Donne's Poems The Sunne example essay topic

How representative are the poems the Sunne rising and good Friday 1613 riding westward of john Donne's overall work and how can these poems be read from different perspectives and concepts? Through John Donne's poems the Sunne rising and Good Friday 1613. Riding westward, it is highly evident how they are representative of his other works of poetry through the recurring themes of love and religion. The representation is also seen through the use of similar techniques used throughout his works such as simile, metaphor, hyperbole, conceit and the use of personal tone.

These poems can be read through several various perspectives, particularly through the perspectives of a feminist and from a patriarchal perspective. Donne's overall work consisted largely of Love Poetry such as The Sunne Rising and Religious Poetry such as Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward. These two poems also consist of various techniques that are also utilised in other works of Donne. Through these recurring techniques and constant themes of love and religiousness seen in Donne's body of work, we see how the poems The Sunne Rising and Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward are representative of Donne's overall.

Personal tone is used in Donne's love poetry, which enhances the dramatic quality of Donne's poetry and allows Donne to speak directly to the audience. It is seen in the Sunne Rising throughout the poem where there is a dominant sense of the poet: "I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink". The personal tone is also utilised in another of Donne's romantic poems, Loves Alchymie, where authority is gained though the use of 'I': "I have lov'd... ". In Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Donne compares natural phenomena to a love relationship, the "sigh tempests" relating to the element of air, and the "tear floods" to the element of water. He uses this hyperbole to demand that his lover remain stoic and resist any show of emotion upon his departure.

Similarly in Sunne "I could eclipse and cloud them" juxtaposed with "with a winke" adds to the conceit in this poem. Alliteration is employed in The Sunne Rising through the line: "Thou Sunne art halfe as happy 'as wee". This is done to give the statement a snide tone, which could almost be seen as mocking. Alliteration such as "bracelet of bright hair" is used to a different effect in the poem The Relique, where it helps to maintain the visual impact of the imaginary scene being described. As in Donne's love poetry, personal tone is also used in his religious poetry.

In Good Friday 1613. Riding Westward the personal tone is put into use to add authority to the piece and: .".. where I begun ne". Personal tone is largely evident in another of Donne's religious poems, A Hymn e to God the Father, where the poem is concluded with the line 'I have no more". Metaphor is another technique used in Donne's religious and overall work.

Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness the controlling metaphor for the poem - the human body as a map - and the physicians have therefore become map-readers. In Good Friday the metaphorical connection comes from the stressing between the physical and spiritual which links God's death to the setting sun. In this sense the crucifixion becomes the microcosm of the world. In Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV the relationship between the image and the subject is of great importance, Donne exploits the technique of paradox in order to successfully show the great importance: "Except you enteral me, never shall I be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me". The paradoxical notion that God who is 'selfe life, must dye' is explored through emotive imagery in Good Friday, which highlights that witnessing such a death made: 'his footstool e crack, and the Sunne winke".

In the 1590's, at the time when John Donne produced his Songs and Sonnets, the Petrarchan tradition had already had several centuries of undeniable rule over amorous poetry and literature in general. Donne probably thought this rule should come to an end, for his sonnets rudely, and even cynically changed the concepts concerning love and women. His love poetry is best valued when compared to the very strong at the time Petrarchan concept. The most scandalous of his ideas is probably how he viewed women.

All in all, John Donne managed to step aside from a centuries old tradition in literature that went on even throughout his lifetime. Namely his audacity to violate the conventions, to try something new made a very special place for his works in the English renaissance. Not only that; to a great extent he foretold the upcoming women's struggle against sexism and more of less set the ground for breaking the rules of the Petrarchan tradition..