ASSIGNMENTS: Essays and Activities

Click a unit or assignment below:

1. JOHN DONNE

  1. Writing Activity

2. BEN JONSON
  1. Short Essays

3. UTOPIAN VISIONS
  1. The Country-House Poem
  2. Utopias

4. MARRIAGE, MADNESS, AND MELANCHOLY: JACOBEAN THEMES
  1. The Marriage Question
  2. Malfi and Mariam: Tragedies of Marriage

5. THE NEXT GENERATION: HERRICK, HERBERT, and CRASHAW
  1. Robert Herrick and the Social Order
  2. George Herbert: Devotion and Artifice

6. THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE-DOWN
  1. Seeking the Source: Debating Political Authority
  2. Representing Regicide

7. JOHN MILTON AND PARADISE LOST
  1. Essays


1. JOHN DONNE

  1. Writing Activity
    Select one of Donne's "Songs and Sonnets" (not "The Canonization") that employs religious imagery, and one of his Holy Sonnets (not 18) that employs images of romantic or sexual love. What are these images, and what do you think they add to (or detract from) the poem? Do the religious references heighten the charge of Donne's love poems, or are they distracting? Do the references to physical passion serve to suggest the intensity of the poet's desire for God, or are they merely blasphemous?

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2. BEN JONSON

  1. Short Essays
    1. Based on the internal evidence of Jonson's poems, what is the source of the authority he claims to write as laureate and as arbiter of morality?
    2. Contrast the attitudes toward Ben Jonson in Carew's "To Ben Jonson" and Herrick's "His Prayer to Ben Jonson." Which poet do you think praises Jonson in the manner he would like best? Why?

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3. UTOPIAN VISIONS

  1. The Country-House Poem
    Short Essays
    1. Compare Jonson's presentation of Penshurst and the Sidney family in his poem "To Penshurst" with the representation of that household in pictures and letters. How much does "To Penshurst" tell us about the Sidney household, and how much does it tell us about Jonson?
    2. How does Lanyer's representation of Margaret and Anne Clifford in "The Description of Cooke-Ham" compare to the impression of their lives you get from pictures and Anne's diary?
    3. Compare the country-house poems of Aemilia Lanyer and Ben Jonson. In what ways, if any, do their different poems suggest that perception is gendered?
    4. Does Marvell's "Upon Appleton House" seem to idealize the Fairfax family in terms comparable with what we find in Jonson's and Lanyer's poems?
  2. Utopias
    Essay
    Compare either Bacon's New Atlantis or Cavendish's The Blazing World to More's Utopia. Discuss the ways in which the seventeenth-century work is modeled on More's text, and the ways in which it differs from it. What is Bacon's or Cavendish's motive in writing utopian literature, as compared to More's? What do they hope to bring about by doing so?

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4. MARRIAGE, MADNESS, AND MELANCHOLY: JACOBEAN THEMES

  1. The Marriage Question
    What chiefly concerns Katherine Philips about the prospect of marriage? What evidence do you find in the Marriage Service and in The Law's Resolution of Women's Rights to suggest that her fears are or are not justified?
  2. Malfi and Mariam: Tragedies of Marriage
    Short Essays
    1. What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of the stage-play and the closet drama as instruments of social analysis and comment? Is one a more suitable vehicle for the expression of different perspectives? (Does it make a difference that the Duchess of Malfi had to be played by a boy-actor and Mariam by no one at all?)
    2. What similarities can be detected between the two problematic characters of Bosola and Salome? Is it reasonable to associate any of their controversial pronouncements with the views of Webster and Cary?
    3. What are the wellsprings of evil and tragedy in Webster's Italy and Cary's Judea?
    4. How would Richard Braithwaite respond to the widowed Duchess's decision to marry again? How would John Dod and Robert Cleaver view Mariam's behavior within marriage? How would each of these tragic women reply to their advice-book-writing critics?

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5. THE NEXT GENERATION: HERRICK, HERBERT, and CRASHAW

  1. Robert Herrick and the Social Order
    Essays
    1. Do the criticisms of traditional festivities by Stubbes and Prynne change the way you understand "Corinna's Going a-Maying" and "The Hock-Cart"? What aspects of each poem would particularly outrage Puritans? Do you think Herrick is seeking to provoke and taunt such critics? What values do his poems uphold in opposition to those of Stubbes and Prynne?
    2. What vision of the social order is constructed in "The Hock-Cart"? Is Herrick's celebration of this order absolute or ambiguous? How should we understand the concluding references to the laborers' "pain," and the remark, "Feed him ye must whose food fills you"?
    3. Compare Herrick's "Corinna's Going a-Maying" and "The Hock-Cart" with another poem celebrating a traditional festival, Sir John Suckling's "Ballad upon a Wedding." What similarities do you find between Suckling's and Herrick's visions of the social order? How does each poet seek to represent the perspective and voice of (illiterate) agricultural laborers?

  2. George Herbert: Devotion and Artifice
    Writing Activity
    Try writing a "shaped poem" (like "the Altar") on one of the following themes: the university; mountains; the moon; the one I love. Or choose your own theme.

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6. THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE-DOWN

  1. Seeking the Source: Debating Political Authority
    Writing Activity
    What would you describe as the ultimate source of political authority in the society you live in? Be careful to distinguish this question from that of who wields political power at the present time.

  2. Representing Regicide
    Writing Activity
    Compare Marvell's description of the execution of Charles I with the contemporary account and illustration. How does each attempt to represent the "truth" of this event?

    Essay
    Compare Marvell's and Philips's responses to regicide. In each case, how does the poet present him/herself as qualified to judge the rights and wrongs of regicide? What is the political stance underlying each poem?

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7. JOHN MILTON AND PARADISE LOST

  1. Essays
    1. How far does Milton rely on Genesis, and which elements of his narrative have no basis in Genesis? What might account for Milton's inclusion of these episodes? Choose one such invented episode and analyze it in depth, discussing why Milton may have included it and how it affects the meaning or the experience of reading the poem.
    2. Compare Rachel Speght's and Aemilia Lanyer's accounts of Eve's personality and her culpability in the Fall with Milton's accounts. Do Speght and Lanyer agree with Milton on any points? To what extent does Milton fall among the ranks of commentators on Genesis opposed by Speght and Lanyer? To what extent does he anticipate their objections?
    3. Based on the responses of a range of contemporary and later readers of the poem (Marvell, Addison, Johnson, Medina, Blake, Shelley, or Byron), to what extent does each generation create its "own" Paradise Lost? Does the poem retain the same meaning in all times and places, and if so, what is this? If the meaning of the poem changes, what do the responses of the various commentators (refer to at least three) suggest about their times and cultures?

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