Preview

The Flea, By John Donne

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
579 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Flea, By John Donne
A work of literature in regards to sex and romance creates an image that shows an emotional aspect rather than a person's physical attributes. For instance, the elements of romance consist of cherishment or display of mutual affection. However, the poem, “The Flea” written by John Donne, changes the tradition of the romance perspective of sex by discussing intimacy in a straightforward manner.The poem is more of a crude satirical seduction rather than a romance poem. This lyrical piece is not a romance poem but a realistic approach to sex being an instinct, thus demonstrating a crude carpe diem viewpoint.
To begin with, the speaker in John Donne’s poem has a crude carpe diem approach in which he tells the woman in a blunt manner to have sex

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The poem takes the form of a sonnet, most typically known as a gesture of love. However, in the poem Harwood mocks this love-theme. The woman is loved for her “softness”, “mane” and her “smell” by the beast that personifies a man. These are purely physical qualities. Insight into who the woman is beyond her body is intentionally omitted from the beat’s reminiscing. The attraction felt for woman is only skin deep and is misguided by the beast’s “rank longing”. The sexualisation in the first stanza is developed by the image of an evocative “thigh”. A carnal motif that is hidden behind the idealised ‘true love’ that is divulged shamelessly by Harwood. Subsequently the beast’s ‘love’ is only the lustful thoughts of her body. By unveiling the undertones of the couple’s erotic relationship, Harwood is being critical of the false notions of innocent attraction - replacing them with the “love feast” that is sexual desire. It is Harwood’s challenge against the orthodox expectation ‘purity’…

    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This poem consists of three stanzas, which demonstrate the structure and meaning of the poem. The speaker compares the woman's life with the man to the flea while the woman is itching to kill it. In the first stanza, the man tries to seduce the woman. In the second stanza, the woman disagrees and disapproves of the seduction efforts. Finally, in the third stanza the man accepts the fact that she denies him, but tells her that he will not give up his efforts.…

    • 689 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    While both “Morte Darthur” and “The Miller's Tale” display some characteristics of a satirical approach in which human vices are attacked in a whimsical manner through irony, comedy, and folly, they are actually quite different in their literary genre and style. “Morte Darthur”, an adventurous tale with an imaginary setting that perfectly idealizes the chivalrous knight-hero and his noble deeds done for the love of his lady, is a classic example of a tragic medieval romance. A fabliau, of which “The Miller's Tale” is an example, takes a comical approach with the typically large cast of colorful characters: the blissfully ignorant husband, the foolish Casanova, the insatiable young wife, and the avaricious clery members whose disingenuous interests lie in only satisfying themselves. Although both tales utilize the classical aspects of courtly love, the medieval romance glorifies the devotional characteristics, while “The Miller's Tale” focuses on subject matter that is overtly sexual in nature. This approach is typical of the fabliau-style that deals with the seedier elements of courtly love traditionally left out by writers of more elevated genres. John Edwin Wells, in his 1916 Manual of the Writings in Middle English, “concluded that the fabliaux's impropriety led to their rapid disappearance” (Furrow). From a modern perspective, it reads like a “grunge romance” that relies on puns and word manipulation to achieve it's desired “shock” effect. Although both Chaucer and Malory use satirical elements to demonstrate the absurdity of implementing the contradictory, idyllic, and impractical conventions expected within courtly love on an everyday basis, they do so in a very different manner. This paper will use specific aspects of courtly love to provide a comparison of each literary genre and illustrate how the use of traditional courtly love conventions used within these two…

    • 1840 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In a fast paced read by Sharon Old’s poem “Sex Without Love”, she expresses the poet’s attitude towards loveless sex as a cold, hurtful act. She picked certain words to come across to us that the activity of sex is cold and the speed of reading the poem is almost as if it was the speed of having intercourse. It’s not a beautiful thing us humans do, it is more of an activity that we do for pleasure.…

    • 519 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A common belief held during the sixteenth century was that during sex the two lover’s blood combined (source?). John Donne’s The Flea, is the story of a man’s use of a flea bite to convince a woman to have sex with him. Their blood is mingled by a flea bite from each, so they might as well complete the physical aspect of copulation. This paper describes how a flea bite is used by the main character to attempt to seduce a woman to have sex with him.…

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Donne and W; T Speech

    • 582 Words
    • 3 Pages

    His work suggests a healthy appetite for life and its pleasures, while also expressing deep emotion. He did this through the use of conceits, wit and intellect – as seen in the poems “Hymn to God my God” and “Death Be Not Proud”. The questions of life, death and love shown in Donne’s poetry are also then expressed again through W;t as Vivian recounts and expresses her feelings during her time of sickness. Wit re-embodies Donne’s experiences of agony and self evaluation, thereby revitalising the feelings expressed and felt by Vivian…

    • 582 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “Sex without Love" by Sharon Olds the speaker presents a clear view of the use of irony. She also reveals disgust for casual sex. She captures the shameful act of immoral sex and animates it with her language structure. Her use of imagery creates a picture in the readers mind. The elements that are compared with the idea of sex without love are usually seen as beautiful circumstances, but due to word choice these elements quickly turn into a disturbing scene as the poem develops.…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rhapsody on a Windy Night

    • 573 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The loss of affection throughout the poem is seen as a one of the most significant resulting in various forms of alienation. A prime example of such a theme can be seen through the image of the prostitute within the poetry.…

    • 573 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Compare and Contrast

    • 968 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “Sex without Love” begins asking the reader a question, “How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?/” (Love 1-2). She there sets out her main point in writing this poem; how can the make something as beautiful as love without loving each other. She compares making love to that of “beautiful dancers/” (Love2) who are “gliding over each other like ice skaters over the ice/”(Love 2-3). When we then talk about her other poem, “Last Night”, it also provides us with vivid images that show the disconnection between the participants. “Love? It was more like dragonflies/ in the sun, 100 degrees at noon…/” (Night 1-2). She here describes how she felt when she was having sex with that other person, she then goes on to describe how she was having sex. “No kiss,/ no tenderness-more like killing, death grip/ holding to life, genitals/ like violent hands clasped tight/ barely moving, more like being closed/ in a great jaw and eaten/” (Night 12-17). “Sex without Love” provides us with vivid images that show us how she feels when she is having sex with someone she loves while in “Last Night” she describes how she felt while having sex with someone she didn’t love; it was a more rough and emotionless sex.…

    • 968 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the numerous levels of this poem is of the narrator’s initial response to sex without love. She does not seem to be scolding or preaching to those who have it. In fact, the narrator uses words that interpret the act of sex alone as being beautiful even if there is no love involved in the equation. The…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Flea Tone

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages

    John Donne’s ‘The Flea’ is a metaphysical love poem that takes the usage of a hilarious erotic narrative. The main theme of the poem is seduction that is shown using a persuasive vanity of a meek flea. The extremely original symbol of the flea is utilized to show unconventionally that both lovers are already adjoined in church and God’s eyes since the flea had bite off their bodies and intermingled with their blood. The tone used in the poem is extremely dramatic, ironic and farcically amusing. The creative and unorthodox speaker provides arguments of philosophical and theological that rest in the irrational authority that their merger has already been completed in the flea's little body (Gioia, 2011).…

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Love In The Odyssey

    • 1309 Words
    • 6 Pages

    While Donne appears to hold a holistic, unified view of love, undivided by the physical and made whole by the spiritual, the body of the woman is ironically the real obstruction of the abstract. Donne discards human bodies for celestial figures: “..free spheres move faster far than can/Birds whom the air resists…” (Lines 87-88). Air is yet another element that taints and obstructs the ‘free sphere’, yet it is vital to note the similar inhumanity of the poet in being described as a bird. Instead, both lovers described as celestial ‘spheres’ denotes transcendence from earthly ties, advancing instead along an “empty and ethereal way” (Line 89). Love, in its emptiest form, also appears at its purest. However, transformation of the poet, framed as the epic hero, prevents Donne from having a firmer grasp on pure…

    • 1309 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The flea by John Donne is a persuasive poem, in which the speaker is trying to convince his love interest to have a sexual relationship with him. The speaker’s, love interest rejects his request of intimacy because it is hinted that the female lover is a proper lady, and does not believe in premarital sex. John Donne represents the sexual union of the speaker and lover, with the use of imagery, rhythm, and the conceit of a flea. The flea is utilized as a metaphor to represent the relationship between them, and to further persuade his love interest into sleeping with him. The speaker claims that if his love interest are united in the flea, then they would also be united in lovemaking.…

    • 1042 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Modern Love

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Use of intense simile and metaphor throughout “Modern Love” also demonstrates a grim view on the concept of modern love. The muffled cries of the wife are called “little gaping snakes” showing how afraid and vulnerable the husband is to them. The man’s wife has a “Giant heart of Memory and Tears” which shows the heavy, almost useless organ that the wife carries around within her, empty of love, only able to remember the sadness to which she has been subjected to. Then, the husband and wife are said to be “like sculpture effigies” in their “common bed,” lying “stone-still.” Instead of two lovers talking to each other and loving each other in their bed, a place shared between the two of them, they are “moveless” and silent. This makes modern love seem empty of joy, empty of companionship, and devoid of love.…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    John Donne The Flea

    • 454 Words
    • 2 Pages

    I chose this poem because i can relate to the speaker back when i was a young man trying to get lucky to some lady that has no interest in me. I came to understanding about this poem after my third time reading through. I knew this is something about a man and a woman when the author mentioned about "one blood made of two" s poem by John Donne is a classic comedy between a man and a woman in the 16th century. The clever use of flea as a metaphor for sex made the poem more fun to read. In the end, the man suffered from a bad rejection and perhaps…

    • 454 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays