Batter my heart

Batter my heart

1. Context

   • Written after Donne was asked to be an Anglican priest, the poem expresses his inner desperation and mental turmoil, Donne wants to let God into his life yet feels he is too weak, he is asking God to push himself in and the poem contains many violent images. The poem was shocking for its time and still has the power to shock as the four stanzas chart the struggle Donne undergoes.
   • before this sonnets were almost always abut a speakers love for a woman

2. Audience

   • Plausible that he could have read them to an audience of friends hence the shocking quality, not likely to have been read in a sermon due to controversial nature of ideas.

3. Purpose

   • This poem is an appeal to God, pleading with Him not for mercy or clemency or benevolent aid but for a violent, almost brutal overmastering.

4. From

   • ABBAABBACDDCEE rhyme scheme
   • loose iambic pentameter
     • rhythm like a marching army; want god to march into his besieged town where the speaker is captive
   • Petrarchan sonnet

5. Imagery/ lexis

   • Paradox
     • "Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me"the speaker claims that only if God takes him prisoner can he be free, and only if God ravishes him can he be chaste.
   • Lexis
     • A lexical set of violence is prevalent throughout the poem
   • Extended metaphor
     • Want god to attack the Town he is captive in order to capture it thus making a holy sin-free place "like a usurp'd town"

6. Grammar

   • Imperative voice
     • to order God to punish him, the use of the first person possessive pronoun ‘my’ centres the poem on Donne making it a personal appeal and a personal struggle with the issue of his faith,
   • Enjabment
     • used makes the opening sentence complex which is indicative of the complex nature of the argument.
   • Syndetic and asyndetic listing
     • show the strength of his feelings, here he is referring to god as a carpenter as he entreats him to ‘mend’ him.

7. Phonology

   • – show the strength of his feelings, here he is referring to god as a carpenter as he entreats him to ‘mend’ him.

8. Content

   • On one hand there is intimacy, a genuine affection towards God, but one the other, you can also construe there is a serious disrespect for god
   • Tension between the physical attraction and a spiritual for of love; reflective of the context of the sonnet, the context is central to the sonnet's meaning