1. Analyzing 17th Century Lyrics: Donne, Wroth
    1. John Donne
      1. His two sides: Aristocratic courtier--of women and high favor--Songs and Sonnets
      2. The Rector of St. Pauls--top Anglican preacher in the kingdom--favorite of King James
      3. A performer, self dramatist as both.
        1. Risky romantic marriage that got him into trouble and poverty
        2. Coming to preach in his burial shroud
      4. Appreciation of Bible as God's great literary, metaphorical achievement--Expostulation 19
      5. Holy Sonnets--love sonnets used for devotional purpose
        1. # 10--Batter My Heart
          1. Extreme emotions; extreme conceits or metaphors
            1. Since he's been taken over by God's enemy and is betrothed to Satan, he asks God to enter him like an invading army, with violent assaults
            2. Paradox/oxymoron: contradiction that's wondrously true: "Except [unless] you enthrall me/never shall be free/Nor ever chaste except you ravish [rape] me."
          2. Union of spiritual and sexual passion--Song of Solomon, Psalms, 17th Century "Baroque" or "Mannersit" attitude--St. Theresa of Avila and Bernini's scuplture--art as over the top
          3. Donne's use of sounds:--batter, break, blow burn--oh to no end--operatic
        2. Intense struggling with and challenge to God--#5 If poisonous minerals...cannot be damned alas why should I be?
        3. Violent rhetoric: "Spit in my face ye Jews and pierce my side" #7
      6. Songs and Sonnets
        1. Erotic, witty, utterly irreverent, edging on blasphemous
        2. Elegy 19 p. 1563
          1. Seduction or "Invitation" poem--rhetorical persuasion and flattery, including "Blazon" or detailed praise of the beauty of the woman
          2. Explicit and pornographic
          3. Witty--cleverness and self-consciousness--Renaissance Humanist ideal of Sprezzatura--artless appearance of artfulness--cool or casual
          4. Deliberate exaageration of pleasure: Mahomet's paradise, my America, my New Found Land--playing on the pervasive conceit of America as an unspoiled virgin there for the taking
          5. Religious language--mystic books, imputed grace--in unlikely place
        3. The Canonization 1554
          1. Canonizing: the selection of what is sacred from what is not
            1. Canonized books of the Bible that are considered holy
            2. Saints are canonized when Pope decides certain individuals can join their ranks
            3. Canonized texts are those considered "great" literature and included in school anthologies.
            4. Arguments over "The Canon" are political--why have only dead white males been included?
          2. Donne's Poem
            1. Overall progression from beginning to end--defiant defense to reverent praise
            2. Lovers are raised from being regarded with contempt to being saints that people pray to
            3. Transitions between ideas are far-fetched and witty and casual--express "attitude" toward logic
            4. Poem is difficult and erudite and like all jargon or in-group language, creates bonds among those who are included in understanding and excluded by not.
        4. The Flea
          1. Dramatic dialogue
          2. Figure out what's going on between stanzas
          3. Speaker switching positions to respond to listeners reaction
          4. Another carpe-diem, invitation poem, displaying wit and attitude
        5. The Ecstasy
          1. Extreme mix of spiritual and secular--begins with assertions that the delicately evoked spiritual union of souls into a single watching speaking "dialogue of one" transcends bodily attachment
          2. After full ecstasy and "interinanimation," he argues that they should to "bodies go" with many elaborate arguments. A sweet exalted con job.
          3. Real erotic or spiritual love, or mainly a display of rhetoric?
    2. Mary Wroth
      1. Niece of Sir Phillip Sidney--Pamphilia to Amphilanthus: All-loving to Dual Lover--modelled on Astrophil and Stella
      2. Speaker takes Petrarchan lover's role as victimized by love against her will. She is betrayed and nevertheless can stop loving
      3. Displays profound inner conflict between competing parts of the self
      4. Female point of view expressed in tragic cont ext--Penseroso, melancholy mood
      5. #1:In sleep, vulnerable dreams of Venus and Cupid, planting burning heart inside her
      6. #16: Conquered and lost liberty--after struggling against love
      7. #40: Paradox/oxymoron of false hope: conceit of the abortion--terrible mixture of positive and negative--Paradise Lost. False hope like a tyrant that uses good for evil purposes, raises up his favorites only to tear them down