The Apparition - John Donne Revision Guide

Student Revision Guide
This Revision Guide offers 7 clear sections: Overview; Form and Structure; Close Analysis; Key Themes; Context; Critical Perspectives; Study Questions and Extension Activities.
The Close Analysis section follows the poem as three movements within a single sentence: the scorned lover’s promise to return when she believes him dead; the haunting itself, the sick taper, the partner who feigns sleep, and the woman left an aspen wretch in a cold quicksilver sweat; and the refusal to say what the ghost will speak, since his love is spent and he would rather she painfully repent. Form and Structure examines the seventeen-line sentence, its rough pentameter broken by three short, indented lines, and its echo and distortion of the sonnet. Context covers Renaissance beliefs about ghosts, revenge tragedy, and the medical language of fever and mercury. Critical Perspectives asks whether the poem exposes the rejected lover’s vindictiveness or indulges it.

Quotation Quilt
A selection of key quotations from ‘The Apparition’, arranged to support the themes and concepts an essay on this poem is most likely to need.
Quotations are grouped by murd’ress and scorn; the feigned vestal; the sick taper and the ghost’s visit; the aspen wretch and cold quicksilver sweat; a verier ghost than I; and the threatening silence of what he will not say.