Love in To His Coy Mistress and The Flea
Both 'To His Coy Mistress', by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) and 'The
Flea', by John Donne (1572-1631) present different attitudes to love.
Both are also structured very differently and occasionally use
contrasting imagery. Each poem was written in the 17th century, just
after the Renaissance. The poets were metaphysical poets. Although the
'metaphysic' was originally a derogatory term, metaphysical poetry
used intellectual and theological concepts in an ingenious way.
Metaphysical poetry was partly written in rebellion against the highly
conventional Elizabethan love poetry just prior to the time.
Conventional love poetry what one would generally expect of a love
poem. A perhaps typical love poem of the era would have been: 'Shall I
Compare Thee To A Summer's Day,' by William Shakespeare (16th sonnet)
where lavish compliments and imagery are used to flatter. 'The Flea'
and 'To His Coy Mistress', however, are very unconventional and like
most metaphysical poetry are the complete opposite of what a reader
might expect of love poetry. The poems do this by using the
'metaphysical conceit', where an elaborate metaphor or simile is used
to present an unusually apt parallel between dissimilar things or
feelings. This is shown especially in 'The Flea'. The poems also
tended to challenge conventional rhythm, using a ragged, irregular
movement.
The consummation of love is presented as a tiny, insignificant
creature in 'The Flea', through one basic central image. The imagery
symbolises the act of love to make it seem trivial, this being the
speaker's main argument. This implies that love is not part...
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changes to suit the lover's actions. This is significant as it shows
that although he appears dominant in the relationship, he is still
completely reliant on the lover. This indicates that typical relations
between men and women were that men had the power over women in a
sense, yet here this woman's permission is essential.
The fact that Marvell uses time imagery is relevant to love in the 21st
century as his issue that time is always 'hurrying near' (L.22) seems
to give Carpe Diem a great significance. It seems that his strong
confidence can have great influence on not only the lady that he is
wooing but also the world. The passion expressed and the underlying
message translates into the modern cliché that life is simply 'too
short' to suppress true love.
¹ Note: This point was researched on the Internet.
John Donne's view of love deviated greatly from the Medieval philosophy of courtly love, which had been expressed in poetry handed down from the sonnets of such poetic giants as Sidney and Petrarch. The general verse until then had focused greatly on the unrivalled importance of love in the context of the life of the poet (or his creation's voice). Until then, "love" had consisted mostly of an obsession with one woman, and an exploration of the feelings and situations that this caused in the narrator.
Though some may argue that the speaker in Marvell’s poem loves his mistress, he comes across as experiencing no emotion aside from lust. The speaker merely mentions the word “love” three times, all in the first stanza. Nowhere does the speaker connect this so-called love with his girlfriend’s personality traits, but always with her physical appearance. The speaker explains that if he had all the time in the world, he would adore for “an age at least” all the parts of her body and “the last age should show your heart” (17-18). The speaker’s overemphasis of his girlfriend’s body in place of concentration on her personality and heart – one’s more important traits – ...
to be scared out of her state of mind and into his beliefs. He starts
In the story, “Loves Executioner”, Yalom treats and old woman named “Thelma” that is overly obsessed with a man named Matthew, her former therapist from ten years ago. Yalom feeling though that he is drawn to the facets of her dilemma decides to do everything he can to empower Thelma move past the obsessions that had been wrecking havoc on her mental health. Although Thelma’s love obsession with her therapist, and her subjective experiences on life of what is preventing her from living in the present, Yalom attempts to treat a 70-year-old woman only to learn that being love executioner more complicated as he had anticipated.
trying to portray a message to us: It is not what is on the outside
Different Ways of Expressing Ideas About Love in The Beggar Woman, To His Coy Mistress, My Last Duchess, How Do I Love Thee and Remember
Love is a type of language, feeling, and action that is universal, yet so unclearly defined. The earliest form of love that can be felt and expressed usually takes place in the family. Through maturation, love is introduced in a different light, one that is often romanticized and idealized. Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse and Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Extreme Solitude” provide their own, realistic take on love. However, they do not explicitly define love, but attempt to describe it in the most familiar way to the audience: in the perspective of a lover. Though love is a type of interpersonal relationship, it is essentially intrapersonal as humans cannot share the emotions of another.
Lover A Ballad was written as a reply to the poem To His Coy Mistress.
Perhaps it is Shakespeare’s last unspoken word on the concept of love: childlike and mischievous. For those under love’s spell, perception becomes distorted in the subjectivity of the imagination rather than the objectivity of truth. Helena’s metaphor effectively imparts Shakespeare’s notion that Love has a beguiling and capricious nature. For Shakespeare, lover’s left disillusioned and irrational is conceivably the happiest
In the days of Shakespeare, marriages were not commonly made for love, but rather for power, wealth or even just so that a parent could be assured care at an advanced age. Such marriages were made very young, and most times arranged between the parents of the two who were to be wed, or between the bridegroom and the parents of the bride. In looking at A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this notion is not exempt. In fact, it is almost emphasized throughout the play. Shakespeare’s comedy offers an exposition of a person’s wish for dominance over the emotional states of those that they love, represented by the tandem conflicts that bridge the mortal and supernatural worlds. The more the characters fight to control the affections of their counterparts, the more it becomes clear that they have virtually no control over where the objects of their affection’s own love lies, such as that of Hermia and her father’s wishes, Oberon and Titania, and a role reversal in the case of Helena and Demetrius. Although the play is meant to be as absurdly comedic as possible (and, indeed, even the great trickster Robin Goodfellow apologizes in the end for its ridiculousness), this central theme truly reflects the flavor of a changing era, where outside arrangements of love were beginning to be traded in western Europe for arrangements from the heart.
The two poems The Flea and The Sunne Rising capture John Donne’s primary motive to get in bed with women. Donne wrote these poems at an early age, and at that time he was seeking nothing more than a sexual relationship. His poetry depicted clearly how sexist he was at the time and how he used to perceive women as a medium of pleasure. The content of his early poems express an immature and desperate image of Donne, who is dominated by his fixation on the sensuality of women. In The Flea, Donne shows his desperation to have sex by addressing a flea that has sucked the blood of both him and the woman he is persuading. It is quite awkward how the poet uses this obscure image of the flea as a symbol of love and sex to convince the woman that...
Human desires plague the male mind causing him to go to drastic measures to acquire his wish. John Donne writes his poem “The Flea”, using unlikely symbolism to create an almost humorous, metaphysical love poem. In “The Flea”, the narrator uses the unique symbol of a flea in an attempt to coax his poor mistress to bed. Throughout the entire poem, the flea is symbolic, being compared to acts of marriage, sin, and sex. Overall, Donne depicts a needy lover using a most strange symbol, in his three-part argument, to moralize getting his mistress to sleep with him.
The Flea and To His Coy Mistress are two poems written by poets living during the Renaissance Period. To His Coy Mistress was written by Andrew Marvell and The Flea was written by John Donne. Both of these poets were well-educated 'metaphysical poets', and these poems illustrate metaphysical concerns, highly abstract and theoretical ideas, that the poets would have been interested in. Both poems are based around the same idea of trying to reason with a 'mistress' as to why they should give up their virginity to the poet.
In Redeeming Love Angel starts off refusing to have any hope, but after a few visits from Michael she feels herself starting to believe again and “[t]he hope she thought long-since dead was resurrected.” (199) After she and Michael are married she lives in his cabin with him and though she wants to be free from her past and pretend those horrible things hadn’t happened “[t]hey had, and they left deep, raw, gaping wounds. Even when the wounds healed, there were scars.” (254) These scars remind her of how awful her life was and make her hesitant to hope for something better. Michael can see her struggling to forgive herself and be hopeful, therefore, since they are married and he knows sex was the one thing that had always caused her pain and
"Sonnet 130," by William Shakespeare, is probably a mockery of love poems of his era which focus mainly on comparing the loved one to nature and heavenly characteristics. An example of such poems is "Epithalamion," by Edmund Spenser, which sticks to the conventionality of it's time. Shakespeare's style used conveys his love for his "mistress" in an honest and sincere way without "false compare," which makes it more acceptable than the poems of his time. He does not in anyway think of his love as a goddess or a heavenly creature, but in spite of that, his love "as rare," which makes it realistic and charming at the same time.