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3.3.13: Reading and Review Questions

  • Page ID
    47094
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    1. How, if at all, can readers reconcile Donne’s love poems with his religious poems? Do his love poems contain religious, or spiritual, elements?
    2. How, if at all, do Donne’s poems reconcile a cynical realization of the many, or life’s heterogeneity, with his thirst for the Absolute, or the one. Do his poems offer partial solutions to his dilemma?
    3. Why do you think Donne uses words like all, infinity, everywhere; or claims that his love is like America? What’s their effect, and why?
    4. How do Donne’s poems compare with Elizabethan love poetry? Consider the decorum and conventions of Elizabethan poetry that praises and pines for distant and idealized ladies in gentle and courtly language. How does Donne’s poetic style compare with the Elizabethans’?
    5. How, if at all, does Holy Sonnet 10 relate to Meditation 17? What attitude towards God and man do these works suggest?

    This page titled 3.3.13: Reading and Review Questions is shared under a CC BY-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Bonnie J. Robinson & Laura Getty (University of North Georgia Press) .

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