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Thread: Help please! AS Level work: Metaphysical elements in Donne's poetry

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    Registered User Viola_Juliet's Avatar
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    Exclamation Help please! AS Level work: Metaphysical elements in Donne's poetry

    Hi, I'm currently studying AS Level English Literature and we've started writing essays for a few of John Donne's poems. I'm struggling a bit in finding some of the metaphysical elements, how they are used to support Donne's opinion/argument/etc. and being able to write about said topics in my essays. I'm writing three essays at the moment, each involving basically the same question question of 'what are the metaphysical elements.....blah blah' and they include: 'Song: Sweetest Love I Do Not Go For Weariness Of Thee...', 'Twickenham Garden' and 'The Flea'. I'd really, really appreciate if I could get some replies to help me with this work, it's already a week overdue and my teacher isn't exactly about too often. Please help

    Otherwise I may end up like this at my computer soon:
    “Madness is the inability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak there."

    "We’ve all felt that."

    "And all of us, one way or another, are mad.”

    - Veronika Decides To Die by Paulo Coelho

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    hi =]
    I know how you feel lol the essays are so hard! well in The Flea the metaphysical techniques are the use of a conceit [a small image to portray something larger] the conceit is the mixing of their blood in the flea representing the mixing of them having sex...no sin is created as they are already joined.
    Song: Sweetest Love - he uses the idea of the sun going away at night and coming back in the morning as a representation for him leaving and coming back
    and the bit at the bottom with how she sighs hes soul away is the idea of metaphysical stuff too..
    Twickenham Garden is like spring V winter - winter is his emotions and spring is opposite to pathetic fallacy [surroundings revealing feelings of characters] it's about the seasons reflecting emotions
    the religious references in the first stanza are a common trait of metaphysical poets
    hope that helped
    Good Luck!!

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    Registered User Viola_Juliet's Avatar
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    Thankyou!! I've been in and out of lessons of late so I'm a little behind and I needed a little extra help on this, thankyou you've given me a great starting point.
    “Madness is the inability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak there."

    "We’ve all felt that."

    "And all of us, one way or another, are mad.”

    - Veronika Decides To Die by Paulo Coelho

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    i dont know much on "metaphysical elements",and i read little about Donne.The most impressed poem is A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING,and i think maybe the "stiff twin compasses" is something the kind of metaphysical elements.i like the last sentence:"Thy firmness makes my circle just,And makes me end, where I begun."
    from stone to jade.

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    oh dear
    that's hard we know
    I hope that I can help you
    but also I have to write the same
    and still don't know what should I do

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