Metaphysical poets, selected poems Contents
- Social / political context
- Religious / philosophical context
- Literary context: ideas and innovations
- Aire and Angels
- A Hymn to God the Father
- A Hymn to God, my God, in my Sicknesse
- A Nocturnall upon St. Lucies day
- At the Round Earth's Imagin'd Corners
- A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Synopsis of Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Commentary on Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Language and tone in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Structure and versification in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Imagery and symbolism in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Themes in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- A Valediction: of Weeping
- Batter my heart
- Death be not Proud
- Elegie XIX: Going to Bed
- Elegie XVI: On his Mistris
- Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward
- Lovers' Infiniteness
- Oh my blacke Soule!
- Satyre III: 'On Religion'
- Show me Deare Christ
- Since She Whom I Lov'd
- Song: Goe, and catche a falling starre
- The Anniversarie
- The Dreame
- The Extasie
- The Flea
- The Good-morrow
- The Sunne Rising
- This is my playes last scene
- Twicknam Garden
- What if this present
- Aaron
- Affliction I
- Death
- Discipline
- Easter Wings
- Jordan I
- Jordan II
- Life
- Love II
- Man
- Prayer I
- Redemption
- The Church-floore
- The Collar
- Vertue
- Hymn in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
- Hymn to St Teresa
- St Mary Magdalene, or the Weeper
- To the Countesse of Denbigh
- Ascension - Hymn
- Man
- Regeneration
- The Night
- The Retreate
- The Water-fall
- A Dialogue between Soul and Body
- On a Drop of Dew
- The Coronet
- The Definition of Love
- The Garden
- The Mower Against Gardens
- The Mower to the Glo-Worms
- The Mower's Song
- The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun
- The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers
- To his Coy Mistress
- Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax
- An Elegie upon the Death of the Deane of Paul's Dr John Donne
- To a Lady that Desired I would Love her
Themes in Batter my heart
Sinful, unworthy, unfaithful
The overriding theme of Batter my heart is Personal Sinfulness and Unworthiness, to which, almost as a corollary, the theme of Unfaithfulness is attached. The imagery of the sestet is quite explicitly that of marital unfaithfulness: ‘am betrothed unto our enemie'; ‘Divorce me'; ‘ravish mee'. It might seem shocking to use such explicit human terminology for spiritual unfaithfulness, but, then, the Metaphysical poets do set out to shock. For Donne, we feel, this is not some rhetorical trick, but an expression of his own sense of being a divided personality.
A divided personality
Various critics have made suggestions about why Donne feels so divided:
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His leaving of the Roman Catholic church may still have haunted him with feelings of betrayal and of division.
-
It may be more temperamental. Some people are supersensitive to their own shortcomings and failures.
Whatever the reason, it makes for dramatic poetry.
- Pick out words and phrases in Batter my heart that express Donne's sense of his own sinfulness
- Is this sense of sinfulness a general malaise?
- Or do there seem to be specific sins behind it?
- Is this sense of sinfulness a general malaise?
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