Nocturnal upon st Lucy sky John Donne.ppt

Nocturnal upon st Lucy

1. Basic features
Extended use of conceits
Dramatic beginning/ Sudden, colloquial opening
Argumentative/ logical pattern
Emotions are shaped by logical reasoning
Compression of maximum of meaning in the
minimum of language
Presence of an intense personal experience
Use of cross-references/ allusions
Mixture of learned and familiar vocabulary

2. Timeline
1572Born in Bread Street, London
1583Enters at Hart Hall, University of Oxford - He studies there for three years
1586
Spends three years at the University of Cambridge, takes no degree because he refuses to take
the Oath of Supremacy
1596Joins the naval expedition that Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, led against Spain
1598
Returns to England and appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the
Great Seal
1601
Secretly marries Lady Egerton's niece, seventeen-year-old Anne More. Her father, Sir George
More has Donne thrown to Fleet Prison for some weeks
1607Divine Poems published
1610Pseudo-Martyr and A Funerall Elegie published
1611An Anatomy of the World and Ignatius his Conclave published
1612Of the Progress of the Soul published
1614Cambridge confers the degree of Doctor of Divinity on Donne
1615Donne reluctantly enters the ministry and is later appointed Royal Chaplain
1617Anne Donne dies 15 August
1618Holy Sonnets published
1621Appointed Dean of Saint Paul's
1631Dies in London 31 March
16331
st
edition of poems published by his son

3. “A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy’s Day”
Lucy- According to Prof. Grierson, perhaps the Countess
of Bedford (It was perhaps written when she was ill and
was at the point of death in 1612)
J. B. Leishman in his book on Donne, The Monarch of
Wit, raises the possibility that the poem may have been
written by Donne to his wife during some grave illness in
1611.
There is also the possibility that the poem may refer to
the death of Donne’s wife in 1617.
The poem shows that a relationship of great and
tempestuous intimacy lies behind it.

4. St Lucy’s Day: 13 December, believed to be the shortest
day in the Julian calendar, used in England in Donne’s
time, and until 1752.
Prof. Garrod says that this day was never the shortest day
during Donne’s life time.
Prof. Garrod finds out a certain affinity between “A
Nocturnal” and “The Dissolution” in which Donne also
laments the actual or imagined death of a mistress.
The theme of the two poems is not the celebration of a
Platonic relationship, but a lament for the loss of one

5. ‘Flasks’ – powder horns
‘light squibs’ – brief flashes and small explosions of a firework
‘hydroptic earth’ –possibly the general aromatic fragrance of
nature
Ingram suggests that the ‘genearl balm’ may itself be the sap
‘hydroptic’ – dropsical
‘bed’s feet’ – The image is that of a dying man whose life has
ebbed away to his feet.
‘quintessence’ – the ‘fifth essence’ of ancient and medieval
philosophy, supposed to be the substance of which the
heavenly bodies were composed.

6. ‘limbeck’ – alembic, a primitive form of retort
‘first Nothing’ – which subsisted before the Creation of the world, and
out of which the world was created.
‘yea stones, detest’ – The later systematic philosophy of Leibniz’s
Monadology.
‘mu Sun’ – his dead body (Theodore Redpath)
‘the Goat’ – means either the Tropic of Capricorn or the Zodiacal sign of
Capricorn
The goat is the most lustful of all animals
“let me prepare towards her’ – ‘let me prepare myself devotionally’ (the
poet wishes to share in her death and resurrection)
‘Vigil’ – a devotional watch over a dead body

7. “But I am none”- the most crucial phrase
One of the most interesting tensions in the
poem
The question is raised whether the poem is
dark and negative or strangely positive