Donne's poems are highly complex and intellectually taxing; you must read and re-read them, tracing the grammar of the sentences through various convolutions and inversions and across many line endings.  Be careful not to gloss over the meaning of a line by rushing too quickly to the next, and be careful to distinguish the tenor from the vehicle when considering metaphors and similes.  The tenor is the thing being discussed or described; the vehicle is the thing used to describe it through comparison or identification.  If I say, "The sun is a ball of tin foil," the tenor is "sun" and the vehicle is "a ball of tinfoil."  If I say, "My love is like a rose," then love is the tenor and rose the vehicle, etc.

1.  In his essay "Of Love," Bacon says that "the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole, is comely in nothing but in love."  Be prepared to discuss Donne's use of hyperbole (overstatement) in the poems assigned for today.

2.  When Bacon insists that "it is impossible to love, and to be wise," he might as well be the person addressed by the speaker of Donne's "The Canonization," who seems to have been chiding the speaker for his love and telling him that love is self-destructive folly.  What is the speaker's defence against this chiding?  Consider particularly his use of religious metaphors.

3.  Be prepared to discuss how each of the five stanzas of "The Canonization" contributes to the speaker's glorification of his love.  Who is addressed in each stanza?  What grammatical mood does each use (declarative, imperative, interrogative, subjunctive, exclamatory)?  How do images and figures of speech contribute to each?
 
4.  Many of Donne's poems are what has come to be called "dramatic monologues," poems in which the speakers' language
evokes a dramatic situation of some sort, in which the persona interacts with an addressee, explains a thought process, changes
his or her mind, develops an opinion, unintentionally reveals some insecurity, or otherwise evokes a dramatic context.  Choosing one of the assigned poems, analyze how the language evokes a dramatic context; who is the implied hearer or addressee? What sort of relationship exists between him or her and the speaker?  How are the speaker's attitude and circumstances revealed through the tone and wording of the address?

5.  A favorite genre of love poem in the medieval and renaissance periods is an adaptation of a form used in classical Roman
literature: the dawn song, called alba in Latin and aubade in Provençal.  The alba usually laments the coming of day when lovers must part.  The need to part is often (though not always) linked to the illicit nature of the relationship. Which of Donne's poems assigned for today might be considered variations on the dawn song?  How do Donne's speakers feel about the coming of the morning in these poems?  How does the dramatic context of lovers waking up in the morning after a night together affect the tone of these poems in various ways?  How does the imagery reflect that dramatic context?

6.  During the eighteenth century Donne was classified by literary critics as one of the "metaphysical poets," late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century writers known for their use of intellectually complex conceits and metaphors that draw on the
language of science, math, law, geography, cartography (map making), philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, political theory, and
theology.  Poetry grounded in such discourse sounds very different from poetry that depends (as some other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetry does) upon nature imagery, allusions to classical mythology, and the language of religious devotion.  Which of the poems assigned today seems most dependent on "metaphysical" imagery?  How does Donne's use of this relatively non-traditional discourse affect the way he approaches the subject of love in these poems?

7.  What is the tenor of the simile in the opening stanzas of "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"?  The vehicle is an image of virtuous men dying quietly, parting with their souls so peacefully that their friends can't tell exactly when the moment of death occurs.  But the poem is not about death; what is its occasion?  What is the tenor of the simile?

8.  At the conclusion of "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," the speaker tries to console his beloved with two different similes, two different ways of describing their love.  Why does he need two?  How does each simile console?  Is the image of gold in any way related to the image of a compass drawing a perfect circle?

9.  Recall from earlier in the course the seventeenth-century notion of the microcosm, the idea that each person is in himself a little world, complete with all its components.  How does Donne make use of this idea in "The Good Morrow" and "The Sun Rising"?

10.  In Renaissance slang, "to die" is to have an orgasm.  That does not mean that writers are making a sexual joke every time they use the verb "die," so one shouldn't get too carried away looking for off-color puns.  Nevertheless, Donne does use that slang sometimes.   Consider the possibilities in the poems assigned for today.