The Flea John Donne Essay Example - PaperAp.com.
The Flea is a love song bordering on the absurd. This flea is used to assist the poet in making his case for sex. The poem alternates metrically between lines in iambic tetrameter and lines in iambic pentameter, a four and five stress line, respectively.
In the lyric poem “The Flea,” by John Donne, a clearly-individualized speaker attempts to persuade a lady to make love with him.He does this through a clever, well-constructed, tongue-in-cheek.
During the Renaissance when this poem was written, the flea was used in many poems about intercourse. Within this poem the flea is illustrated as a marriage temple and a carrier of life; however, at the same time being something so irrelevant and small as well. The speaker uses the flea in relation to intercourse on more than one instance.
John Donne’s witty and outrageous poem “The Flea” is a classic example of the “metaphysical” school of poetry, with its argumentative tone and blend of amorous and intellectual elements. The flea, though apparently an unlikely subject for romantic poetry, had been previously used as an amorous conceit in English poetry.
Donne's poem The Flea appears to be a love poem, a dedication from a male suitor to his lady of honor, who repudiates to yield to his lustful desires. In this poem, the speaker tries to seduce a young woman by comparing the consequences of their lovemaking with those of an insignificant fleabite.
John Donne’s “The Flea” is a first person narrative and a direct address to a woman where the poet concentrates on one metaphor; the flea. He uses the flea as an argument to persuade his mistress, explaining how the flea has bitten both of them and now has their “bloods mingled” inside, using this as a reason for them to engage in sex.
The Flea is amongst such an unusual love poem, where the poet uses a flea to reveal his sexual interest with his lover. As Donne uses unusual objects or subjects for his poems as one can observe in “ Jealousy ” or “ A Valediction: Of my name, in the window “, the reader can expect the same in The Flea as well.