Comparison of how The Flea and To His Coy Mistress Present and Develop the Poets' Arguments

In both poems there is the recurrent theme of irony. In “To His Coy Mistress” the poem’s entire first section is ironic in the sense that the speaker knows he isn’t being genuine. The speaker uses words to his advantage and we can take little of what he says to be truthful. In Line 1, “Had we but world enough, and time”. The first section of the poem is a series of hyperbolic statements meant to impress and flatter the reader but the

As in the other stanzas, this arranges its four supporting arguments into three couplets and a triplet by rhyme. However, whereas the first stanza loosely held the ideas to couplets, the second shows more organization in thought. This further structure is necessary to support the conceit of the flea as a holy church. The support for this idea is arranged into the following four sub-argument: one, do not kill the flea, because we have conceived within it; two, thus, the flea is like a “marriage bed,” and by extension, a “marriage temple”; three, despite your parents’ and your concerns, that’s the way it is; and four, if you kill the flea, you commit three sins – killing me, killing yourself, and sacrilege by violating the sanctity of the marriage temple. Note that Donne does present an argument to seduce his beloved in this stanza. His words are filled solely with reverence and concern for the flea. Through this, we can see the earnestness and seriousness of the passion he has for his beloved: the sanctity of their relationship – even their surrogate relationship within the flea – is sacred to him.

Both ‘Mrs Sisyphus’ and ‘the Flea’ seek to present us with complex, arguably discordant relationships between men and women. Duffy and Donne exploit the satirical potential of light-hearted comic verse to present serious issues in a light-hearted manner. Despite the overwhelmingly light-hearted tone of both poems, it can still be argued that relationships are presented in a negative light.

The narrators in both poems, “The Flea” by John Donne and “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell are trying to persuade a woman to have sexual intercourse with them. It seems like both of the narrators are overbearing but not in the exact same sense. Donne states, “And in this flea our two bloods mingled be” (Line 4). This line talks about how the flea has bitten them both and mingled their blood together, which makes this an alternative to sexual intercourse and then the narrator declares that there is no “A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead” (Line 6). Marvell writes, “My vegetable love should grow/Vaster than empires, and more slow” (Line 10-11). These lines refers to the narrator trying to tell the mistress how his love will grow more

With the initial impression of “The Flea,” one does not expect an erotic love story. The title suggests a tiny insect may be the main focus of the poem, but this assumption proves to be incorrect. Using intense metaphors, imagery, symbolism, and alliteration to perform his argument, the speaker is attempting to woo a lady in a rather repulsive romantic comedy approach. Throughout the couplets, the flea is personified and becomes symbolic of a much greater meaning. Although John Donne’s “The Flea” obviously discusses sex as the primary topic, the poem contains underlying features regarding the themes of marriage and even religion.

In “The Flea,” Donne’s speaker tries to ease his lady’s anxieties about sex. At the end of the poem, he seizes on her comment that the death of the flea—which contained both of their blood—did not harm either of them or make them any weaker. It is important to note the significance of the word “death” in this context. According to Miller, sexual culmination was commonly likened to death at the time this verse was written.

In ‘The Flea’, John Donne uses humorous and erotic lines to come up with a tale about a young man trying to seduce his mistress while using a flea to prove his point. The speakers’ mistress does not want to sleep with him for fear of the sin that would be committed. He spins the truth around by saying because the flea has already bitten them both, they are technically already married inside the flea and are committing no sin. Donne uses many literary devices including, puns, metaphors, personification, and also many references to religion, all to help the speaker win his case. The speaker makes a great case for himself by using the metaphor of the flea, other literary devices, and religion to try to seduce his woman.

The comparison of sex to a flea is quite the unexpected plot of a love poem, but John Donne’s “The Flea” is not the usual love poem. In the poem, the speaker addresses a lady who he is attempting to convince to participate in unnamed sexual actions with him. She, apparently sticking to the appropriate tradition of her time by maintaining her virginity, cannot be convinced. The speaker uses ridiculous arguments, which he switches stance on a couple of times, and the device of conceit,or an exaggerated metaphor, to explain the need for the woman to take part in his desires.

In the poem “To His Coy Mistress” the man uses the idea that one day he and his lover will grow old and no longer be beautiful, and that they must take advantage of the opportunity to have sex while they are still full of youth and energy. In the poem Marvell writes: “Thy beauty shall no more be found, nor in thy marble vault, shall sound my echoing song; then worms shall try that long preserved virginity.” (Ln 25-28). This is relevant because it makes clear that there is no telling how life will turn out and while she is trying to maintain honor what good will it be if she dies of old age and worms take her purity. In the poem “The Flea” Donne takes a different route of attack by trying to convince the woman that just because she gives up her virginity does not make her any less of a woman nor does it give her a legitimate reason to kill herself. In the poem Donne writes: “Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou find’st not thy self nor me the weaker now.” (ln 23-24). This is relevant because it insinuates that they are human, and just because others say they are less than that because of sex before marriage does not make it true nor should they feel like it

He clarifies that making a physical love is not a sin or shame as their blood is mixed inside a flea. The first stanza begins when the speaker asks the lady to “Mark this flea” (Donne 1) which has bitten him and sucked blood from him and repeated it in the woman. The speaker uses the situation to point out that the lady “denies” him something. At the same time the “flea” got a chance to enjoy their union through their blood within its body. “It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,/ And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;” (3-4).

In the first stanza of the poem, the flea itself represents the love Donne wants to express to his lover. For instance, by “[Marking the] flea” (l.1) that “suck’d [him] first and now sucks [her]” (l.3) means that because the flea mixed both Donne’s blood and the woman’s they are already together. He is trying to woo her in order to spend the night with her. The flea represents sexual intercourse and “in this flea [their] two bloods mingled” (l.4) which proves that both him and her are already as one.

As the girl threatens to kill the flea, the speaker begs her to stop. He states that all three of their lives are in this flea, and that through the blood of the flea he and her are already married. If the girl were to kill the flea, he feels that it would be the equivalent of murdering all three of them. The speaker is desperately trying to manipulate the girls actions too his advantage. Donne uses more metaphors too twist his words into a more convincing argument.

Since Donne has no desire to love a woman and only wants sex with them, it is almost like Donne is putting those combinations together to state his point kind of like Chaucer did without anybody catching on to what he is doing. Another example of where he does the same thing is at the end of the seventh stanza where Donne has the two words “Deceit” and “Bait” saying that woman deceive men by their beauty, and Donne once again does it that way to try and hide what he thinks about women.

It would seem that the protagonists in The Flea and To His Coy Mistress are both after the same thing; they’re attempting to persuade their mistress to have sex with them. Within each of the poems the male protagonists use imagery with insects to degrade the importance of chastity. Both of the passages refer to the woman’s virginity in comparison to these insects. Insects used as metaphors for sex appear differently within the texts. In The Flea, The protagonist calls it "the loss of maidenhead” and in To His Coy Mistress the male clearly states “that long preserved virginity” belonging to his mistress. The protagonists in the poems speak with graphic imagery. In The Flea the man uses the flea, which has bitten them both, as a symbol for their

At line 13, Donne writes “Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is”. The couple is united through the flea; thus, the flea is at once a representation for their bodies' union a matrimonial relationship, the combination of blood in the marriage’s consummation, and also a physical area in which all this is comprised. In addition, “temple” is an example of a divine language Donne uses to support the steadfastness of his argument. Additionally, at lines 16-18, Donne says “Though use make you apt to kill, let not to that self-murder added be, and sacrilege, three sins in killing three”. Donne is recollecting the religious allusion to the trinity to support his tone and language; thus, it is a “sacrilege” and “sin” kill the flea and thus to refute his own reason. Through his use of theological insinuations, Donne’s divine references truly help expose the complex and remarkable meaning of the