Table of Content 1. Introduction 2. Metaphysical and Conceits 3.3 Similarities and Differences of Donne’s and Marvell’s Poetry 4. Conclusion 5.2 Appendix Page 1

Universität Bielefeld Anglistik: British and American Studies (BA) A Survey of (Beleg-Nr. 230525) Basic Module 3: Introduction: Studying Literatures in English Semester: 2

John Donne - “The Flea” and Andrew Marvell - “” Metaphysical Poetry: Virginity, Sexuality and Seduction in Conceits

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1. Introduction

How are poets like and Andrew Marvell able to write about an apparent theme that offers a completely different profound meaning if the reader scrutinizes the poem? What does the metaphysical author really intent to say with his poem? In this term paper I try to answer these questions and a lot more.

First I have to clarify what metaphysical poetry and conceits are. For that reason I want to give a short overview of the 17 th century, the main issues of that time and who were leading poets. Moreover, I will point out the characteristics of conceits, which are explained in more detail in the course of this paper, using the example of two poems. Then I will give a short analysis of these poems called “The Flea” by John Donne and “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell. This analysis will be extended to an in-depth analysis of the conceits (type, style of writing, theme, etc.), but I will merely concentrate on the most salient aspects, which are connected to virginity, sexuality or seduction, because a whole analysis would break the mould. In a next step I will introduce an analysis of similarities and differences of Donne’s and Marvell’s literature, having a look at the poets’ background, because I expect some astounding coherences with the theme of the poems. At last, I will summarise all my results in a conclusion. For all my suppositions I will consult a lot of secondary literature to prove my ideas and results.

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2. Metaphysical Poetry and Conceits

Metaphysical poetry denominates a literary movement in the 17 th century and is part of the period of Baroque, represented by Donne, Marvell and other famous poets. Johnson “remarks of them that 'the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together'.” (Eliot 43). The book Englische Literaturgeschichte helps to define metaphysical poetry more precisely: A major topic is religion, even more frequently there is only love poetry, which is commonly very sensuous and drastic in marked contrast to metaphysics but yet is a central theme for the poets of that time. The arguments in the poems are usually selected for a matter of changeover or cajolery procedure. Marvell and Donne compress erotic ideas in conceits, what means that elements of two widely separated fields of reality are trenchantly copped. The conceits are often actually seeking for darkness and mystery. This technique is also called “strong lined” (Seeber 109). But even in the century of Donne and Marvell the pictorial language was treated depreciatory. The poets seem affected and as if their uppermost aim is to impress the people by presenting their wit. Metaphysical poetry can be seen as a break with the conventionalised Elizabethan poetry. The School of Donne, who was denominated the father of metaphysical poetry, is featured by an emphatic, impetuous way of speech, often colloquial and of an appellative nature. It is essential for the poets to avoid a sophisticated choice of language as effectively as possible. The issues are provocative; most poems deal not with love as a feeling but with physical desires and the premarital act of love-making, some even canonise the sexual intercourse. Love will be materialised, which is absolutely against all English traditions of that time (Seeber 108-110). The Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory gives the marks of metaphysical poetry: “conceits (showing a preoccupation with analogies between macrocosm and microcosm), wit, ingenuity . . . a linking for paradox and dialectical argument” (Cuddon 508). The essence of metaphysical poetry is the intellectual delectation; the poets often merge secular ideas and colloquial language with witty subtleness. A proper definition of conceits is provided by W. R. Moses. He says that a conceit is “a passage which causes imaginative shock, usually through the stated or clearly implied linkage of things or ideas from different associational categories” (19). That implies that the concept of the poem, the basic idea, cannot be perceived without understanding the conceit, which is often extended to the whole poem. The categories the images are taken from must be so contradictory that the reader is surprised, even shocked. The imaginative distance decelerates apprehension (Moses 8), therefore we can also speak of “bold metaphors”, like Bode does in Page 5

his book Einführung in die Lyrikanalyse (94). Conceits are often decorated by series of linked metaphors and they are the figures of wit (The Cambridge Companion 105). There are many different kinds of conceits, typical for the 17 th century. They range from sonneteering conceits over jealousy and inventory of blazon conceits to carpe diem conceits (Cuddon 165-170), which are also sometimes called “persuasion- to-love” (Stocker 203) conceits. In this term paper I will concentrate on the carpe diem conceit Marvell uses, which is featured by “the appeal to the mistress not to delay loving because beauty fades and time is a devourer” (Cuddon 166) and the metaphysical conceit of John Donne’s “The Flea”.

The theme of “The Flea”, a typical seduction poem, is very provocative for the 17 th century. The speaker woos his mistress very subtle by comparing their sexual intercourse with the intermingling of both his and her blood in the flea’s body. He opens his argumentation with the observation of a flea which has sucked blood from him and afterwards from her. He assures her, that the flea’s vampirism is just as little a disgrace as the premarital sex he wishes with her. She is not impressed at all, so he regrets her coyness and equates the intermingling with their marriage, although he is primarily interested in a sexual get-together and not in a wedding. The speaker compassionates himself because he is not granted to enjoy the stitch and being swollen by the mistress’ blood like the flea. As she is still reluctant and only menaces to kill the flea, he steps up the pressure on her: He makes “the killing of the flea at once sacrilege, murder and suicide” (Nelly 83). If she kills the flea, not only the insect has to die but she also murders him and herself, because their vital blood is within this flea. “Sacrilege” (“The Flea” l. 18) raises the insect to a religious sign for their marriage and emphasises the shame related with its homicide. The speaker makes her behaviour a sin and so he tries to compensate her anxiety of a sexual intercourse. He tells her that the loss of her maidenhood is as trivial as the loss of life she suffered from killing the flea. His clincher is that if even such a primitive creature like a flea is allowed to get pleasure from her blood, why shouldn’t he? He equals the mixture of blood in the flea with their marriage and the Page 6

subsequent sexual intercourse. Concomitantly he minimizes the incident of copulation and especially of virginity, hence mocks her coyness.

In the 17 th century it was believed that copulation is nothing other than the mixture of blood inside the woman (Roston 110). The whole brilliancy and subtleness of the poem is constituted by the speaker “applying the same arguments to the moral as to the physical side of life” (Nelly 83), because he says that the mixture of blood already happened and it does not matter where it happened, whether in the flea or within the mistress. He considers that it would be ridiculous now not to sleep together in reality. Moreover he conceives the opinion that the flea only does what is in his nature, so it is not to blame, just as little as the couple if it would copulate (Roston 110).

Donne is obviously witty; he plays around with the image of a flea to seduce a woman. This metaphysical conceit is a typical stylistic device Donne uses and most modern for that time (Bald 62). He searches for far-fetched analogies to build bold metaphors. Nobody would ever think about a flea if he wants to seduce a woman, but Donne builds up his conceit by the amalgamation of two far-fetched categories: one of the lowest forms of insects and sexuality. His poems are completely deliberated; he is always “one step ahead of his reader” (Roston 110). Here he arranges traps for his mistress and the reader walks right into them in concern with her. If she falls into these traps, the speaker is in an excellent position to convince her to give him her virginity, because he destroys her moral doubts. The whole poem aims at this climax, is constructed to that effect (Roston 110-112).

3.2 The Wit of Conceit in “To His Coy Mistress”

The poem “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell was published in 1681, thus it is a metaphysical poem. It is divided into three sections whereby Marvell starts and finishes with a profane approach to time which is analogue to and bounded by lifetime (Kremen 94). The speaker philosophizes about time in relation to the mistress’ beauty in the first part. He would admit her all the years she needs to make up her mind and hopefully decide for him, if they had “world enough, and time” (“To His Coy Mistress“ l. 1). His debauchment is an exaggerated hyperbole. He would also admire every part of her beautiful body, praise her endlessly, he would accept her coyness, would even allow her to refuse and wait for her for all eternity. But since they haven’t got the luxury of thousands of years, the speaker becomes

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impatiently and steps up pressure on his mistress in the second part of the poem. He starts complaining that she grows old as time goes by and that her treasured virginity will only be loved by the worms in her grave if she dies. The time peruses them adamantly so why should they wait? She could save her virginity to the bitter end, but her life will be over before she knows it. The third part of the poem (starts with line 33) offers a solution to the problem of limited time, the persona finds back to his actual idea, the pleasure of lust. Here the speaker is in the opinion that the mistress would not lose any honour if they would sleep together, so he would prefer to make the most of now and simply take the opportunity to assuage their desire. He asks her not to waste any time but start loving right now as long as they are in their primeage and capable of doing so. That is the typical leitmotif of the carpe diem poetry: seize the day and not detain anything, less than ever loving because beauty melts away and time elapses irrecoverable.

Another characteristic of the carpe diem is to lay emphasis on the daily routine via metaphors. Marvell does so as well: in the last passage the persona mentions the sun. The lovers can adjust the sun and the lapses of time, because they can identify with the sun: the union of the speaker and his mistress is metaphorically seen as a ball in the shape of the sun (“Let us roll all our strength, and all/ Our sweetness, up into one ball”, ll. 41-42), whereby “strength” is a symbol for masculinity and “sweetness” for femininity. So the sun and the lovers are correlate, they interact because on the one hand the lovers can control the lapses of the sun, but on the other hand they are inescapably captured by time (“Thus, tough we cannot make our sun/ Stand still, yet we will make him run”, ll. 45-46) (Hofmann, 102-108). In Marvell’s Ironic Vision, Toliver is persuaded that “our sun” stands for the lovers’ lifetime, is “elliptical for ‘our time under the sun’” (158). This conceit is part of the speakers’ argumentation to seduce his mistress; again he says that they should use the present instead of awaiting the death. Their only chance to influence the run of time is to speed it up and to live more intensive.

The mistress has to protect her virginity, it is her uppermost property (especially in the

17 th century under the control of Cromwell it was essentially to be virgin pending marriage, the women’s primary task was to bear children to their husbands). The speaker has to present extraordinary arguments to convince the woman to bestow him her virginity, whereas the persuasion of the accuracy of the argument is not of top priority. His only aim is to have sex at the soonest, but the woman must believe that he is serious. So he urges the argument of the “vegetable love” (l. 11). The speaker talks insistently of love, which is only continuing in his lifetime and not perpetually growing in the “marble vault” (l. 26), it is only a “vegetable

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love”. “Vegetable” refers not only to the plant kingdom as the concrete part of the conceit but also to the state of being alive and it denominates the speaker’s type of love, which is the abstract metaphysical quality of the conceit. Plants are also innocent, whereas the speaker’s thoughts are anything but innocent; he signalizes the platonic love emphatically at the beginning but at the end he is obviously only interested in the sexual intercourse. That has also a very ironic undertone, because the mistress is apparently in the point of view that love has to grow and emerge as blamelessly and slowly as plants. (Toliver 158-160) The vegetable kingdom however is next to paradise, it is peaceful, but the human love is hectic and the speaker has no time at all but says that his love is vegetable, thus this passage is a paradox (Hofmann 102-108).

3.3 Similarities and Differences of Donne’s and Marvell’s Poetry

Andrew Marvell and John Donne have different policies to seduce their mistresses. Marvell obtrudes to start running out of time whereas Donne tries to ensnare his woman by minimizing the incident of the loss of maidenhood. But it is not only the theme which differs, it is also the style. It diverse in the types of conceits: Marvell apparently uses the carpe diem conceit. Why apparently? Because it is only camouflage, so says Stocker in her book Apocalyptic Marvell. She says that “To His Coy Mistress” is a profound philosophical assertion and Marvell parodies, even mocks the whole carpe diem poetry in a dark, satiric way (Stocker 203). Alvarez also thinks that Marvell uses irony to mock; he says that there is no mistress existing at all in the poem. He proceeds on the assumption that Marvell only complains himself, because in lines 5-7 of “To His Coy Mistress” he talks about his mistress far away in an elusive country (“Indian Ganges, l. 5) and him sitting in his hometown compassionating himself.

Donne however invented the metaphysical conceit. He is often referred to as the father of conceits and metaphysical poetry, this movement is also often called the “School of Donne”. (Alvarez 116-120). He plays with wit in such impressive ease, even if his conceits are composed of non-poetic objects like a flea, for instance. He has a major influence on and serves as a model for many poets (Bald 14-17), that he deserves the title “father of metaphysical poetry”. He has an eschatological vision, which is integrated in the majority of his erotic poems. Donne believes in the theory that two bodies and two souls can unite in

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one shared body with only one shared soul, whereby the individuality of both of the united souls endure in this liaison. That is also important in “The Flea”, because there the lovers’ blood in place of the souls (Roston 111) intermingle in one body namely the flea’s. That choice of stylistic devices is possibly also anchored in the poet’s background: Donne is religious, in 1615 he was consecrated a catholic priest, he was strongly influenced by the Pope. He often uses biblical conceptions (like the body-soul-matter mentioned above) and his assumptions are largely supernatural (Kremen 95).

It can be said that the main difference between Marvell and Donne is not the finesse of their wit but their manner of writing and the sort of poets. Donne is inventive; he uses daily situations to show up surprising fields of awareness like taking the simple stitch of a flea and bear the analogy of the sexual intercourse to seduce his mistress. He is always in quest of new astounding bold metaphors he could build which leads to an entirely innovative “standard of realism” (Alvarez 117). His poetry is more “a poetry of action” (Alvarez 119). He is very original and creative; he conceives new styles for unique innings and chiefly synthesizes (Alvarez 104-120).

On the contrary Marvell is more composed; he wants to improve his poetry, his wit, so he uses the same theme many a time and tries to perfect it. He is more a poet of evaluation and more into politics, wants to judge and explain everything logically. He is able to balance his own delight against intuitive sensibleness and therefore also called a “poet of judgement” (Alvarez 107). All his poems are well-wrought from the very first; his conceits are deeply embedded in the poem and sometimes puns are incorporated. He is always mock-serious, because his conceits are exaggerated, too enormous (Alvarez 105-119). His memento mori (remember your death) in “To His Coy Mistress”, for instance, is very deep and too forceful for the persuasion-to-love poetry (Stocker 203). Alvarez calls this style of writing “too conceited” (111). Marvell believes for example that there is no life after death, he anticipates no extrasensory life. In his poem he uses the running-out-of-time-aspect to exert leverage on the women he is wooing. He is more a realist and sees the sensual pleasures limited to the natural life. He tries to seduce his mistress to use the brevity of life because he does not believe in “resurrection to divine union” (Kremen 95). In his opinion man is non-eternal and seducible and for that reason he has no prospects and no hereafter (Kremen 95). Nevertheless Marvell is one of the most considerable adherents of Donne. He has not necessarily written most poems, but the later they were published the better and more ingenious they were, especially “To His Coy Mistress”. With this work he approaches Donne.

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4. Conclusion

In this term paper I found out a lot about the treatment of virginity, sexuality and seduction in metaphysical poetry of the 17 th century. The authors give full scope to their fantasy, sometimes the themes seem arbitrarily selected at first glance, but on closer examination it becomes obvious that the whole poem is perfectly elaborated. To me, both poems, “The Flea” and “To His Coy Mistress”, are very impressive. At first, before I started writing, I was afraid of that mammoth task, but while reading the secondary literature I became more and more conversant with the subject. One discovers not only information about the poems and topics themselves but also about the background and why and how the poets are writing. The metaphysical poetry of the 17 th century is very provocative, premarital sexual desire is proscribed. The style of writing is impressive and new, a general issue is presented in a keen and witty style, often with casuistry. But I am surprised how current the theme of virginity, sexuality and seduction is still today, albeit not with the same brisance. This style of writing has a major influence on English literature. It is not antiquated; especially Donne writes ageless poetry. Last but not least I found something striking: Andrew Marvell himself is allegedly homosexual but in this poem he merely addresses a woman.

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N Alvarez, Al. The School of Donne. : Chatto and Windus, 1970. N Bald, Robert C. Donne’s Influence in English Literature. Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1965.

N Bode, Christoph. Einführung in die Lyrikanalyse. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2001.

N The Cambridge Companion. John Donne. New : Cambridge University Press, 2006.

N Cuddon, John Anthony. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 4 th ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1998.

N Eliot, T.S. “The .” Discussions of John Donne. Summers, Joseph H. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1962. Pages 42-47. N Kremen, Kathryn R. The Imagination of the Resurrection. Cranbury: Bucknell University Press, 1943.

N Moses, William Robert. The Metaphysical Conceit in the Poems of John Donne. Folcroft: Folcroft Press, 1970.

N Nelly, Una. The Poet John Donne. Cork: Cork University Press, 1969. N Roston, Murray. The Soul of Wit: A Study of John Donne. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.

N Seeber, Hans Ulrich. Englische Literaturgeschichte. Stuttgart: Verlag J.B. Metzler, 2004.

N Stocker, Margarita. Apocalyptical Marvell. Sussex: Harvester Press, 1986. N Toliver, Harold E. Marvell’s Ironic Vision. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1965.

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5.2 Appendix

John Donne - The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is ; It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea out two bloods mingled be. Thou know’st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ; Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two ; And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met, And cloister’d in these living walls of jet. Tough use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee? Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now. ‘Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ; Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me, Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

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Andrew Marvell - To His Coy Mistress Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day. Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood; And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow. And hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze. Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousands to the rest. An age at least to every part, And the last age should sow your heart. For, Lady you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. 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, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust. The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now, therefore, while the youthful hue

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Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may; And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour, Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength, and all Our sweetness, up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life. Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.