John Donne

“Metaphysical” love poetry such as John Donne’s “The Sun Rising” has certain characteristic features. The frequent use of colloquial speech stresses the occasional quality of the poems in the sense, that they often seem to rise out of a specific occasion, and in some cases they even seem to be deliberately provocative. Further characteristics are the elaborate and innovative “metaphysical” metaphors, that deliberately distance the tenor from the vehicle, thus stressing the unusual and original by startling contrasts. Also intricate rhythmical patterns aim towards wit and originality. The love poetry often features a deliberate intellectualisation of emotional states (love); The lover becomes a logician instead of a suffering victim, and the poetry addresses the mind rather than the heart. Although metaphysical love poems acknowledge the poetic tradition of the renaissance - the Petrarchian love sonnet as a part of the courtly love tradition - it nevertheless represents a distinct break with that tradition according to form and content. Since I find it impossible to touch upon all of the above characteristics in a limited analysis like this one, the following aims to point to the ways, i

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The 3rd line of the poem: “Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?” sets the main theme of the poem’s discourse; namely the freeing of love from temporal or spatial demands (the sun’s orbit is thus symbolic of the course of time).

“Busy old fool, unruly sun/ Why dost thou thus/ Through windows and through curtains call on us?”(ll. 18) is, in fact, but a pallid representation of the real wealth of being, that is, loving: “Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday / And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay. 9-10) maintains this distinction, denying the crucial question.

Furthermore, Donne’s poetry is not only original in the way it employs traditional forms and themes of poetry in new, complex and challenging structures and meanings. 14)

This is an illustrative example of Donne’s transformation of poetic tradition . It was challenged in many ways (politically, religiously and socially) and was eventually replaced by a world view with less confidence in universal “absolute truths”.

The 2nd stanza reinforces the lover’s argument of the first stanza, that the sun is equalled if not out- powered by the loving couple. It seems that this challenge is reflected in the formal and thematic transitions of the (love) poetry in the 17th century; In a way the fate of the Elizabethan love sonnet in the 17th century is emblematic of the end of Elizabethan society and courtly tradition’s authority.

The “great chain of being” of the Elizabethan age, with its strict rules of hierarchical notions, conformity, courtly authority and insistence on a universal truth lost validity during the 17th century. 17) or official honour (kingship) (l.

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