Donne stances

Question 1

The Good Morrow

Answer 1

• ‘The Good Morrow’ places a significant emphasis on the power of romantic love.
• ‘The Good Morrow’ presents a speaker who appears to have moved beyond the merely sexual passion into romantic relationship of balance and harmony.

Question 2

Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star)

Answer 2

• The first person narrator laments what is asserted as if it were fact that it is impossible o find a faithful woman no matter how far one travels.

Question 3

The Sun Rising

Answer 3

• ‘The Sun Rising’ is a celebration of the power and fulfilment of romantic love where concern of the material world is presented as insignificant compared to the wonders of the beloved.
• In ‘The Sun Rising’, Donne’s monologue presents a delightful celebration of romantic love.
• ‘The Sun Rising’ suggests a subtle fear about the inevitability of time passing, which s used to provide a contrast to the overwhelming tone of bliss concerning romantic love.
• In ‘The Sun Rising, the poet uses the from of the Aubade (celebrating the dawn) and narrative expansion to pace the time focus very powerfully upon a present moment of romantic bliss.

Question 4

The Canonisation

Answer 4

• Donne uses language and imagery to establish a complex argument where the narrator’s angry attitude to those who criticise his love develops into an extravagant claim that their love is a perfect standard for all future lovers.
• Donne’s ‘The Canonisation’ uses a first person perspective to communicate a sense of conflict between the private world of romantic love and the perceived imposition of a wider society.

Question 5

Air and Angels

Answer 5

• Donne muses upon the mystery of romantic love and how it seems tantalisingly to be fond between the physical and ethereal and spiritual.

Question 6

Love’s Alchemy

Answer 6

• Donne uses the form of a monologue to satirise the subject of romantic love and brutally attacks the notion of women maintaining their intellectual and physical attractions once possessed.
• In ‘Love’s Alchemy’ Donne creates a disturbing and potentially offensive first person voice that satirically attacks the ideology of love.

Question 7

The Flea

Answer 7

• Donne’s narrator presents an argument in favour of sexual license against his lady’s rejection of his sexual advances.

Question 8

A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy’s Day

Answer 8

• In ‘A Nocturnal…’ Donne displays a nihilistic attitude to life that seems drained of any comfort.

Question 9

The Apparition

Answer 9

• Donne creates a spiteful voice of imagined vengeance upon a woman who turned down his sexual advances.
• One of the most disturbing aspects of ‘The Apparition’ I the speaker’s desire to sadistically and supernaturally haunt his lover after death.

Question 10

Valediction Forbidding Mourning

Answer 10

• Donne uses ‘Valediction…’ to create an intensely romantic poem suggesting lovers can transcend the misery that might be felt upon separation because of he power of their love.
• One of Donne’s most romantic meditations upon spiritual love is the poem ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’

Question 11

The Relic

Answer 11

• ‘The Relic’ uses a wide range of images and poetic techniques to define the special qualities of the narrator’s romantic love from the surprising viewpoint of beyond the grave.
• ‘The Relic’ certainly shows an interest in the future by imagining the lovers past from the future of beyond the grave.

Question 12

The Dissolution

Answer 12

• Donne uses a single stanza monologue to present feelings of grief and an argument that the narrator’s pain can inspire his soul to ascent to heaven.