Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress is a carpe diem poem, one that focuses on ‘seizing the day,’ because the speaker uses mortality along with religious terminology to justify his reasoning for needing to sleep with his mistress. He uses an antediluvian time frame, a time before the biblical flood, to set a frame of reference regarding his extended love. The speaker appeals to his mistress’s sense of devoutness by exploiting the religious connotations of phrases such as “Flood” (Marvell), “conversion of the Jews” (Marvell), “Deserts of vast eternity” (Marvell), and “long preserved virginity” (Marvell) while simultaneously associating them with humanity’s short life. In doing so, the speaker lays the groundwork for his argument, describes why time is of the essence, and expands on the adverse effects of his mistress’s reluctance to submit to entice her into believing that sleeping with him is justified by religion itself. The speaker uses religious context to set the foundation for his argument by assuring the reader that he genuinely cares about her and would prove it had he more time. The narrator constructs an antediluvian time frame to illustrate and exaggerate his devotion to his mistress. The narrator claims he would express his love for his mistress “ten years before the Flood” if he had the opportunity. This reference to the biblical flood shows how long he is willing to prolong his love in terms of expression without acting on his urges. The date of the flood,
Within To His Coy Mistress we see the manipulation in which the speaker uses for his own benefit through the personification of time, ‘Had we but World enough and Time’ expressing, through the personification of ‘Time’, how he would love the potential lover and wouldn’t mind her initial rejection if time was an endless matter. This attempt of flattery, seen
fate of the lovers will be, as well as the state of his own feelings
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.
‘To His Coy Mistress’ was written by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678). The poem is a metaphysical poem, which was mostly used in the seventeenth century and was classed as a highly intellectual type of poetry and mainly expressed the complexities of love and life; just as this poem is. In brief the poem is about seizing every opportunity in life and not caring about the past or future. In other words ‘seize the day’. The poem also explores the nature of seduction.
Towards the end of ‘On the Equality of the Sexes’, Murray specifically invokes the story of Adam and Eve, a story used for centuries to depict women as the sinners, to turn the argument against itself and argue that Adam, or the men, are the real sinners in the Bible, as Adam knowingly breaks the rules while Eve was innocently deceived by the serpent. “Adam could not plead the same deception,” says Murray, “nor ought we to admire his superiour strength, or wonder at his sagacity”, implying that people overestimate the skills of men while dismissing the intellect of women as commonplace. The bigger takeaway from Murray’s invocation of Adam and Eve is that it shows the audience that she is trying to make her argument more relatable by putting gender equality in the framework of the Bible, a piece of work that was not only a religious text, but a way of life for most people in Murray’s time. By analyzing the Bible through a feminist lens and swapping the roles of Adam and Eve, Murray saved women’s reputation as the repenting sinners, but in mentioning the Bible to justify her point, Murray ultimately retreats back to the practice of relying on others’ words to make her ideas worthy of public consumption.
While on the way to venerate Saint Thomas Becket’s remains, the entertainment of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims falls upon the requiting of stories between the different estates. However, this requiting quickly turns malicious, the Host’s simple proposition evolving into an aggressive show of social dominance that includes the boasting of both literal and metaphorical rape. The normalization (or, borderline reverence) of aggressive manliness contributes to the creation of both rape culture and compulsory heterosexuality. Consequently, when a man does not dominate a woman—or, does not use his masculinity to humiliate another man—he is seen as weak or effeminate, subsequently placing his sexuality under scrutiny. Such is the motive behind John and Aleyn’s rape of the miller’s wife and daughter—to make Symkin seem weak, and to gain a reputation of superior masculinity. Thus,
Ever since the beginning of time, love has played an enormous role among humans. Everyone feels a need to love and to be loved. Some attempt to fill this yearning with activities and possessions that will not satisfy – with activities in which they should not participate and possessions they should not own. In Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker encounters an emotion some would call love but fits better under the designation of lust for a woman. In contrast, the speaker of Robert Herrick’s poem, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” urges virgins to marry, to make a lasting commitment in which love plays a
He begins his explanation by saying 'I would love you ten years before the flood'; which to me means that he would love her from the beginning of time. He then continues by saying, 'and you should if you please refuse, till the conversion of the Jews';. If the reader has any knowledge of the strength of the belief of Jewish people in their faith, then the reader would get the idea that the speaker meant to say that he will lover till the end of time, even if she was to refuse his love.
He uses this in the poem to give it rhythm to engage the reader and
The task at hand is to establish the perception of a utopic past, and therefore it is with regard to these two contrasting notions of utopia that I will be considering the ways in which both William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Hermaphroditus seek to expose and challenge the mechanisms of traditional views regarding spiritualism and the physical form, as well as critiquing the mode of normative sexuality and representations of the body. Another important concept to consider alongside this is that of dystopia, which is characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, and all matters associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Dystopic societies are usually set in the future and provide an antonymic, frightening opposition to the general concept of utopia. Rather than portraying an idyllic state of civilisation which promises an exit from the cycle of life and death, the term dystopia is used to draw attention to real-world issues which if unaddressed could potentially lead to such a dystopia-like
Why does Charles Foster Kane force Susan Alexander to become an Opera Singer? Why is it so important to him? Kane’s friend Leland states that Kane always has something to prove it is also evident that throughout the movie Kane wants to be loved by the public; when Jim Gettys made it possible for the press to make public that Kane was having an affair the press called the mistress a “singer” as opposed to singer. Kane set out to make his lover Susan into an opera singer because this is to him the only way to recuperate from the scandal and to justify his relationship with Susan. Kane goes as far as to build a theater for Susan to perform in, Susan protested many times due to the bad reviews she was receiving, but Kane was hungry for public attention; Kane put his wife through various lessons and shows to make the public recognize his wife as a singer. We can also see that Kane might also enjoy his wife’s performances, as it is shown that often times he is left as the only person applauding Susan’s performances. The only way Kane was convinced to end Susan’s career was through her suicide attempt but even then he tried to convince her that she needs to fight for the approval of the people, which of course Susan declined.
Humanity is often perceived as the epitome of evolution, God’s perfect creation that is meant to rule above and subjugate and justifiably exploit all other creatures for the benefit of mankind, should he choose so. These anthropocentric sentiments, in which human beings are the central entities in the world and are separate from and superior to nature, is embedded into many philosophies and certainly a part of English literature. However, in Caroline Yoachim’s Carnival Nine, humans are but mere toys under the whim of an omnipotent “maker” and have little to no say on their origins or lifetime. Yoachim’s work not only serves as a blunt reminder of the greater forces at play in the universe that absolutely belittles the idea of anthropocentrism,
attention of this mistress so that he can scare her and rush her into making a
Andrew Marvell writes an elaborate poem that not only speaks to his coy mistress but also to the reader. He suggests to his coy mistress that time is inevitably ticking and that he (the speaker) wishes for her to act upon his wish and have a sexual relationship. Marvell simultaneously suggest to the reader that he/she must act upon their desires, to hesitate no longer and ³seize the moment?before time expires. Marvell uses a dramatic sense of imagery and exaggeration in order to relay his message to the reader and to his coy mistress. The very first two lines of the poem suggest that it would be fine for him and his mistress to have a slow and absorbing relationship but there simply isn¹t enough
In her poem “The Golden Age”, Aphra Behn divides nature from civilization, almost in a biblical sense of Eden and after-Eden. Nature and civilization are separated as a positive and negative experience where love is dishonoured, and sin takes over Earth. Through this before and after division, Behn shows how the fall of mankind led to the oppression of the female sex as woman, associated with love, kept the world pure until man, associated with honour, took over. Thus creating “Pleasure, Nature’s worst Disease” (148). When Nature is overpowered by civilization, gender issues arose. This division of gender issues sets women up to be a tease or object of pleasure rather than an equal lover who is free to her own sexuality. “The Golden Age” presents the fall of natural order with the rise of man.