Serious Humor in To His Importunate Mistress, by Peter de Vries

585 Words2 Pages

There are two sides to every story. Where one might see love and passion another sees burden and indifference. Such is the case with Peter de Vries “To His Importunate Mistress”, a comedic parody of the 17th century work by Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”. Peter de Vries uses satire and rhyme as a way to present a humorous approach to the reality and consequence of a modern day extra-marital affair.

While poetry is a literary art that takes on many somber subjects, some feel that humor and profound thought reside on opposite ends of the spectrum. In reality, the use of humor can open a pathway to a new perspective, yet still maintain depth and meaning. With “To His Importunate Mistress”, the narrator accomplishes this by separating concepts and finding their opposite meaning; dividing words, gender and symbols. While the subject being parodied is a somber story of love, Peter de Vries presents the tale of adultery with less merit.

The opposing view begins with the title and establishes a tone by substituting the word coy with importunate. When one reads the word coy, its syn...

Show More
Related

  • Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail

    2206 Words  | 5 Pages

    Professor’s comment: This student uses a feminist approach to shift our value judgment of two works in a surprisingly thought-provoking way. After showing how female seduction in Malory’s story of King Arthur is crucial to the story as a whole, the student follows with an equally serious analysis of Monty Python’s parody of the female seduction motif in what may be the most memorable and hilarious episode of the film.

    Read More

  • Pictorial Narratives: Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode

    1588 Words  | 4 Pages

    Hogarth's remarkably exuberant satire of marriage for money, his pungent details of upper-class life, and his mastery of complex scenes find perhaps their highest expression in this series, generally considered his finest work. (Encarta). Although critics have commented that the series progresses somewhat abruptly, with little idea of what occurs in between the six scenes, rarely is any one painting referred to independent of the others. But because of the complexity of each scene, the paintings, The Marriage Contract and The Téte-à-Téte in particular, can easily stand by themselves as brilliant satires of arranged marriage in the 18th century. Such is the genius of Hogarth.

    Read More

  • The Knight and the Cart

    1463 Words  | 3 Pages

    Very different from traditional writings of the past was the new flourish of troubadour poetry. Troubadour poetry, derived of courtly romances, focused on the idea of unrequited love. “A young man of the knightly class loved a lady”, most often, “the lady was married to the young man’s lord”. The courtly lover would compose highly lyrical and erotic poems in honor of his lady, and the troubadour was filled with rapture even at the slightest kindness that the lady might offer him.3 This new literary artifice provides us clues to the cultural changes that took place in medieval Europe during this time.

    Read More

  • Comparison: Marriage, by Gregory Corso & The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot

    2128 Words  | 5 Pages

    A common practice when faced with a difficult choice, self-examination, is the centerpiece of two popular poems: Gregory Corso’s Marriage and T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Both poems are dramatic monologues in which the speakers address the similar situations that they find themselves in. While the speaker of Eliot’s poem has a nervous and bashful approach in his attempts at romance, the hesitant postmodern speaker in Corso’s poem makes use of sarcasm to attack the institution of marriage. When these two monologues given by similar personas are analyzed together the result is a dialogue which discusses two distinguishing views on the ideas of romance and love.

    Read More

  • Role of Gender in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

    935 Words  | 2 Pages

    Everyone in the literary world is familiar with Shakespeare's two “star-crossed lovers” Romeo and Juliet. Their love story, doomed by fate and feuding families has been an inspiration to many other literary works, movies and even music. Yet it is unknown what makes these couple’s story to popular and interesting across the globe. Is it their youth, their love of first sight quickly followed by their terrific death, the tragic events that lead to their demise, or a mixture of possibilities? One aspect of the play that causes an image in the reader' mind and has a profound impact is the exquisite language of Shakespeare. The language gives each character a distinct personality and character; each character has a different sense of humor, wit and love. Shakespeare’s words show society in Verona, different beliefs, values, and behaviors in both men and women are present in his play. The main characters of the play, Romeo and Juliet, are even affected by these beliefs and value, but mainly role of gender.

    Read More

  • Structural and Textural Irony

    997 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...into works of literary art. In particular, structural and textural ironies, in conjunction with other literary elements, can add dimension to short stories to help enhance their literary merit. The dynamics of these short stories are then studied for years and years in the scholarly world. Through the use of the previous four short stories the impact and influence derived from textual and structural ironies are exemplified in great detail. Zora Neale Hurston, William Sydney Porter, Guy de Maupassant, and Nathaniel Hawthorn heavily incorporate these two forms of irony into their stories in order to achieve a greater literary merit. While doing so structural and textural ironies have managed to also intrigue their audiences to read further, present a moral warning to their readers, and finally provoke discussion through adding depth and purpose to their contents.

    Read More

  • The Lanyard by Billy Collins

    707 Words  | 2 Pages

    The popular American Poet, Billy Collins, is playing a significant role in the evolution of poetry. His writing style evokes an array of emotions for the reader. Every stanza in his poetry passes the satirical standard that he generated for himself over his career. Collins swiftly captivates his readers through his diverse use of figurative language. More specifically, his use of vivid imagery paired with humorous personification and extended metaphors create his unique style of satirical poetry. This developed form of writing appeals to a large crowd of people because the generally accessible topics that he discusses are fairly easy to resonate for the common man. However, his poetry offers an interesting perspective on what otherwise would be simplistic ideas. The main themes and concepts that are being presented in each of his writings are revered and coveted by the general population. An appealing aspect of his writing is his ability to directly convey the main idea within the poem. As a result, the reader can understand the meaning of his work with ease. The typical beginning of his work gives the reader a slight taste of what is to come. Billy Collins’ unique writing style and various trademarks directly influenced by his ability to propagate an array of emotions for the reader, his humorous tone, and the accessibility of the topics he describes within his poetry.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Shakespeare's Loves Labours Lost

    949 Words  | 2 Pages

    Shakespeare’s story, Love Labour’s Lost, focuses the story on the endearing lust of men. Women are a powerful force, so in order to persuade them men will try to use a variety of different resources in order to attract the opposite sex. Men will often use their primal instincts like a mating call, which could equivocate today to whistling at a woman as she walks by. With the use of lies to tell a girl what she wants to hear, the musk cologne in order to make you appear more sensual, or the cliché use of the love poem, men strive to appeal to women with the intent to see his way into her heart. William Shakespeare is a man, who based on some of his other works, has a pretty good understand and is full of passion for the opposite sex. Nonetheless, whether it had been honest love or perverse lust, Shakespeare, along with most men, aimed to try to charm women. With keeping this understanding of Shakespeare in mind, his weapon of choice, to find his portal way into a woman’s heart, was his power of writing.

    Read More

  • Comparing Women in A Man's Requirements and A Letter to Her Husband

    644 Words  | 2 Pages

    Authors use poetry to creatively present attitudes and opinions. “A Man’s Requirements,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” are two poems with distinct attitudes about love that contain different literary approaches. In both of the poems, love is addressed from a different perspective, producing the difference in expectation and presentation, but both suggest the women are subservient in the relationships.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Litany by Billy Collins

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    How does one define a perfect match? Society defines two equally attractive individuals as perfectly matched, and that a woman’s beauty defines her attractiveness. In “Litany,” Collin’s speaker presents and describes a true, unconditional and unequally relationship as a picture-perfect puzzle. The speaker names characteristics and attributes that his lover lacks while also listing others attributes in as backhanded manner. While using “you” the speaker portrays and addresses his lover with unusual comparisons and with ordinarily undesirable. He describes himself more attractively and the fact that despite his superior characteristics, he still needs and loves her. Many of his comments are backhanded with double meanings. “Litany” much like Shakespeare’s, “My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing Like Sun,” mocks the perfection and romantic idealism of love. Through metaphors, an effective use of syntax, structure, and contrast, Collins effectively conveys humorous satire towards traditional love poems while describing a view of a perfect match.

    Read More

  • Character Development in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

    551 Words  | 2 Pages

    "What say you? can you love the gentleman? This night you shall behold him at our feast; Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face, And find delight writ there with beauty's pen; Examine every married lineament, And see how one another lends content; And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies Find written in the margent of his eyes. This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him, only lacks a cover: The fish lives in the sea; and 'tis much pride For fair without the fair within to hide: That book in many's eyes doth share the glory, That in gold clasps locks in the golden story; So shall you share all that he doth possess, By having him, maki...

    Read More

  • The Wife of Bath: Illustrating Courtly Love

    960 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is written in an entertaining and adventurous spirit, but serves a higher purpose by illustrating the century’s view of courtly love. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other pieces of literature written in the same century prevail to commemorate the coupling of breathtaking princesses with lionhearted knights after going through unimaginable adventures, but only a slight few examine the viability of such courtly love and the related dilemmas that always succeed. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that women desire most their husband’s love, Overall, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that the meaning of true love does not stay consistent, whether between singular or separate communities and remains timeless as the depictions of love from this 14th century tale still hold true today.

    Read More

  • The Scorned Lover of Sir Philip Sidney's "Sonnet 31"

    713 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sir Philip Sidney’s “Sonnet 31” paints the portrait of a lover scorned. Sidney examines the subject of unrequited love through the sonnet’s male persona, Astrophel. Rather than using a precise enumeration of the sequence of events that led to Astrophel’s painful rejection, Sidney instead leaves the reader to infer the condition of the speaker based on a scene in which Astrophel projects his sorrows onto the moon. Unable to accept the cruelties the “beauties” of his world perpetrate against those who love them and moreover unable to make his particular “beauty” reciprocate his feelings, Astrophel seeks to delineate his understanding of the injustices of unrequited love to an audience devoid of the capacity to either disagree with his assessment or further injure his already wounded pride.

    Read More

  • Essay On Everyman In His Humor By Alexander Pope

    532 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Rape of the Lock deals with the issues of vanity, frivolity, conceit, pride and the indulgence of elite of the English society in trivial matters of love, romance, sexuality and flirtation. In the mock-...

    Read More

  • Critical Appreciation Of Sonnet 130

    962 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, the speaker ponders the beauty, or the lack thereof, of his lover. Throughout the sonnet, the speaker presents his lover as an unattractive mistress with displeasing features, but in fact, the speaker is ridiculing, through the use of vivid imagery, the conventions of love poems and the way woman are portrayed through the use of false comparisons. In the end, the speaker argues that his mistress may not be perfect, but in his eyes, her beauty is equal to any woman who is abundantly admired and put through the untrue comparison.

    Read More

More about Serious Humor in To His Importunate Mistress, by Peter de Vries

Open Document