What is the religious imagery in the flea?
What is the religious imagery in the flea?
The poem is full of religious imagery, such as when the speaker describes the bed as a “temple” in which the lovers are “cloistered”. In the end, the poem’s speaker is unsuccessful in persuading the woman to have sex with him, as she kills the flea in the third stanza.
Is the flea a religious poem?
“The Flea” is an erotic metaphysical poem (first published posthumously in 1633) by John Donne (1572–1631). The speaker tries to convince a lady to sleep with him, arguing that if their blood mingling in the flea is innocent, then sexual mingling would also be innocent.
What are the three sins in the flea?
But, he says, if she kills the flea she will be committing no fewer than three separate sins: murder, suicide (“self murder”), and sacrilege (or disrespecting the faith).
What is the metaphor in the flea?
John Donne’s poem, ‘The Flea’ is a metaphor for sex. The speaker shows a flea to a woman he wants to sleep with, and states that the flea has combined them into one by biting them both and sucking their blood.
What is paradox in the flea?
In “The Flea” by John Donne, the paradox that the speaker presents concerns a flea that has bitten both him and the woman he is trying to seduce.
What is the tone of the flea?
The tone of the poem is highly ironic, dramatic and absurdly amusing. Extravagant declarations of devotion and eternal fidelity which are typical found in love poetry are absent.
How does the flea represent three lives in one?
For instance, the speaker describes the flea as “three lives in one.” This is in reference to the fact that the flea contains the blood of the speaker, the mistress, and of the flea itself, but it’s also an allusion to the Holy Trinity: the Father (God), the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Ghost.
What is the paradox in the flea?
How is language used to present desire in The Flea?
“The Flea” As a Representative of Sex: As this poem is about physical intimacy, the poet uses “flea” as an extended metaphor to demonstrate his desire to have intimacy. As he argues, he says that its a sin to kill the flea, as it contains the lives the speaker and his beloved.
How is John Donne’s poem The Flea a paradox?
A paradoxical relationship between love and religion embodies the core issue in Donne’s poems like “The Sun Rising”, “The Good Morrow” and “The Canonization”. The poem “The Flea” primarily deals with the pleading of the speaker lover to his beloved for her denial in mingling the blood that implies a sexual intercourse.
What does “mark but this flea” mean?
In the first stanza Donne’s opens up with “Mark but this flea, and mark in this,/ How little that which thou deniest me is;/Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee,” (Donne 1373). It is evident that Donne is trying to use the flea as an example to convey how the woman has denied him something so small similar to that of a flea.
What is the theme of the flea by John Donne?
Themes of religion and sex in John Donne’s “The Flea”. . In John Donne’s “The Flea”, he uses the idea of a flea to persuade a woman to have sex with him. The importance of the first two stanzas is seen in how Donne uses metaphysical poetry to touch upon the themes of sex and religion.
What is the significance of flea in the Renaissance?
Flea was a very popular subject for ribald and amatory poetry during the Renaissance. In this respect, the Renaissance poets imitated Ovid who has a poem on the subject. Such poets envied the flea for it had a free excess to the body of the beloved, but such excess was denied to them.
What does the flea symbolize in the poem The Flea?
In The Flea the speaker notes the insect’s activity of blood sucking as symbolic of sex between romantic partners. He creates a parody of the approach used by Cavalier Poets, who through flawed logic attempted to convince virgins to engage in sex.
