John Donne's The Flea

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Recommended: Printing press impact on renaissance

The cultural Renaissance is known to have began in Italy in the 14th century, however the cultural rebirth had engulfed all of Europe by the 16th century (bbc.com). The Middle Ages suffered from the Plague which wiped out roughly half of Europe’s population. As stated on bbc.com, “This mysterious disease, known as the Black Death, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history.” It resulted in painful boils and turned limbs black from gangrene. After Europeans found a way to deal with this awful disease through quarantining the sick, people had more time to farm, to learn new subjects, to create art and to come up with new inventions (Black Death). They suddenly had time to live again. Then, printing presses made literature available …show more content…

He loved language, women and being Anglican. His pieces were notoriously infused with high-falutent words. His opus focused on themes of love and devotion both physically and spiritually (The Poetry Foundation). Two of his most famous works deal with sex and death, respectively. “The Flea” is an erotic metaphysical poem that provides a delightful extended metaphor or conceit for intercourse. The speaker of this poem tries various tactics to get his love interest to reciprocate his feelings, all while using a little flea as his vehicle for wooing her (britannica.com). In “Death Be Not Proud”, the speaker seriously tackles death. Death is personified throughout, and the speaker questions Death’s power to take lives. The certainty that the speaker adopts in challenging death arises from Donne’s deep religious roots. To the very religious, Death doesn’t pose a threat. Death can only attack the human body, the speaker of the poem argues. The soul will always lie beyond Death’s reach …show more content…

He was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He was heavily concerned with such themes as justice and hypocrisy, deceit and revenge, prejudice and wealth, and the overarching theme of politics. Marlowe loved to know what made people tick and believed that evil inhabited the minds of all. His legacy lives on in Shakespeare’s plays, as Marlowe was said to be a great inspiration to him. Marlowe has also been immortalized as one of the greatest writers of blank verse; his plays, while penned in iambic pentameter, did not contain rhymes (The Poetry Foundation). In Doctor Faustus, Marlowe played with the already well-known German legend of the title character. Doctor Faustus is a great scholar who’s looking to cure his ennui and sells his soul to the devil as the best option for killing his boredom. In this play, Marlowe showcases a whole host of devilish creatures who all witness Doctor Faustus’ demise (Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus). In “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”, the speaker of the poem is highly persuasive in getting his love to disappear into the wide, verdant pastoral with him. Marlowe applied his political prowess to bribing his love interest with clothes, song, and dance (The Poetry

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