Sample "Culture Changed and Literature Changed With It" Issues:

Castiglioni and Marvell (Can Humans Improve?), and Julian-Donne (What Gender is God?)

        Castiglioni (Bembo's "Ladder of Love") and Marvell ("To His Coy Mistress") both make literary uses of their eras' attitudes toward human capacities for improvement by means of love, and Julian of Norwich (Showings) and John Donne (HS #14: "Batter My Heart") make literary uses of religious doctrines about the gendered nature of God or divine love's manner of working in the soul.  Were you to get some historical research that gave you a testable principle about the cultural norms for either of those attitudes in the eras in which the authors wrote, you would have the tool you would need to pick the lock on either the Castiglioni-Marvell comparison or Julian-Donne.  In both cases, you're looking at pre- and post-Reformation English religious doctrine, i.e., the difference between Medieval (Catholic) Christian attitudes toward human spiritual "improveability" or the gendered God, and Modern Anglican Protestant attitudes toward those concepts.  The differences are numerous and profound in their effects upon the authors' use of those concepts in the poems, and on their audiences' understanding of the poems.