Assignment: Read and take notes on the following poem by John Donne. Answer:
How does Donne express his concept of love? Consider what major metaphysical conceit and supporting imagery are used to create a specific tone and message about love in this poem. Post your response in comment form. Be sure to incorporate essential examples from the poem.
"Love's Diet"
TO what a cumbersome unwieldiness
And burdenous corpulence my love had grown,
But that I did, to make it less,
And keep it in proportion,
Give it a diet, made it feed upon
That which love worst endures, discretion
Above one sigh a day I allow'd him not,
Of which my fortune, and my faults had part ;
And if sometimes by stealth he got
A she sigh from my mistress' heart,
And thought to feast upon that, I let him see
'Twas neither very sound, nor meant to me.
If he wrung from me a tear, I brined it so
With scorn and shame, that him it nourish'd not ;
If he suck'd hers, I let him know
'Twas not a tear which he had got ;
His drink was counterfeit, as was his meat ;
For eyes, which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat.
Whatever he would dictate I writ that,
But burnt her letters when she writ to me ;
And if that favour made him fat,
I said, "If any title be
Convey'd by this, ah ! what doth it avail,
To be the fortieth name in an entail?"
Thus I reclaim'd my buzzard love, to fly
At what, and when, and how, and where I choose.
Now negligent of sports I lie,
And now, as other falconers use,
I spring a mistress, swear, write, sigh, and weep ;
And the game kill'd, or lost, go talk or sleep.
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In Love's Diet, John Donne expresses his concept of love through the use of a metaphysical conceit told in the perspective of a man who realizes that he needs to change the intensity of love. He personifies love by comparing it to a person who overeats and is out of control. Donne explains that the speaker's love has “grown” (line 2) and that it tends to “feed” (line 5 ) constantly. As a result, he decides to put love on a “diet” ( line 5). He shows that love has a large appetite with the tendency to over-indulgence if the appetite is satisfied too often. He must keep his over-indulgence under control, so he does this by putting love in “proportion” (line 3). To succeed in his diet, he makes his love “feed” (line 5) upon “discretion” (line 6). Donne's choice of the word “discretion” shows that in the poem the speaker's diet will consist of him hiding his love in order to control it.
ReplyDeleteThe speaker wants to put love on a diet because then, he would regain control over love, and allow it “to fly / at what, and when, and how, and where I choose” (line 25-26). He makes himself regain his control by only allowing himself to love this women in small amounts. In addition, he ignores all that his lover does for fear of causing him to lose his ability to maintain his “diet”. For example, in the second quatrain, he explains that he would not allow himself to go “above one sigh a day” when he sees her. He does this because this is one of the ways in which he expresses his love for her. So he does not allow himself to express his lose, then he slowly gains control of his emotions. Also, he continues in state that if “by stealth” (line 9) he received a sigh from his “mistress' heart” (line 10) then he would not allow himself to think that it was meant for himself, but he stole it when it actually is meant for someone else. The imagery that Donne uses when he says that the sigh came from the lover's heart shows that a sigh is an expression of a deep and emotional love. The resulting message which Donne gives about love is that it is strong and can grow, so regardless of what is done to love, it will not fade, but should be regulated.
John Donne is a master at expressing his love, by using various literary techniques. One major technique he uses is personification. In line 2, “And burdenous corpulence my love had grown”, love is being personified by saying it is growing, and in line 4, However Donne does not consider his love as a piece of him, but instead a whole separate entity. Because the speaker’s love for another person is too strong, Donne comes up with the solution to his problem in the following stanzas, by using the literary technique of structure. His solution to his problem is by again using metaphors and personification to bring up the idea of how his love needs to go on a diet (line 3-5), and then Donne’s diet plan is in the poem’s following stanzas. By the end of the poem, the speaker was able to get over their love, “Thus I reclaim'd my buzzard love to fly” (line 25), and be free. This helped change the tone from once being desperate, to more confident and independent.
ReplyDeleteThe metaphysical conceit found in “Love’s Diet” by John Donne, is the diet. Dunne expresses his unhealthy love for another person as a love that needs to go on a diet. I personally have never imagined love being anything close to a diet. The diet is something that is used to help the speaker get over a major crush and by forcing himself to only “one sigh a day”, or by lying to himself by calling his tears for her sweat. Moreover, because the speaker’s affection for another woman is too strong, he is forced to put it on a diet in order to make it healthy. However, by the end of the poem it is hard to tell whether or not the diet was worth it, since line 30 “. . .the game kill’d, or lost. . .” makes the reader believe that he no longer has any love at all for that person, and that it is now dead.
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ReplyDeleteLove is depicted as smothering and fattening in John Donne's "Love's Diet." Love spoils an individual and makes him fat until he can take it no longer and needs to curb his love. Expressions of love are reinterpreted to represent unappealing aspects of the human diet. The poem is structured in five, six lined stanzas. Each stanza portrays a different love constraint until the end by which realization occurs and the speaker goes back to his initial state.
ReplyDeleteWhen his love had become a "burdenous corpulence," (line 2) the speaker decided to put his love on a diet to "keep it in proportion" (line 4). The diet dictates what is appropriate and what is a deviation from the course of the diet. He is not allowed more than one sigh a day and if his mistress sighs, the man will want to "feast" upon her love. However, the diet will "let him see 'twas neither very sound, nor meant to me" (line 12). He is not allowed to cry, because if he does, it would have "brined it so with scorn and shame, that him it nourish'd not" (line 13-14). The diet is personified to be a person stopping the man from shedding tears or sighing. Human emotions are turned into objects attributed to food and cooking. For example, meats and other foods are brined in a salt bath. The tears he sheds are covered and submerged by "scorn and shame" (line 14) as a meat is in a brine. The diet would tell the man that "his drink was counterfeit, as was his meat" (line 17). The woman could represent the meat and the tears represent the water. While on the diet, there can only be limited love and tears. Such excuses such as the tears being sweat would be created to divert the mind. Any letters written by his mistress would be burned if it "made him fat" (line 21). Once realized that he wants his love back in all of its glory, he took back his "buzzard love, to fly at what, and when, and how, and where I choose" (line 25-26). Love is now free and all aspects of his life that the "diet" was holding back, are unrestrained. Nothing is held back and every action can be lived to express feelings of love and joy.
By putting one's love on a diet, much like human diets, wants and desires are restricted. Uncontrollable love needs to be curbed. By alluding to food preparations and human action, Donne creates a tone of desperation and desire. In addition, humorous feelings are transformed into techniques applied to cooking. The metaphysical conceit is the comparison between a man's need to monitor his love and a diet restricting what one eats. The term diet is used to describe the means by which a man can overcome the overwhelming love in his life. Donne is clearly stating that when love becomes onerous, several steps must be taken to confine those feelings. Once off of the "diet," similar to food diets, things go back to the way they previously were.
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ReplyDeleteJohn Donne's poem, “Love’s Diet”, contains a metaphysical conceit of love to an officious person. The speaker decides to put Love on a diet and throughout the course of the poem, he talks about how he prescribes the diet. This could mean that he wishes to contain his relationship and he does so by denying his love. Through the use of a contemptuous tone, detailed diction, personification, imagery, and an identifiable structure, Donne conveys his negative view of love and depicts the speaker’s longing not to be tied down by relationships.
ReplyDeleteThe speaker says in the first stanza that because love was getting too heavy, that he was going to put it on a diet; it was placing too heavy a burden on him and so he looked to lessen it. He writes, “To what a cumbersome unwieldiness and burdenous corpulence my love had grown”. The use of diction such as “cumbersome” and “burdenous” serve to reveal just how much love had grown and how much it irritated the speaker. The imagery of Love as a plump individual reinforces the idea that he should go on a diet. The speaker may even be pointing out that what he’s doing is for Love’s own sake, that he’s doing what’s best for it. So as a remedy, he “made it feed upon that which love worst endures, discretion”. The fact that Donne made love’s worst enemy discretion, or good judgment, depicts what little regard he has for love.
The next three stanzas portray how the speaker enforces the diet upon Love, and its effects. In the second stanza, he speaks of how when his lover would sigh, he didn’t want to give Love the satisfaction of witnessing any affection so he claimed that she was not sighing for him. “And if sometimes by stealth he got a she sigh from my mistress’ heart and thought to feast upon that, I let him see ‘twas neither sound, nor meant to me”. It is here that we see that the speaker suspects the strength of his mistress’ faithfulness. His suspicions are clear in the second stanza as well. He claimed that when his lover would weep, he thought that those tears were superficial, not really tears at all, but sweat. If Love drank some of her tears, he would tell him that “his drink was counterfeit”. Essentially, Love is being “starved” because what he is getting from both sides of the relationship is not sincere. In the third stanza, Love is given a voice to speak and the speaker says that it dictates love letters that he is to send to his lover. So at times, Love inspires him to write letters that reveal his affection, but he would burn the letters his lady would send to him. Yet if these letters gave Love joy, the speaker would crush its happiness by convincing himself that even if he sent her letters, that it would be nothing among the many others she would receive from her other lovers, for he claimed he was only fortieth in line for her love. “I said, ‘If any title be convey’d by this, ah! what doth it avail, to be the fortieth name in an entail?’” The speaker tries to control and contain Love by denying his own. He finds the faults in his relationship and perhaps blows it to great proportions in order to convince himself to withdraw.
In this poem John Donne uses his desire as a metaphysic conciet. For example,he describes how his diet needs to be trained to not cherish this girl. In these lines it describes how he sees this girl he needs to train himself to not desire this girl. "'Twas neither very sound, nor meant to me.
ReplyDeleteIf he wrung from me a tear, I brined it so
With scorn and shame, that him it nourish'd not ; If he suck'd hers, I let him know
'Twas not a tear which he had got ;
His drink was counterfeit, as was his meat ;
For eyes, which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat"
This illustrates that Joohn Donne needs to train himself to change his appearance to hide his true feelings for his love. Like all poems, the end reveals that his diet hurts so much that it is probably better to desire than to deny that it hungers for.
Through the poem Love’s Diet, John Donne utilizes a metaphysical conceit to express a man’s love. However, the man comes to the realization that he must “make it less” (line 2). This shows that the man wants to still love her; he just wants it to be less evident. However, the lover is fully aware that love dislikes being suppressed; “that which love worst endures, discretion” (line 6). However, the lover’s desire to limit his love is only physically limited. “I let him see” ( line 11) that physically he is not moved by the “sigh” (line 7) the mistress makes. John Donne uses personification of love as a way to allow the readers to see how the love grows as the mistress does things. In order to prove to his mistress that he seems to never be moved by her, he gives an excuse for his responses to her feelings. When the mistress sheds a “tear” (line 13) the speaker accidently allows a tear to slip; however to explain the tear on his face, he states that it was just “sweat” (line 18). This shows that even though the speaker places himself on a strict guideline for his love, he fails to realize that it out of his control. He fails to realize that the diet he places himself under can work physically; mentally his love just continues to grow and develop. When his mistress writes him “letters” (line 20) the speaker comes to eh realization that it “made him fat” (line 21). Even though he places himself on a diet, the love continues to grow. The speaker desires to have the love under his control. By letting it “fly” (line 25) he realizes that he can make decisions without appearing forceful.
ReplyDeleteIn the poem Loves Diet, John Donne uses a metaphysical conciet to express his concept of love. Donne expresses his idea of love through the concept of a diet. When someone wants to change their physique or be healthier, they take upon a diet. Donne is basically saying that his love has got so big, that he needs a break, " Give it a diet..." (Line 4) He is so obsessed now that he allows himself " one sigh a day" (Line 7) from the numerous times he use to sigh. The speaker also says that if he interprets a" she sigh", he will not think about it too much. (Line 10) Donne uses great imagery in the third stanza when he talks about tears and sweat. " For eyes, which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat." (Line 18) This is great imagery and the speaker is saying that if his love ever thinks he is crying, he will make her believe it is sweat. In relation to his diet, the speaker believed that "her letters" made him somewhat over the top about her, which " made him fat." (Lines 20-21) This is the sole reason he needs to go on the diet, because everything about her is making him more and more obsessed. In the poem, Donne does a great job in using personification and rhyme scheme. As a person is able to grow, he imitates love in the same manner. Also, his rhyme scheme attracts readers and helps it to be more enjoyable. Overall, Donne uses a diet to help his explanation of his love. It was getting to a point where it would become obese. At that point, he had no other choice but to take some time off and take upon a diet. Donne uses excellent technique to portray his reasoning.
ReplyDeleteIn John Donne's poem "Loves Diet", he conveys the idea that love is overwhelming and overbearing. In the narrator's case, love has become too dominant in his life and decides he needs to lesson his dependence on love resulting in a "diet". A burdenous corpulence my love had grown... Give it a diet..." (line 1-4). The narrator begins his struggle with love to become more in control of himself, and his life. Donne uses personification when showing his mistress' feelings. "A she sigh from my mistress' heart" (line 10); she too is feeling discomfort in their situation. Through imagery, the narrator's hardship becomes more clear; "For eyes which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat. The narrator is very knowledgeable, and is more knowing than his mistresses spouse. Here, the narrator suggests that when she cries, and her spouse "suck'd" (15) her tears, they are not really tears but sweat. This leads to the idea that she may have been nervous, and her tears were not real they were lies. At this point in the poem the idea that this love triangle is becoming tired for the narrator becomes more apparent. Sneaking around and living the lies which are being "fed" to this other man is becoming to burdensome for him. The poem is concluded with "Now negligent of sports I lie, I spring a mistress, swear. write, sigh, and weep; And the game kill'd, or lost, go talk or sleep" (line 28-30). Although he tries to lesson the weight of his love, he ends up where he started, his love was not altered and he is left with the same choices he began with. Diets don't work, and don't last. The narrators abstinence from love was only temporary.
ReplyDeleteLove has always been a popular topic for poets to write about. In John Donne’s “Love Diet,” love is portrayed as a fattening and indulging feeling that engulfs an individual. To help the reader better understand his idea, Donne compares love to an individual on a diet.
ReplyDeleteIn the first stanza, the narrator states that his love has become a “burdenous corpulence,” (line 2) and in order to “keep it in proportion,” (line 4) he has to put it on a “diet”. In the second stanza, the narrator explains that his lover’s “sigh” is a “sound” that lingers through his head. However, he is only allowed “one sigh a day” otherwise he will only be focused on her and nothing else. In line 17 of the poem, the narrator states that “his drink” and “his meat” were consumed by his love mentioned earlier in the poem. In the fourth stanza, Donne shows the narrator’s effort in keeping the diet by burning the letters his love forces his to write, in order to keep it from being “fat” (line 21). In line 24 however, Donne creates a twist in his poem. He states how he is “the fortieth name in an entail,” meaning that there are others before him. As a result, he “reclaim’d” his “buzzard love, to fly at what, and when and how, and where” he chooses (lines 25-26). Now that he realizes that her love is insincere, he uses his love as a “falconer” to “spring a mistress” of his liking. Since he kept his love on a diet, he is perhaps less affected then he otherwise would be if his love was free.
Donne uses the metaphysical conceit of a comparison between an individual’s diet and love to portray how one must control their love. The narrator knows that love is consuming and by keeping it on a diet, the lover is in essence controlling the love and how much it takes in.
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ReplyDelete"Love's Diet" is a typical John Donne poem. In the poem, the speaker tries to do the impossible, which is keep his love on a diet. Donne uses a metaphysical conceit when he compares love to something that can be kept on a diet such as food. He keeps his love in check by limiting his actions. For example, the speaker only allows himself "a sigh a day" (line 1). This might be similar to somebody limiting their meals. The speaker also ignores anything that might be translated into the women loving him back. He tells his love that if she sees her sight that it "'Twas neither very sound, nor meant to me."(line 12) Not only does the speaker limit his love, but he also avoids any possible cravings. The diet, however, proves to be to rigorous. The speaker cannot sustain it any longer. He becomes negligent of it and allows his love to take over him. In the last quatrain he says:
ReplyDeleteThus I reclaim'd my buzzard love, to fly
At what, and when, and how and where I choose.
Now negligent of sports I lie
And now, as other falconers use,
I spring a mistress, swear, write, sigh, and weep;
And the game kill'd, or lost, go talk or sleep.
The love the speaker felt for the women was to strong to keep chained up by a diet. As a result, the speaker had no choice but to let it free. In doing so, the speaker was able to take love for the beauty that it is. The message John Donne is trying to send is to not rationalize love so much, but to let it just take over you.
In the poem Love's Diet, John Donne uses metaphysical conceit to portray the concept of love. He uses the extended metaphor by comparing love (in this particular situation) to a person in desperate need of a diet. The overall tone of the poem is enlightening, as if the speaker finally experienced an epiphany. The poem definitely has a sense of righting the wrongs. In the first stanza, the author recognizes how far-
ReplyDeletefetched his idea of love has become. He personifies his love as a human body, stating it as having grown into "burdenous corpulence." Then the speaker starts his rehabilitation phase of trying to limit his feelings. He gave his love a diet by making it feed upon discretion, meaning that it is up to his own judgment to make the diet effective.
"Above one sigh a day I allow'd him not" implies that he has started limiting himself from being too overwhelmed by his lover. Moreover, when his lover sighs, or gives him attention, he tells his other self (love) that the attention is not meant to him.
Whenever love forced a tear out of him (possibly because it has less appetite and is hungry), ht is so ashamed that he even makes the diet more strict (i'm guessing the part "that him it nourish'd not" meant what i said). When his love sees the lover's tears, the speaker confronts the fact that it is more likely that sweat is coming out of her eyes because she is too busy looking at everyone, not only him.
The fourth stanza reiterates the idea of the third one. If the reason of his love's increasing appetite is due to the fact that the speaker burned the letters his lover wrote him, the speaker would say that she sends letters to every one and he is probably the 40th person to receive it.
He states his solution in the final stanza. He simply concludes that because he has been able to control/limit the love aspect of his life, he becomes his own man again- as compared to his old self who was overwhelmed by another girl and his deep passion.
In this poem, John Donne uses the technique where he separates the speaker into two beings- the speaker himself and his feelings (love). The speaker's feelings represent his old self or his rising temptations and the speaker himself acts as conscience. To completely support his argument, John donne finds the perfect conceit in a body in need of diet to fit into the his technique mentioned previously.
P.S.- Ms.Silva, i used "his love" and "his lover" too many times.. please note that i intended that and they are two different things.
In "Loves Diet," Donne reverses the convention of affection's starving hopes and instead, imagines his love as having grown "corpulent" from feeding on unwarranted expectations of winning his lady. In simpler terms, Donne characterizes his love as a big fat creature, having the need to diminish his "meal" or like he says "Give it a diet". The several examples of imagery Donne includes in his poem highlights that view of love as the 'consumer'. First, in line six, he identifies the object of his imposed diet: discretion. Discretion is that which love “worst endures”. His love is so immense, it seems impossible to him to be discrete and measure himself. Next, as part of his diet, the author decides that he best remedy would be ignoring his lady. As he describes in the second stanza, "A she-sigh from my mistress' heart, And thought to feast upon that, I let him see'Twas neither very sound, nor meant to me.”, he convinces himself that any sigh the lady makes is not for him in order to fool his love and keep it fit. Additionally, Donne continues portraying this idea in the third stanza. As he says, "If he wrung from me a tear, I brined it so With scorn and shame, that him it nourish'd not/For eyes, which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat." he implies that her tears are not real, but counterfeit - she does not weep for him, but sweats because she is rolling her eyes at everyone. Finally, in the fourth stanza, Donne is burning the letters his dieting love forces him to write, in order to keep it slim. Donne cannot control the lady's act of writing to him, therefore, he controls his love by burning his own letters.
ReplyDeleteJohn Donne does a magnificent job depicting and characterizing that anxiety his own love has. He demonstrates so, by using vivid images of this fatting creature he calls 'Love'.
Through the use of a brilliant metaphysical conceit, Donne illustrates his views on love.
ReplyDeleteThe speaker of this poem has been posed with a problem: his love has grown to the point that it is completely out of control.
His solution to this problem, and essentially the metaphysical conceit of this poem, is to put his love on a diet. He makes an essential and incredibly interesting statement in the following line: "made it feed upon That which love worst endures, discretion"
What Donne means here is that discretion is love's worst enemy. This is true, I believe, because it is much easier to simply let one's love run rampant like some wildfire. Yet, to let such a conflagration to burn without limitations can result in the destruction of a relationship and even one's mind.
In the next few lines, one can see a number of literary techniques used to illustrate the diet the speaker places on his love.
First, he only allows his love one sigh a day. If he hears a sigh from his lover, he denies its existence giving his love very little to feed on. Another method he uses is the burning of all her love letters. And, if somehow his love still derived satisfaction from the letters, he would convince it that his letter was only one of many that were sent out to many other men: "ah ! what doth it avail, To be the fortieth name in an entail?"
In the final few lines, Donne uses another metaphor to compare his love to a bird, or falcon that he has trained to fly where he tells it to.
Donne's idea of love here is clear: he believes it is something that is beautiful and enjoyable, yet it is something that must be regulated
John Donne expresses his concept of love using the metaphysical conceit. Throughout the poem Donne uses the personification of putting love on a diet. The speaker is giving love a diet when he says “Give it a diet, made it feed upon” (line 5). The speaker tries to control his growing love by putting it on a diet. The speaker gives human characteristics to love and describes it as a “burdenous corpulence” (line 2) indicating that the speaker’s love is constantly growing to a point where it is a burden. The speaker is trying to “keep it in proportion” (line 4) like one would try to do to their weight.
ReplyDeleteThe structure of Donne’s poem includes five six-lined stanzas. In each stanza, the speaker walks the audience through the efforts he puts forward in order to constrict his growing love. The speaker constructs excuses for his woman when she sighs. In the second stanza, the speaker tries to contain this “burdenous corpulence” (line 2) by stating “And thought to feast upon that, I let him see/ ‘Twas neither very sound, not meant to me” (lines 11-22). When his object of affection sighs or looks at him, the speaker wants to feed his “hunger” by replying, yet he dismisses it. Secondly, when his lady looks at him he retorts, “For eyes, which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat” (line 18). The speaker implies that just because the lady looked at him, it does not mean anything because she looks at everyone. Therefore, he is not a special case and the speaker should not read deeply into the lady’s actions. Moreover, the speaker is the “fortieth name in an entail” (line 24) meaning that he is one of many (forty in this case) that has fallen for this woman and thus he will not make a difference. Subsequently, the speaker goes to great lengths to stay on his diet by burning the letters she writes to him (line 20). If not, it may make him “fat”. The imagery of food and nourishment is supported by his use of the words, “feed”, “fat”, “brined”, “meat”, “nourish’d” and “drink”. All of these words give an image of food and the appetite. This therefore continues to support the personification of love as being put on a diet. All in all, the speaker can be portrayed as trying to curb his emotional appetite.