Aristotle’s Poetics v. Donne’s “The Sun Rising”

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For Aristotle, the substance of poetry consists of a kind of rhythmic quality that is unmistakably unique to the field. Moreover, Poetics suggests that the nature of a poetic artist’s rhythm or meter is a kind of “calling card” for that artist. Nevertheless, John Donne defies this dichotomy, particularly in “The Sun Rising.” While Aristotle teaches and perceives a world in which all poetic creations are more or less uniform, Donne’s blending of hyperbole and alternative pentameter illustrate his range and, in so doing, the evolution of poetic rhythmic schemes.

In “The Sun Rising,” each stanza’s rhyme scheme is in the ABBACDCDEE form. The three uniform stanzas are each ten lines long and with varying meter. The first, fifth and sixth lines are metered in iambic tetrameter, but the second line is in dimeter and the third, fourth and seventh lines are in pentameter. As such, Donne’s variation on his rhythmic metering tends to cut against Aristotle’s sense of an artist’s metering habits as more or less consistent as an identifiable calling card.

Similarly, Aristotle’s sense is that various subject matter requires specific forms of construction in order to make good on their thematic core. In other words, more dramatic forms of poetry cannot, for Aristotle, truly be blended with more comedic ones. And yet, Donne’s poetry, including “The Sun Rising,” is a hyperbolic exercise in illustrating the metaphysical primacy of love. For Donne, the comedic and dramatic can coexist and, as such, his narrator can both emerge as a reliable one for the reader, while at the same time also insisting that a reality of his own making is superior to the actual reality.

Ultimately, Aristotle’s treatment of poetry is somewhat less evolved than Donne’s poetry, which is natural in that Aristotle’s treatment arrives far earlier than Donne’s work.

Works Cited

Aristotle. Poetics. The Internet Classics Archive. 17 Mar. 2014. Web.

Donne, John. “The Sun Rising.” Poetryfoundation.org. 17 Mar. 2014. Web.