Loving Poems Study

Donne (John, 1572-1631) was one of the most controversial poets in the history of English literature. From the beginning of 17^th century to present days, Donne has been undergone repeated high praising and sharp criticizing. This phenomenon has fully showed the contradiction and complexity of Donne and his poetry. Donne's love poetry, 55 lyrics in the name of Songs and Sonnets, is the best representative of his poetic art. Donne's researchers usually make an overall survey of Donne's poetry from a certain angle, such as feminism, post-colonialism, the new criticism, defamiliarism, etc.. This thesis, however, aims at Donne's love poetry, discussing the diversity and complexity of Donne's thoughts, feelings and art from different angles.The first chapter focuses on the religious rift in Donne's love poetry. Donne's apostasy left obvious marks on his love poetry. First, the repeated theme of constancy and betrayal in his love poetry has showed the unavoidable shadow in his psyche left by his apostasy. Second, Donne's self-image of canonization and martyr in his love poetry has displayed a kind of religious illusion-his salvation. Third, a great multitude of gloomy words showing human persecution, scattered among different poems, such as "murderess", "murder", "massacre", "prison", "rip", "carcase", etc. have revealed Donne's religious bruises left by religious persecution in Elizabethan age.The second chapter discusses the contradictious elements and their mixture in Donne's love poetry. As for men and women, Donne showed his complicated feelings of contempt and admiration, cynicism and idealism towards women; as for reason and absurdity, they can be found coexisted in Donne's love poetry; between the relationships of body and soul, Donne expressed his addiction to sensuous body love and longing for spiritual love; as for the attitude toward living and death, Donne regarded living as the beginning of death, and death as the beginning of the eternal life, another circumstances of living.The third chapter explores the implication of some reappeared images in Donne's love poetry. The images of "sphere", "new star" (or star) have indicated the influence of both traditional and new astronomy on Donne; the image of alchemy has different meanings on different occasions, sometimes suggesting the illusion or cheat of love, sometimes symbolizing the new birth of love from death; the image of circle means the perfection, infinity, immortality and divinity; the images of bullet, powder and war have fully reflected the social reality and Donne's personal experiences; the various pieces of death image have revealed Donne's thoughts and feelings of death.The fourth chapter discusses the features of Donne's poetic art. Donne's love poetry bears the following characteristics: 1. the strong style of ragged metre. Donne's strong style with his ragged metre and direct dialogue is a kind of clash to the romantic sweet style prevailing in the Elizabethan age. 2. the entanglement of feelings and reasoning. Donne usually hid his feelings in the reason. The feelings appeared only after step-by-step reasoning (sometimes the reasoning might seem absurd, contradictious and logical). 3. defamiliarized imagery. The images in Donne's love poetry show a kind of anti-tradition trend, having a surprising effect. 4. obscureness, paradox and sense of absurdity. The obscureness and abstruseness sometimes appearing in Donne's love poetry, the paradox seemingly logical yet absurd, and his sophistry with the color of medieval metaphysics make his poetry produce a sense of absurdity.The fifth chapter touches the translation of Donne's love poetry. The translation of Donne's love poetry in our country has made great progress, but the study on it still needs deepening. On one hand, misunderstanding and mistranslation caused by differences in language and culture, and Donne's uniqueness must be avoided; on the other hand, some unique aesthetic elements and distinctive characteristics in Donne's love poetry deserve our attention and must be reproduced in the translation.