John Donne and an Analysis of "The Flea"
John Donne was born on Bread Street, London, in 1572. His family was very rich but they were Roman Catholic, not the best group to be a part of at his time, in England. He studied three years at the University of Oxford and three years at Cambridge. He never got a degree because he refused to take the oath of supremacy at graduation time. He then studied law and was on his way to be a diplomat. He wrote a book of poems, Satires, after his brother died of fever in prison after offering sanctuary to a proscribed catholic priest. He then wrote a series of love poems in Songs and Sonnets. In 1596, he joined a naval campaign against Spain and when he came back, 2 years later, he became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton.
Just as he started doing well, he secretly married Egerton's niece, Anne More, and when discovered, he was thrown in jail along with the two friends who had helped in his secret relationship. Anne's family helped them and a few years later, Donne reconciliated with Sir Thomas and was finally given the dowry he was owed. He lived the next few years as a lawyer and lived a poor existence. He then wrote two anti-Catholic poems that got him the king's favor and started working Sir Robert Drury of Hawstead, who gave him an appartment in his castle for writing a beautiful eulogy for his 15 year old daughter. Donne and his wife had 12 children, 7 of which survived and in 1617, Anne died at age 33, while giving birth to a stillborn child. He wrote the Holy Sonnets. He was made vicar in 1625 but suffered from severe infections of the mouth which caused his death in 1931. He would've become a bishop in 1930. Before his death, he preached his own funeral sermon, Death's Duel. His last piece was The Hymn to God, my God, in my sicknesse.
Donne is a very witty poet. In The Flea, like in many other poems, he tries to convince a young woman to sleep with him. He compares giving up her virginity her virginity to the size of a flea go show how "unimportant" it is. "It suck'd me first and now sucks thee" is used in the first stanza to argue that because their bloods are mixed inside the flea, they are married and therefore, making love would not be a sin.
In order to better understand Philip's critique of Donne within the lines of her poetry, a reading
Every writer leaves his mark, his imprint, in his writing; a thumb print left behind the ink if you know how to look for it, and Donne is no exception. The problem is extracting Donne’s imprint, and essence, from the poem, and understanding what that tells us about him. In one poem in particular this stands out, his Holy Sonnet IX, where Donne’s imprint lingers, giving another story behind the text, of his belief in God, but also his inner questioning, and confliction and doubt which come out as contradictions. Behind the text, Holy Sonnet IX, as Donne speaks through his speaker and poem, we come to understand that he is a religious man, though conflicted, which leads to doubt and contradictions, as he resents God in a way, while also just craving for his absolution and for him to forget and forgive his sins and wash them away, sins which weigh on him heavily and he believes taint him.
John Donne uses poetry to explore his own identity, express his feelings, and most of all, he uses it to deal with the personal experiences occurring in his life. Donne's poetry is a confrontation or struggle to find a place in this world, or rather, a role to play in a society from which he often finds himself detached or withdrawn. This essay will discuss Donne's states of mind, his views on love, women, religion, his relationship with God; and finally how the use of poetic form plays a part in his exploration for an identity and salvation.
Donne, John. “Hymn to God, my God, in My Sickness.” Poems of John Donne. vol I. E. K. Chambers, ed. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 211-212.
John Donne's, "The Flea," is a persuasive poem in which the speaker is attempting to establish a sexual union with his significant other. However, based on the woman's rejection, the speaker twists his argument, making that which he requests seem insignificant. John Donne brings out and shapes this meaning through his collaborative use of conceit, rhythm, and rhyme scheme. In the beginning, Donne uses the flea as a conceit, to represent a sexual union with his significant other. For instance, in the first stanza a flea bites the speaker and woman. He responds to this incident by saying, "And in this flea our bloods mingled be."
Death is a very complicated subject that people view very differently in different situations. In John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, he writes about death in Meditations X and XVII. Both meditations use many similar rhetorical devices and appeals, but the tones of the meditations are very disparate. Donne’s different messages in Meditations X and XVII convey tones of defiance and acquiescence towards death, respectively. His apparent change of attitude towards death could be accounted for by his differing life situations while he was writing the meditations: mid-life, and near-death.
The narrator in The Flea is a youthful man trying to convince a young woman to give her virginity to him. He tries to do this by comparing their relationship to a flea that is in the room. The flea bites them both and Donne explains to her that this is symbolic of both of their worlds combining into one. He says that the flea is now the realm of love, lust, and marriage. At first this poem seems to be just about love, commitment from a male to a female, who says no his lustful desires. However, a deeper look than just the superficial reveals that the male in this poem is actually revealing a valid point to his lady: that the loss of innocence, such as her virginity, does not constitute a loss of her honor.
One of Donne's famous poetic devices is diction. Again in line one and ten appear "Mark" and "Oh stay." These words are denotations of strong causative voice in order to obtain mistress' attention. In addition to diction, another outstanding part is his rhetoric skill. For example, "Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee," (line 3). His using different ...
John Donne, an English poet and clergyman, was one of the greatest metaphysical poets. His poetry was marked by conceits and lush imagery. The Flea is an excellent example of how he was able to establish a parallel between two very different things. In this poem, the speaker tries to seduce a young woman by comparing the consequences of their lovemaking with those of an insignificant fleabite. He uses the flea as an argument to illustrate that the physical relationship he desires is not in itself a significant event, because a similar union has already taken place within the flea. However, if we look beneath the surface level of the poem, Donne uses the presence of the flea as a comparison to the presence of a baby, thus making the sub textual plot about aborting the baby.
Each four-line section expounds upon one aspect of the Trinity- God the Spirit/God the Father/God the Son. Donne continually juxtaposes the explication of aspects of the Trinity with explication of man’s relationship to God, resulting in a high degree of conflation throughout. The first line opens with a simultaneous statement of doubt and faith, “Wilt thou love God, as He thee?” While the speaker is convinced of God’s love, he doubts his ability to reciprocate. This is in contrast to many of Donne’s other Holy Sonnets in which the speaker continuously implores ...
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 employs a flea that is buzzing around the two to form three arguments. The first stanza compares sexual intercourse to two people being bitten by the same flea. Both are connected by "two bloods mingled (Donne 1081)"; and the act of sex is defined by the mixing of fluids, not an act of love or lust. Yet the tone of the passage is one of playful curiosity, which suggests the smile on the face of the speaker as he envisions achieving his lusty goal. We can see the playfulness in his selection and treatment of the subject. A flea is not a normal object held in the light of love; in raising this conceit, we can see the unconventional way the speaker tries to sell his argument. He acts jealous of the flea because it received her blood “before it woo (1081).” The argument is not intense or angry; it ends with a mock sigh: “And this, alas, is more than we would do (1081).” The playful conceit of the first stanza lays the ground for the more outlandish claims of the second and third.
By making many references to the Bible, John Donne's Holy Sonnets reveal his want to be accepted and forgiven by God. A fear of death without God's forgiveness of sins is conveyed in these sonnets. Donne expresses extreme anxiety and fright that Satan has taken over his soul and God won't forgive him for it or his sins. A central theme of healing and forgiveness imply that John Donne, however much he wrote about God and being holy, wasn't such a holy man all of the time and tried to make up for it in his writing.
The metaphysical era in poetry started in the 17th century when a number of poets extended the content of their poems to a more elaborate one which investigated the principles of nature and thought. John Donne was part of this literary movement and he explored the themes of love, death, and religion to such an extent, that he instilled his own beliefs and theories into his poems. His earlier works, such as The Flea and The Sunne Rising, exhibit his sexist views of women as he wrote more about the physical pleasures of being in a relationship with women. However, John Donne displays maturity and adulthood in his later works, The Canonization and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, in which his attitude transcends to a more grown up one. The content of his earlier works focused on pursuing women for his sexual desires, which contrasts heavily with his latter work. John Donne’s desire for physical pleasure subsides and he seeks to gain an emotional bond with women, as expressed in his later poetry.
Put simply, John Donne’s “The Flea” is about a man trying to convince his love interest to have sexual relations with him by using a flea that has bitten both of them as a metaphor for their relationship. The speaker argues that the flea, which holds both of their bloods, has become the embodiment of their love and its overall sanctity. Donne’s use of the flea as an extended metaphor of their relationship represents a metaphysical conceit that dramatizes the conflict between the woman losing her virginity to the speaker and the far-fetched attempt of the speaker to emphasize the significance of the flea which is being used to represent a sacred bond between the couple.
John Donne delivered, like all of the other great poets of the renaissance era, an invaluable contribution to English literature. However, it is the uniqueness of this contribution that sets him apart from the rest. This statement seems somewhat ironic when one analyses the context of his life and the nature of his writing, for Donne is clearly the rebel in English poetry. He is the one poet that deliberately turned his back to the customs and trends of the time to deliver something so different to the reader that he will be remembered forever as a radical and unconventional genius. This is most probably the way that he would have liked to be remembered.