instances of metaphoric expression of love in some of the seminal secular and religious poems” (200). He also analyses The Ecstasy, which helped me to better understand certain aspects and answer a couple of questions that came to my mind after the discussion in class.
3. Method
In order to support the thesis statement stated above, it is important to start with research regarding the topics one wants to discuss in an extensive essay. For me, I would begin by reading generally about love in regard to John Donne and then try to narrow it down. As already mentioned above, Donne, as many other poets in his time, used love to express all sorts of different attitudes towards love. A good example here would be to take a look at his poem To his Mistress …show more content…
After the introduction, I would have one subtopic about love poems in general. Here I would describe typical features love poems consisted of in the 17th century and compare them to Donne and elaborate the differences. Moreover, I would state eventual special characteristics that emphasised Donne’s work during this
By reading through his Songs and Sonnets I try to find similarities between the poems and maybe discover patterns. Once I am done reading one of the poems for a couple of times, I consult secondary literature to see if my interpretations match the ones that can be found in different online resources, such as, JStor, or our library’s archive. One really protruding secondary article I found was written by Hans Osterwalder and is called "Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me": The Love Imagery in John Donne's Secular and Religious Poems. The author analyses “some of the most salient instances of metaphoric expression of love in some of the seminal secular and religious poems” (200). He also analyses The Ecstasy, which helped me to better understand certain aspects and answer a couple of questions that came to my mind after the discussion in class.
3. Method
In order to support the thesis statement stated above, it is important to start with research regarding the topics one wants to discuss in an extensive essay. For me, I would begin by reading generally about love in regard to John Donne and then try to narrow it down. As already mentioned above, Donne, as many other poets in his time, used love to express all sorts of different attitudes towards love. A good example here would be to take a look at his poem To his Mistress …show more content…
After the introduction, I would have one subtopic about love poems in general. Here I would describe typical features love poems consisted of in the 17th century and compare them to Donne and elaborate the differences. Moreover, I would state eventual special characteristics that emphasised Donne’s work during this