A good sense of humor is one of the essential skills of any great writer. Geoffrey Chaucer is one of those artists who exerts a puzzling amount and variety of humor, and wields it in a remarkably subtle manner. He makes the common reader laugh and the intelligent reader smile. He is the first great humorist in English literature.
Chaucer was the first great English poet who presented a realistic picture of men and women of the latter fourteenth century England in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. The religious life or the ecclesiastical life of the time is mirrored through six sketches of religious characters—the Prioress, the Monk, the Friar, the Summoner, the Pardoner and the Parson.
The age of Chaucer is the age of transition - transition between the two incongruous periods- the medieval and the modern or the Renaissance. The medieval and the Renaissance world stood side by side. The distinctive feature of the medieval mind is its belief in spirituality and abstract ideas, whereas the Renaissance lays emphasis on the sensuous and the concrete.
The Anniversarie by John Donne is among the most expressive poems of the Songs and Sonnets. It caters the lovers' sense of the agelessness of their world of love. The speaker states that even the king and the sun have grown older and reach a year near to the death. But he, along with his beloved is ageless and death cannot kill them because their love is pure and they are connected with the hearts.
The Apparition is a uniquely different poem by John Donne where he demonstrates his individuality by interlacing two themes: the excluded lover's criticism that his lady's chastity is killing him, and the threatening that the lady will desire for the pleasures in vain which she now refuses to grant her lover. The combination of these two themes takes the poem on an elevated level.
Death, be not proud is one of the best poems of John Donne which is holy Sonnet 10. It was written in 1610 and was published in 1633. The title of the poem comes from its first line. Donne highlights his Christian belief taking reference from Bible Corinthians 15:26, where Paul writes 'the final enemy to be destroyed is death'.
A very well-known poem, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is a metaphysical love poem by John Donne written in 1611 or 1612 and published in 1633 in the collection of 'Songs and Sonnets'.
The Sun Rising, originally spelled as The Sunne Rising, is a metaphysical love poem by John Donne where the sun is personified as the ‘busy old fool’. It was first published in 1633. As this poem is a metaphysical poem, it is loaded with witty conceits and unbeatable logics of John Donne.
The Sun Rising originally spelled as The Sunne Rising is one of the best known poems of John Donne published in 1633. The sun is addressed in a rhetorical manner in this poem by the speaker.
To His Mistress going to Bed by John Donne is considered as the greatest verbal striptease in English literature. Originally this poem is spelled as To His mistris going to Bed. In this dramatic situation, there is a male speaker in the poem who seduces his mistress to open her clothes so as to have physical intimacy.