John Donne And Cecile Day Lewis - 1088 Words

Since definition of love and its representation varies person to person and in the past it has already been represented in various ways, which leads one to presume that language is insufficient to represent love. However, it is evident that the language has proved to be sufficient enough to not only analyze, dissect and explain the feelings of love from so many angles including biologically. Subversions of conventions of love is not the matter of insufficiency of language but a matter of how a poet experiences love or how a poet chooses to express those experiences. It is mainly the poet’s era and life experiences that dictate how he/she represents love. Thomas Wyatt, John Donne and Cecile Day Lewis are good examples of how life experiences can determine the poets’ divergence of traditional courtly and pastoral love. An abreast analysis of the above poets’ lives and their works allow us to draw parallels between their life experiences and their subversions of conventions of love. Thomas Wyatt’s subversion of courtly love was influenced by his intimate relation with the women. Sir Thomas Wyatt, an English ambassador suffered from his wife’s infidelity and his mistress’s marriage with his king and later her execution. Due to his position of being an ambassador of England left him no choice but to represent love in courtly and patriarchal manner. Wyatt was deeply affected by the infidelity of his first wife and the execution of his mistress at the hands of the monarch. For