Close reading of “The Cannonization” with 4 Types of Meaning

Sense: The speaker in the first two stanzas makes pleas to his audience to “let [him] love.” In the first, he does not care if his audience “chides [his] palsy, or [his] gout” as long as he is able to love. He continues on by citing hyperbolic hypothetical situations of which his mere act of love was not the cause—no one is injured, no “merchant’s ships have…drowned.” In the third stanza, the speaker illustrates the nature of their love with several metaphors that share the theme of two conjuncts that create a whole. The lovers are like an eagle and a dove, but the speaker offers that the phoenix is a more appropriate metaphor for them. If their love is unfit for life and death, it will be expressed in verse, which he compares to and urn.

Feeling- The speaker clearly values love, the subject of the poem, for he compares his/their love to the canonization of saints, “all shall approve/Us canonized for love.” This metaphor is blasphemous as to compare the sacred ritual to the worldly. But the speaker does this intentionally as to contrast their divine love with carnal love.

Tone- The speaker seems angry or indignant toward his audience. His mention of the hyperbolic like, “tears have overflow’d the ground” and the cliché love poem notion that love can exist beyond the worldly in the fourth stanza with their mocking, sarcastic attitude serve to compound the speaker’s tone.

Intention- The speaker aims to demonstrate the nature of his love, that is almost other-worldy and beyond the carnal, profane love. He achieves this primarily through feeling.

Week 3 posting

For this weekend, please post your Brooks-style close reading of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by midnight on Sunday.

Poem #2 Close Reading

The first two lines of the poem had similar rhythm with emphasis on roughly every other syllable. “Spring” and “sing” illustrate masculine rhyme, echoing the aforementioned bird song with the short “i”. The second stanza continues with a description of specific birds—the thrush and robin that sing in the holly-bush or “covert” as referenced in the first stanza. “Bush” and “thrush” are arguably slant rhyme as are “boughs” and “house” of the following stanza. The fourth stanza makes use of alliteration with the repetition of the soft “s” that compounds the almost romantic naturalistic description of “sweet scents” and “whispering air.” The air by the end of the fourth stanza is personified and its soft words comprise the final two stanzas. The fifth stanza is similar to the first in its parallel sentence structure and masculine rhyme of “alone” and “stone.” The notion of the “sun shineth/most shadily” is oxymoronic in a literal sense, but humorous as well by personifying the sun. The poem ends with the image of the “far sea” that is physically far from the singing birds in the thrush that the speaker began with. By the last line of the fourth stanza, poem’s mood shifts with the negative connotations of “snare”, “alone” and “shadily” that juxtapose the cheery images of spring just above while harking back to the first line’s mention of winter. I would suggest that the speaker uses scenes from nature as a metaphor, although the object of which I am unsure of and I hesitate to default to the usual suspects (?) of “love”, “life” and “poetry.” Or perhaps all poetry boils down to the human condition/mortality.

Donne's Cannonization, Richards' Four Types of Meaning

The poem creates an imaginary scene: a husband repels hordes of merchants and solitary, proselytizing monks in order to love his wife in privacy. INTENTION: By constructing this scene, Donne criticizes money-mongers and religious fanatics for canonizing objects of desire in the name of True Love. At the same time, he asserts that this True Love is spiritual in its carnality and artistry.

TONE: Each mini-stanza addresses a different group in the imaginary scene.

The first mini-stanzas address hordes of cosmopolitans. They judge the speaker for his earthly poverties and for rabble rousing poetically amongst a status quo. The speaker encourages them to judge his physical state yet leave his poetry alone (hold your tongue, and let me love/ Or chide my palsie, or my gout); they can turn to distractions like finance and fine arts (With wealth your state), but they cannot say that his poetry upsets their order (what merchants ships have my sights drowned), nor can they say that poets are less educated or influential than they (We’re Tapers too…And wee in us finde the’Eagle [Evil] and the Dove [Good]). Poets take risks to live on poetry (We can dye by it, if not live by love), and no, they may not be able to afford the hearse and tomb like the moneyed. Finally, the speaker gets angry: how dare the masses invoke the poets when they drive each other into isolation, fight wars over mercantile matters, and put contracts on their very souls.

The couplets slyly shoo away the monks, and their form connotes childish admonition. The speaker sees them as brainwashed automatons that can be moved around through ad hoc spiritual musing. Donne places the couplets off to the side, as if these zombie-monks need only to be whispered-to so that they may turn and go take a course, get [a] place [to] Observe his honor, or his grace. Donne leaves ‘his’ un-capitalized to show a form of disrespect to Christianity. While he shows rebellious disrespect to the merchants, here the disrespect is more cerebral: The Phoenix ridle hath more with/ By us, we two being one, are it. The speaker says to the monks: the Resurrection is too complex a way to preach about Love; this love here between my wife and I is much more appropriate.

The three line mini-stanzas represent a personal address to the speaker’s wife. They take the tone of the speaker shaking his head and smiling with a loved one after a hard day’s work of fortifying the fortress (and sanctuary) against the seas of ignorance. Sometimes, he entreats the wife to let it all go so that they can love in peace: Contemplate, what you will, approve,/So you will let me love. Sometimes, the words are frozen in third-person love poems: Soldiers find warres, and Lawyers find out still…Though she and I do love.

FEELING: The poem’s feeling is created through dynamics among the coordinated mini-stanzas and within the five larger stanzas. Each mini-stanza addressed to the masses gets angrier and angrier, until the poet finally shouts them down in the last stanza. Conversely, the speaker gets less snotty with the monks, and by the fourth stanza, they are gone. In their absence, the speaker prays carnally, spiritually, and artistically to his wife through the couplets.

4 Kinds of Meaning in "The Canonization"

A Richards-type analysis of the four kinds of meaning in Donne’s “The Canonization” highlights certain aspects of the poem that go unnoticed when considered in the whole.  The sense of the poem is fairly straightforward, in that it is a plea to an unnamed other for the ability to love.  Beyond this, the poem becomes increasingly nebulous in its characterization of the two lovers as existing by and for their very brand of love.  There is then a meta-poetic aspect that most completely characterizes the sense of the poem by literally pointing out the “canonization” of the speaker and his love.  Finally, it ends with an appeal to other lovers under similar circumstances to consider the speaker’s own lot throughout their trials.  The feeling of the poem is perhaps the most ambiguous of the four kinds of meaning.  When considering the subject matter and the impassioned language it seems to be an expression of unshakable love, despite an implicit disapproval from outside; however, the intense use of hyperbole, the intentional anonymity of the listener, and particularly the literal intent to canonize himself and his lover may suggest the speaker’s acknowledgment to the reader that this is no more than a work of art.  The tone of the poem appears less ambiguous, in its impassioned and overtly romantic imagery and language.  The hyperboles of the second stanza and the appeals in the final stanza suggest a perceived self-martyrdom.  It is read as a polemical cry against those that would restrict the liberty to love, and as such, the tone seems to quite clearly reflect the sense of the poem.  Finally, the intention of the poem seems to lie in Donne’s desire to relate this instance of passionate love in the face of adversity, while simultaneously, and perhaps more importantly, suggesting the ability of lyrical composition to eternalize.  This is furthered when considering the conventionality of the sense and tone, which leaves only the ambiguity of the feeling to reveal the less evident intent of the poem.

The Canonization is a piece comprised of different themes and dedications, especially after examining its words with Richard's theories in mind. The word "canonization" refers to the process by which a deceased person is declared a saint, and a religious tone is definitely laced throughout the piece. In origin, a person could be referred to as a saint without any formal reasoning, but the decision became more particular with time. It appears that the author is addressing God, asking him questions about love and how his personal devotion affects the world around him. He states that love in is entirety is what defines human nature, most of the actions performed in everyday. He questions how the concept of "love" is perceived differently according to specific situations, and he doesn't understand how his love could affect the world in an overwhelmingly negative way. 

Richard's theory examines four ideas to examine in close reading, being sense, feeling, tone and intention. Each of these can be applied to "The Canonization, starting with sense. The language uses an address to God, who the author is speaking to about his current state of love. The language lapses between contemporary and words that weren't recognizable as well as different spellings. The author chose to organize their thoughts into separate paragraphs, keeping the language and address constant throughout. In the context of feeling (as well as tone, in a different examination), the author often uses phrases like "so you will let me love" and "who's injured by my love?" Sometimes it's unclear as to whether or not the author is referring to a direct relationship (as "her," is often mentioned) or if he's merely referring to his relationship with God. He refers to Creation as something the Lord challenged himself with, referencing life and death as well, the value love holds in existing. He realizes that life continues being dysfunctional even with love around, that soldiers still die in battle and lawyers still find corruption. The author understands how God so loved the world, and he carries confusion as to why controversy can be caused as a result of love. The tone is not overwhelmingly biblical, the concepts are presented in the authors perspective, non aggressively. 

The last and (as discussed in class) most difficult idea that Richards presents is "intention," which is somewhat holistic of sense, tone, and feeling. It seems, in this piece, that the author wants to examine love's role in his own life. "Call us what you will, wee are made such by love." God created the world to his likeness, humans in his own light. He believes that humans owe this entirely to the love God provided for us, and that it shouldn't cause controversy. "A patterne of your love" suggests that we should follow in his footsteps when perceiving love.

Getting Donne with Richards

Reading Donne’s “The Canonization” using Richards’ four kinds of meaning illuminates the intention of the poem by way of the other three kinds of meaning.

The first stanza offers a list of ailments and the second offers images of death and misfortune. These images call up negative feelings of sadness and loss. At the same time each stanza ends with the word “love,” a concept that would have positive correlations in the minds of readers. By contrasting the two feelings, letting the speaker love seems like the more positive choice.

To canonize is defined in the OED as “To deify, apotheosize,” and “to sanction by the authority of the church.” Donne’s decision to use the term can be read as his attempt to imbue the poem with a religious tone that would appeal to his readers.
Within the question of why the speaker’s love must be canonized also lies the poet’s intention. If the speaker’s love needs to be sanctioned by the authority of the church, it likely was founded on impropriety or sin. A scandalous love affair would pale in comparison to illness or death. The conscious or unconscious aim was to point out the innocence of their forbidden love in the grand scheme of things.

Close Reading with Richards: "The Canonization "

In John Donne’s “The Canonization,” the multi-layered and ambiguous tone (as Richards defines it) affects the interpretation of the other three meanings. What kind of audience is the speaker talking to? What kind of considerations must we as “readers” make for the historical context and audience that Donne may have been addressing? Even though sense asks for the most basic dictionary definitions, language is unstable and over time words take on new meanings and invoke different feeling within the given audience. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker urges his audience to criticize his tangible defaults (his body or his fortune) and celebrate themselves as long as they allow him to love. He goes on to show that his love is harmless to the kingdom at large, that he and his lover find their ultimate definition in their commitment to love. The lovers may be unfit for the exaltation of grand physical tombs, but they will become canonized—elevated to sainthood—by their love through poetry.

The overarching feeling is the enthusiasm for love, but that can be construed in different ways depending on the reading of the tone. Richards assumes that there is a commonality of meaning, however, the politics of Donne’s language provides complication. In the first stanza, the tone can be antagonistic or revisionary to the nobility, who value themselves on “wealth” or “state,” but now the speaker presents a new value system based on love. The dramatic language of stanza two can be read as a mocking and ironic tone towards love for what it can’t and doesn’t do, but it can also be part of the persuasion for the unbelieving audience that extends to the third stanza about living and dying by love. Stanza four and five can have a skeptical and irreverent tone towards saints, religion, and canonization at the expense of elevating love and poetry. To a devout person, this may sound like disrespect and reduction, but to a lover it would sound supportive and celebratory.

In pinpointing the elusive intention of the piece, the ulterior motive, all the meanings rather mesh together. The intention could be as simple as defending love and poetry and putting them on a pedestal. It could also be a more complex critique of the potential audiences or society at large, since for love to be elevated, other things are implied to be devalued or even mocked. Richards neat categories seem to fall apart with a poem like this, since they are meant to find a Total Meaning, that changes depending on what assumptions were made to recognize the types (sense, feeling, tone, and intention).

Stanley Fish on reading Pres. Obama's inauguration speech

Stanley Fish, an English & law professor, writes in the New York Times this week about reading (as opposed to listening to) President Obama's inauguration speech. Fish discusses two possible modes of (close) reading: pondering the significance of each individual sentiment, or treating the text as a cumulative argument, in which each part builds upon the last and moves towards an end point or summation. He argues that Obama's prose style invites one of these kinds of reading, and not the other.

Week 2 posting

For this weekend, please use I.A. Richards's techniques (detailed in Practical Criticism) to close read Donne's "The Canonization" by Sunday night (1/25) at midnight.

Poem 1 Reading

The poem's argument is an interesting one, because--unlike other poems in the same vein--it is not so much an inward retreat in reaction to modernity and materialism, but instead a kind of retaliatory manifesto against it; the poem presents a bold statement of facts that attempt to rewire our understanding of nature, and to connect reality to a qualitative, rather than quantitative, system. The first two lines parallelism set up this transfer of emphasis from the outset. By line two, we understand that the mechanical 'breath' is at best only symptomatic of a 'great spirit' that truly constitutes our state of living, and that the importance of blood as a visceral material is wholly subsumed by the "busy heart," here representing not a part of the circulatory system, but filling its traditional poetic role as a hypostatized emblem of human love. These intangible virtues ("One generous feeling," "great thought") are given tangible power in the following lines where the poet endows them with the ability to extend life and time. The poem continues in a methodical fashion, providing the new units for the new system of life: deeds substituted for years, thoughts for breaths, feelings instead of "figures on a dial." The poem culminates with what comes across as the dictum for this new existence: "He most lives/ Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."

I want to address line three and seven at this point, because I find them to be the strangest in the poem, but also the ones that testifies best to this poem's underlying oppositional enmity. The poet writes, "The coward and the small in soul scare do live." This line interrupts the logical argument that otherwise runs smoothly from the start until the end. Line seven, while perhaps not so distracting from the argument, again makes a reference of condemnation towards the world outside the poem. It is these lines that really humanize the poem for me. We can see the poet and the poem in reaction to society in an explicit way, which, for me, makes the poem immediately more interesting than if they should simply remain as so much metaphysical musing in a vacuum.

Poem # 1 Close Reading

This poem focuses on the theme of purpose; namely that life should be lived with larger intent than physical longevity, as years do not determine value or understanding of existence. Positive deeds and actions give breath to life in all its short significance, as "the coward and small in soul scarce do live." The poet emphasizes that even one "generous thought" or deed precedes the importance of years in a persons life. A person who passes away young, but full of heart, has learned more about life in their short years than a person who has lived their entire life without positive feeling or desire to help another. The poet contrasts the physical (quick round of blood) with more spiritual ideas (great spirit and busy heart) to further emphasize the authors purpose. "We should count time by heart-throbs," is beautifully placed, referring to the overwhelming swell a person feels in happiness, not the amount of times a heart beats per minute. Many become too focused or obsessive about expanding their lifelines instead of taking a moment to understand why human existence is important, in reaching out to others. 

The poem reads in an organized thought pattern, as an important statement might be read to an audience. Rhyme would take away from the beauty of the language, the placement of the words, and this was apparent in the authors decision to write it as a concise, fluent, observation about humanity. "He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best," concludes the piece.

Poem 1

Throughout this poem, the author addresses the importance of what life is and how it should be lived. The first two lines propose that life is more than our biological existence; it consists of having the will (“great spirit”) and the endurance (“busy heart”) to be or to do something that is greater than ourselves. The writer clearly states what he/she believes to be life and who is or isn’t living it properly, according to the writer. Those not living by the author’s words are deemed a “coward” and “small in soul” for they do not live life to its fullest extent. For the rest of the poem, the author draws a simple outline of actions that one should take in order to make life seem worthwhile: “one generous feeling, one great thought, one deed of good.”

The poem dismisses time as a factor in life and keeps its focus on our actions as being the ideal mode of maintaining a reputable lifestyle. The reader can infer the morality in the poem with the use of words such as great, generous, good, noblest, and best. The author continually expresses the need for us to act internally and externally in reference to our thoughts, feelings and deeds, so it’s not just how we portray ourselves on the outside, but the inside as well. The repetition of the words: deeds, thoughts, and feelings in the poem create emphasis for what “we” as humans should employ in our daily lives to reach the point of being “the noblest” and “the best.”

Poem 2

The poem begs the question "to be or not to be," and further, "how best to spiritually be?"

We start with an Eliot-like beginning: Spring has come to disturb Winter’s slumber. The speaker retreats into springtime hibernation, surrounding himself with flora and fauna in a covert/convert/convent. Like the speaker, the birds sing in solitude, suggesting a courtship motif. The boughs arch over the house, suggesting the cathedral, and the cool house suggests religious austerity. The sweet air whispers softly, as if the voice of God. Whispers, however, can connote devilish mischief, and we’re not so sure that the house is snare-free. Here, the poem’s chief ambiguity surfaces. Now the voice speaks of safety and solitude, and we think of the coffin. The stone has stopped rolling and gathers moss as its soul exits in a clear stream. The ambiguities come full force: the sun shines shadily, and the first five-line stanza appears. Now we scan the poem back up from six stanzas/feet under, read downwards once again, and our three-peat reading moves us to ask important questions about religious behavior.

Does faith in God send us to an early grave? If we live an austere life, are we robbing ourselves of the ocean’s gifts? Is the monastic life a cowardly life?

At first, we vicariously enjoy the speaker’s covert; maybe we even envy the beauty he experiences. When we reach the end, however, we see the corpses and rot beneath the beautiful descriptions. We are moved to associate esoteric subjects with nothingness, despair, and death.

We’ve done some good critical thinking, but we’re not done yet; we should give monasticism a fair chance. Perhaps the answer to the ambiguity is this: it is best to carry the covert with us on the unforgiving seas of life until we make it to the beach. Otherwise, we dig ourselves into an early grave.

Poem #3 Close Reading

Though the speaker spends the first eight lines of the poem issuing commands to usher in, what is presumably, the resurrection of the dead (as alluded to in Revelations), there is a significant change of attitude when he begins to address God as “Lord” in line 9. The beginning of poem, containing authoritative calls to “blow your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise from death, you…souls,” initially leads the reader to believe that the speaker is wholly in control. God is a distant but assumed figure in the background until the speaker appeals to him directly. Relinquishing any illusions of power, the speaker asks his “Lord” to “let them sleep,” acknowledging God’s power over the timing of the events. He knows that to let the dead continue sleeping gives him time to strengthen his bid for Heaven. Sin bars his way. With mounting urgency, he charges God to teach him how to repent. For the speaker, repentance, regret for past wrongs, is “as good as if Thou hadst seal’d my pardon with Thy blood.” This last line of the poem expresses a continuing anxiety about the speaker’s assurance of salvation. Repentance is “as good” but the not the same as God’s pardon. Yet, in his finite understanding, the speaker cannot be sure. He knows that the blood of Christ is the only way he can achieve pardon and he doubts his ability as a penitent. The poem shifts from the impersonal resurrection of the body to focus on the personal resurrection of one soul through repentance, a question of salvation from not only physical death and all its causes, but also the internal turmoil experienced by the speaker.

Poem #1 Close Reading

            The poem questions overtly conflicting vantage points regarding the perceived duration of human existence.  The speaker criticizes the idea that time is only of importance relative to the “figures on a dial” (ln 9).  The poem is an appeal to live through all aspects of humanity; as the final line suggests, through mental, spiritual, and physical action an individual may forego the passivity of merely existing.  The poem equally offers a not so subtle rebuke of those that are cowards, small in soul, and live as do current nations of mankind.  This implies a level of elitism to the appeal, as the speaker discounts the possibility of entire nations of peoples living purposefully.  This seemingly shallow polemic has further depth when considering the irony inherent within the form.  While the poem advocates an intentionally imprecise and non-standardized perception of time, the poem is almost wholly written in pentameter.  With only one digression from this in line 6, which emphasizes the length of the thousand days, the form of poem seems to conflict with the transcendental notion of time that poem advocates.  This apparent tension may be overcome by attributing the strictness of the form to a desire to sound canonical.  In echoing the conservatism of major poetical works, the poem ironically bases its argument of spiritual perception on the strictness of earlier poetical forms.  Equally, the very presence of this tension brings attention to the essence of the argument and instigates a deeper analysis.

Poem #3 Close Reading

In this poem the speaker paints him or herself as a martyr for lost souls through the use of hyperbole. These souls reside at “round earth’s imagined corners,” imagination belonging to the realm of sleep and dreams and implying their not being awake to the reality of their situation. The speaker implores God to “let them sleep,” and instead allow him or her to “mourn a space” instead. Referring to the quantity of souls as “numberless infinities” dramatizes the sacrifice the speaker volunteers to make.

After outlining “all whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, / Despair, law, chance hath slain” the speaker states that “above all these my sins abound.” The reader is not privy to any catalogue of the speaker’s sins or misdeeds so this statement cannot be substantiated. Also, the speaker’s “sins abound” and would require “abundance of [God’s] grace.” Both terms are derived from the Latin “abundare” meaning “to overflow.” This word choice serves to characterize the speaker’s sins as so bad that they are commensurate with God’s grace. Up until this point in the poem, the speaker refers to him or herself as separate from the souls.

However, he or she writes “’Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace, / When we are there,” (italics mine) as if for all his or her bravery in stepping forward as martyr, he or she is still afraid of facing God alone.

Week 1 posting

Please post, by midnight on Sunday 1/18, your close reading of one of the three Practical Criticism poems. Your posts should be about 200-300 words in length.

Welcome

Welcome to the English 261 blog, where you'll be sharing your literary interpretations and thoughts about close and distant reading on a weekly basis.

Here are two artists' renderings of "close reading" to jump-start your musings on the topic: Johan Adriaensen's "A Study in Close Reading" and Mark Kostabi's "Close Reading."

This blog has a mirror blog where you'll find students at Swarthmore College posting in response to the same set of texts and questions. You'll meet them in person at the end of the semester and can keep up with them on-line for now.