Persuading their Mistresses in The Flea and To His Coy Mistress Essay

Persuading their Mistresses in The Flea and To His Coy MistressExamine the shipway in which the poets in The Flea and To His CoyMistress try to persuade their mistresses. some(prenominal) The Flea by John Donne and To His Coy Mistress by AndrewMarvell are conquest rimes, written by the poets to seduce theirmistresses. Both fetch three stanzas and a basic couplet rhymingstructure. Donne and Marvell are metaphysical poets from the 17thcentury. They have landn simple ideas and stretched them far - forexample, using a flea as a symbol of union. They have madephilosophical poems about simple facts of support - for example, the fearof death seen in To His Coy Mistress. The similarity seen amongthese poems is quite surprising - the use of imagery, enjambement andvariation in rhythm and rhyme to relate their ideas, and the way theyput forward their arguments to seduce their mistresses.In The Flea, the flea is used as a symbol of their love, or his lovefor her. The account book flea h as many con nonations and denotations, butinterestingly, when spoken sounds the same as the verb, to flee. In improver to perhaps suggesting the fleeting nature of love, the wordalso connotes danger to take place away as from danger to take flight totry to overlook, is the Oxford English Dictionaries definition. It canalso connote an abrupt ending to suck away from, hasten away from toquite abruptly, forsake (a person or a place, etc.). This insightwould give an added dimension to Donnes use of a flea in his poem.The OED also provides us with the definition a small wingless sucking lousewell known for its biting propensities and its agility leaping. Thefinding that fleas do not have wings could be quite significant,because ... ...blood, and that sex with him willtake no more from than the flea did. Marvells first persuasion tacticis a wild-eyed one - that he loves her so much she should have sex withhim, the abet persuasive argument is that if she doesnt have sexwith him, pe riod will eviscerate through and she will die a virgin. His last is againone of time - that they should take hold of time how they can, andmake him Marvell personifies time in his poem run. The imagery inTo His Coy Mistress is very effective, and the use of a flea as asymbol in a love poem holds together quite well, even if it is arather surprising choice. The enjambment in both poems really givesthe poems meaning, creating a tone in severally of them, and whether themistresses they were trying to persuade were every actually persuadedor not, it is clear that the poets went to majuscule lengths in theirattempts.