Topic 3 (session B) - Patterns, Deviations, Style and Meaning > Extended parallelism: literary examples > Task A

Extended parallelism: literary examples

Task A - 'The Indifferent'

We will start this exploration by looking at the first stanza of 'The Indifferent' by the seventeenth century poet John Donne , a very religious man but also a man who had an intense fascination with sex! 'The Indifferent' is a poem in which the male persona tries, via an argumentative conceit to persuade womankind that to love many (or be 'false') is better than to love one (or be 'true'). In the first stanza of the poem the persona says that he can love many different kinds of women.

Below is the first line of the first stanza of the poem. Read it carefully and then read the commentary on it. Then, each time you click on 'Next' you will receive a further line of the stanza and the comment will change to relate to the parallelism in that line. In this way you can see how the parallelism builds up in the poem and what effects it has.

If you would like to view the full version of this poem you can do so at the The Literature Network website.

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