38 Generative AI Model Essay

I will be using John Donne’s poem “The Canonization” for each AI-generated model essay. Read through the poem again first, then read the AI-generated essay. Finally, review my annotations on the essay, where I have highlighted terms to use, corrected the AI’s mistakes, and added some things that are missing, most notably, a thesis statement. Reviewing these examples may give you some ideas about how you can use generative AI in your own approaches to texts. When generative artificial intelligence is used to augment thinking, it’s a useful tool. But if we try to use it to replace thinking, we’re not learning what we need to know.

This is a fairly prosaic and conventional essay, and it lacks a coherent approach, but there are some things we can work with, as I’ve noted in my annotations below. Especially when you’re working with a new or unfamiliar critical lens, using an AI model essay as a starting point might help you to identify search terms and knowledge gaps. It can also suggest a few different avenues that you could explore in your own essay.

“Psychoanalyzing Love: Freudian Insights into John Donne’s ‘The Canonization'”

“The Canonization” by John Donne is a poem that explores the theme of love and its various stages. Through the use of Freudian analysis, we can gain a deeper understanding of the psychological motivations behind the speaker’s actions and emotions. You can kind of see how ChatGPT works with this opening paragraph. It takes the words from my prompt and regurgitates them back to me. I don’t really see a thesis statement that uses psychological criticism here. But reading through the essay, I can piece one together. Here’s what I come up with: When analyzed through a Freudian lens, John Donne’s “The Canonization” provides examples of the pleasure principle, sublimation, and the speaker’s unconscious desire for self destruction. 

The speaker in the poem is deeply in love with his beloved, and is willing to suffer for her love. This is evident in lines such as “For God’s sake hold your tongue and let me love,” which shows the speaker’s intense desire to be with his beloved, even if it means sacrificing his own happiness. This is an example of the Freudian concept of the pleasure principle, where the speaker is driven by his desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. The pleasure principle is an actual Freudian concept. But this paragraph doesn’t really make sense. While the first line might indicate the speaker’s desire for the beloved, sacrificing his own happiness would not be an example of the pleasure principle, where we seek pleasure. For Jeremy Bentham, the English utilitarian philosopher, pleasure and happiness are synonymous. 

Another aspect of the poem that can be analyzed through a Freudian lens is the speaker’s use of religious imagery. The speaker compares his love to a religious devotion, and speaks of himself and his beloved as “saints” and “canonized.” This can be seen as a manifestation of the speaker’s desire to elevate his love to a higher level, and to make it something sacred and holy. This is in line with Freud’s idea of sublimation, where individuals channel their unconscious desires into more socially acceptable forms. The use of religious imagery is undoubtedly an important feature of this poem, as we have seen in previous model essays. However, with psychological criticism, we’d want to consider this imagery in terms of the psychological theory, so this paragraph made me want to learn more about what Freud thought of religion. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Freud’s thought on religion is, perhaps fittingly, rather complex and ambivalent: while there can be little doubt as to its roundly skeptical, and at times hostile, character, it is nonetheless clear that he had a firm grounding in Jewish religious thought and that the religious impulse held a life-long fascination for him” (IEP).  I think this is one of the more interesting aspects of the AI essay, so interesting, in fact, that I might use this as an idea generator for an essay of my own. Sublimation (as the AI correctly notes) is when we change socially unacceptable impulses into action that is socially acceptable. That’s exactly what Donne is trying to do with his marriage. 

Additionally, the speaker’s use of language in the poem can also be analyzed through a Freudian lens. The speaker uses words such as “consumed,” “waste,” and “martyr,” which suggest that the speaker is willing to sacrifice himself for his beloved. This can be seen as an expression of the speaker’s unconscious desire for self-destruction, which is a common trait in those suffering from unrequited love. There’s a Freudian term that would be better to use here: Death drive. This is the opposite of the pleasure principle. You may see these two terms contrasted as eros and thanatos. It might also be interesting to explore how these two Freudian concepts play out in the poem. 

In conclusion, “The Canonization” by John Donne is a complex poem that explores the theme of love and its various stages. Through the use of Freudian analysis, we can gain a deeper understanding of the psychological motivations behind the speaker’s actions and emotions, including his intense desire to be with his beloved, his desire to elevate his love to a higher level, and his willingness to sacrifice himself for his beloved. With psychological criticism, we can focus on the poem’s speaker (or a novel’s characters), but it would also be acceptable to consider what the poem revealed about the poet’s mind, and I think there’s a lot of room to work with here. The paragraph on sublimation would work well within the context of the poet’s frame of mind.