John Donne’s “The Flea” details the attempts of a lover to convince his partner of the insignificance of physical love through conceit. The desperate lover hopes to woo ahesitant woman to have sex with him because physical love means nothing. Donne utilizes biblical allusions through symbolism and slant rhyme as the speaker builds and rebuilds his crooked case for the unimportance of sex. When the action of the poem shifts, the speaker’s argument shifts accordingly. The flea transforms into a symbol of the conscience that is the main obstacle to the physical love that the speaker seeks. Through the speaker and overstatement, Donne satirically asserts that physical love is not important, mocking a theme of contemporary carpe diem poems.
In his first argument, the speaker attempts to persuade the woman that making love with him will be as insignificant as the flea’s bite that has taken blood from them. He begins by stating the sex that “thou deniest me” (Donne 2) means nothing, just like the flea’s bite. The bite remains a small mark on her body: the mark on her conscience from having sex
Donne develops this idea through the symbolism of the flea and the twisted imagery of the Trinity. He uses slant rhyme to depict the man’s slanted argument and stretched logic, which highlight the man’s crooked idea of what physical love is. Donne’s use of slant rhyme and hyperbole mock other poems that praise women with flowery language in an attempt to charm them into bed. In contrast, the speaker here uses crude arguments meant to woo this woman to sex with him.Renaissance carpe diem poems speak about enjoying physical love within one’s short-lived youth. “The Flea” touches on fleeting love too; the body with the blood of life and love may soon be squished. However, there are consequences which always entail physical love. These consequences might be the real
Stated in the first metaphor of the poem, “How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice skaters” (lines 1-3) captures an image of two lovers gliding over one another like an abstract artistic painting in a simile. The cold atmosphere indicates the disdain detachment between the lovers during the experience. In modern society, many believe in the “no strings attached” method as part of a liberation for one’s self. Yet, Olds creates a paradox in the imagery by describing the people “red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to five them away” (lines 6-8). In literal concept, the images display a child birth after an eventful sexual experience. When a child enters the world, it comes responsibility many young adults don’t care to handle, thus creating a narcissistic for the younger generation. Nevertheless, the syntax, form, and tone are broken down as Olds further answers her frustrations to society. A tonal shift reverted any ambiguities about these faceless sexual beings by describing them as “the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God” (lines 15-16). Without the great
Whether Donne wrote his poem for his wife or just touched a universal theme for of us to learn from, the huge apparent differences bring the mortal love between the speaker and his lady to a level of perfection and no journey can ever break that.
During the 17th century, certain poets wrote poems with the specific purpose of persuading a woman to have sexual intercourse with them. Three of these seduction poems utilize several strategies to do this: Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” and Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” and “The Flea.” Some of the reasoning used by both poets is similar to the reasoning used today by men to convince women to have sexual intercourse with them. These gimmicks vary from poem to poem but coincide with modern day rationalization. The tactics used in 17th century seduction poems are relevant and similar to the seduction tactics used in the 21st century.
John Donne's, "The Flea," is a persuasive poem in which the speaker is attempting to establish a sexual union with his significant other. However, based on the woman's rejection, the speaker twists his argument, making that which he requests seem insignificant. John Donne brings out and shapes this meaning through his collaborative use of conceit, rhythm, and rhyme scheme. In the beginning, Donne uses the flea as a conceit, to represent a sexual union with his significant other. For instance, in the first stanza a flea bites the speaker and woman. He responds to this incident by saying, "And in this flea our bloods mingled be."
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...
“The Flea” John Donne observes a typical bar, every Saturday night sweat drenched bodies emitting alcohol and pheromones from every pore, exchange conversation, pleasantries, and yes even sex (perhaps not directly in view but certainly eluded to). Is this animalistic, barbaric behavior acceptable? Should sex be taken so lightheartedly? Or do we take it too seriously, guarding sex like it was the Holy Grail, or the secret to life itself? These questions may be to deep and pointed for most to approach, yet John Donne in his poem “The Flea” wades through them like the kiddy pool. In this clever poem Donne uses a flea, blood, and the murder of the flea as an analogy for the oldest most primal exchange, sex. Donne, through symbolic images, not only questions the validity of coveting virginity but also the importance of sex as it pertains to life. The metaphors in “The Flea” are plentiful, but the symbols repeated throughout the poem are clear, beginning with the most prevalent, and the flea. This small parasitic creature is chalk full of symbolic meaning. During the time this poem was written (the Renaissance) the flea was use in many poems about sex. I derive that in this particular poem the flea is symbolic of the act of sex from the speaker’s remark in the beginning, “Mark but this flea, and mark in this, how little that which deniest me is” the flea is small and inconsequential, his lady denies him sex, which the speaker believes is also petty. The flea is described as a marriage temple and a carrier of life, but in the next stanza as something insignificant and small. The speaker applies a certain duality to the flea and therefore to sex. The metaphor develops more as it relates to the other symbols. Blood is used more than once a...
There is a similar theme running through both of the poems, in which both mistresses are refusing to partake in sexual intercourse with both of the poets. The way in which both poets present their argument is quite different as Marvell is writing from a perspective from which he is depicting his mistress as being 'coy', and essentially, mean, in refusing him sex, and Donne is comparing the blood lost by a flea bite to the blood that would be united during sex. Marvell immediately makes clear his thoughts in the poem when he says, "Had we but world enough, and time/ This coyness, Lady were no crime", he is conveying the 'carpe diem' idea that there is not enough time for her to be 'coy' and refuse him sexual intercourse and he justifies this thought when he suggests when she is dead, in ?thy marble vault?, and ?worms shall try that long preserved virginity?. He is using the idea of worms crawling all over and in her corpse as a way of saying that the worms are going to take her virginity if she waits until death. Donne justifies his bid for her virginity in a much longer and more methodical way, he uses the idea of the flea taking her blood and mixing it with his, ?It suck?d me first, and now sucks thee?, and then...
In both ‘The Sun Rising’ and ‘The Good Morrow’ Donne presents the experience of love, in a typical Metaphysical style, to engage his reader through sharing his own experiences. These poems show distinctive characteristics of Metaphysical poems which involve colloquial diction, drawing inventive imagery from unconventional sources, passionately analysing relationships and examining feelings. Donne presents the experience of love through conceits, Metaphysical wit, language techniques and imagery, in a confident tone using logical argument. The impact of Donne’s use of direct and idiomatic language shows the reader how he feels about a woman and ultimately love.
John Donne’s poems are similar in their content. They usually point out at same topics like love, lust, sex and religion; only they are dissimilar in the feelings they express. These subjects reflect the different stages of his life: the lust of his youth, the love of his married middle age, and the piety of the latter part of his life. His poem,’ The Flea’ represents the restless feeling of lust during his youthful days but it comes together with a true respect for women through the metaphysical conceit of the flea as a church in the rhythm of the sexual act.
On the surface, John Donne’s poem “The Flea” dramatizes the conflict between two people on the issue of premarital sex, however, under the surface, the poem uses religious imagery to seduce the woman into having sex. The speaker in this poem is a man, who is strategically trying to convince a woman to have premarital sex with him through the conceit based on a flea, however, the coy lady has thus far yielded to his lustful desires. The speaker’s argument has the form of logic, which contradicts to its outrageous content.
John Donne lived in an era when the lyric was at its pinnacle. Poets were writing well-rounded, almost musical poetry on subjects that ranged from all kinds of love to enchantment with nature. Donne could not help but revolt against this excess of fluency and melody. John Donne's style stands in such sharp contrast to the accepted Elizabethan lyrical style that it becomes difficult to accept the fact that his works date from the same era. To highlight this statement, one has to compare a typical Elizabethan lyric to one of Donne's works.
One of the last seventeenth century metaphysical poets, Andrew Marvell is known for his complex and allusive poetry (Press 208). In “to His Coy Mistress,” Marvell incorporates his belief in Neo-Platonism by focusing on the idea of carpe diem, which means, “seize the day” (208). He focuses attention on the transience of life and the inevitability of death to emphasize the urgency that men have to persuade women to engage in the act of sexual intercourse (Masterplots II 2209). In taking the idea of carpe diem and incorporating his Neo-Platonism beliefs, Andrew Marvell uses “To His Coy Mistress” as a warning to women of the male attitude towards love and relationships.
Lines 23 – 27. Donne’s approach to the topic plays an important role in the result in which the poem ends. Instead of being utterly romantic and persuading his lover in a kind and tender way, he is straightforward and not afraid to ask her what he wants. To a certain extent, the metaphor of a flea can be deemed as logical in the sense that if a flea bit them both their blood would have already been shared. In this poem, Donne breaks the barriers of Petrarchan poetry when using metaphysical wit and conceit to portray his feelings, making metaphysical poetry much more interesting and challenging.
John Donne, an English poet and clergyman, was one of the greatest metaphysical poets. His poetry was marked by conceits and lush imagery. The Flea is an excellent example of how he was able to establish a parallel between two very different things. In this poem, the speaker tries to seduce a young woman by comparing the consequences of their lovemaking with those of an insignificant fleabite. He uses the flea as an argument to illustrate that the physical relationship he desires is not in itself a significant event, because a similar union has already taken place within the flea. However, if we look beneath the surface level of the poem, Donne uses the presence of the flea as a comparison to the presence of a baby, thus making the sub textual plot about aborting the baby.
Despite the speaker’s best attempt at convincing the woman to have sexual relations with him through his metaphor of the flea, he would appear to be unsuccessful at the end of the poem. His far-fetched and cynical approach belittles both the woman’s virginity and sexual relations outside of marriage in general, and only highlight his lust for her. However, the poem’s metaphysical characteristics which include the primary use of a conceit through the flea, hyperbole, ironic wit to balance the plot between a serious and humorous nature, and an argumentative structure, allow Donne to create a satirical narrative to address the subject of sexual relations outside of marriage.