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Metaphysical conceit in donnes poetry
Critical analysis of 130 sonnets
Analysis of donnes holy sonnets
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Is it possible to misunderstand something, yet still be guided toward its claims? Is it possible for something that ultimately has the greatest impact on your life to be unnoticed until the last possible moment? In most cases, a true revelation does not present itself until later in a person’s life. In the play Wit, by Margaret Edson, the character of Professor Vivian Bearing reaches a profound realization concerning one of the great impacts in her own life. Vivian, self-proclaimed intellectual and widely-feared professor, essentially devotes her life to the works of John Donne, a renowned metaphysical poet. She tirelessly prides herself on her exceptional skills and experience with analyzing Donne’s works, even in the midst of being diagnosed and treated for ovarian cancer. During her stay in the hospital, Vivian unwillingly sees that her lifetime analysis in Donne’s writings has only scratched the surface in comparison to the truth that she discovers in the last hours of her life. For the first time, she is able to personally relate to the speaker in the sonnets that she was supposedly so familiar with. In poetic terms, “wit” means the development of a metaphysical conceit. It is an insightful use of analogy, metaphor or inventive joining of dissimilar images to make a point in a poem. In these regards, this play has been appropriately titled. John Donne, whose Holy Sonnets make numerous appearances in the play, uses his metaphysical poetry to spark unrest, debate, and controversy. He himself wrestles with questions about faith, God’s mercy and judgment, human mortality, sin, damnation, absolution, and salvation. The Holy Sonnets are the product of doubter, one who has not yet found inner peace. This realization i... ... middle of paper ... ...s a moment when she starts to see the true meaning but doesn’t want to accept it at first, which is evident from the groaning and “hiding.” However, at the end of the play and the end of her life, Vivian is ready to accept this truth that she herself is living out the same life as the speakers in Donne’s poems and begins “reaching for the light –“ (Edson 66). Works Cited Donne, John. “Holy Sonnet 5, Holy Sonnet 6, Holy Sonnet 10.” John Donne’s Poetry: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Donald R. Dickson. W.W. Norton & Company. New York, London. 2004. (Handout) Donne, John. “Hymn to God, my God, in My Sickness.” Poems of John Donne. vol I. E. K. Chambers, ed. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 211-212. Edson, Margaret. Wit. MCC Theater: New York City, NY, 1999 Gardner, Helen, ed. The Metaphysical Poets. London: Penguin, 1985.
Margaret Edson’s Wit is a touching play that takes the reader through a woman’s critical journey from being diagnosed with stage-four metastatic ovarian cancer to gaining an understanding of life and its many intricacies. This woman is Dr. Vivian Bearing, and she tackles the incredible challenge of cancer with her unique relationship with words. Her wit and intimacy with words are what cause enormous upheaval in her life up until the very end. Words were the keystone of Bearing’s profession, but they turn on her during her experience with cancer. Then, this reversal gives her a true understanding of the poet John Donne, and finally the doctor can see the value of human beings and relationships. Through these events, Edson produces a resounding
When readers reflect on the poetry of the seventeenth century, poets such as John Donne and the
Vivian Bearing is a literary professor specializing in the sonnets of John Donne who is dealing with cancer. She is the personification of wit, a major theme in the play as the title suggests. Her formal behavior exhibits this characteristic in her refined way speech and dignified actions. This aspect of her personality becomes to define her as even the difficulty of her classes hold a reputation among students, and even strips her of humanity. When being given a pelvic exam by a former student, Jason Posner, she describes it as “thoroughly… degrading,” putting into perspective her refinity when we compare her to another person who would have most-likely described the experience as ‘embarrassing.’ Vivian is even shown declining a student's request to extend the deadline for an assignment because of the death of a family member. Her actions
The student paper written by Delys Waite titled, Imagery, Meter, and Sound in Donne’s Holy Sonnet 7, takes a formalist approach to critiquing the poem. Waite focuses only on a few literary devices to look at how those devices influence the form of the poem. Waite goes into detail describing sound by showing how groups of words have similar sounds that makes the reader say the words slower with more pauses. He addresses these words and how they sound to help emphasize different ideas the poet is trying to get across. Waite does this in a detailed manner by using accents over the letters that create these sounds and by deeply explaining the sound in each word. In the paper, he also discusses imagery and how the images that the poet is creating show how the poet feels about God.
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.
Vivian Bearing undergoes an intensive cancer treatment, while she encounters a driven medical staff. As a well-known literature professor, she enjoys the challenge of seeking truth in complex or abstract ideas. While she lectures her college class, the students struggle to understand the lesson, for she assumes everyone shares the same amount of knowledge as she does. A doctorate degree in literature, Vivian takes pride in her assertions and lacks patience in explaining to others. Throughout her treatment, she loses control she once had in her classroom, shifting from a familiar and comfortable environment to the hostile and foreign hospital. In the presence of her doctors, her status shifts to being no longer the authority in the field. Once smart, ambitious, and capable of perception, Vivian is left weak and vulnerable for the first time. Vivian takes pride in her wisdom, for she knows that is the only trait that distinguishes her from the others. Ironically, what initially gave her courage eventually inhibits her ability to cope with her illness. The occurrence of obstacles is simply beyond our power to manage, therefore, those are the times when we are forced to relinquish and allow fate take
In her play “Wit”, Margaret Edson depicts Professor Vivian Bearing as an intense, brilliant scholar with a passion for the cryptic Holy Sonnets of John Donne. However, as she struggles with metastatic stage IV ovarian cancer and gets closer to death, her perspective seems to shift; when her mentor Professor E.M. Ashford comes to visit her, Bearing wants her to read not one of Donne’s sonnets, but instead the children’s book The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. Through her inclusion of The Runaway Bunny in contrast with Donne’s sonnets, Edson highlights the lack of need for the incessant interpretation that Bearing is used to as well as the straightforwardness regarding the idea of salvation, seeming to suggest that simplicity can be more meaningful than a constant analysis of complexity in connecting with people through kindness, and that God has a merciful nature in granting redemption.
In the “Unholy Sonnet; after the Praying” by Mark Jarman and “Batter my Heart, Three-personed God, for You” by John Donne, there lies very common subject matters. Both poems are expressing a feeling that the author has about his religion and it’s purpose in his life. Yet, although the subjects both poems are addressing are the same, the messages being delivered are slightly different.
---. "Sonnet 130." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1. M. H. Abrams, ed. W. W. Norton (New York): 1993.
Every writer leaves his mark, his imprint, in his writing; a thumb print left behind the ink if you know how to look for it, and Donne is no exception. The problem is extracting Donne’s imprint, and essence, from the poem, and understanding what that tells us about him. In one poem in particular this stands out, his Holy Sonnet IX, where Donne’s imprint lingers, giving another story behind the text, of his belief in God, but also his inner questioning, and confliction and doubt which come out as contradictions. Behind the text, Holy Sonnet IX, as Donne speaks through his speaker and poem, we come to understand that he is a religious man, though conflicted, which leads to doubt and contradictions, as he resents God in a way, while also just craving for his absolution and for him to forget and forgive his sins and wash them away, sins which weigh on him heavily and he believes taint him.
Donne, John. "A Valediction of my Name, In the Window." Poems of John Donne - Vol I. Ed.
In his sonnets, John Milton tackles a number of subjects which he addresses at considerably greater length in his other poetry and prose. These subjects range from religious to political, and rarely is any one piece of writing limited to one or the other of those fields. While his Sonnet 16 begins with a challenge to familiar biblical passages, Milton ultimately uses it to offer a critique of the nearly ubiquitous comparison between the king and God.
In the Holy Sonnet XIV, John Donne use the exaggerated descriptions to display his tough attitude and faithfulness for God. Also, these words make the sonnet become more inspiring.
John Donne and his poetry exemplify the type of verse that connects the themes of derisive cosmic forces out of our control, to love, to religion, to paradoxes within the poems, and the theme of fidelity. These themes are evident in “The Flea”, in which the woman kills the flea and the supposed marriage between the man and the woman, “The Hymn to God My God in My Sickness” in which Donne feels he is on the verge of dying, and “The Triple Fool” in which Donne feels depressed after rejecting his love in a sexual manner.
No poem of John Donne's is more widely read or more directly associated with Donne than the tenth of the Holy Sonnets,"Death, be not proud." Donne's reputation as a morbid preacher was well-known. He had a portrait of himself made while posed in a winding-sheet so that he could contemplate a personalized memento of death. Donne draws upon a popular subject in medieval and Renaissance art, Le roi mort or King Death. His fascination with death reaches another plateau with this poem. He almost welcomes it and denounces the process as being neither horrifying nor the "end-all be-all." In a contextual point of view, he works to rupture habitual thinking and bring attention to the intensity and depth of a situation by creating doubt or offering a new aspect of his subject. Donne takes this poem and pours forth an array of visions that directly connects to the contextualist in a look at death, the pa...