NOTES FOR THE CAVALIER POETS SECTION:
Carpe Diem (page 268)
Transiency: ephemeral; pass through, temporary
Metaphysical conceit:
Metaphysical means having to do with the spirit world or the world that cannot be seen but experienced through the spiritual realm or through the mind.
Conceit: an extended metaphor comparing two unlike things.
Humors: the belief that personalities were caused by vapors exhumed by certain organs and blood. If one were sanguine (sangre:blood) then one’s relaxed personality was the result of vapors exhumed by the blood. If one were foul tempered or bilious, then it was assumed that one’s gall bladder was in overdrive and produced too much bile, hence an irritable personality.
Christopher Marlowe:
Flamboyant and brilliant writer of plays and poetry. Was a spy who was denied his masters at Cambridge because of suspected Catholic sympathies; however, Queen Elizabeth interceded for him with a tartly written message to the professors saying that he should be granted his degree because of secret work that he had performed for her which only she and he know about - and it's nobody else's business. What he did for her exactly is still unknown to this day. He later was killed when he was stabbed in the eye by another man, also suspected of being a spy, over a bar tab. There is a theory grown up around Marlowe that he wasn't killed at all, merely wounded, but went underground due to the dangerous political climate of the time, and continued writing plays and sonnets. These plays and sonnets were given to a young writer/actor at the time who produced them at his theatre under the name of William Shakespeare. (Most scholars accept Shakespeare, however, as the authentic author of these works.)
Émigré: people who are immigrating to another country.
Madrigals: a type of music that is sung with multiple parts.
Swains: lovers
Theme: If you were my love, we would throw our cares to the world and live in the moment, living off the land.
Speaker: The speaker is the shepherd.
Occasion: He is a young man speaking to a young maid with seduction on his mind.
Audience: The young maid
Purpose: To seduce.
There is no mention of the passing of time in a committed relationship.
Tone: Bold, witty, but also a bit treacherous.
Bed of roses: implies a luxuriousness
Ben Jonson:
A felon who was convicted of killing an actor for mangling his lines. He managed to avoid the hangman’s noose by reciting some liturgical verse in Latin which qualified him as a member of the clergy, allowing him to be tried in the clerical court which was less harsh than secular court. For his punishment, he had his thumb branded which marked him as a felon.
For His Son:
Subject: A father’s grief over the loss of his son.
Speaker: the father
Occasion: His son’s death
Audience: To his dead son
Purpose: To console himself over the death of his beloved son
Theme: That death is a state to be envied where one escapes the pain of such loss, yet Jonson also hopes that his grief over the loss of his son will never lessen which would imply that his love for his son has lessened.
You do not have to write the question, but you MUST incorporate the question in your answers. You must answer in complete sentences and make references to the poem in question.
THE NYMPH’S REPLY TO THE SHEPHERD
Speaker: The Nymph
Occasion: To answer the shepherd’s seduction
Audience: The shepherd
Purpose: To rebut the shepherd’s seduction
Tone: Realistic, Bold, Sassy, Skeptical, snappy, honest, ironic logical, Socratic arguments
Pastoral: rural setting or a type of poem extolling the virtues of a country setting.
Litotes: a form of understatement which adds to the irony.
She said not unkindly that Mary was unhappy.
She was not unattractive.
Marilyn was not unattractive.
John Donne
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Speaker: John Donne
Dull sublunary lovers:
Occasion: He and his wife are separated. She is grieving because she is pregnant and is having premonitions that something bad is going to happen.
Audience: His wife
Purpose: To calm his wife and to not feel so alone.
Literary devices:
Iambic hexameter
Rhymed verse
Alliteration:
“Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, No.”
Still to Be Neat
By Ben Jonson
Soapstone
Speaker: Ben Jonson who feels that true beauty is natural
Occasion: He is conveying to a too arfully made-up lover that he would prefer her more au natural.
Audience: the woman who is too artfully made-up
Purpose: to convince her to be more natural and not so heavily manicured into a contrived perfection.
Tone: matter-of-fact
Theme: True beauty is natural
Read “Delight in Disorder” by Robert Herrick to show similarity.
Meditations by John Donne
The bell tolls for thee. When a person dies, and a bell tolls it tolls for everyone. We are all interconnected. Everyone is part of the body of Christ. Every member plays an important part in the Church.
Metaphor:
Book: all of humanity is part of the same book written by the same author. When someone dies, it is not a page torn out of the book. It is translated into a finer language (heaven).
Translations: means of death or being translated into a finer language (going to heaven.)
Vocabulary:
Promontory: cliff
Theme: God, religion, church
For Whom the Bell Tolls: for everyone
Occasion: to console or to warn those who are about to die.
Audience: Everyone (particularly those in the Church).
Purpose: to tell us that we are all connected.
Tone: Serious, somber, Deep,
His perspective is limited to those who are going to Heaven.
We are all connected and a person’s death, regardless of who that person is, diminishes us.
To His Coy Mistress
By Andrew Marvell
Soapstone
Speaker: Andrew Marvell
Occasion: Man is expressing his love
Audience: the mistress
Purpose: to love when she is young
Tone: Expressive, honest, realistic, artful
Figurative Language:
Allusion: “the conversion of the Jews.” Reference to the Ganges.
Imagery:
River; Marble Vault: her tomb; Time’s winged chariot hurrying near; Nor in thy marble vault shall sound my echoing sound; deserts of vast eternity; amorous birds of prey; tear our pleasures with rough strife; through the iron gates of life.
Personification: The sun will chase; we will make him (sun) run.
Marvell is urging a young woman to live life! The poem is set up first as a condition (If we had but time enough) and sets up an unrealistic situation, filled with fantastic, historical and fanciful and geographical conditions which cannot occur.
Lines 12 – 15 describe her as a treasure.
The word “but” goes back to reality. The "but" contradicts the “If we had but time…”
Theme: Carpe Diem
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