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March 29, 2024, 12:51:36 pm

Author Topic: Mod A (Donne and W;t)  (Read 7115 times)

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JadeVD

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Mod A (Donne and W;t)
« on: August 04, 2017, 12:41:32 pm »
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Really need help with Mod A, especially with integrating context and getting the rubric across.|If anyone else doin W;t/Donne knows how to integrate these points into this essay that would be really helpful.

Mortality is a ubiquitous and natural part of life, yet is feared for being a true unknown. However, death itself is simplistic, only made complex by humanity’s innate fear of dying. Despite the years and contextual values separating John Donne’s 17th century poetry and Margaret Edson’s 1995 post-modern play W;t, both texts share intertextual parallels that discourage the anxiety of mortality, as the simplicity of metaphysical human values ultimately lead to redemption.

Donne once said “no man is an island”, and similarly, all texts share intertextual connections which enrich the universal conceits of their predecessors. Edson’s dramatic structure of W;t explicitly parallel’s Donne’s Petrarchan structure, and when studied in conjunction with one another they enhance the ubiquitous fear of mortality. The titular metaphor of “W;t” is an ironic foreshadowing of Vivian’s hamartia ; the arrogance of placing faith solely on literary capacity. This arrogance inhibits her from understanding that the seeming complexity of Donne’s poetry is a means of expressing simple conceits; “it is not wit, it is truth”. Initially, Vivian emphasises that she’s a “scholar of Donne’s Holy Sonnets”, but this limitation upon her studies of Donne inhibits her from understanding the conceits of the transcendental powers of simple human truths within his entire corpus. This limitation thus signifies that Vivian is a personification of the antithesis of his love poetry – isolation – while also reflecting Edson’s belief in humanity’s reliance on intellect in a secular society has drawn them away from the simple human truths necessary in all contexts. The title of Donne’s love poem ”The Sunne Rising” invokes the imagery of a sunrise, a metaphor for new beginnings and the end of darkness, which foreshadows the power love has to end death anxiety and create renewed engagement with life. Donne’s use of apostrophe and sardonic tone towards the “the unruly Sunne” transcends the sun through the power of love, indicating to the audience that one should engage life passionately like the poems’ lovers, as the metaphysical allows one to transcend the limitations of the physical, including death. Vivian’s redemption arc in W;t, “now is a time for simplicity”, further expounds to the audience that Donne’s conceits of the empowering nature of love are a continued relevance. Therefore, “The Little Bunny” intertextually parallels Vivian’s own struggle with accepting her mortality, seen by the allegory of God finding the soul “no matter where it hides”. This “little allegory of the soul” ultimately implicates that despite Vivian’s estrangement from the simple human values emphasised through his love poetry, she would still be redeemed in death. This thus encourages the audience to seek a passionate life as they have the security of redemption in death due to love being ungoverned by the metaphorical “rags of time ”.

One of the greatest anxieties surrounding mortality is judgement in death, and despite W;t not pertaining the same contextual religiosity as Donne’s corpus, the play explicitly parallels Donne’s own struggles with mortality through Vivian; “my life and my death ”. At the round earth’s imagin’d corners (Earth) reflects Donne’s religiosity, and that through this faith he discovers that death is simply transitionary. The juxtaposition of biblical allusions to Judgement Day , “your trumpets, Angels”, to the debasement of death through duality , “arise, arise/ You numberless infinities”, conveys to the audience that death shouldn’t be feared, as it’s only through death that we are redeemed; a biblical belief still relevant as death itself is a continuum . This comfort in the transitionary manner of death is furthered by the poems’ form as a Petrarchan sonnet, as well as the transitionary conjunction “but” that indicates the poems’ turn for the personal and sermonic in the volta, which signifies the resolution of Donne’s confliction with his redemption. This redemption is gained through the metaphysical, implicated by “as if thou’hadst sealed my pardon, with thy blood”, which is a religious allusion to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross to absolve man of sin. Through this allusion, as well as the didactic tone of “teach mee how to repent”, Donne links redemption with repentance, and ultimately encourages the audience to turn to simple human values like humility, as these allow one to transcend the death anxiety that has restricted them from living a passionate life.

Donne’s sociocultural context of religiosity is further revealed through his repetitive conceits of resurrection, embellishing that despite humanity’s continued complication of death, it’s still inherently simplistic in its ability to redeem . The use of Cartesian Dualism in Earth, “to your scattered bodies goe”, emphasises the simplistic religious belief that the physical is marked by sin, whereas the metaphysical soul is pure. Edson enriches this duality in the contextual frame of secularisation, implicating that human connections have been substituted for God’s grace in reaching redemption. Vivian’s reliance on the rationale is revealed to be restricting her from making meaningful connections, indicated by the rhetoric “just a comma?”  Through her inability to understand this comma in Donne’s Death be not proud, a poem whose conceits of the inevitability of mortality encourages the audience to live life fully, Vivian symbolises her continued inability to understand the necessity of human connections in following this important conceits, as the comma is a metaphor for the barrier between Vivian and humanity which results in her personification of Donne’s antithesis, isolation. Ashford is a humanising foil to this intellectualisation, encouraging Vivian to “enjoy yourself with your friends”, an intertextual allusion to Donne’s love poetry conceits that living is meaningful through human connections. It’s only when Vivian experiences humility, implicated  through her childlike regression by the metaphor of popsicles as childhood, that she understands the simple necessity of these connections in order to alleviate death anxiety and live passionately. Her acceptance of mortality is specified by nudity being a metaphor for purity, as in her death she discards the gowns that were her metaphorical physical sin, an implicit intertextual allusion to the Cartesian dualism in Hymne to God my God, in my sicknesse; “I their Mapp”. Through this amendment of relying on intellect, Vivian is a continued intertextual symbol of Donne’s conceits, which ultimately is that redemption through simple human values like humility and connections in the face of mortality will encourage us to live life passionately.

Through the intertextual parallels between Donne’s corpus and Edson’s W;t, the simple nature of death is enriched, allowing for the anxiety of one’s mortality to be alleviated in lieu of human values which argue the necessity of living a passionate life .