Donne

Done!

I finished my 2,500 words (and maybe then some) on the libertine-era, love lyrics of John Donne and submitted my essay before the 23:59 deadline expired. My argument goes like this:

This essays makes the argument that John Donne’s love lyrics are demonstrably not a rejection of the Renaissance era’s public sphere in favour of a valorized private realm of mutual love between a man and a woman.  Rather, Donne’s early poetic works are best understood as performance pieces by a coterie poet of the late-16th / early-17th Century seeking to be noticed, advanced and raised up in a rigidly stratified world. The love lyrics are concerned at least as much (if not more) with demonstrating Donne’s wit, understanding of, as well as worth within and to, the upper echelons of English courtly society as they are with making esoteric observations on the nature of the romantic bonds and erotic bliss found in heterosexual love in the private, even secret, spaces of his time.

I abandoned my original idea to focus on The Cannonisation as the second poem to be taken apart. So I've written on The Sun Rising and A Valediction: On His Mistress. I thought it might be wiser to look at an aubade and an elegy. We'll know in four weeks or so.

Next, it's on to a close analysis of a scene from Waltz with Bashir, due tomorrow no later than 23:59 for my film studies unit. How much more easy online submission makes the life of an undergraduate student who too often flies by the seat of his pants.