Author Archives
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Analysis of John Donne’s The Good Morrow
The Good Morrow was first published in John Donne’s posthumous collection Songs and Sonnets (1633) and ranks among his best known love poems. Critics have developed various theories regarding the poem’s symbolism, many relating to the Platonic theory of love…. Read More ›
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Analysis of John Donne’s Go and Catch a Falling Star
John Donne enforced a tight structure on his song Go and Catch a Falling Star (1630), with three stanzas each containing sestets with a rhyme scheme of ababcc and concluding with a rhyming triplet. That controlled format contrasts with the… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Donne’s The Flea
Most critics agree that John Donne wrote The Flea during his youth, before becoming an ordained minister. It was first published as part of Songs and Sonnets in a posthumous collection that appeared in 1630, 1635, 1650, and 1669. As… Read More ›
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Analysis of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism
An Essay on Criticism (1711) was Pope’s first independent work, published anonymously through an obscure bookseller [12–13]. Its implicit claim to authority is not based on a lifetime’s creative work or a prestigious commission but, riskily, on the skill and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Alexander Pope’s Epistle to Miss Blount
Alexander Pope originally published Epistle to a Young Lady in 1712. His subject may have been imaginary or real, but in 1735 he changed the poem’s title to reference his dear friend, Martha Blount: Epistle to Miss Blount. They had… Read More ›
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Analysis of Alexander Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
Alexander Pope spent some time considering the choice of form for his late-career rebuttal of those who had most demeaned him in print. He selected a poetic letter, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734), which later critics would deem a rhetorical… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray may have begun writing Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard as early as 1746. He discarded four stanzas of an early version, which were probably read by his friend Horace Walpole, and planned to title the work simply… Read More ›
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Analysis of Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad
Alexander Pope has long been acknowledged as one of the leading satirists of his age. Adopting the 18th-century belief that the “lash” of satire could lead to change, he applied that lash liberally in various works targeting those who established… Read More ›
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Analysis of Oliver Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village
When Oliver Goldsmith wrote his 431-line poem in rhyming couplets The Deserted Village (1770), he exhibited the talent for shrewd observation and scene for which he had gained a reputation. He also imbued this idealization of English rural life with… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud
While discussion continues over the order in which John Donne wrote the individual poems that compose his Holy Sonnets, the critic Helen Gardner has argued convincingly that Death Be Not Proud was published in 1633. Structured as a variant of… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Donne’s The Canonization
Critics basically agree to divide John Donne’s writing into two groups related to his life stages, his romantic, or love, poetry in the stage dating prior to 1615, and the spiritual poetry emanating from the time of his ordination in… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Donne’s Batter My Heart
Critics feel fairly certain that one group of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets was published in 1633, a collection that included “Batter My Heart,” sometimes listed as “Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God.” It gained fame as a prime example of… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast
John Dryden wrote his second ode (1697) in celebration of St. Cecilia’s Day, Alexander’s Feast; Or the Power of Music, 10 years after his first tribute, A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day. Set to music by Jeremiah Clarke, it became… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis
With Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, 1666 John Dryden published his first major nondramatic poem, and his last major poem utilizing the heroic quatrain format. In addition to its subtitle, The Year of Wonders, 1666, the work contained an… Read More ›
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Analysis of George Herbert’s Affliction
George Herbert wrote five “Affliction” poems, all contained in his collection The Temple. The first of the series, while not essentially autobiographical, did grow from Herbert’s life and experiences. While the poem begins with positive aspects of the speaker’s life,… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel
John Dryden’s publication of Absalom and Achitophel (1681) had a specific political motivation. He wrote the poem during the threat of revolution in England, connected to the so-called Popish plot and the move to exclude the reigning King Charles II’s… Read More ›
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Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s There’s a certain Slant of light
When Mabel Loomis Todd published this poem in the 1890 Poems under the rubric of nature poems, she set a precedent that would be followed by editors for more than half a century. Todd may have seen it as a… Read More ›
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Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s Because I could not stop for Death
One of Dickinson’s most famous and widely discussed poems, Fr 479 appeared in the first 1890 edition of her poems, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Higginson had given it the inappropriate title “The Chariot,” thinking, perhaps,… Read More ›
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Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s What Is Minor Poetry?
In 1956, Eliot published On Poetry and Poets, his first major compilation of previously published essays since Selected Essays in 1932. Among the essays collected in the later volume is “What Is Minor Poetry?,” which Eliot had first delivered as… Read More ›
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Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Religion and Literature
Another essay from that period in Eliot’s career as a social and literary critic when he was staking out the parameters of his conservative views, Religion and Literature was originally from a lecture organized by the Reverend V. A. Demant… Read More ›
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