Love Philosophy In Unconventional Poetic Devices

This thesis attempts to study the poetic art of the love poetry of John Donne(1572-1631),who is a rebellion of Elizabethan poetry and the founder of the Britishmetaphysical poetry, and to fully explore the unconventional poetic charm of Donne's lovepoems. Nobody in the English poetry history has experienced such extreme fluctuation inreputation and fame as Donne. His poetry is a combination of contradiction and complexityand, in particular, anti-convention, and what can represent it best is his love poetryincluding 55 poems in Songs and Sonnets and 20 poems in Elegies.This thesis is divided into four parts.Chapter one centers on the features of metaphysical poetry and Donne's position inthe history of English poetry.Chapter two is devoted to a study of Donne's unconventional philosophy of loveconcepts. That Donne condemns women for their inconstancy and coaxes the ladies intolove with him reflects a sort of anti-gynaeolatry and male-chauvinism; that Donne openlymakes reference to sexual love and connects the love of secular happiness with that ofdivine quality reveals a kind of love of naturalism and humanism. That he associates lovewith disciplines of science and religion or even death exhibits his view of ubiquitous loveand universal connection. Through the analysis of Donne's masculine attitude, the pursuitof perfect and honest love and linking love with science, religion and death, the author thencomes to a conclusion that Donne's philosophical love concept is the ultimate pursuit oflove.Chapter three explores the unconventional rhetoric devices employed in Donne's lovepoetry to help him express his thoughts and emotions. They are respectively puns and hugeexaggeration, deranged images and conceits, and paradoxical reasoning, which featureprominently and play an important role in Donne's love poetry. The puns under Donne'spencil are often connected with sex and the exaggeration are always put into extremity; theimaged employed by Donne are endowed with features of the poet's personality and thecharacteristics of the science at that time; conceit in the poetry is the cornerstone ofDonne's wit and a tester of the readers'; both the image and the conceit distinguish the poetas leader of a new poetic school. The paradox and reasoning in Donne's love poetry injects into the poems challenging logic and dynamic wit.Chapter four examines the eccentric poetic form and style of Donne's love poetry.Irregular punctuation and indentation, colloquialism and dramatic features, unconventionalrhyme and stanzas, which all reflect Donne's desire to deviate from traditional poetry andbring forth a new poetic path. Donne does not confine himself to the traditional decorationsand the then commonly-accepted"love dictionary", neither does he employ flowery wordsand lyric style. Rather, he takes in simple words and colloquial poetic lines to express hisgenuing feelings. Those seemingly inharmonious forms and styles actually more vividlyand directly express the poet's thoughts and emotions, thus providing fresh feelings for thereaders.