Love as Joyous Essay Example for Free

Love as Joyous Essay Both Plath and the Metaphysical Poets show love as joyous by suggesting a strong physical intimacy between themselves and their lovers. Donne, known for his hedonistic ways tried to seduce his lady in the poem To his mistress going to bed by relating her undressing to a holy analogy. Hallowed temple heaven paradise Angels gives a sense of purity about the relationship and emphasises the innocence in that the love they are about to share is purely between them. Along with this, in order to fortify the intimacy felt during love making Donne uses polysemic terms such as My mine of precious stones which not only displays mine as a first person possessive pronoun- perhaps showing pride in the possession he has over his mistress- but also the mine that is her genitals- the new land he is yet to discover. Similarly Plath uses polysemantic terms as a way of showing the exclusivity in her relationships in the poem Ariel , specifically referring to the apparent lesbian affair she had soon after her and Ted Hughes split The childs cry melts in the wall not only suggests that when with her alleged lesbian partner shes free for the burden of motherhood and can just focus on their passion but also that when being in a homosexual relationship the possibilities of conceiving a child are none an therefore there is no-one else to detract from the bond and overwhelming desire that the 2 have for each other. Plath also represents this intimacy by using metaphorical imagery such as White Godiva which indicates the female naked freedom while also subtly protesting against her husband by portraying this great female symbol. Plath also uses imagery to intensify the passion she feels in love making with another woman The brown arc of the neck and into the red eye suggest the vagina and feminists would argue that Plath portrays the orgasm as Foam to the wheat glitter of seas which exaggerates the intimacy experienced when the 2 are at their most vulnerable naked states. Along with this both Plath and the Metaphysicals display the joyous love by the overwhelming of emotions that it creates. In Donnes poem To his Mistress Going To Bed the whole poem is written in one stanza with its contents being ridden with enjambment we easily know By this these Angels from an evil sprite:. This shows the feelings Donne has as not being able to express them fast enough as, as hes seducing her, so many emotions are being created at the foremost frustration and lust. At the time, Donne was known for being debauched and this excitement and unable to contain his feeling emphasises how much he risked in order to sleep with the woman. The use of plosives such as Behind before, above, between, below represent the transactional and heightening strength of the emotion whilst the caesura in the line suggests Donne needs to pause after the words to try and calm himself down from all the overwhelming urges and desires he has for his mistress. As Donne was a child genius and was working in law by the time he was 17 he was popular with the ladies, and so when a woman such as the one hes addressing in the poem doesnt succumb to his epicurean ways so easily, his emotions flair and overwhelm him into an almost plea for her to make love with him. Plath also uses linguistic features in portraying the overbearing love and excitement she has for her first child to be born. Youre is a poem written during her pregnancy of her first child Frieda. She uses the phrase Vague as fog and looked for like mail to represent the anticipation and urgency she has to meet her new child. However, this is a homophone and mail could also mean male as in the absence of her husband Ted Hughes who was rarely around. At the time she was having relationship issues with Ted and building a new everlasting love bond with her new child and so the conflict in positive and negative emotions at the time would have certainly been overwhelming. The fog in this phrase represents the uncertainty and space between the mother and the gestating baby which may also be ironic of the disbelief she has that she can love a person so much without having met them yet. Finally both the metaphysical poets and Plath display love as joyous by seeing it as an opportunity for a new start. Donne sees this new start being one as starting from the pure naked state in the relationship to enter in these bonds is to be free is an oxymoron as the bond of marriage incarcerates two people in a relationship eternally. However Donne is expressing that by having this new start of marriage they will have a sense of freedom and self completion making love even more joyous. Whether Donne actually meant to marry the woman is questionable, after his strong womanising reputation however if he is then the new start he would have in actually committing himself in a marriage shows the strength of the love he feels. Plath, in Ariel sees the birth of her first child as a new start for herself. The metaphor of the last 2 lines Right, like a well-done sum. A clean slate, with your own face on shows the positivity she already sees in this new being well-done sum and clean slate. At the time she was going through hardships in her marriage with Ted Hughes and so the new child could be a source for a new start of optimistic love and a positive source to project happiness onto. The compound words in Thumbs-down on the dodos mode. Represents the new life and thus new beginning Plath will receive from the new baby whilst the assonance of the o sound fortifies this by showing certainty and stability she sees in that this undoubtedly will give her the release and new start that shes needed for so long

Langston Hughes Essay examples -- essays research papers

The period of the Harlem Renaissance was a time of great change and exploration for African Americans . It was during this point in the early twentieth century that African Americans were exploring their cultural and social roots. With the rapid expansion of a cohesive black community in the area, it was only a matter of time before the finest minds in Black America converged to share their ideas and unleash their creative essences upon a country that had for so long silenced them. In the midst of this bohemian convergence, many notable figures arose who would give a new voice to African Americans. With such great notables as Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale, and James Johnson, mainstream American now had a unique window into the plight of African Americans all over the country. One individual though stands out as one of the most prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes defined himself by his ability to pursue the true essence of â€Å"black folk† a t a time when black identity, culture, or art was considered an oxymoronic concept. Hughes sought to explore the true identity of Black America even amidst criticism that his work was anti-assimilationist in its literary expression. Wallace Thurman, one of Hughes’ closest friends had this to say about the poet’s subject matter: â€Å"He went for inspiration and rhythms to those people who had been the least absorbed by the quagmire of American Kultur, and from them he undertook to select and preserve such autonomous racial values as were being rapidly eradicated in order to speed the Negro’s assimilation.† ( Bloom 161) To many black critics, including Thurman, the subjects of Langston Hughes’ poetry exposed an aspect of the black culture that, according to Countee Cullen threw wide, â€Å"every door of the racial entourage, to the wholesale gaze of the world at large (Bloom 152).† Hughes was a lover of his people and sought to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America. He created works of literature that were distinctively Negro in their elements: Without repudiating the Americanness of the Afro American, he defined how a work of art by a black American can be Negro, the artist’s Americanness notwithstanding†¦..The black artist stands a good chance of capturing the Negro soul if he looks for his material not among the â€Å"self-styled â€Å"hi-class† Negroes,† but among â€Å"the low down folks†, the ... ...gston Hughes manifested itself in â€Å"The Weary Blues†. Hughes wrote the poem to be played to music and it was performed with an accompaniment of jazz in the background. The flow of the poem is in tune to a blues beat. It incorporates the slow mellow mood of the blues and its easy free flow of thought. The poem captures the essence of sadness and melancholy that is attributed to the blues. Hughes writes about observing a piano player as he plays the sweet blues in the night: â€Å"He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool Sweet blues! Coming from a black man’s soul. O Blues!†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  (Norton 1733) â€Å"The Weary Blues† captures an important element of the black identity, that of its music and the soul which is put into its expression. The poem captures that soul of the black man as he wails a mellow tune to the beat of a blues rhythm. Langston Hughes established himself as the poet laureate of Harlem. He served as the voice of the downtrodden, as well the elite in black culture. The criticism that he once received is now praise as his influence is manifested in the affirmation of the black identity.

African American History

African American History