Although his poetry was largely ignored and rejected during his time, John Donne is known today to be one of the finest poets of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He earned this reputation by creating diverse poems, which made him stand out among his peers. Perhaps the best way to examine these unique characteristics is to analyze one of Donne's poems and that of another famous poet of his time, Edmund Spenser. When comparing and contrasting Edmund Spenser's Sonnet 75 and John Donne's “The Blossom,” the qualities of Donne's poetry that are new and unique to the time stand out prominently. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThere are some features that Donne's "The Blossom" and Spenser's Sonnet 75 have in common. To begin with, both poems involve the action of speech, with Spenser addressing his mistress and Donne addressing a flower and then her heart. Both make early use of symbols: Spenser uses the ocean as a metaphor for death and Donne uses a flower to represent newly blossomed love. Aside from this, however, Spenser's and Donne's poems are different in both form and subject. Sonnet 75 is found within Spenser's “Amoretti and Epithalamion,” published in London in 1595 (Spenser 585). It is difficult, however, to date Donne's “Songs and Sonnets.” Despite searching our text John Donne: Selected Poetry, class notes, and the Internet, I was unable to find a specific date for “The Blossom.” But since the subject of most of the poems in “Songs and Sonnets” appears to be secular, I think it is safe to infer that Donne wrote “The Blossom” during his “rake and rogue, man-about-town” years, sometime before him . he secretly married Anne More in December 1601 (Donne xxiv). Since both poems were written during the Petrarchan sonnet craze that was occurring in England from the 1590s onwards, one would expect them to share a common form and style, but this is not the case. Where Spenser's poem follows a slight variation of the English Petrarch sonnet (three quatrains followed by a couplet), Donne separates himself from the Petrarchan trend by having his poem consist of five stanzas, each of which contains a quatrain and two couplets. The rhythm of the two poems also varies. Spenser writes Sonnet 75 with lines that are roughly the same length, varying between 9 and 11 syllables. Donne's poem, however, is composed of lines of varying lengths in each stanza: approximately 7, 9, 10, 10, 10, 4, 10, 10 syllables. He continues this same pattern with each stanza of the poem. The subject matter differs greatly between the two poems. Sonnet 75 first begins with a metaphorical visit to a beach where the author demonstrates the futility of man's attempts to immortalize “a mortal thing” (line 6). The poem, however, is not about a visit to the beach, and after four lines the speaker turns away from the beach and turns to a lover who criticizes him for trying to resist the passage of time and the inevitable fate of being forgotten . The speaker then claims that his lover and their love are greater than other "lower things" (line 9), that his verse will make them both eternal, and that their love is so great that it will renew life after death has conquered the world. (lines 13-14). These characteristics are very typical of the poetry of this time. The brief description of the speaker's lover as having “rare virtues” (line 11) is a common characteristic of any maiden in Petrarchan sonnets. Likewise, the idea of ​​a poem that eternalizes beloved speakers appears everywhere in the poetry of the end of16th and early 17th centuries (see Shakespeare's Sonnets 18 and 19). Spenser also advances the idea that their love is a life-renewing love, which will be observed by all the inhabitants of the earth as the ideal model of love. This thought returns to the old concept of the “Golden World,” or Mimetic Power of the ideal model, which is another common feature of the writings of the time. While Spenser sticks to common contemporary themes, Donne's poetry is much more unique. “The Blossom,” instead of starting with a scene, starts with someone talking to a flower. He laments the fate of the flower because he knows that, despite how lively and triumphant the flower is today, tomorrow he will find it “fallen, or not at all” (line 8). Donne then transforms the flower from the first stanza to his heart in the second stanza. Here the speech act really plays an important role, since the reader has the feeling that the heart and the speaker are two separate beings, and the speaker really pities the poor heart. Then the unthinkable happens: the heart actually responds to the speaker. The heart invokes logic in the speaker, arguing that he should “go to your friends, whose love and whose means are present / Various contents / To your eyes, ears, tongue and every part. / If then your body goes, what need do you have of a heart?” (lines 21-24). In the next stanza, the speaker concedes to the stubborn heart, but warns it that "A naked, thinking heart, that makes no show, / Is to a woman, a kind of ghost" (lines 27-24). 28). It warns the heart that, despite all its efforts, a woman will never know a heart. In the fourth stanza, the speaker tells his heart to meet him in London, where he will be in a much happier state after being in the company of his friends. He also predicts that he will find "another friend, that we will find / Happy to have my body, as my mind" to whom he can give his heart (lines 39-40). Having the speaker address an inanimate object is the first unique feature of Donne's poetry. In Sonnet 75, the speaker addresses only his lover, but in "The Blossom", the speaker never speaks to another human being, although he speaks all the time. The flower symbol is also an example of the metaphysical aspect of Donne's poetry that distinguishes him from his contemporaries. While the beach scene in Sonnet 75 was a very simple metaphor for mortality, the flower in “The Blossom” goes from being a metaphor for new love to its complex entity; it is something that is both inside and outside of man. The way the poems treat their respective lovers is also different. Spenser speaks of woman as the ideal virtuous woman who should be remembered by all forever, while Donne speaks of woman as a passing attraction that can be easily replaced. This leads to the next interesting difference between the two poems. It is also important to note the difference in tone. Sonnet 75 maintains a very serious tone throughout the poem. Spenser doesn't joke when it comes to mortality and the importance of his verse eternalizing his lover. And although Donne's poem begins sounding serious and sad, with language like "poor flower" and "poor heart," it ends up sounding lighthearted. The speaker goes to London to be among friends, becoming "fresher and fatter" (line 35), culminating in taking on a careless attitude because he is confident that he can find another nameless friend to give his heart to , as if doing so doesn't actually mean much to him. It is very easy to see that Donne was doing new and unique things with his poetry, but it is difficult to explain these qualities simply because we don't know enough about him. An examination of his life and personality, however, makes it easy to guess why he wrote in such a unique style. In class we discussed the fact that Donne prided himself on being an outsider 1601..