2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

Introduction

The research question I will be investigating is “To what degree are the issues of sex, love and gender similar and different within the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy and John Donne?”. This is a comparative research question and as such, the task will be to compare and contrast the treatment of sex, love and gender by these poets. Whilst on the surface, the 17 th century metaphysical poet, John Donne and the 21 st century feminist poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy seem to write about widely different themes – on a closer analysis, one can recognize some fascinating similarities. For instance, with John Donne’s poem, ‘The Good Morrow’, whilst the narrator is male and the female voice is silenced, the concept of all-consuming mutual and respectful love is nevertheless explored. The thematic perspective of John Donne’s poetry, coincidentally, resembles Carol Ann Duffy’s love poem ‘Tea’; where the female narrator shows her devotion, love and respect for her partner through the ritual of making tea, just as John Donne’s male speaker does in the poem ‘The Good Morrow’. In this, we see one example of vastly different poets with vastly different contextualisations yet remarkably similar ideas. This link between the ages, despite all indications to the contrary, is what makes this study so fascinating. My methodology throughout this essay has been to select a range of poems by John Donne and Carol Ann Duffy, finally choosing the six that I found most applicable to my thesis. After this I commenced my close reading of the poems and developed my own interpretations of the poems, later to be backed up by secondary research. After my poetry analysis was completed, I then began comparing the ideas and concepts between Carol Ann Duffy and John Donne by placing the two poets on a spectrum of

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