Irony In John Donne’s Songs And Sonets

John Donne is a unique poet among the Renaissance poets and he is known as thefounder of the metaphysical poetry. Donne’s works mainly include Songs and Sonets,Epigrams, Elegies, Divine Poems and Satires. Donne’s poetry gave up the later part of theElizabethan period’s magnificent poetic styles and created a new metaphysical poetic stylewith meticulous mind and rigorous logic. He was good at using exotic image and speciousmetaphor in his poetry. Since the20th century, there have been more and more scholars athome and abroad who did the research on John Donne’s poetry. So far, there were not somany researchers who used irony in the New Criticism to study John Donne’s Songs andSonets. Thus it has brought great challenges to this thesis.The themes of Donne’s poetry, the use of images and expressions have close relationwith the irony theory. This thesis will try to do a relatively systematic research on Donne’sSongs and Sonets by using the theory of irony.This thesis is divided into three chapters altogether.Chapter One mainly focuses on irony in themes. The first section analyzes irony in loveof Donne’s Songs and Sonets. The second section studies Donne’s use of irony when facingdeath and the effects of irony. Through the study of irony in Donne’s poems, it has reflectedhis rebellious and optimistic ambivalence.Chapter Two studies irony in images of Donne’s poetry. This chapter is divided into twosections, it mainly illustrates the use of irony in the image of the “sun” and “circle”, andpoints out that Donne was ingenious and unusual in using images.Chapter Three mainly studies the irony in Donne’s poetic expressions. This chapter isdivided into two sections, romantic irony and paradoxical irony.The conclusion expresses the idea that irony has greatly interpreted Donne’s poetry andmade his poetry much more meaningful.