An Analysis of Donne’s A Valediction: of Weeping Essay -- Valediction

An Analysis of Donnes A adieu of cry William Empson begins his critical essay on John Donnes A Valediction of lachrymose with the statement below. Empson here plays the provocateur for the critic who wishes to disagree with the notion that Donnes intentions were possibly less than the sincere valediction of a weeping gentlemans gentleman. Indeed, A Valediction concerns a parting Donne is going to sea and is leaving his nameless, loved former(a) in England, and the Valediction is his emotive poesy describing the moment. ...the lyric poem of A Valediction of express emotion is picnic through with a suspicion which for once he is too piano or too preoccupied to state unambiguously, that when he is g star she allow for be unfaithful to him. Those critics who say the poem is sincere, by the way... know not what they do. --- William Empson, A Valediction of Weeping, John Donne a Collection of Critical Essays (ed. H. Gardner) at that place is little argument as to what Donne is feeling at surface take he is sorrowful and grieving because he must be apart from his loved one, who has become his world (a metaphor which is carried out in the befriend stanza). Empson is indeed correct when he says that the poem is not unambiguous. There is a large range of interpretations that can be made based upon the language in the poem, and these atomic number 18 focused around the source of Donnes grief. It is easy for one to picture a grieving sailor leaving his caramel, but what makes this man grieve? It is the innate love between two mass who are intensely focused upon each another(prenominal) which must be institutionalise on hold? Is it some additive emotion that consists of two people who are about to suffer separation and loss of a lover? Or is it, as Empson p... ..., Donne and his lover/other struggle with their sadness expert before separation. Donne realizes that this may be a futile goal, but he also sees the importance of composure if their rela tionship - his world - that he ascribe to her is going succeed. Donne seems to have no dearth of sincerity in this poem. He is also purposeful in writing it Donne himself was a man of extensive passion, and who had to go out to sea. A Valediction of Weeping seems not to be the valediction of a jealous lover, but of a conscientious other making a concerted effort not to let jealousy and self-pity control his farewell to a lover. Works CitedDonne, John. A Valediction Of Weeping. The Longman Anthology of British Literature Volume 1A. 2nd ed. Ed. Damrosch, David, Christopher Baswell and Anne Howland Schotter. New York Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc, 2003.