Eliot's Use of Literary Reference

In seeking out the reference of Philomel in Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, Ovid’s tale of Tereus’s savagery added an unexpected level of insight into the poem. Eliot’s text reveals the circumstances to a large extent, in that it is clear that she was “rudely forced” by a “barbarous king”, but the exact nature of Philomel's injuries remains vague without the reversion to Ovid’s text. This revelation then forced a further consideration into the nature of the other works that are cited in the opening. Not only is the adulterous, cruel, and sordid nature of Tereus’s actions uncovered, but Satan’s betrayal of God and Cleopatra’s betrayal of Antony lends meaning to the circumstances of Lil’s relationship with Albert. From Eliot’s text alone there remains an ambiguity as to the level of separation between the war-torn couple. It is evident from the pills Lil took “to bring it off” that there was an unwanted repercussion to a past sexual exploit. The reader is then left in a state of uncertainty regarding Lil’s fidelity to Albert. Lil claims that the pills are what made her look “antique”, and as this is assumed to be a look that may shock the recently “demobbed” Albert, the potential implication is that she has been unfaithful. However, by analyzing the earlier references in the opening of the section, particularly those of Ovid, Shakespeare, and Milton, there is a pattern of infidelities and betrayals that arises and presents a level of certainty to the reader that Lil has indeed been disloyal. While the extent to which Eliot expected his readers to know or research the references of his poem is unknown, the similarities found between the literary allusion leads to the belief that a more complete understanding can be had by inspecting his references. If we take this similarity to be intentional, the juxtaposition of the earlier textual infidelities in Ovid, Shakespeare, and Milton with Eliot’s own portrayal of betrayal forces the idea that Eliot is attempting to place his own work into the major literary canon. This section of the poem then becomes more than a critique of the degradation of modernity and modern love, but also reveals Eliot’s intentions of asserting himself among the most celebrated poets of earlier eras.

Lil as Cleopatra

Understanding the reference to Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” in the first line of Eliot’s “A Game of Chess” establishes a specific frame of reference through which the reader should consider the woman throughout the rest of the poem.

The Cleopatra of Shakespeare’s play is vain and self-absorbed. She is called a lustful gypsy, a whore, an enchantress. She deserts her lover Antony twice in battle, the second time only to take the side of his opponent Octavius. Antony cries out: “This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me.” By noting the reference to Shakespeare, Eliot is able to conjure up all these characteristics and actions in just a single line. The reader is inclined to be skeptical of the woman or women of the poem from the get-go.

This throws new light on the final stanza about Lil and her husband returning from war. After a four year absence, Albert is coming home and will question his wife as to where the money he left her to get new teeth has gone. It is implied that Lil has spent it on “them pills [she] took, to bring it off,” or more bluntly, an abortion. If Albert has been away at war for the last four years the logical conclusion is that Lil had an affair – she betrayed her lover while he was in battle, just like Cleopatra.

From here, one can work back and see that the earlier stanzas can be read as an account of the adultery. Understanding the significance of the reference to "Antony and Cleopatra" allows the reader to draw the parallels between the events of the play and the events of the poem that Eliot intended.

The Game of Chess

The Game of Chess is an excerpt from Eliot's "The Wasteland" that describes two different scenes of women, one being a high society woman and her evening in a lavish room while the other references a group of women sitting at a bar. Eliot's piece was particularly well known for the footnotes he decided to attach to the piece and we were asked to examine whether or not any of these contributed to a deeper understanding of the reading. Through examining other pieces in class, it's evident that I've found value in other footnote like pieces, particularly in Coleridge's journal entry concerning the baked beans he ate as a child. Unlike Wimsatt & Beardsley's perception of what is most useful in close reading, I found that his personal relationship to what beans meant to him growing up was interesting and contributed to his work as a writer. In "The Game of Chess," however, I felt like the story was and contrast between high society and lower class interactions was clear enough without most of them. The only footnote that really contributes to the story is the one that clarifies "the game of chess" as denoting a seduction in the piece Middleton's "Women beware women." It seems the woman is speaking to an unknown lover or suffering from a hallucination about a lover in the lines just before. This entirely adds validity to his reference of chess in line 137. However, my skepticism of the other footnotes is merely in the words that he uses to launch into description, for example "laquearia" reference in the Aeneid. As a reader, I understood the lavishness of the room she was in without knowing exactly where that reference came from, whereas the seduction denotation really solidified the piece for me.

"Game of Chess" reference

While this was touched upon in Friday’s class, I read the plot synopsis from a “New York Times” theater review of Middleton’s “Women Beware of Women” to fully understand Eliot’s “game of chess” referenced in line 137 of “The Waste Land”. Apparently, the chess scene is the most famous of the play where the protagonist distracts one person with chess while the other makes sexual advances on a third person. I hadn’t recognized the other sexual references in the poem like the Philomel painting in line 99 until I researched this one. The speaker’s mention of the Cupidon on the frame of the mirror too adds to the romantic theme. Similarly, the glittering jewels that “[rise] to meet” (line 84) the reflections of light from the sevenbranched candelabra as well as the perfume fumes and breeze that “ascended/In fattening the prolonged candle-flames” (line 91) is sexually suggestive as well. These references though are of negative sexual experiences—that of rape in Philomel’s case and of manipulation in the “game of chess.” The aforementioned adds further texture to the tone of the poem of gloom and echoes the relationship troubles of Lil and her husband Albert in the second half. Lil is being pressured by her husband and the speaker of the second part of “A Game of Chess” to fix her appearance to become more sexually desirable. Ironically though, Lil fell into this unattractive state because she attempted to abort their fifth child and has no desire to bear more of Albert’s children.

The Tempest in "The Game of Chess"

“Those are pearls that were his eyes” is a quote from one of Ariel’s songs in The Tempest (Act I, Scene II). Ferdinand, who has only recently arrived on Prospero’s island, hears the song and follows the nameless and invisible voice to Prospero and Miranda. Ariel’s song refers to Ferdinand’s drowned father who assisted in the treachery that overthrew Prospero, Duke of Milan.

Unlike the evocations of Cleopatra, Dido, and Philomel, The Tempest reference seems a little harder to place in the context of “The Game of Chess.” It is not just a story, but a specific quote that Eliot uses, forcing a closer look at the Shakespearean play. Ferdinand has just landed on a magical island as a result of a shipwreck orchestrated by Prospero. Unsure of where he is or whether any of his fellow mates have survived, Ferdinand laments his ill-fortune, in addition to the death of his father. The knowledge of the allusion slightly changes the reading of the poem. It offers a smoother transition to the “Shakespeherian Rag,” because it is about Shakespeare. Yet it makes the jump from Shakespeare of the past to Shakespeare of the present (represented by a phonograph tune). For Eliot, who throughout the poem juggles time and space on a strange continuum, this is just one more example of the range her covers. The Shakespeare connection also heightens the depth of the man’s despair in response to the aggressive woman who asks “Do you remember nothing?” Apparently the man remembers something, but rather than answer, he thinks the words from Ariel’s song. The fact that Ariel is invisible when he sings to lure Ferdinand also potentially has bearing on the Eliot poem. In many ways, the man is invisible, he neither talks, nor seems to think without prompting.

In researching the Tempest, I also came across another game of chess that Eliot may or may not have had in mind. At the end of the play, Prospero pulls back a curtain and reveals Miranda and Ferdinand playing chess. At this point they are already engaged and Prospero has warned Ferdinand against “untying [Miranda’s] virginal knot” until marriage. In light of the sexual politics suggested by a game of chess, it was interesting to find it in Shakespeare as well.

Philomela, A Game of Chess

I read A Game of Chess as a fractal point in space time representing the formal concept of fornication. This mystic scene unfolds in a fabulous room beyond imagination, suggesting an interconnected concept rather than a single scene. In this conceptual space, the viewer looks backward to Eve's first bite of the apple, hangs suspended in Cleopatra's ostentatious and seductive palace, and peers forward to a modern bar scene. Always we have perfumes, be they from glands, vials, or modern commodities. The 'room' transforms through time yet stays tied to that first fornication. Standing inside of it feels like a psychedelic time-travel experience: the walls transform and the characters morph, yet I remain in the same point in interconnected space-time.

The reference to Philomela adds an extra dimension of meaning and space to this fractal point. We ascend from the human drama of fornication into the space of 'the rape of modernity,' for just as Philomela, having been raped, exits humanity and yet retains her soul, the Earth constantly evades the foolish attempts to subdue Her. Now, 'fornication' comes in to stand for man's gradual rape of the Earth's surface.

Besides Philomela's transformation, the reference suggests 'the rape of modernity' for the fact that modernity holds the privelleged position of integrated knowledge. The Modern Scholar looks out of the window of the conceptual room and sees not just a scene of human eroticism but instead a highly symbolic artwork unfolding. As he connects they symbolism with the image, he raises the trope of fornication from the humanistic sphere and into the global.

Week 4 posting

For this weekend, look up a single reference from Eliot's "A Game of Chess" and blog (by midnight on Sunday 2/8) about how understanding the reference changes or doesn't change your interpretation of the poem.

Prufrock.

T.S. Eliot has composed this piece in what acts like a stream of thought, as if the imagery is coming directly as he is writing. His audience is unclear, potentially he is speaking to another or these thoughts are within himself, as an older man. He often refers to imagery of thinning hair and lonely existence, propelling the idea that he is alone and seeks companionship. The piece centers around his inability to make a decision about some sort of action of thought he wants to express, and he struggles with this throughout (Do i dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time, for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.) He attributes his nervousness to women (Is it perfume from a dress that makes me so digress?) and seems to be self conscious about his outward aged appearance. 

Brooks readings of close poetry often center around paradoxical themes. He believes that all poetry inevitably reflects these contradictions, even without the authors intent to do so. Arguably he believes that every poem can be interpreted as a poem about poetry. In Prufrock, the title of the poem including the word "Lovesong" is a contradiction to the theme of the poem, in which Eliot does nothing to suggest that the piece is a reflection of any serious love affair, rather of a man's struggle to understand how to express his own feelings. A lovesong often expresses concrete feelings without doubt, and Eliot torments himself with whether or not his thoughts are important enough to say, whether or not he'd communicate his sentiments poorly (And turning toward the window, should say: That is not it at all, that is not what I meant at all.) I am skeptical about Brooks' theory behind all poetry being a reflection of poetry. The ideas and imagery presented in poetry are in themselves enough of a description of poetic form, without attributing it to any sort of formula from piece to piece.

Prufrock, Brooks

We can tackle the powerful prologue by looking closely at re-occuring elements in this lengthy poem.

The basic paradox in this poem pitches the bodily description of a lonely aging bachelor (Time to turn back and descend the stair,/ With a bald spot in the middle of my hair) with the spiritual description of the human soul, the All-Ether that penetrates each body in a crumbling modernity (The yellow fog...and fell asleep). Modernity incarnates this indescribable, universal ether in various scenes of urban despair.

Eliot creates this paradox by assigning opposing senses to identical phrases (And indeed there will be time/ To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?") Likewise, different schemata attach to associated stanza. Stanza 4 references Godly ether, Stanza 5 references one life, but combining the senses reveals the Ether in man and the Man in the ether.

Through this paradoxical unity, the reader feels one with the poet and the ether of the speaker. Feeling this, he understands poetry.

Some meta-readings

"Let us go, you and I": The bachelor speaking to himself, the Ether speaking to Itself, Eliot calling the reader along

"Like a patient etherised upon a table": the bachelor is comfortably numb/drunk, the Soul is numbed by modernity, the reader is numb to prejudices when reading poetry

"Streets that follow like a tedious argument/Of insidious intent": The bachelor navigates society like an argument, the city argues against spirituality, historicized reading is insidious

"Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'/ Let us go and make our visit."

Brooksian Close Reading of "Prufrock"

The potentially rhetorical questions in one of the final stanzas (the first of the two beginning in “And would it have been worth it, after all”) reflect the very structure and composition of the poem. “Would it have been worth it” questions the limits of interpersonal communication, whether between speaker and listener or between female and desirer. Prufrock, in lamenting his own inaction, doubts the nature of his own desire to initiate a connection with an “other”; the underlying question is whether or not the justification or the success of the attempt is to be judged by the success of the connection. Prufrock’s neurotic self-doubt reflects that of the would-be poet in choosing to compose or not. Eliot’s portrayal of Prufrock’s dilemma ironically mirrors the possibility of his potential audience successfully recognizing what his works attempt to put forth. For Prufrock and Eliot, having established nothing beyond a superficial bond of “cups”, “tea”, and “talk of you and me”, the overwhelming concern is if the true elements of their minds may be expressed with any accuracy or if the plight of human connection lies in the impossibility of shared understanding: the “That is not what I meant at all”. Prufrock’s own invocation of Lazarus and a “her” as object of carnal desire furthers the question. If the poet, potential-prophet, or would-be lover wishes to reveal a truth, Prufrock seemingly recognizes that it must be a self-justified action, as meaning may not rely upon an “other”. Such doubt proves to be the essence of Prufrock’s immobility and the source of his reliance on discursive inner-dialogue rather than action; however, it may be posited that Eliot’s own composition of the poem, itself at times intentionally obfuscated, expresses the poet’s faith in communication, albeit imperfect communication in which a transcendent meaning may be implicitly ascertained.

Brooksian Reading of Prufrock

The obvious underlying paradox that supposedly governs the “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is strangely absent. In its place becomes a plethora of synecdoches—identifying the parts without the concrete acknowledgement of the whole. This knowledge in itself can be construed as evidence that the poem is about the nature of poetry and Brooks’ insistence that poetry revolves around paradoxical (ambiguous, metaphorical and ironic) language. The entire poem hinges on the absent lady and almost every stanza suggests or alludes to an empty central figure. It is a paradox of meaning in a poem impossible to paraphrase.

Just as Prufrock identifies himself indirectly with Polonius in stanza on Hamlet, earlier in the poem he aligns himself with a well-known biblical figure in King Solomon, who is the widely accepted author of Ecclesiastes (a book in the Hebrew Bible), which states: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up…” (King James Version, Ecclesiastes 3:1-3). The idea that there is “nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9) emphasizes the bleak emptiness of Prufrock’s reflections and constructed realities. The poem memorably alludes to the words in the Bible saying, “And indeed there will be time…There will be time, there will be time/ To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;/There will be a time to murder and create,/And time for all the works and days of hands…” Prufrock, like Solomon, begins to fathom the world’s sheer meaninglessness. Yet, within the emptiness, Prufrock seems to find paradoxical significance in the mere awareness. Though it could seem a comfort to know there is an unoriginal time for everything, Prufrock also points out that it includes “time..for a hundred indecisions/ and for a hundred visions and revisions.” Ironically, in this stanza, Prufrock identifies with a wise biblical king. For most of the poem, Prufrock’s hyperconsciousness welcomes a peculiar suspension of space and time, yet the constant references to a much older literary tradition create ambiguity, not only in finding what I.A. Richards would call the “Total Meaning,” but also in pinpointing exactly where the governing paradox lies if there are so many (often initially overlooked) possibilities hidden deep within the poem.

A Poem by a Poem about a Poem

Brooks believes that all poems are on some level about poetry. In Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" the poetic speaker can be read himself as the personification of poetry.

Before leading the reader through his lines, or "streets that follow like a tedious argument," the speaker warns against the heresy of paraphrase. "Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" / Let us go and make our visit." The couplet calls to mind Brooks' comparison of poetry and drama: both are "something which arrives at its conclusion through conflict." The conflict can be found in the "hundred visions and revisions" that there is time for over the course of reading the poem.

Certain lines also read as the poetic speaker's concerns regarding being misread. When he presents himself with a bald spot in the middle of his head, "They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!'" The literal or paraphrastic reading of the bald spot misses entirely the reason for its inclusion in the first place. Hence the speaker's trepidation when he is fixed "in a formulated phrase" by the eyes of his readers -- "When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, / Then how should I begin." Whatever meaning he intended himself to possess has passed out of his hands and into those of his readers. This brings us back to a central concern when composing poetry and also the factor that necessitates all of the paradox and conflict of poems: "It is impossible to say just what I mean!"

Close Reading of "Prufrock" a la Brooks

This tension in the first stanza of Prufrock as created by the contrasting imagery could be, as all metaphors in poetry, a greater metaphor for poetry itself. Brooks’ notion that all poetry, regardless of the poet’s intention, is paradoxical and self-referential merely by the nature of poetic language is supported here. Poetic language is necessarily paradoxical because of the presence of metaphor. Metaphor serves to compare two superficially unlike similar to reveal a mutual similarity. Here, “etherised” compares and contrasts “evening” on several different levels. The evening is described as though it were viscous, syrupy substance separate from the sky rather simply a darkening of it. The evening that generally connotes the calm and mysterious is contrasted with the gruesome image of a human body sprawled against a cold, impersonal medical table. “Etherised” in the immediate poetic context denotes a hospital patient under the influence of ether, an inhalation anesthetic. But ether’s secondary definitions include “the clear sky” and images of the divine cosmos, which supplements the positive connotation of “evening”. Additionally, as Mike had offered in Friday’s class, the last two lines of the first stanza are meta-poetic as well. “Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’” could be a direct address to those who attempt to simply paraphrase poetry as well as historicists who look for contextually dependent references. Instead the speaker recommends that we, as readers of poetry, “go and make our visit”. Poetry is an experience of the paradoxical, unlike an epigram that compares two unlike elements as a metaphor does, but is merely a witty statement—a moment in time rather than a progression of such.

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.