Personas & Conceits

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The transition from Petrarch's eyes and angels to Donne's fleas and compasses has begun. As noted in class today, we will be analyzing poetry for the speaker's persona, the character the author adopts to create the tone and theme of the poem. In our comparison of "Glorious Fame" and "The Indifferent," your class picked personas such as "preacher" and "boss" to describe the Petrarchan speaker's directions to the immoral women of society and "scorned lover" to clarify the Donne's speakers comprehension of relationships. As we interpret Donne's songs next week, we will spend some quality time discussing all of Donne's personas and his conceits, the extended metaphors occupying many of his poetic works. 

On Monday, we will have peer evaluation day for the New Historicist essay. You will need to have a hard copy for this activity. Final drafts are due by Friday, October 9, at 3:30 p.m. in hard copy form.