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B.A 1st Sem English Major & Minor Unit 2 Poetry
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Unit 2 Poetry
Very Short Questions & Answers:
1. Who wrote “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue”?
Ans: Geoffrey Chaucer.
2. What is the central theme of “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue”?
Ans: It explores themes of marriage, gender roles, and authority.
3. Which collection features Edmund Spenser’s sonnets “Amoretti”?
Ans: “Amoretti” is a sequence of 89 sonnets written by Edmund Spenser.
4. What is the significance of Sonnet 57 from “Amoretti” by Edmund Spenser?
Ans: Sonnet 57 celebrates the enduring love and loyalty of the speaker’s beloved.
5. Which sonnet by Edmund Spenser reflects on the fleeting nature of life and love?
Ans: Sonnet 75 (“One day I wrote her name upon the strand…”).
6. Who is the author of Sonnet 30 and Sonnet 116?
Ans: William Shakespeare.
7. What is the theme of Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare?
Ans: It explores the theme of memory and the passage of time.
8. Which sonnet by William Shakespeare asserts the constancy of true love?
Ans: Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds…”).
9. Who wrote the poem “The Sunne Rising”?
Ans: John Donne.
10. What is the central metaphor in John Donne’s “The Sunne Rising”?
Ans: The sun is personified and addressed as an intrusive lover.
11. Which poem by John Donne challenges the inevitability of death?
Ans: “Death be Not Proud.”
12. What literary period is Geoffrey Chaucer associated with?
Ans: The Middle Ages, specifically the late 14th century.
13. Which poetic form does Edmund Spenser use in his “Amoretti”?
Ans: Sonnets.
14. In Sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser, what does the speaker write on the sand?
Ans: The name of his beloved.
15. What is the structure of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30?
Ans: It follows the traditional Shakespearean (or English) sonnet form, consisting of three quatrains and a final couplet.
16. What emotion does Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare emphasize?
Ans: Unwavering love and commitment.
17. What does John Donne’s “The Sunne Rising” personify?
Ans: The sun.
18. What theme is explored in Donne’s poem “Death be Not Proud”?
Ans: The defiance of death and the triumph of eternal life.
19. Which sonnet tradition did Chaucer contribute to?
Ans: Chaucer contributed to the English sonnet tradition
20. Which poet from this selection is known for his metaphysical poetry?
Ans: John Donne.
Long Questions & Answers:
1. What are symbols/allusions in Sonnet 30, and how do they connect to the overall meaning? Is there any diction that reveals a specific pattern?
Ans: Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare is a poem in the English sonnet form. The poem comes in as the thirtieth sonnet in the set of 154 sonnets that Shakespeare left behind. The sonnet is part of a group of sonnets that are written to a young man and speak about love and loss. In particular Sonnet 30 stands out as a poem mainly about the loss of love and friends to the passage of time.
The first quatrain (a group of four lines) deals with the loss of opportunity. When the narrator sits down to think in silence, “sessions of sweet silent thought” (line 1) he comes to realize, with despair, all of the wasted opportunity in his life. He “sighs” at the lack of “things sought”, an indication that he is regretting all of the things he set out to do but never accomplished. In this passage, there is judicial language used in the terms “sessions” and “summons” both of which are language indicating a court or trial. This allusion to a court of law creates an image of the narrator putting his past on trial.
The second quatrain continues the case against the past. The narrator discusses how friends have gone on to “death’s dateless night” and how he now has a chance to mourn their absence from his life. He continues to build out the idea that there is something missing, and that he mourns the loss of not only friends/love, but of the chances he never took.
The third quatrain then moves on from listing the things that the narrator will mourn to discussing how the narrator will relive those losses over and over. The judicial language returns with the idea of “grievances,” “account,” and “paid” in the thirteenth and fourteenth lines. The payment to the memories of friends and untaken chances creates the image of an almost Sisyphean punishment. The idea that once the grief is dealt with, it must be reopened, and reexamined.
Luckily in the closing couplet, the narrator is saved from that unfortunate fate. By remembering his friend, he can restore his spirits and recognize the good that happened in his life. The symbolism and allusion to the court are communicated in Sonnet 30 through the repeated images of the court and sentences handed down by a court.
2. What takes all the sadness away in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30?
Ans: In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30, thinking about his dear friend takes all the speaker’s sorrows away.
The speaker addresses this friend and lists quite a number of woes. These include thinking about things past that will not return, considering how he has not achieved things he has sought, wondering about wasting his time mourning over what he didn’t achieve, and remembering friends who have died. The weight of the woes he recounts testify to the power of his friendship; it is remarkable that simply thinking about his friend can counteract all these many sorrows. The idea of having his friend perks him up and compensates for his losses.
While the sonnet seems weighted with sorrows, the speaker shows his positive attitude in focusing on the value of what he has in the present moment-his friend.
3. What thoughts cheer up the speaker of the sonnet? William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30.
Ans: In William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30, “When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought,” the speaker acts as a judge in his nostalgia, summoning “remembrance of things past”; recalling his losses, the speaker seems to pay again for them:
And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,/And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sh’d sight/Then can I grieve at grievances foregone/And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er/The sad account of fore bemoaned moan….
But, somehow by thinking of the fair youth, “all losses are restor’d and sorrows end.” However, it is odd that this new relationship compensates for the dead ones. Perhaps, by reflecting upon his melancholic memories, the friendship and love of the youth. The speaker is reconciled by the friendship and love of the youth.
Interestingly, the line “remembrance of things past” was taken as the English title of the translation of the novel of the great French writer, Marcel Proust.
4. In “Sonnet 30” by William Shakespeare, to what does the metaphor in lines 9-12 refer?
Ans: William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 30” is about the speaker feeling dejected when remembering past woes and losses. For example, in the first two quatrains, he “drowns an eye” remembering “precious friends” who have passed away, and he wastes his time thinking about “old woes.” However, his sorrows end when he thinks of his “dear friend” in the couplet, and all of his losses are restored.
Essentially, the speaker of “Sonnet 30” is recalling sad events in his past, and feels the pain over and over again. In the third quatrain, the “sad account” in line 11 is equivalent to an itemized bill requiring payment. This metaphor refers to the speaker’s sorrows that never seem to go away but keep plaguing him, just like a bill that has already been paid but continues to demand payment. This means that the speaker must suffer these “forebemoaned moans” continuously even though they are in the past and he has already mourned them. Lucky for him, he has a friend to cheer him up.
5. Does “Sonnet 30” by William Shakespeare suggest that after a certain amount of sorrow, the human mind no longer reacts? “Sonnet 30” by William Shakespeare.
Ans: No, it seems to suggest just the opposite. The speaker can summon up remembrance of things past and relive them even long after he suffered from them emotionally, including “love’s long-since cancelled woe” and “precious friends” who have been dead for some time. The poem deals with the fact that Shakespeare, like ourselves, relives old events and has to suffer the pains they caused him in the distant past as if he had not already suffered them (“Which I knew pay as if not paid before”).
If an experience was important enough, and painful enough, we will all remember it for the rest of our lives. This is why Shakespeare’s sonnet is so touching. In the concluding couplet he says that with thoughts of his “dear friend, / All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.” But this does not mean that the losses are permanently restored or that the sorrows are permanently ended, only for “the while.”
“Remembrance of Things Past” was used as the title of the best English translation of Marcel Proust’s “A la recherche du temps perdu” by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. In that great work the past remains accessible in its entirety and can actually be completely relieved.
6. Where does the turn take place in “Sonnet 30” by William Shakespeare?
Ans: Uncharacteristically, the turn in thought does not occur in Sonnet 30 until the final couplet.
Perhaps in keeping with the “remembrance of things past,” the lines of this sonnet return again and again to ideas that “grieve at grievances foregone” in imitation of the persistence of sorrowful memories. The haunting of these memories is also connoted by the suddenness of the sibilant alliteration in the beginning”sessions of sweet silent thought” and the slower alliteration in lines 6 with the lingering sorrow of “death’s dateless night” and line 9 and 10 with “grieve at grievances foregone” and “woe to woe.”
This poignant sonnet underscores the insight that people do not so much possess memories as their memories possess them. The speaker in this sonnet “pays” over and over for his memories of the loss of things he has desired, the time he has wasted, his defeat in love, and his failure to achieve many of his goals. Despite all his sorrows, the speaker need only dwell on the love of his “dear friend” and “all losses are restored and sorrows end.” Indeed, the final couplet provides the resolution to the speaker’s rue and grief For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
The speaker’s lover brings him such fulfillment that he forgets all his remembrances of “old woes,” and he would not change places with any, even a king.
7. How does the poet express his woes in Sonnet 30?
Ans: According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a woe is “a condition of deep suffering from misfortune, affliction, or grief.” In Sonnet 30, the poet Shakespeare expresses his woes in a number of ways, but it’s important to keep in mind that he does it as a counterpoint to his conclusion at the end: that when he thinks about his beloved friend, his sorrows all go away.
When the poet mentions “the lack of many things I sought,” he is sorrowful over things that he failed to achieve in his life. In the next line, he is sad about his “dear time’s waste,” emphasizing that the time that a person is given in life is precious, but he has wasted so much of it. He weeps for friends “in death’s dateless night”-in other words, friends who have died and no longer live in the limited time of this world. He also cries over “cancell’d woe,” or sorrows that have already passed and are already healed. He laments over “the expense of many a vanished sight,” referring to people or things that he could see in the past but can no longer see.
The poet then repeats that he is remembering past sorrows: “grievances foregone,” “woe to woe tell o’er,” and “fore-bemoaned moan.” These are all different ways of saying that he is not contemplating present sorrows but rather sorrows of the past. In the end, the thought of his friend takes all these woes away.
8. What do “sessions” and “summons” imply in Sonnet 30?
Ans: The language of business that appears later in the poem, the “expense” of things and people that the speaker has lost, a “sad account” that the speaker must “new pay as if not paid before”brings to my mind some kind of a business transaction rather than a court. The speaker doesn’t seem to be judging his memories so much as he is going over how much he has lost as he has aged and time has gone by: the loss of “waste[d]” time; “precious friends” that have died; “love” that didn’t last or was, perhaps, unrequited; “grievances foregone”; and so forth. He considers his “losses,” as he calls them in the final line, seeming to “summon” them and tally them up as one might when one is involved in a “session” or meeting for the purpose of doing business.
However, in the end, after calling the sad remembrances forth, he realizes that when he remembers his “dear friend” to whom the poem is addressed (using apostrophe: when the speaker addresses someone absent or dead or something which cannot respond), he no longer feels the great weight of his losses and cannot mourn them anymore.
9. Explain the third and fourth lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30.
Ans: In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30 there is a tone of regret as the speaker thinks about his past personal losses and sorrows. In lines one and two the speaker provides us with a condition (whenever he silently thinks about memories of the past). Lines three and four then provide a sort of introduction for the next eight lines that come after the colon at the end of line four.
Here is a breakdown of the wording. The words “I sigh the lack” mean that he “sighs about not having”, and “many a thing I sought” means “the several things I used to try to find”. Thus he is saying “I sigh about not having all the things I used to try to find”. In line four the words “And with old woes new wail” mean that “And old woes cause today’s crying”. What is he crying about? According to line four, it is “my dear time’s waste”, which means “the time he now realizes that he has taken for granted”.
In the next eight lines of the poem after he will then go on to list several of the sad things that he has hinted at in lines three and four. They are the things which cause him to feel a new wave of grief and regret whenever he sits in sessions of silent thought.
10. What role does the speaker assign to the “dear friend” in line 13, in relation to the metaphors of the poem?
Ans: The speaker begins by noting how he remembers good things from the past. But then he recalls things he did not accomplish or achieve. And he feels that in wailing about these “old woes,” he is wasting his (present) time. He cries and this is illustrated by the metaphor to “drown an eye.” He is overcome with nostalgia for people he had known who have died in the past. His present weeping is about things he has wept about in the past. It is as if he is reliving his past “woe.” He uses the metaphor of paying an old debt again to symbolize how he is reliving this misery:
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I now pay as if not paid before.
The mourning he is going through seems new, as if he never went through it in the past. The solution or cure to his misery of reliving his past regrets and sorrows is to focus on the present. Therefore, his “dear friend” is someone who is alive and well in the present. His dear friend functions as a hero or the cure to his obsession with the past.
11. How does the thought of his dear friend change the speaker’s attitude?
Ans: Throughout the majority of the sonnet, the speaker sighs over “the lack of many things [he] sought” and cries about the time he feels he has wasted. He says that he does not typically cry, but he will weep over “precious friends” who have been lost to death, over loves that ended long ago, and for sights that he feels he will never see again. He grieves for things which he had previously let go, feeling the losses of such lost friends and loves and sights all over again, as though he had not already grieved in the past for these.
The speaker mourns them all over again, as though each were a new, fresh loss. He seems to be caught in an unending cycle of sadness and loss and grief; the first twelve lines of the sonnet have a terribly melancholy mood. However, in the final two lines of the poem, the speaker says, But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored, and sorrows end. (lines 13-14) In other words, when the speaker thinks of one particular friend, he feels that everything he has lost is restored to him, and he feels no more sorrow. This is quite a change: the speaker will not grieve his losses forever; rather, he can think of his “dear friend” and feel whole and happy. The last two lines have a much more hopeful, optimistic mood than the previous twelve.
12. What is the speaker going to “bewail” in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30?
Ans: In this sonnet by William Shakespeare, the speaker “bewails” (mourns or shows great regret for) his past and present. Looking back, the speaker summons “up remembrance of things past” and regrets that he was unable to achieve the many things he wished for. According to the speaker, he wasted time that he cannot get back: “And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.” The speaker goes on to mourn the lives of his friends who were lost in “death’s dateless night.” He continues to weep because remembering them has brought the pain to the surface.
Therefore, the speaker bewails a life that did not come to be as promising or fulfilling as he had hoped. He was unable to do everything that he wished to do, and now he finds that it is too late. Looking back on his losses only makes the speaker feel the losses again.
13. What is the theme in sonnet 30 and what are some poetry/ literary terms in sonnet 30 and in what lines.
Ans: Sonnet 30 is most well-known for its first two lines, particularly the second line-“remembrance of things past”-because it provided the title for a novel by Marcel Proust.
The central theme of the sonnet is the poet’s pervasive sense of loss:
I sigh at the lack of many things I sought./And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:/Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,/For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night…
Looking back on his life, the poet regrets his failure to achieve many things he wanted, including the loss of years in the attempt to achieve those things. In lamenting the loss of friends, he uses the fairly conventional metaphor comparing death to an endless night (“friends hid in death’s dateless night”).
The simple fact of remembering his losses, moreover, recalls them to his mind, which causes new torment-“and weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe”-and, with the word cancell’d, the poet begins an extended metaphor comparing his loss of the past to monetary losses.
Scholars have discussed both the legal terms-“sessions” in line 1-and the banking and accounting terms, but I think the accounting metaphor is the more obvious comparison: “cancell’d woe,” “expense of many a vanish’d sight,” “woe to woe tell o’er,” “sad account,” “which I now pay,” and “all losses are restored.” These are the terms of commerce, of banking, of accounting-as if the losses can be managed as one manages a monetary account.
When we reach the couplet, the losses on the poet’s account are made whole:
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,/All losses are restored and sorrows end.
The controlling metaphor of the sonnet, then, is the comparison of the intangible losses of memory, the death of friends, to the tangible elements of a commercial account-cancelled note, expenses, accounting, payables and payment-but the important point is that all these problems are resolved, made whole, by the simple expedient of thinking about the poet’s “dear friend.”
14. Scan the meter of verse 1 of “Sonnet 116” and comment on the rhythm.
Ans: The meter of verse one of “Sonnet 116” is the standard meter of Shakespearean sonnets: iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter describes lines made up of pairs of syllables syllable in the pattern of unstressed/stressed, which are called iambs, grouped five per line (hence, “pentameter”). The poem continues to follow the form of other Shakespearean sonnets by consisting of three quatrains, or four-line stanzas, and ending with a single couplet, or two-line stanza. It also has the typical Shakespearean rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. This poetry format wasn’t just loved by Shakespeare. Iambic pentameter is the most common type of poem in English language verse. The popularity is thought to be linked to the ways that the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables mimics English speech.
15. Explain each stanza in the sonnet 116?
Or
What is the main theme of the sonnet 116?
Ans: The topic of Sonnet 116 is love. The poem is a rumination on. love, if you will.
Stanza by stanza, here’s a paraphrase:
1. Don’t let me consider anything that would get in the way of a-marriage between true minds. Love does not change when its object’s appearance or affections change, or if a lover turns or looks elsewhere, or if a lover is absent.
2. Love is like a star that guides a ship, a star that stays steady during great storms. Love is the star that guides every wandering ship, a star whose value, quality, true nature is unknown even though its measure is taken to determine the location of a ship.
3. Love is not made a mockery of time. Love is not a fool or clown. Love lasts until the judgment day, resisting even the grim reaper.
4. If my thoughts above are incorrect and it’s proven to me, I’ve never written and no man has ever loved.
The first three stanzas are quatrains of four lines each. The last two lines are a rhyming couplet.
16. What is an analysis of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116?”
Ans: In “Sonnet 116,” the speaker begins by stating that two people who are truly in love should not be kept apart, and he goes on to describe the nature of ideal love.
Real love remains strong, he says, even when the object of affection undergoes changes. It is steadfast in the face of life’s challenges (he uses the idea of “tempests” as a metaphor for troubling times). Age can’t dissuade true love, for the lover will always see his or her beloved as they are, regardless of what happens to the body over time. (In the line “Love’s not Time’s fool,” he implies that physical changes are somehow illusory-that the unchanging nature of the soul is what’s important, and that a true lover will always recognize this.)
In the final couplet, the speaker essentially tells us that if his description of love turns out to be wrong, then he’ll take it all back (“I never writ”), but he also affirms that if love doesn’t meet these standards, then no one has ever known true love (“nor no man ever lov’d”).
17. What is a figure of speech in “Sonnet 116” by William Shakespeare?
Ans: In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare employs synecdoche in lines 1-2: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.” Synecdoche is the use of a part of something to stand in for the whole thing. It isn’t just people’s minds that get married, it is the whole two individuals that wed. Therefore, “minds” stands in for the whole person. It’s a somewhat ironic, or unexpected, choice because we typically think of romantic relationships as a joining of two hearts, if we use any part of the body to describe it. Irony occurs when reality differs from what we’d expect, and since we tend to associate the heart, not the mind, with love, such a choice is ironic.
Further, Shakespeare personifies “Love” as well as “Time,” giving them human attributes and raising this story of love almost to the mythic since he ascribes intention and consciousness to intangible entities.
Shakespeare employs synecdoche again in lines 9-10: “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / Within his bending sickle’s compass come.” The sickle is a symbol of mortality (since we only have so much time before we are, figuratively, cut down by it), though time does not only claim our “rosy lips and cheeks” again, it claims our whole selves. But this example of synecdoche allows Shakespeare to employ a visual image as well.
18. Discuss three figures of speech used in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.
Ans: Given the fact that the Sonnet’s focus is the description of love, I think that you could find much in it to serve as a figure of speech. In my mind, one of the strongest figures of speech would be the description of love as a star in the heavens. In lines 5 and 6, Shakespeare describes love as a “fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.” The comparison of love as a star in the heavens to which all aspire and direct their attention connotes the celestial condition of true love and emphasizes its “other worldly” quality.
Another example of figurative language would be lines 9 and 10, where Shakespeare describes love as something that is not “Time’s fool.” The implication here is to use figurative language in describing love as something permanent, not to be withered through the impact of time. In describing it as “time’s fool,” Shakespeare might be suggesting that love carries with it a sense of lasting. I would argue that the last example of figurative language could be found using the same type of analysis as outlined above. In the opening lines, I would submit that one can find an example of figurative language in how Shakespeare conceptualizes love. In attempting to find examples of figurative language, seek to find ways that Shakespeare describes what love is. In the opening lines lies one such example.
19. Illuminate and extract the uses of rhyme scheme and figures of speech in “Sonnet 116.”
Ans: The rhyme scheme is typical of the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg. This means that the last words in lines 1 and 3 rhyme (this is called end rhyme), the last words in lines 2 and 4 rhyme, the last words in lines 5 and 7 rhyme, the last words in lines 6 and 8 rhyme, the last words in lines 9 and 11 rhyme, the last words in lines 10 and 12 rhyme, and then the last words in lines 13 and 14 rhyme (this pair is called a rhyming couplet).
In line 1, the word “minds” is substituted for entire people (it isn’t our “minds” that get married, but ourselves); this kind of part-for-whole substitution is called synecdoche. Love is compared, via metaphor, to “an ever-fixed mark” that is not shaken even by storms. Another metaphor compares love to a “star” that guides travelers home. Love is personified, as is Time, made capable of being a fool (though it isn’t one) or having a fool, respectively. Time is also personified as a reaper, who takes our years and our “rosy lips and cheeks” away. These qualities stand in for our youth, and this kind of detail being substituted for a thing with which it’s associated is called metonymy.
20. What are the similes and uses of alliteration in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116?
Ans: As the other educator has pointed out, there are no similes in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116; there are, however, metaphors. A simile compares two things by saying Thing One is like Thing Two, while a metaphor compares two things by saying Thing One is Thing Two. Both devices enhance the meaning of Thing One through the comparison.
If you meant to ask about metaphors rather than similes, the examples in this sonnet include:
“[Love] is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken”
“[Love] is the star to every wand’ring bark”
“Love’s not Time’s fool”
Through these metaphors, Shakespeare compares the concept of romantic love to something which cannot be moved by the storms of circumstance; it is “never shaken” by life’s “tempests,” but remains “ever-fixed.” Like the North Star, which sailors have used for millennia to guide them in their travels, love is the soul’s compass which guides lovers through their lives. Love is not “Time’s fool,” that is, it is not duped by the physical changes of aging. It “alters not” with the years, because it is eternal; it “bears it out even to the edge of doom.”
Shakespeare’s presentation of love is thus akin to St Paul’s famous statement from his first letter to the Corinthians, that “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” St. Paul was speaking of spiritual love, rather than its romantic counterpart, but Shakespeare is saying that (true) romantic love is equally sacred.
As for alliteration, the sonnet has examples in each quatrain.
See, for instance:
“the marriage of true minds”
“Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”
“Within his bending sickle’s compass come”
“But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”
“I never write, nor no man ever lov’d.”
There are a few others, though these are more particularly repetitions of words (“alters/alteration” and “remover/remove”).
21. How and why does Shakespeare use comparisons especially similes and metaphors in Sonnet 116.
Ans: William Shakespeare uses comparisons particularly similes and metaphors in various ways in Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”).
Those ways include the following:
In line 1, the speaker uses a metaphor to compare the union of two minds or souls to a “marriage.” This word implies a long-term mutual commitment sanctified by God and perceived as holy and immutable. Such a union merits social respect and speaks well of the two parties involved.
In line 5, the speaker uses a metaphor to describe true love as “an ever-fixed mark,” meaning a landmark, especially one visible from sea. This phrase calls attention to the mutability of the world, which requires the existence of firm landmarks if we hope to find a sure path as we navigate through life.
In line 7, another metaphor compares true love to a distant star, especially (perhaps) the North Star, which is extremely lofty in its position above the world (as true love transcends all merely worldly things) and which, like the landmark already mentioned, can be used to help us navigate and find our ways through life.
In line 10, another metaphor implicitly compares Time to a harvester, perhaps the proverbial “grim reaper,” suggesting that true love escapes the ravages of time:
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come (9-10) Interestingly, metaphors are common in this poem, but similes are not. It is as if the speaker tries to imply the strongest possible links, even identification between the various objects he compares.
22. How does William Shakespeare use poetic devices throughout “Sonnet 116”?
Ans: Shakespeare deploys several literary devices in “Sonnet 116.”
There are examples of alliteration throughout. One particularly striking example is the use of fricative sounds in though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
In this case, the repetition of fricative consonants serves to heighten the sonic stimulus provided by the image. Sickles slice through grain and grass and produce a sound, which the repeated “ck” sounds emulate. Thus, the phrase becomes onomatopoeic, as well as alliterative.
The second line contains the phrase “Love is not love.” While this sentence is continued on the next line, at first glance it seems abrupt. It is oxymoronic when taken in isolation and made all the more effective by the full stop which precedes it. This break mid-line, or caesura, heightens the impact of the phrase which follows.
Finally, not only does language like “rosy lips and cheeks” evoke the imagery in Shakespeare’s other works, it also fleshes out the personification of the characters Love and Time. Capitalized. They are rendered proper nouns, like people. Love is granted verbs: it “admits,” “looks,” and “bears […] out”; it is even given a gender, in Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come To summarize: alliteration (particularly the repetition of fricative sounds), onomatopoeia, oxymoron, caesura, imagery, and personi-fication (or anthropomorphism) are examples of literary devices used in this sonnet.
23. What were Shakespeare’s personal feelings about love?
Ans: First, as stated in an earlier answer, do not we know what Shakespeare’s personal feelings were about love. We do not have any existing diaries or letters in which he explicitly stated his personal feelings. Instead, what we have are literary works, plays and poems. In his plays, various characters express a wide range of opinions about love, but we cannot assume that any of the characters voice Shakespeare’s personal opinions.
Similarly, in Shakespeare’s poems, the narrators of individual poems express different ideas and sentiments, but we cannot simply assume that these narrators voice the personal feelings of the poet. Instead, they often seem to follow the conventions of the period and genres in which they were written.
In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare argues for a notion of love that is transcendent and spiritual. This is actually a quite common convention we also see in Petrarch’s sonnets, in which the beloved is portrayed as an anagogical ideal, partaking in the characteristics of the divine (perfect, unchanging, unaffected by events in the sublunary sphere). The physical beauty of the beloved leads the lover’s soul to contemplate the transcendent divine beauty of which all physical beauty partakes in this particular conception of love. One should note, though, that this concept does not appear in all of Shakespeare’s sonnets and thus is likely simply to reflect one of the standard conventions of late medieval and Renaissance poetic love rather than a personal opinion.
24. Explain “Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds” (or Sonnet 116) by Shakespeare.
Ans: As the title suggests, the poem argues that true love will not be impeded, changed or stopped by transitory circumstances. True love, implicitly opposed to lust or some shallower form of affection, is a fixed form: the narrator describes it as “an ever-fixed mark.” The poem sets it in opposition to all that is changeable. If the love between two people is real, it will rise above whatever temporary material conditions might get in its way.
If trouble comes, which the poet likens to “tempests” or storms, true lovers are not “shaken” by this. If time ravages the looks of the beloved, wreaking damage on rosy cheeks and lips, that doesn’t matter either: love transcends physical appearance. The poet likens true love to a star that stays unchanging in the sky. It is eternal The poem argues that true love is a perfect, Platonic form based on the union of minds, impervious to what can happen to the body.
If we understand this sonnet as the voice of a lover speaking to his beloved, it mounts a strong and fervent argument in favor of the depth and sincerity of the poet’s love, reflecting the heart of a person who even promises to stay with the beloved to “the edge of doom.”
25. What is the symbolism in Sonnet 116?
Ans: A symbol is created when something an object has both literal and figurative meaning. A metaphor, on the other hand, has only figurative meaning, and it compares two unalike things. In this sonnet, the speaker says that love, real love, is an “ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken.” He compares love to a lighthouse, an object that stays put and guides ships through storms and does not move, via a metaphor.
Next, he says that love is “the star to every wand’ring bark,” again using a metaphor, to compare love to the North Star, which seems never to move in the skies, so ships can use it to navigate. The speaker also uses a lot of personification in the poem, the attribution of human qualities to things that are not human. For example, both “Love” and “Time” are given intention; Love is described as not being “Time’s fool,” and both Love and Time are gendered as male.
26. What is the emotion of Shakespeare’s speaker in Sonnet 116?
Ans: Shakespeare’s speaker, who begins with a most ceremonial tone in the first lines, expresses awe and firm conviction regarding the power of intellectual/spiritual love.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments.
In this sonnet, the speaker argues that the ideal romantic love is one that conjoins body and soul. For true love surpasses the corporeal, the “rosy lips and cheeks” and the temporal, the”briet hours and weeks”; indeed, it remains constant and eternal “even to the edge of doom,”
Furthermore, there is an earnestness to the tone of the speaker as he expresses this profound sentiment. Indeed, his emotional insistence suggests that if he can succeed at his argument that a spiritual love supersedes time and is steadfast through eternity, he strengthens the puissance of his own feelings and may well capture the mind and heart of his beloved.
27. Describe the evolution of thought in “True Love,” Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare.
Ans: The evolution of thought in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 follows the logical expansion of an idea that defines the nature of love. Instead of turning to a contrasting idea at the sonnet voltas (volta means turn, as in a Petrarchan turn to a contrasting idea), Shakespeare continues expanding on the nature of love but turns to other metaphors for it; the metaphors are expressed in imagery of unified minds, ships navigating in troubled seas, and “Time” as a reaper. The ending couplet presents a paradoxical resolution that says, in paraphrase, “If I’m proven wrong about this that I’ve said, then it must also come to be true that I never wrote anything and that no man ever loved.”
The first iambic pentameter quatrain, in the standard Shakespearean rhyme scheme of abab, metaphorically compares love to unity of mind, “marriage of true minds.” He describes this unity as one that does not alter in devotion due to changes (usually understood to mean physical changes, as in old age) in the one loved. “Or bends with the remover to remove” means that the unity of mind stays steadfast even if the one loved withdraws their love.
The second quatrain, with a volta at line 5, turns to a second metaphor that compares love to objects by which sailors navigate in tempestuous, stormy seas and by which they return back on their true course when tossed off course. The metaphor means that love can keep one from being discouraged by problems (“looks on tempests and is never shaken”) and can be the measure of one’s course in life (“every wandering bark, / Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”) A “bark” is a small sailing ship, and “height” refers to altitude as measured by longitude. “Whose worth’s unknown” refers to one who is young in life and has not yet made a great impact in life, therefore, their “worth” to society cannot yet be known.
The third quatrain turns at the second volta of line 9 to a metaphor that contrasts love to “Time” that is personified as a reaper of “hours and weeks” and who has a “bending sickle.” Love withstands the changes and threats produced by time and is eternal, “even to the edge of doom.” The resolution in the couplet of the evolution of thought offers a reversed conditional that challenges the reader to prove “If this be error” and concludes with the contradictory challenge that if the ideas expressed in the metaphors can be proved erroneous, then he never wrote, including the poem being read at the precise moment, and “no man ever loved.”
28. What does Sonnet 116 mean?
Ans: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ admit impediments”
The phrase “true minds” suggests an elevated rather than physical love. With a love of this kind, no obstacles should interfere. A marriage of true minds should withstand any storm, including the ravages of time. This type of love is unchanging, an “ever fixed mark”. Unlike other loves that could be tossed about by tempest and destroyed, this love is solid, like the star that guides the log at sea (every wandering bark).
Because it is not a lust or a body driven love, the usual mortal complaints don’t apply. Time may ravage the body, affecting such external qualities like the rosines of lips and cheeks, but a marriage between true minds-that is true exalted love-will continue despite the ravages of time. And this is what it means to love.
29. In “Sonnet 116,” what is the nature of the relationship described?
Ans: You asked two questions and so according to remote regulations I have been forced to edit your question down to focus on just one question. This is arguably one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, immortalised by its use in the film production of Sense and Sensibility starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet This sonnet defines love metaphorically as “the marriage of true minds” and argues that the key characteristic of love is its constancy in the face of fading beauty or the passage of time. The personnel ends by the speaker saying that if he is wrong in what he writes then he is no writer and no one has ever loved.
Interestingly, the poem has examples of defining love by talking about what it is not and what it does not do.
For example, it says:
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
And again:
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
All of these negative definitions of love serve to emphasise the constancy of love and how it remains unchanged in spite of ageing and death. Thus the sonnet doesn’t really describe relationships as such-it describes the true nature of love.
30. How does musicality contribute to the meaning of Shakespeare’s sonnet 116?
Ans: Sonnet 116, also known by its first line “Let me not to the marriage of true minds,” is one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets. Shakespeare’s sonnets usually twist and turn, often appearing different by the end of their lines than they did at the beginning Shakespeare’s wit is usually subversive, but in Sonnet 116 his prose is clear, honest and loyal.
There are a few ways that Shakespeare uses musicality to evoke the meaning in Sonnet 116. Through assonance, Shakespeare reveals beautiful, whole and open sounds. If you examine the vowels in the first five lines, you will notice a repeated use of long sounds, such as the “oo” in remove, “ai” in minds, and the fun diphthong in alteration. These sounds create an image of a speaker who is in love. It feels as if the speaker is almost sighing over the person they speak about in the sonnet. Also, the alliteration in the sonnet speaks volumes. Shakespeare uses B, P, V, D and T often, which are all placed at the front of the mouth. What do lovers often use? Their lips! Shakespeare demands you use your lips when speaking this sonnet.
31. What language does Shakespeare uses to show the importance of a relationship in Sonnet 116?
Ans: William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 provides a definition of love. Curiously though, Shakespeare does not tell readers what love is by defining what it is; instead, Shakespeare defines love by defining what it is not.
The language he uses is one which speaks to the defining of something through the things which cannot align with it. (Sounds different, but (sometimes) one’s knowledge of what something is does not allow them to identify what something is). For example, milk is not a fruit because it does not grow on trees, it does not have seeds, and it does not qualify as a solid.
Therefore, according to the sonnet, love is defined by the things which it is not: love is not something which can be altered, bent, or removed. Love is not wandering, shaken, or “Time’s fool.” By identifying what love is not, one can identify what love is: love is unalterable, unbending, and steadfast. Love is rooted, strong, and “unfoolish.”
32. What is the mode of the writer in the beginning of the poem “The Sunne Rising”?
Ans: In the poem “The Sunne Rising” by John Donne, the poet wakes in morning sunlight and admonishes the sun for disturbing his rest. He is not alone in bed. He is with a lover. He personifies the sun by addressing it as a person: “busy old fool, unruly sun.”
The poet is angry and petulant but also playful in addressing the sun in this manner.
He is angry because he has been disturbed while in the arms of his lover. It’s obvious that she is special to him. As he explains in the second stanza, once his eyes are open, he does not want to close them again because he doesn’t want to lose sight of her. In the third stanza, the poet clarifies that she is the most important person in the world to him and their shared bed is the center of their existence,
The poet is petulant, which means ill-mannered and peevish, because he is rude to the sun when he addresses it. He knows that he cannot stop the sun from appearing, but he expresses his annoyance anyway.
He is playful because even though he expresses anger and petulance, he realizes that ultimately there is nothing he can do about the sun. Still, he playfully tells the sun to go elsewhere and shine on other people, such as school boys, apprentices, huntsmen, and kings. He asks the sun to suspend its natural function for the sake of them. of the poet, his lover. course the sun cannot oblige and Of
33. Could anyone please help me identify the literary devices in poem “The Sunne Rising” by John Donne?
Ans: The speaker of John Donne’s “The Sun Rising” addresses the sun using apostrophe, which is the term for a poetic address to something or someone who is not there or cannot answer. In this case, the sun is obviously not human, so it cannot respond to Donne’s insults and commands. This also means that Donne uses personification to give the sun human qualities.
The poem begins with the speaker asking the sun two questions that convey the speaker’s frustration with the sun: Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must thy motions lovers’ seasons run? (1-4)
The speaker chastises the sun for breaking through windows and making lovers wake up, separate, and go about their days. He wonders why lovers’ lives have to be ruled by the sun and by time. He continues this line of thought by calling the sun a “Saucy pedantic wench” (5). This is clearly an insult that suggests the sun’s impertinence and bossiness. The speaker then lists some groups of people who he thinks the sun should go bother instead of lovers: people “Late school boys,” “court huntsmen,” and “country ants,” for example (6-8). The speaker concludes the first stanza by saying that love cannot be controlled by the changes of time, including the rising of the sun.
In the second stanza, the speaker makes his complaint a bit more personal. He does begin by, in a way, praising the sun as having “reverend and strong” beams (11). He goes on to write,
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so long; (13-14)
The speaker uses figurative language to say that he could shut out the sun, but he must admit that the sun helps him to see his lover for a time. He does not want to wholly do away with the sun.
The final stanza begins with a series of metaphors that establish the speaker’s confidence in the power of his love.
He writes,
She’s all states, and all princes, I, Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honors mimic, all wealth alchemy. (21-24)
The metaphors compare the lover to states and the speaker to princes. He then goes on to raise the stakes of his metaphor by saying that actual princes are inferior to them. He also claims that their love makes honor look false and wealth look like magic. He extends his logic to the concluding lines of the stanza where he says,
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere:
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere. (29-30)
The speaker claims that since he and his lover are the most important and inspiring example of love, the sun should shine exclusively on them. The metaphor that ends the poem, as well as the other comparisons in this stanza, is hyperbolic, or exagger-ated. The speaker conveys an extreme attitude toward the power of his and his beloved’s relationship.
34. How does Donne use repetition, personification, or irony in “The Sunne Rising”?
Ans: Repetition-Donne’s use of repetition is more subtle than many poets’ use of the device. Instead of relying on a refrain, Donne repeats structure and ideas more than mere sounds or words. For example, each stanza is not only ten lines long but also includes short opening lines and then moves to the third and fourth lines (of each stanza) containing ten syllables each. He repeats the pattern of ten syllables in the ninth and tenth lines of every stanza. If one looks at the lines that have repetitive structure, they are similar in the sense that they are the speaker’s perception of what the sun truly means to mankind.
2. Personification-Donne relies strongly on his personification of the sun. He first portrays the sun as an old, fickle woman.
BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices (lines 1-6).
Donne views the sun as someone who enjoys disturbing others’ pleasure, whether it is lovers who must break away from the romance of the night or boys who are up to no good under the cover of darkness. The poet continues to use personification to illustrate that the sun is an old woman who wants attention but who really has no true power over man. In fact, the speaker claims that he can ignore the “old woman” (the sun) simply by closing his eyes if he so chooses (Stanza 2).
3. The irony is connected to the truth presented in Stanza 3.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we, In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties are To warm the world, that’s done in warming us (lines 25 – 28).
The irony lies in the idea that the sun should be viewed by humans as a power to be respected, but the speaker still feels that he can command her or even try to “ease” her work in her old age.
35. Critically evaluate Donne’s poem “The Sun Rising.” Please give an explanation in simple and decorated words. Particularly discuss conceit used in poem.
Ans: The first conceit, the extended metaphor in “The Sun Rising,” is the speaker’s treatment of the Sun as pedantic, annoying interruption. In the first stanza, the speaker chides the Sun, telling it to go wake up schoolboys and hunters. The speaker, in bed with his lover, does not want to awake or have to leave the bed. Then to underscore his point that the Sun is an unwelcome intruder, the speaker notes the Sun’s (and Time’s) irrelevance because their love is beyond the confines of time.
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. (9-10) In this dramatic monologue, Donne uses apostrophe, a figure of speech in which the speaker addresses an abstract idea, absent person, or personified object. In this case, the speaker addresses the personified Sun. The poem is narrated in the present tense as the Sun rises. This poem is an example of hyperbole, an exuberant exaggeration of the speaker’s love, the second extended metaphor.
The rhyme scheme for all three stanzas is abbacdcdee. Some of the lines are short and this accentuates the speaker’s monologue of scolding the Sun. The increases the intensity of his voice and establishes the Sun’s personification.
In the second stanza, the speaker flatters the Sun, but follows up by mocking its supposed power, claiming he can eclipse the Sun’s light with a wink. The speaker continues his mockery and continues praising the love between him and his mistress. He claims that his love is so grand that all the spice, wealth, and royalty of the world are “here in one bed.”
In the third stanza, the speaker’s glorification of his love with his mistress reaches new heights. The poem has two extended metaphors. One is the personified Sun as an annoying and pretentious interruption. And, ironically, the speaker is also pretentious in the praise of his love which he claims is, at least metaphorically, worth all the value in the world. She, his lover, is “all states” and he is “all princes.” And there is nothing else. Everything else is just a copy of themselves.
The speaker finally invites the Sun to shine on them. One could argue that the speaker is overdoing the glorification of his love. One could also argue that he is just so in love that he doesn’t want it to end; he does not want to be reminded of the passage of time (which is the Sun’s job, rising and setting). For the speaker, the entire world is their bedroom. If the Sun shines on them in that room, it shines everywhere. Their love is a world all by itself. Since this love is timeless, it cannot be disturbed by the Sun’s indications of the passage of time. In this respect, the speaker is not merely flaunting his love in spite of the Sun. He is praising the richness of the intimate experience.
36. Who first published “The Rising Sun” (otherwise know as “The Sunne Rising”) by John Donne?
Ans: The poem you mention, usually called “The Sun Rising,” was published by John Donne’s son (also named John) in 1633 (after the poet’s death). “The Sun Rising” along with many other of Donne’s poems were published in the collective work some say was called Collected Poems while others say it was called Poems, by J.D. Even though the name of the actual publication is different depending on which source you consult, this doesn’t negate the significance of the publication.
Donne’s son also edited the poems he published in that volume, and another two volumes of his father’s work would soon follow. The reason for this is simple: John Donne left many of his unpublished works to his son posthumously. Supposedly, this is significant because it is one of the first instances of an “authorized edition.” Up until this point, guidelines were quite loose for publishing works after an author’s death.
37. How is “The Sun Rising” by John Donne a metaphysical poem?
Ans: In poetry, “metaphysical” refers to both a specific era of writing and to the use of broadly extended metaphors, or conceits, in the narratives of the poems. Metaphysical poets are considered to have written during the 17th century in England, though the associations are not always clearly defined. John Donne is typically considered a metaphysical poet.
The concept in “The Sunne Rising” is seen in the long discussion with the sun. The poem is about two lovers who wish to stay in bed with each other, but it is portrayed as a message directly to the sun: leave, and come back tomorrow. This personification of the sun and the extended comparisons between the sun’s required labor and the lovers’ desire to lay with each other are the features that most clearly display the poem’s metaphysical nature.
38. Which words are stressed or unstressed according to monometer in “Death, be not proud”?
Ans: For a poem to be written in monometer means that there is only one metrical foot per line, and in monometer, the number of stressed syllables per line could be no more than one or two. As a Petrarchan sonnet, this poem is written in iambic pentameter, which means that there are five (penta-) feet per line, and the prevailing foot is the iamb (one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable). Thus, there ought to be five unstressed syllables per line and five stressed syllables per line. I will mark the stressed syllables with bold font and the divisions between iambs with a “|” symbol in the first four lines:
Death be not proud | though some | have call | ed thee Migh ty | and dread | ful for | thou art | not so
For those | whom thou | think’st thou | dost o | ver throw Die not | poor Death | nor yet | canst thou | kill me.
Each foot above is an iamb except for the first foot of the second line, which I have underlined; this is a trochee: one stressed foot followed by one unstressed foot (essentially the opposite of an iamb). The use of one foot in place of another is called a substitution.
39. What are the figures of speech in “Death, be not proud”?
Ans: First of all we have personification. This is a figure of speech where something that isn’t human is given human characteristics. In this particular case, that something is death. All of the character traits given by Donne to death are negative ones. Death has no reason to be proud; some may call it “mighty and dreadful,” but it really isn’t. Death can really be nothing more than sleep:
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure…
And what’s so special about sleep? Sleep potions and drugs can do the job just as well as death:
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
In any case, death is but a short sleep, a prelude to better things: the elevation of our souls to eternal life:
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Sleep is used by Donne, then, as an extended metaphor. This is in keeping with his strategy in the poem to disabuse death of its pride and arrogance. In reducing death to little more than a short sleep, he’s depriving it of its tyrannical power over us.
Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole. An example would be “hand” as in “hand in marriage.” You don’t marry someone’s hand; the hand is used to stand for the whole person, Donne’s use of synecdoche here is much less obvious, more subtle:
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
“Me” doesn’t simply refer to the speaker of the poem; it refers to all of us. So the speaker is standing for the whole of humanity as part of the general theme of the piece.
And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Of course it’s not just our bones that rest when we die, but our whole bodies. But “bones” is being used here to stand for our bodies.
Alliteration is used throughout the poem. In particular, the repetition of the “d” sound induces a deadening, sleepy rhythm that perfectly captures the spirit of Donne’s extended metaphor of death as sleep. Also, the repetition of “k” introduces a note of sparky defiance to the poem, bold challenge to the deadening weight a of death’s sleep:
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
In the previous line the spirit of defiance is also represented by the repeated use of the “th” digraph:
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow…
Finally, Donne ends the poem with a paradox. He’s emphasizing his main point once more that individuals and societies should stop fearing death. And if they can do this, then death will effectively lose its power over people: And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
40. What is the theme of the poem “Death be not Proud” by John Donne?
Ans: The central theme of the poem “Death be not Proud” by John Donne is the powerlessness of death. According to Donne, death is but a pathway to eternal life, and as such is not something “mighty and dreadful” as some may believe it to be. Contrary to death’s own conception of itself as a forbidding entity powerful enough to destroy and “overthrow,” in reality it only brings the best men to a state of “much pleasure” and “soules deliverie.” In essence, Donne is telling death that it has no basis for bragging and being “proud,” because it is not the ominous, frightening force it would make itself out to be. The speaker’s tone is almost belittling; his purpose is to cut arrogant death down to size.
Donne almost seems to poke fun at death’s inflated sense of itself, telling it that, in reality, it is a “slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men.” Even in its capability to bring rest it is not the best, because “poppie or charms can make us sleep as well.” Death’s influence is not final, nor even long-lasting; the speaker says that “one short sleep past, wee wake eternally.” ally.” Death has not reason to be proud because its power is an illusion, its reign fleeting. Once it has served its purpose of transporting its victims out of earthly life, it is “no more,” overcome by life which lasts eternally.
41. Who is the poet addressing in the poem “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne?
Ans: Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not soe.
Who is the poet addressing?
The poetic narrator of the poem speaks to “Death.” Death is supposed to be “mighty and dreadful” because it kills everybody, but Donne takes a different look at death. He pities it and antagonistically tells Death not to be proud of itself.
Donne was a minister. With his familiarity with death, he speaks to it as if it were a person. Speaking in incongruities, he states that people do not really die when they meet Death, so neither will the speaker. Then, Death is compared to the calming facets of life: rest and sleep. Death comes to all no matter who a person is. He adds that the best of men often go with Death because these people know that they will not find pain, but delight. And soonest our best men with thee doe goe, Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Then, the speaker makes an accusation against Death: It is a slave to chance, luck, kings and dangerous men. Death does not keep very good company. His companions are war, illness, and poison. Death is not a necessity and should not be feared. A person could always take drugs to die and have the same effect as falling asleep. Death is like a nap. The Christian wakes up and finds himself in a better place. When that happens, there will be no need for Death-Death will die.
The speaker challenges Death and essentially goes out wits him. Donne employs several types of figurative language to get the best of Death. A metaphor, an apostrophe, personification, an extended metaphor, a pun-these are the tools used by the poet.
The primary hope is to be able to defeat Death and go to Heaven. The Christian will continue his existence in the next world; consequently, Death will not win. The speaker’s faith will not let him down. The final assertion states that Death has to die as well.
Background:
John Donne was a metaphysical poet. These poets study the reality beyond the physical, everyday world and deal with questions about God, the creation, and the afterlife. “Death Be Not Proud” is a good example of this type of poem. Written after the death of his wife, this was one of Donne’s Holy Sonnets. This is Holy Sonnet 10. These poems were published two years after Donne’s death in 1631.
The poem is written in the Petrarchan sonnet style. It has fourteen lines and is divided into an octave and a sestet. The purpose of the poem is to take the sting out of death and not make it seem so scary. It may not work, but that was what Donne was hoping for in his poem. He also tells the reader how to handle death when it comes for him. This same advice could apply to anyone who tries to intimidate another person.
42. What literary techniques does John Donne use in his sonnet that begins “Death, be not proud”?
Ans: Examples of the literary techniques used by John Donne in his sonnet beginning “Death, be not proud” include the following:
Line 1: Personification, in the reference to death as “Death.” Irony and paradox, in addressing death as if it were a living thing. Enjambment, because of the lack of punctuation at the end of the line (a technique also used elsewhere in the poem).
Line 2: Metrical emphasis, as in the following departure from regular iambic rhythm: “Mighty and dreadful.” Normally, in iambic meter, the odd syllables are unaccented and the even syllables are accented. Thus, the first four syllables of this line, if they had been written in iambic rhythm, would look like this: unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed. Instead, Donne accentuates the first four syllables as follows: stressed, unstressed, unstressed, stressed. He thus throws full weight onto the two key syllables, “Might” and “dread.” Donne is a master at manipulating rhythms, as he proves again at the end of this line, in which the last three words (“art not so”) are all heavily accented monosyllables, a kind of rhythm that stresses the strong claim made in these emphatic words. Later, one could argue that every singly syllable of the following, similarly emphatic, phrase is accented: “nor yet canst thou kill me.”
Line 3: Alliteration, the repetition of the same consonant sounds, as in the repetition of “those,” “thou,” “think’st,” and “overthrow.” This technique is also used elsewhere in the poem.
Line 5: Metaphor, or comparison without using “like” or “as,” when rest and sleep are called the “pictures” of death.
Line 8: Chiastic (or crisscrossed) phrasing, as in the way this line initially puts a noun (“Rest”) first, followed by possessive words (“of their bones”) and then puts a possessive word (“soul’s) first, followed by a noun (“delivery”).
Line 9: Cataloging (or listing), as in the last six words of this line. Notice, too, how Donne creates an expectation of single-syllable words (“fate, chance, kings”) and then disrupts that pattern by inserting a multisyllabic adjective (“desperate men”). Note also the use of assonance (emphasis on the same vowel sounds) in “slave” and “fate.”
Line 10: Iambic rhythm. Note that this line is (ironically) highly unusual in this poem since it uses the kind of iambic rhythm that is often extremely common in the works of other poets: “And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell.”
Line 12: Rhetorical question, or a question added mainly for emphasis, as at the end of this line.
Line 14: Paradox, as in the final claim, death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
43. What is the meaning of eternity in “Death, be not proud” by John Donne?
Ans: John Donne’s “Death, be not proud,” or Holy Sonnet 10, is a poem written in the form of an Italian sonnet. It is narrated in the first person. The narrator directly addresses Death, a figure personified in the poem. The concept of eternity is mentioned in the poem’s last two lines. One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
The key to understanding the meaning of eternity in this poem is to know that Donne, born into a Roman Catholic family, converted to Anglicanism and was, in 1615, ordained as a priest in the Church of England. This means he is writing not just as a Christian, but as a theologically knowledgeable cleric, and distinguished preacher whose sermons are still widely read.
Donne’s concept of eternity assumes the immortality of the soul. He points out that although our body dies, our souls live on eternally (either in Heaven or Hell); thus, the triumph of death is only apparent and temporary, affecting our physical rather than spiritual selves.
In Christian theology, death itself is only temporary and will no longer exist after the Last Judgement. Paradoxically, while human souls live on forever, according to Christian theology, death itself “dies” or ceases to exist permanently.
44. Discuss death as the subject of the poem “Death, be not proud” by John Donne?
Ans: John Donne was primarily a popular minister in the seventeenth century; however, his poems were considered his greatest work. Donne named part of his poetry the Holy Sonnets because they dealt with religious topics. “Death, be not proud” is Holy Sonnet 10.
The poem follows the Petrarchan sonnet form. It has fourteen lines with three quatrains, and an ending couplet. The first eight lines follow a set rhyme scheme and then, most frequently, cdcdcd; but, this poem finishes with cddcaa. When writers talk to something that cannot answer or respond, this literary device is called an “apostrophe.” This is the most recognized example of an apostrophe in literature.
The first quatrain focuses on the subject and audience of the poem: death. Donne proudly attacks death in his poem. To him, death goes beyond its realm. Death perceives itself as arrogant and able to maneuver people. Individuals are afraid of death and avert their eyes and do everything they can to avoid him. Death has been ascribed the abilities of a king and the power to do dreadful things.
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
He ends the first section by telling death that the people he thinks that he kills, he actually does not.
In the second quatrain, death wants to be distinguished as powerful; in reality, he is no more than a rest or sleep. Pleasure can be taken in death because those who die are released from their suffering here on earth. Death becomes a “rest of the bones.”
In the final quatrain, death is not a king but a subject to fate, chance, and murder. On the other hand, death has no special place in life. Some men chose death to get away from their problems. Death ‘s companions are poison, war, and sickness-nothing of which to be proud.
In the final couplet, Donne returns to the idea of death as a brief sleep.
One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
In Donne’s traditional Christian theology, when people die, they slumber until Jesus returns to take them to Heaven, where Christians will spend eternity. Death will no longer have dominion over anyone. There will be no need for death. Death, itself, will perish.
45. Explain how Donne creates an argument against Death in “Death, be not Proud.”
Ans: One of the central ways that Donne creates an argument against death in this powerful poem that is, normally entitled “Sonnet X” in his Holy Sonnets, is through paradox. Remember, paradox is a statement that at first glance seems impossible or illogical, but when interrogated further, reveals a more profound truth or reality than was immediately obvious. What is interesting about paradoxes is that they grab our attention immediately and force us to consider issues more deeply that we otherwise would do.
In this poem, then, two key paradoxes are used to create Donne’s argument against Death. The first is that Death doesn’t actually “kill” its victims:
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
This is because Death is shown throughout the poem to be nothing more than a transitional state, as some part of the person goes on living and there is an afterlife.
The second paradox that is used is at the very end of the poem: One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Of course, this paradox is in many ways one of the strongest, which makes it a perfect way to finish the poem. However, Donne is suggesting that because Death lacks the power to really kill, because of the “eternal” waking we shall experience after our “short sleep,” this shows that Death has no dominion over us and therefore metaphorically “dies.”
Donne therefore establishes his argument very carefully through the use of paradox to demonstrate and illustrate that Death, although feared by many, actually does have no dominion over us.
46. What is the message of the poem?
Ans: John Donne’s “Death, Be Not Proud” is a sonnet in which the speaker directly addresses death to remove its power. He points out that many of the circumstances that lead to death are in the control of humans, not death itself. “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,/ And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell.” The speaker takes away death’s power by reminding it that some circumstances, such as war or illness, make the decision to take lives. Thus, the speaker takes away any power that death might have. The speaker says that death is quite arrogant but should not be so, since it has no authority.
The speaker continues his rant against death by telling it that “poppy or charms can make us sleep as well/ And better.” Mentioning sleep aids further takes away any power or fear that death might hold over a person. After all, he says, death is like one big sleep, and what’s so scary about sleep? “One short sleep past, we wake eternally/ And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.” The speaker concludes the argument by reminding death that it is merely a temporary condition. After death comes, people experience eternal life and happiness.
Thus, Donne tells his audience not to fear death, as it is a fact of life. He counsels people to remember their religion and, instead of fearing their ultimate end, to embrace it as a pathway to God.
47. What are two things that death is compared to?
Ans: To begin understanding John Donne, one must first acknowledge that his work is the shining example of metaphysical poetry. This is a view of the craft that takes a metaphor and pushes it to its furthest extent through description and explanation. In this poem, Donne compares Death to two things: “rest and sleep” and a “slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men.”
The persona begins strongly with a tone of condescension towards Death, even going so far as to call the once-revered and -feared reaper “poor Death.” This is the metaphysical poet begin-ning to work, setting the stage for the two comparisons.
By comparing Death to rest and sleep, then in the next line saying “Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,” the speaker shake shakes the reader out of the usual daunting connotations, We see the rest imposed by Death as something to look forward to, rather than something to run away from.
“Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men” is a metaphor that is meant to demean Death even further. The speaker then goes on to list the usual connotations of Death (the ones the speaker deviated from in earlier lines) by saying that he associates it with poison, war, and sicknesses of a violent and unsightly nature. This comparison complements the speaker’s condescending tone.
And we return to the first metaphor, “rest and sleep,” when the persona says,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
It is through these two comparisons that Donne intends to rework the reader’s fear toward the inevitability of death.
48. What is this poem about? and what kind of irony is this poem? What is the symbolism in this poem? Analysis and give. examples to better help understand?
Ans: Death Be Not Proud” is number VI of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets. The Holy Sonnets are not always specifically about God, but they all address eternal themes, with sometimes implied = references to God or spiritual things. “Death Be Not Proud” is one of those. First of all the poet uses the device of apostrophe, in which he addresses something inanimate as if it were a human being (such as Byron’s “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean”). Donne’s first first line establishes this “Death be not proud, though some have called thee”. By making a concept or a state such as death into something that can be spoken to, even figuratively, Donne effectively brings death down to a level where it is less universal and more personal. This takes away some of death’s power within the context of the poem.
He speaks of death having much less power than most people think. “Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so”. The poet implies that death should not be feared, for “nor yet canst thou kill me.” Since the poet is a believer in God, and he believes in eternal life, the state of death has no power over him. This is a neat overturning of death’s power, and places the speaker outside of what is considered the normal fate of humanity. In the next lines the poet further disempowers death by likening it to sleep. He emphasizes how sleep brings rest and pleasure to humanity, so therefore death cannot be that frightening.
Since death is more permanent than sleep, he says “Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,” (line 6).
The poet then turns to how the “best men” go willingly to death, so why should not other more common people imitate their superiors? Here the religious aspect of the poem becomes more directly stated. Death is merely “soul’s delivery.” (8) But after these mild insults to death’s power Donne moves to direct attack “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” (9) Death comes, Donne says, at the bidding of such things chance, desperate men, kings (who hold the power as fate of life and death over people), and goes on to say that death keeps company with such low things as “poison, war, and sickness” (10). A mere flower, the poppy (line 11), from which opiates are derived, can make sleep so how could death be such a great and terrible thing? Here Donne’s irony is at its sharpest.
He relentlessly lists the horrors of life which can bring on death, but then turns quickly to the slimmest of comparisons (an opiate sleep compared to death) to show death hasn’t the power to terrify. By this poetic expression Donne shows that humanity is still afraid of deaths in war and sickness, but must remember, and have faith, that no matter how terrifying death is it is really only a transition to eternal life. That the lines before this assertion have the power to frighten a reader make this irony all the more acute, and the reality of the fear of death is an involuntary part of the human condition. “One short sleep past, we wake eternally” (13). At the end of the poem the poet returns to his belief that life will continue forever, and therefore death is but a transition. Donne’s mastery is in his subtle irony, his abstruse comparisons, and his ability to aver one thing while acknowledging the truth of its opposite.
49. What is the subject matter of the poem Death, Be Not Proud by John Donne?
Ans: The poem makes a mockery of the belief that Death is all powerful and consuming by firstly addressing it as human (personification) and then criticizing its arrogance. The speaker states that Death should not be boastful about the fact that it has been called “mighty and dreadful” by some, for it is not. The speaker contends that Death’s belief that it has ruined life is not true and that it cannot overcome him.
The speaker belittles Death by equating sleep” to the likeness presented by comfort and peace much as images of “rest and Death. Such rest and sleep bring Death when it removes the greatest and most respected individuals from their physical state. All Death does, then, is to deliver their souls to a place of eternal rest. The speaker mentions that Death has to do much more to claim its status as the powerful and terrifying force it assumes itself to be.
Furthermore, Death’s claim to glory has no foundation, for it is ruled by chance and is a victim of fate. It is just as much controlled by the command of kings and is subject to the desires and whims of “desperate men.” In essence, then, Death is not as much in control as it claims to be. In addition, Death cannot be boastful for it is associated with perfidy in the form of sickness, poison, and war-surely not companions one can be happy with.
To accentuate the fact that Death has no real authority, the speaker states that drugs and spells can be used to bring about sleep even better than Death does, so it has no reason to brag.
In the end, Death has no dominion, for its power is temporary. The speaker makes it clear that once the soul awakens from its control (a temporary sleep) it will live forever and Death will cease.
50. In Death, Be Not Proud by John Donne, why does the poet feel that Death is arrogant?
Ans: In this poem, the speaker directly addresses and mocks a personification of death. He implies that “Death” is proud or arrogant because it thinks that it “overthrows(s)” its victims. In other words, “Death” is arrogant because it thinks that it is able to completely conquer the people it takes.
However, the speaker says that “Death” overthrows its victims only temporarily. The speaker compares death to sleep, which is peaceful, restorative, and nothing to be afraid of. The speaker also says that death is, in fact, ultimately a good thing in that it brings about the “soul’s delivery” and the moment when “we awake eternally.” Here, the poet is implying that death’s victory over mankind is really not a victory at all, Death doesn’t overthrow its victims but rather helps them to move into the better world of the afterlife, where the soul is free and life is eternal. Death is thus reduced from a conqueror to an unwitting helper, and its arrogance thereby undermined.
John Donne had a fascination with death that is evident in much of his writing. This was in part due to his own poor health but also in part because he lived through a time of high mortality rates. Renaissance England was the time of the bubonic plague and also of endemic typhus, smallpox, and cholera. More than one in ten children died before their first birthday. Public executions were also popular public events. Donne wrote this poem in 1609, when he was 36 years old. The average life expectancy at this time was 42 years old. With all this in mind, it’s easy to understand why Donne would write a poem like this, aggressively confronting death as arrogant.
51. What is the role of the Nun’s Priest in The Canterbury Tales?
Ans: “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is that of Chanticleer and Pertelote, the cockerel and his favorite hen wife. Chanticleer awakes from a frightful dream about a beast trying to kill him, alerting Pertelote to his anxiety. She dismisses his fears as ridiculous, suggesting that perhaps he just ate too much.
When the fox arrives the next morning, he lies and says he only came to hear Chanticleer’s beautiful call. Being flattered, Chanticleer closes his eyes to sing, after which the fox snatches him and runs away. Chanticleer is able to outsmart the fox by suggesting that the fox insult all the people who are chasing the pair of them Chanticleer then escapes to a high perch in a tree, where he is now immune to the fox’s flattery.
As the other Educator says, the irony of this tale comes when the Host flatters the nun’s priest’s physique, insinuating that he would need seventeen “hens” to satisfy such a manhood if the man were not a priest. This directly contradicts the message of the story, which is to avoid succumbing to flattery.
As for the priest’s role, the narrator states that he has accompanied the Prioress and her nun on the pilgrimage. He is one of three priests who accompany the Prioress, but he is the only one who tells his own tale.
52. What are details supporting the claim that Chauntecleer is a round character in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”?
Ans: I would want to argue the central fact that supports the claim that Chanticleer (or Chauntecleer depending on the translation tion) is a round character is actually the way that he clearly shows he has learnt from his experiences with the fox by the end of the tale and also the way that he admits his own foolishness in giving in to the fox’s flattery in the first place.
Let us just remind ourselves that a round character is a character who is shown to us in their full psychological complexity, rather than the rather two-dimensional nature of flat characters, who have but one or two character traits. We certainly see the full complexity of Chanticleer at the end of the tale when he talks to the fox when the fox asks him to come down:
You’ll not, with your soft soap and flatteries, Get me to sing again, and close my eyes! To him who shuts his eyes when he should look, And that on purpose, the Lord sends bad luck!
Here we see Chanticleer being open about the way that he was almost fatally susceptible to “soft soap and flatteries,” admitting his faults, but then also learning from this and integrating this into his character, showing that he is a round character rather than a flat one.
53. In “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” why is Chanticleer a round character in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales?
Ans: By definition, round characters are well-developed and flat characters are not developed. Sometimes round characters are also considered dynamic characters (as compared to static) because they have the ability to change and grow. Chanticleer is considered a round character because we actually learn quite a bit about his life and personality through this tale. Chanticleer is very busy with all of “lady” hens and appears to be quite popular. He is also characterized to be lacking in courage as he reveals his bad dreams to Pertelote, his favorite of the hens.
She and he have an interesting relationship because she challenges his fears and calls him out on his lack of bravery. An interesting contrast to this side of his personality is very strong pride over this singing voice. It is this pride that gets him trouble with the sly Russell the Fox. Luckily, he is able to escape the Fox with a clever reversal, but all of this story reveals several interesting sides of Chanticleer, making him more than a stereotypical rooster who struts around and makes a lot of noise. He learns a lesson about his fears and his talents and is a changed rooster by the end of the tale.
54. What is the main theme of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales? Discuss it with examples from the text.
Ans: Chaucer’s “Nun’s Priest’s Tale” relates the adventures (and misadventures) of the proud rooster Chanticleer. The key word here is “proud,” for the main theme of the tale is pride. Chanticleer is a fine rooster, and he knows it well. His crowing is inferior to none, and he is always right on time. “His coomb was redder than the fyn coral,” and his beak is a shiny black. The noble bird struts through the barnyard like he owns the place, basking in the attention of his seven wives, including the beautiful Pertelote. Life is good for this proud rooster… until one night, he has a dream.
It is a horrible dream, for in it, a red, dog-like creature stalks Chanticleer. He wakes with a yelp, and Pertelote asks him what is the matter. He describes the dream to her, and he is clearly shaken with fear. Chanticleer’s pride takes its first hit, for Pertelote (with a good bit of pride of her own) scolds him roundly for being afraid of a mere dream.
They engage in a long conversation in which Pertelote asserts that Chanticleer must have some physical illness that is causing such nightmares, and the rooster in turn relates several stories in which dreams of murder actually come true. Pride reigns on both sides as Chanticleer and Pertelote seek to out-argue each other, but the two soon make up and life returns to normal. But something is lurking nearby-something that will threaten the pride and the life of the magnificent Chanticleer.
That something is a fox, and he knows all about Chanticleer’s pride. In fact, it becomes the fox’s tool in his plan to catch the fine rooster. The fox approaches Chanticleer and tells him cour-teously that he has come to hear him sing, for the rooster has a voice “As any angel hath that is in heaven.” This, of course, touches just the right spot in the bird’s proud heart, and he stands up tall, stretches out his neck, closes his eyes, and lets out a crow. The fox seizes both the opportunity and the rooster.
But the fox has his own good share of pride. As he runs away with Chanticleer in his mouth and the farm dogs in hot pursuit, Chanticleer suggests to this clever fox that he boast of his victory to the silly dogs. The fox cannot resist, and he does so, but the moment he opens his mouth to boast, Chanticleer flies away and out of the fox’s reach. Pride has cost the fox his dinner just like it almost cost the rooster his life.
55. In The Canterbury Tales, which three morals best sums up “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”?
Ans: The clear moral of this excellent story is the danger of being overwhelmed by flattery. The fox of course shows himself to be a master of flattery and is able to use this strategy to snatch Chanticleer away. Of course, Chanticleer, once he has escaped, himself takes this lesson to heart:
“You’ll not, with your soft soap and flattery, get me to sing again, and close my eyes!”
However, at the same time, there seems to be a moral in the way that Chanticleer is able to turn the tables on the fox by using flattery to secure his release. By pretending that the fox is so worthy and mighty, he uses exactly the same strategy that was used against him to rob the fox of his dinner. Thus a second moral could be said to be that our greatest weakness can also be our greatest weapon.
Lastly, it is important to remember that Chanticleer only goes out into the yard to strut and preen at the behest of his beloved Pertelote, who berates him into ignoring the warning he has been given. As such, Chanticleer is shown to be a victim of love. If it were not for Pertelote, he would never have been seized by the fox. Therefore, another moral seems to be that men need to be wary of paying attention to the advice of women. Let us remember that in Chaucer’s time women were traditionally portrayed as being the temptress figure and responsible for man’s Fall from the Garden of Eden.
56. Who are Chanticleer and Pertelote from “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” by Chaucer?
Ans: In “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer adapts a traditional French folk tale that features a rooster and a hen. The story takes place in a barnyard.
Chanticleer is the rooster. By the time Chaucer wrote, this name and character was already established as a braggart figure, who was often a vain bully as well. That is his personality in this story. with his plumage and voice two elements inspiring his vanity.
While Chanticleer has seven wives, the hen Pertelote (also spelled Partlet) is his favorite. She initially offers a sympathetic ear when he tells her about a frightening dream about being eaten. She soon dismisses his fear, attributing it to something he ate, but later regrets the advice. The fox, Russell, flatters and fools the rooster, and then nearly captures and eats him, but he escapes. While Chanticleer’s vanity made him gullible, Perelote did not take him seriously and gave him bad advice; both factors combined to create a near-tragic end.
57. Discuss the narrative art of Chaucer with reference to “The Nonne Preestes Tale.”
Ans: Chaucer’s narrative style is marked by a certain art of aesthetic that is evident in “The Nonne Preestes Tale.” One characteristic of Chaucer’s art is the use of a light-hearted ted tone that employs subtle humor. This characteristic is evidenced in various parts of this tale, for example, when the fox says:
“Nay,” quod the fox, “but God eve hym meschaunce, That is so undiscreet of governaunce,
That jangleth, whan he sholde hold his pees.” A defining characteristic is Chaucer’s brilliance with description. He employs various theories of description in various instances. For example, when he describes the “povrewydwe” (poor widow), he begins with her habits and ways of living. Aside from saying she is “somdel stape in age” (a little old), there is virtually no physical description of her at all (a great difference from his description of the wife of Bathe).
A contrasting example is his description of Chauntecleer. He approaches Chauntecleer through the theory that asserts descriptions should be physical and start at the top and work down the person (the same theory he applies to the wife of Bathe). As a result we learn first about his chief quality, his voice (“His body was more than the movie organ”), then move to the coxcomb atop his head and end with his “nayles” and his overall coloration of “burned gold.”
In typical Chaucerian fashion, a long digression into discourse is used to introduce the thematic import of the tale. Pertelote debates (citing references!) with Chauntecleer in all honesty (“I kan nat love a coward, by my feith”) about the validity and meaning of dreams. After this long digression, the villain is introduced and the conflict unfolds. We see the conflict rests on the fox’s art of flattery (“many a false flatour”), which is the opposite of Pertelote’s straight talking pronouncements. A final point on Chaucer’s art is that he mixes Christian allusion with Classical, which he may use, as in this tale, to build suspense:
O newe Scariot! newe Genyloun!
False dissymulour, O Greek synoun
That brightest Troye all outrely to sorrow!
58. What was the reaction when Chanticleer was captured by the fox in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”?
Ans: A poor widow and her daughters live on a farm in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer; they do not have much, but they do have some animals. Among them is a magnificent rooster named Chanticleer (which means “sings clearly” in French). went into the yard. He went to please Partlet, whom he loves very dearly. It is, therefore, for the love of Partlet that Chanticleer becomes the fox’s victim.
The obvious moral lesson of the foolishness of succumbing to empty flattery diverts attention from a more subtle warning to beware the advice of women. This was a popular medieval theme. Woman, the original seductress, was the source of much of Man’s sinfulness. As the weaker and less intellectually endowed of the two sexes, Woman was not a reliable counselor. Although in today’s world a moral like this would not be acceptable, back then, it was perfectly normal.
59. What is the historical background of the story of the “Nun’s Priest’s Tale”? Why did he use animals instead of humans? What is the moral that the story discuses?
Ans: In this format (the fable), beasts personify humans and exaggerate Man’s characteristics, usually for the purpose of teaching a lesson. The characters, as in this case with Chanticleer, often make use of classical learning to solidify their moral instruction.
Chaucer probably based this story on the French Roman de Renart (Reynard is a character in the “Old French Le Roman de Renart” written by Perrout de Saint Cloude around 1175) and the German Reinhart Fuchs (the oldest German beast-epic that we possess; The date of its composition is about 1180); but, as was his custom, the author of The Canterbury Tales dramatically altered the plots. In the European models, the rooster is a self-centered idiot who repeatedly refused to listen to warnings. As the reader has observed, Chaucer’s Chanticleer, although somewhat vain, is a victim of love. He overrides his own better judgment and goes into the yard to please Partlet whom he loves very dearly. It is, therefore, for love of Partlet that Chanticleer becomes the fox’s victim.
The obvious moral lesson of the foolishness of succumbing to empty flattery diverts attention from a more subtle warning to beware the advice of women. This was a popular medieval theme. Woman, the original seductress, was the source of much of Man’s sinfulness. As the weaker and less intellectually endowed of the two sexes, Woman was not a reliable counselor.
60. Compare and contrast the methods of argument that Pertelote and Chanticleer use to defend their interpretations of dreams.
Ans: In the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Pertelote and Chanticleer both find the interpre-tations of dreams a suitable topic about which to argue, but they apply different processes to their argumentation.
For example, both Pertolete and Chanticleer appear to take dreams seriously enough to warrant a proper argument, but they differ in their explanations for the dream Chanticleer brings up for discussion. When Chanticleer first brings up the subject of his bad dream, which frightens him with its violent prophesy, Pertelote dismisses his fear with a physiological explanation: overeating. Chantičleer disagrees with Pertelote because he believes the stories he has heard have taught him about the prophecies that dreams can foretell. Clearly, Chanticleer has a more imaginative way of interpreting dreams than an Pertolete, whose focus is on the pragmatic.
Additionally, both Pertolete and Chanticleer support their arguments with the ideas of other thinkers, but they differ in their sources. Petrolete quotes Cato, a Roman statesman and Stoic, to support her argument, while Chanticleer refers to a general group of men that he cannot name specifically. Though both Pertolete and Chanticleer acknowledge what they have learned from others about the interpretation of dreams, Pertolete’s ability to name a philosopher elevates her argument to a position higher than Chanticleer’s.
61. “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale moves on two levels: the human and the animal.” Elaborate.
Ans: The Nun’s Priest is a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. He is one of the pilgrims who is traveling to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. The Nun’s Priest weaves a tale together that is similar to a sermon, complete with a message about the folly of human pride and error. The way that it is told is through a classic literary genre a beast fable, like the ones described by Aesop.
In the tale, the Priest tells the story of a widow with two daughters who had a prized cock-a rooster that can crow both more beautifully and louder than any other rooster. The rooster, Chanticleer, is described in the story as having authority over seven hens, which he describes as both sisters and lovers: “This gentle cock had in his governance Seven hens, for to do all his pleasánce.” The rooster, being given human qualities, can act as the protagonist of the beast fable.
The fable, a traditional way of telling stories to children, functions by teaching a clear lesson or moral as the result of the actions of the animals at the end of the story. For Chanticleer, the moral of the story revolves around pride. In the story, his voice is the thing he takes pride in, and the fox uses that to trick him: “Was only for to hearken how you sing, / For truly you have as merry a steven.” The fox makes it clear that he hasn’t come to eat Chanticleer, but to hear him sing. When Chanticleer does sing, the fox grabs him and runs away with him. Chanticleer is taught a lesson about pride, that it leads to the downfall of all people. He manages to escape and can resist the fox’s wiles a second time.
At a second level, the story functions as a mock-heroic, satirizing the epic language used to talk about heroes and their exploits. The animals are used to mock the stories of great humans because they function as great humans. The widow and her daughters in the story are secondary characters. The animals, in particular Chanticleer and his lover Peretlote, argue about dreams and philosophy in the story-making fun of the characters of epics that discuss high philosophy. If a rooster can do it, and do it while talking about laxatives and bathroom humor, it must not be as heroic as it seems.
The mock-heroic aspect that satirizes the writing style of epic poetry comes when the fox, Daun Russell, tricks Chanticleer and takes him away. An example of how the heroic language is used to ridicule the genre is when Daun Russell first appears-he is called “O false murderer! lurking in thy den! O new Iscariot, new Ganelon!” The irony and thus satire comes from the fact that such high language is used when talking about the action of a fox taking a chicken, a common occurrence. The heroic, a genre that often makes the actions of a hero seem epic and grand, is mocked for being animalistic and simple rather than dignified.
Through the use of both the bestiary fable and mock-heroic, Chaucer can comment on how humans operate in hypocrisy. The pride that Chanticleer feels in the first act mirrors the pride people feel at the heroic deeds recounted in epic stories. Chaucer points out the fallacy of these stories and their failure to capture the true nature of the human condition, by painting a picture of the fallible nature of humans both through the ridiculous quality of the Nun’s Priest’s tale and the presentation of the pilgrims on the journey as nasty, evil, or foolish.
62. What is your opinion about the Nun’s Priest Tale? What are your comments about this tale?
Ans: I like the Nun’s Priest’s tale, because it is a fable. He took the qualities of man and exaggerated them into a bird. The obvious moral lesson of the foolishness of succumbing to empty flattery diverts attention from a more subtle warning to beware the advice of women. This was a common theme in Medieval times. They were building on the tale of Adam and Eve, and in this time, they believed (as some still do) that Eve was the temptress and that it was she that caused the fall of man. That is subtly put into this story. However, as the teller is a Priest, you can see why he may do that, and how his interaction with women may be limited. This theme is in deliberate stark contrast to the Tale of Melibeus, whose central figure, Prudence the wise wife, counsels patience and prevents a war.
I much prefer to see the story as one about the dangers of vanity, as the more important and obvious moral.
63. In The Canterbury Tales what is being satirized in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”?
Ans: I think that with this excellent example of an animal fable we need to be aware of the danger of being distracted by the conflict between Chanticleer and the fox and pay more attention to the role of Pertelote, Note her role in bringing about Chanticleer’s near-death experience: she she deliberately berates Chanticleer about his dream and the fear that he suffers as a result, shaming him into carrying on as normal, whereas if he had paid attention to his dream and the message it was giving him, he would not have met the fox:
“Get along with you! Shame on you, faintheart! Alas!” cried she, “For, by the Lord above, Bow you have lost my heart, lost all my love. I cannot love a coward, that I swear!”
Remembering that the teller of this tale was the Priest in a convent of nuns, surrounded by women every day, we can therefore perhaps see this tale as a subtle satire on women and how dangerous it can be to pay attention to their advice. Note that, although not acceptable today, in the past the woman was portrayed as the cause of man’s fall in the Garden of Eden and therefore was considered as an unreliable counsellor.
64. What is an example of an apostrophe from the “Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales?
Ans: The nun’s priest, Sir John, is called upon by one of the pilgrims to tell a happy story since he feels such things are “gladsome” and beneficial to all. So, the priest, who is the servant of the Prioress, apparently a maudlin, silly woman, seems to have a rather low opinion of the women around whom he is forced to live at the convent as he tells his tale of the handsome rooster Chanticleer.
This Chanticleer is a beautiful fowl surrounded by hens, who are like sisters to him. Among them is a beautiful hen that he loves named Pertelote.
He loved her so that all was well with him. But such a joy it was to hear them sing, Whenever the bright sun began to spring, In sweet accord, (11.46-49)
Chanticleer loves her so much that he listens to her rather than heed his portentous dream of a yellow-red creature with black-tipped ears making “a feast upon [his] body.” But, Pertelote dismisses his fears as indigestion and suggests that he eat some herbs. Chanticleer then illustrates the importance of dreams with an example of a man who awoke from a dream that his friend called out to him that he would be murdered, and the dream was fulfilled. The man, who had returned to sleep, awoke in the morning and went to the place his friend had slept and found him gone. He searched for his friend in a cart covered with hay as he had dreamt and found the man dead. In line 172, Chanticleer exclaims,
“O Blessed God, Who art so true and deep!
Lo, how Thou dost turn murder out alway!
“O Blessed God” is an example of apostrophe because it is an address to a being who is absent as though he is present and able to respond to the address.
65. What is the role of the Nun’s Priest in The Canterbury Tales?
Ans: “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is that of Chanticleer and Pertelote, the cockerel and his favorite hen wife. Chanticleer awakes from a frightful dream about a beast trying to kill him, alerting Pertelote to his anxiety. She dismisses his fears as ridiculous, suggesting that perhaps he just ate too much.
When the fox arrives the next morning, he lies and says he only came to hear Chanticleer’s beautiful call. Being flattered, Chanticleer closes his eyes to sing, after which the fox snatches him and runs away.
Chanticleer is able to outsmart the fox by suggesting that the fox insult all the people who are chasing the pair of them. Chanticleer then escapes to a high perch in a tree, where he is now immune to the fox’s flattery.
As the other Educator says, the irony of this tale comes when the Host flatters the nun’s priest’s physique, insinuating that he would need seventeen “hens” to satisfy such a manhood if the man were not a priest. This directly contradicts the message of the story, which is to avoid succumbing to flattery.
As for the priest’s role, the narrator states that he has accompanied the Prioress and her nun on the pilgrimage. He is one of three priests who accompany the Prioress, but he is the only one who tells his own tale.
66. When Chanticleer first spies the fox in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” what does he do?
Ans: When Chanticleer the rooster first sees Russell the fox, his first inclination is to flee, and he nearly does so. However, Russell cleverly flatters Chanticleer and praises his singing ability at length. Chanticleer, who is eager to please his new admirer, begins to crow proudly. This act in turn gives the fox the chance to seize Chanticleer about the neck and run away with him.
This series of events provides us an important insight in both characters’ personalities: Russell is crafty and clever, while Chan-ticleer is vain and pompous. By extension, both characters also fit into expected animal stereotypes (foxes are commonly seen as crafty tricksters, while roosters are often considered to be vain blowhards). Luckily, Chanticleer is able to learn from his mistakes and amend his self-obsessed ways, as he resists Russell’s second attempt to capture him later in the poem and is able to escape the fox’s clutches for good.
67. What god does the narrator pray here?
Ans: The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is typical Chaucer in being filled with literary and mythological allusions. The animals in this anthropomorphic story are evidently living contemporaneously, within the period of Christianity, but are aware, just the same, of pagan history and its applicability to their circumstances.
Due to Chaunticleer’s being such a ladies’ man (or ladies’ rooster), the goddess invoked in his favor is Venus, the goddess of love:
O Venus, that, art goddesse of pleasaunce,
Sin [since] that thy servant was this Chaunticleer,
And in thy service did all his power,
More for dely than world to multiplye, Why woldestow [wouldst thou] suffre him o on thy day to die?
This is no doubt meant to enhance the comical comical (but (but serious in message) effect of the story. These are learned animals, to be sure. The aid of other figures and abstract powers is invoked as well:
O destinee, that mayst nat been eschewed!
And: O Gaufred, dere mayster sovereign, That when thy worthy king Richard was slayn With shot, completeness his death so sore, Why be made I know thy sentence [wisdom] and thy lore, The Friday for to chide, as did ye? (For on a Friday soothly [truly] slayn was he.)
Gaufred is Geoffrey de Vinsaud, a writer and grammarian of Richard I’s period, So Chaucer invokes English history as well in likening the attack on Chaunticleer to the death of Richard Cœur de Lion nearly two hundred years earlier.
The reference to Friday obviously has both Christian and pagan implications. Is Chaunticleer a Christ figure? Chaucer seems to emphasize the pagan origin of the names for days of the week: Friday is Venus’s Day (vendredi in French) or the equivalent goddess of Germanic mythology, Freyja (from which our English word for the day derives as a cognate in mythology of the Roman goddess of love). The combination of gods, people, and symbols invoked is a sign of Chaucer’s wide-ranging knowledge and of a perhaps ecumenical spirit even in the late Middle Ages. It’s also an expression of the inherent humor of such an erudite milieu in this anthropomorphic world.
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