John Donne's The Sun Rising
Critics of John Donne's "The Sun Rising" often note that the poem's displacement of the outside world in favor of two lovers' inner world serves to support its overall theme: the centrality of human love amidst a permanent physical universe. In an essay entitled "John Donne," Achsah Guibbory supports this reading of the poem, stating, "The world of love contains everything of value; it is the only one worth exploring and possessing. Hence the microcosmic world of love becomes larger and more important than the macrocosm" (135). "[T]he lovers' room," Toshihiko Kawasaki observes similarly, "is a microcosm because it is private and self-contained, categorically excluding the outer world" (29). As evident in this criticism, Donne's lovers seem to transcend the limits of the physical world by disregarding external influences, coercing all things to rotate around them instead. In Thomas Docherty's words, "[the lovers] become the world and occupy the same position of centrality as the sun. They become, in short, the still point around which all else is supposed to revolve, and around whom all time passes [. . .]" (31). They create a miniature world that is more important than the larger universe within the realm of their bedroom, and their bodies are the gravitational center.
Expanding upon the criticism of this poem in his analysis of Donne's poetry, James S. Baumlin concludes that "The Sun Rising" must not be interpreted literally. Rather, Donne's displacement of the outside world, in favor of the lovers' inside "microcosm," is a rhetorical technique used to argue for the strength and energy of mutual love. "Actually," Baumlin writes,
[. . .] the reader knows that the world does not literally go...
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...se. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1991.
Brown, Meg Lota. Donne and the Politics of Conscience in Early Modern England. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995.
Docherty, Thomas. John Donne, Undone. London: Methuen, 1986.
Donne, John. "The Sun Rising." The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch, et al. Vol. 1. New York: Longman, 1999. 1552-1553.
Gorton, Lisa. "John Donne's Use of Space." Early Modern Literary Studies 4.2 (1998): 27 pars. 10 November 1999 .
Guibbory, Achsah. "John Donne." The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to Marvell. Ed. Thomas N. Corns. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 123-147.
Kawasaki, Toshihiko. "Donne's Microcosm."Seventeenth-Century Imagery: Essays on Uses of Figurative Language from Donne to Farquhar. Ed. Earl Miner. Berkeley: U of California P, 1971. 25-43.
Everett, Nicholas From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamiltong. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.
Perry, Bruce. Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1991. Print.
He was born Malcolm Little, to a Baptist lay speaker and a Grenada-born homemaker, Malcolm’s family had to be relocated several times because of constant death-threats toward his father. At the age of six, Earl, Malcolm’s father was killed in a streetcar accident that the family believed was the work of a white supremacist group called the Black Legion. At thirteen, Malcolm’s mother was institutionalized at a mental hospital, leaving her children to be separated into foster homes. Although an excellent student in junior high school, Malcolm dropped out of school when a white teacher told him that his dream of practicing law was “no realistic goal for a nigger”. After a youth of petty crime and a young adulthood of larger infractions, Malcolm found himself in jail for larceny and breaking and entering.
Shead, Jackie. "'The wife of bath's tale' as self-revelation: Jackie Shead discusses how far the Wife's Tale perpetuates the picture we have gained of her from her Prologue." The English Review Feb. 2010: 35+. General OneFile. Web. 24 Feb. 2011.
The autobiography of Malcolm X captures the personal growth and the journey of Malcolm Little, also known as Malcolm X. Throughout his life, Malcolm’s experiences shaped him into the human rights activist that we are all familiar with today. In his early age Malcolm believed every white person was malicious, he was a criminal, and he believed that Christianity prevented the progression of African Americans- later on in life, Malcolm became a controversial human rights activist, believed that white people were “well-meaning” people, and was a devout Muslim (pg. 383).
In order to better understand Philip's critique of Donne within the lines of her poetry, a reading
The life of Malcolm Little, an African American man from the Midwest that lived through it all. While the world around him was plagued by racial discrimination and a lot of violence, he was brought up to believe in how own worth and his own personal rights as a human being. This autobiography highlights the struggles of this African American family, fighting for their rights in a world that wasn’t quite ready to give their rights to them.
Decaro, Louis, A. One The Side Of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Print.
John Donne uses poetry to explore his own identity, express his feelings, and most of all, he uses it to deal with the personal experiences occurring in his life. Donne's poetry is a confrontation or struggle to find a place in this world, or rather, a role to play in a society from which he often finds himself detached or withdrawn. This essay will discuss Donne's states of mind, his views on love, women, religion, his relationship with God; and finally how the use of poetic form plays a part in his exploration for an identity and salvation.
The central theme of the report is to reflect the perspective of a black man in an era that called for equality struggles between races in the United States while battling views on racism and his rise and fall within the Nation of Islam religion. The research paper was constructed so that the reader would gain knowledge of Malcolm X as an individual and not as a phenomenon. A reflection regarding amiable truths that spanned his brief lifetime and the apparent transformations the man and his psyche underwent from childhood to his untimely death.
The United States of America, being a country founded by immigrants, is known all over the world as the land of great opportunities. People from all walks of life travelled across the globe, taking a chance to find a better life for them and their family. Over the years, the population of immigrants has grown immensely, resulting in the currently controversial issue of illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants are the people who have overstayed the time granted on their US, visa or those who have broken the federal law by crossing the border illegally. Matt O’Brien stated in his article “The government thinks that 10.8 million illegal immigrants lived in the country in January 2009, down from a peak of nearly 12 million in 2007.”(Para, 2) While some argue that illegal immigrants burden the United States of America and its economy, others believe that they have become essential and are an important part of the US, economy.
The Canterbury Tales is a literary masterpiece in which the brilliant author Geoffrey Chaucer sought out to accomplish various goals. Chaucer wrote his tales during the late 1300’s. This puts him right at the beginning of the decline of the Middle Ages. Historically, we know that a middle class was just starting to take shape at this time, due to the emerging commerce industry. Chaucer was able to see the importance and future success of the middle class, and wrote his work with them in mind. Knowing that the middle class was not interested in lofty philosophical literature, Chaucer wrote his work as an extremely comical and entertaining piece that would be more interesting to his audience. Also, Chaucer tried to reach the middle class by writing The Canterbury Tales in English, the language of the middle class rather than French, the language of the educated upper class. The most impressive aspect of Chaucer’s writing is how he incorporated into his piece some of his own controversial views of society, but yet kept it very entertaining and light on the surface level. One of the most prevalent of these ideas was his view that certain aspects of the church had become corrupt. This idea sharply contrasted previous Middle Age thought, which excepted the church’s absolute power and goodness unquestionably. He used corrupt church officials in his tales to illustrate to his audience that certain aspects of the church needed to be reformed. The most intriguing of these characters was the Pardoner. Chaucer’s satirical account of the Pardoner is written in a very matter-of-fact manner that made it even more unsettling with his audience. Chaucer uses his straightforwardness regarding the hypocrisy of the Pardoner, suggestive physiognomy of the character, and an interesting scene at the conclusion of the Pardoner’s Tale to inculcate his views of the church to his audience. The way that Chaucer used these literary devices to subtly make his views known to an audience while hooking them with entertainment, shows that Chaucer was truly a literary genius.
iv[iv] Helen Gandner, ed., John Donne: A Collection of Critical Essays. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1962) 47.
[8-16] Donne, John. “From Meditation 17”. Excerpt from McDougal Litell’s “The Language of Literature”, Page 455. McDougal Litell Inc., 2000.
The metaphysical era in poetry started in the 17th century when a number of poets extended the content of their poems to a more elaborate one which investigated the principles of nature and thought. John Donne was part of this literary movement and he explored the themes of love, death, and religion to such an extent, that he instilled his own beliefs and theories into his poems. His earlier works, such as The Flea and The Sunne Rising, exhibit his sexist views of women as he wrote more about the physical pleasures of being in a relationship with women. However, John Donne displays maturity and adulthood in his later works, The Canonization and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, in which his attitude transcends to a more grown up one. The content of his earlier works focused on pursuing women for his sexual desires, which contrasts heavily with his latter work. John Donne’s desire for physical pleasure subsides and he seeks to gain an emotional bond with women, as expressed in his later poetry.