John Donne's 'The Flea'

When it starts saying how the hunters were “wedded to her in lust” it is referring to rape, such as when it says “the sow fell and the hunters hurled themselves at her.” As well as when it quotes “Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his

The conceit in “The Flea” is between a flea and unrequited love in the physical aspect. The complexities of this young romance develop the speaker’s argument for a young women to sleep with him. The biting of the flea is compared to having sexual relations with the women. The speaker claims that the flea bite joins them together like sex. Thus, her preserved purity no longer exists because they now have shared the same fluids (blood) inside the flea. He compares the flea’s bite to the joining of souls such as the holy trinity. The speaker try to get the women to see how blown out of proportion her virginity really is and that not that big of a deal.

He justifies saving the flea’s life in line 11 by saying that now they are “more than married” through the flea. The speaker says that they are the flea, and the flea is their marriage bed and temple, therefore justifying premarital sex between the two. Now, making his plea, the speaker goes further by saying in line14 that “we are met,” meaning that they have already been sexually acquainted because of the mixing of blood between the two lovers inside of the flea’s body. The speaker then explains that if she were to kill the flea, she would be committing three sins against God in killing herself, him, and the flea.

The speaker uses words such as “louring” (line 2), “deep deceit” (line 8), “grievous” (line 11) and “bale” (line 140. All of these words have sorrowful and despairing meanings to them which gives the whole poem an unhappy tone. The third and fourth lines discus that the speaker cannot even look at the beautiful face, which appears to grow more attractive daily, of the woman he loves. Moreover, the couplet tells the readers that the sorrow in the speaker’s eyes is there because of the pain he has felt due to his faulty relationship. The mouse that “lies aloof for fear of more mishap” (line 7) shows the misery felt by the speaker by using the words “aloof” and “mishap”. “Aloof” means to be stand-offish or reserved, which the speaker is because if he gets too close, he will be hurt again. “Mishap” means disaster or unfortune which altogether sounds miserable. Had the speaker used diction that was lighter or less depressed, the reader truly would not understand the misery the speaker has went through. The miserable diction depicts the deep wounds the speaker received from his love, shedding light to how much he really loved her and how bad she really hurt

The Flea and To His Coy Mistress are two poems written by poets living during the Renaissance Period. To His Coy Mistress was written by Andrew Marvell and The Flea was written by John Donne. Both of these poets were well-educated 'metaphysical poets', and these poems illustrate metaphysical concerns, highly abstract and theoretical ideas, that the poets would have been interested in. Both poems are based around the same idea of trying to reason with a 'mistress' as to why they should give up their virginity to the poet.

     Poets have often used symbols to convey deeper messages that they were either too afraid or felt that normal language lacked the power to express. Often when a symbol is used, the reader digs deeper into the issue more than if the message was simply shot out in the open. These symbols and metaphors can be used to portray beautiful things, or could be used to create a more compelling argument in a more subtle way.

The poem, “For That He Looked Not upon Her” by George Gascoigne exemplifies how the speaker suffered from love, something that many people believe one should feel positive about. The title delivers a despairing tone by allowing the audience to believe that the speaker can no longer look the woman he loved in the eye. Conflicting with the despairing tone, the speaker develops a complex attitude with the use of structure, metaphors, diction, and desire.

The flea enjoys the blood and so does the man enjoy foreplay. The pamper'd swells could be that of sexual organs before sex and yet, because that is not happening, the flea is having a better time at the moment than he is, by sucking their blood. I think that by using this comparison, John Donne is being very intellectual and at this point I feel he may win his argument. The second stanza, John Donne becomes weaker as the girl starts to defend herself and he tries to convey his love for her.

Poetry is not only a brilliant form of expression, but also a powerful tool for persuasion. The renowned metaphysical poet John Donne uses the genre for this very purpose in “The Flea,” a work in which he encourages a young woman to have premarital sex with him. Donne backs his argument by referring to a flea that has sucked his own blood as well as his lover’s. In the first stanza Donne assures the woman that sleeping together would be a minor act. When he says “How little that which thou deniest me is” he promises the woman that the act would be as miniscule as the flea is in size (1.2). Also, by using the word “deniest” he tries to make the women feel a sense of guilt, as if

The speaker in "The Flea" is a restless, would-be lover who is trying to convince his beloved to give her virginity to him. Therefore, to convince his lover, the speaker

Following a unique poetic language of the Renaissance, John Donne's ‘The Flea' is a poem illustrating the metaphor of a flea to represent the sexual act and relations between a man and woman. Portrayed through language, imagery, and structure John Donne's poem is one of conceit and seduction, as the speaker (assumed to be a man) follows a consistent pattern of persuasion to have premarital sex with a woman.

Consequently, this picturesque poetic device helped communicate the theme of lost love by helping the reader associate the personas’ thoughts and beliefs with their own.

The use of connotative words in this piece is the foundation of this poem and it provides an idea of what this poem is going to be about. In the first stanza he describes the woman as “lovely in her bones,” showing that her beauty is more than skin deep comparing her virtues to a goddess of “only gods should speak.” In the second stanza, the reader can see and feel the love between the two people. The woman taught him how to "Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand," showing that she was the teacher in the relationship and taught him things he thought he never needed to know. The speaker shows how when they are together, she was “the sickle” and he was “the rake” showing that this woman taught him what love is.

that this act of the flea having both of their blood in its body is

The rhetoric of Donne's persona does seem, upon a first reading, to locate the lovers at the center of the universe successfully while it subordinates all surrounding objects. And the poet's use of hyperbole is convincing enough if readers immediately assume that Donne intended to oppose logic and to define the universe's purpose through the transcendent qualities of language. Yet the inconsistencies in rhetoric that the poem manifests, what one scholar has deemed "a tangle of contradictions and reversals," make this commonly accepted interpretation unstable (Brown 110). While Donne's speaker may dislocate the outside world only for the extent of "The Sun Rising," he is still unsuccessful at convincing critical readers that internal love can symbolically replace the