A Level Poetry Anthology The Flea By John

A Level Poetry Anthology The Flea By John Donne LQ: Can a Flea be a symbol of love ?

Lesson Aims • In this lesson we are going to be analytically Reading Donne’s ‘The Flea’ and analysing the text through exploration into the context, attitude to love, language and structure.

Key Terms • Conceit: • Imagery • Metaphor (and simile if you can find any !) • Alliteration (and sibilance) • Personification • Lexical sets • Allusion

Starter Activity: What is a conceit? (Take Notes) • https: //www. youtube. com/watc h? v=k. F 97 EJfom. Ps

Overview • The poet is attempting to persuade a young lady into bed. The two of them, however, are not married. • The lady is concerned, therefore, that yielding to his advances will destroy her honour and virtue. This is especially true because she still has her “maidenhead”, or virginity. • Donne is writing at a time when women were all too often branded as dishonourable or immoral if they slept with a man outside of marriage. • The poem is divided into three stanzas of nine lines each. In stanza one, the speaker shows a flea to a young woman he is trying to coax to sleep with him and argues that because it bit him and then her, their blood is joined in the flea's body, which is almost like being joined sexually.

Read: Let’s complete a first reading of the poem

Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead; Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two; And this, alas ! is more than we would do. O stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, yea, more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. Though parents grudge, and you, we're met, And cloister'd in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee? Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now. 'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be; Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee. The Flea By John Donne

Remember: We measure poetry in four different areas Attitude to love Context: Language: Structure:

Task: Quick-fire Attitude to love Questions 2 sentence response per question • What is the story within the poem, what is the poem about? • How would you describe the tone of the poem? Does the tone of the poem change at all at any point in the poem? • Who are the target audience of this poem and why? • What is the purpose of this poem, what does the author want the audience to think or consider? • Is thie Attitude to love similar to any other poems or texts we have studied – which one(S) ? (AO 4)

John Donne- Biography (Context) ->born in Bread Street London in 1572 to a prosperous Roman Catholic family ->1593 his brother, Henry died of a fever in prison after arrested for giving sanctuary to a proscribed catholic priest. Donne began to have doubts in his faith. -> 1601 secretly married Lady Egerton’s niece, seventeen-year-old Anne More, daughter of Sir George More ->1611 Donne was invited and joined Sir Robert Drury on a continental trip. It was then Donne composed several of his most prominent poems. “A Valediction: Forbidden Mouring” ->1617 Donne’s wife died. Within 16 years, she had given him 12 children. ->1631 Donne died of serious illness.

John Donne- Writing Style (Context and AO 4) Donne’s work were famous for themes if his faith in God and women. Though not writing with conventional glamorous style of verse like the Petrachan style, Donne successfully and beautifully connect the time and space in his poems with extraordinary images. Donne’s usage of diction and language in composing his work is considered revolutionary of his time. His style is regarded as “metaphysical” in the modern study of poem.

Metaphysical Poetry- Definition(1) • By itself, metaphysical means dealing with the relationship between spirit to matter or the ultimate nature of reality. The Metaphysical poets are obviously not the only poets to deal with this subject matter, so there a number of other qualities involved as well: • Use of ordinary speech mixed with puns, paradoxes and conceits (a paradoxical metaphor causing a shock to the reader by the strangeness of the objects compared; some examples: lovers and a compass, the soul and timber, the body and mind) • What other Metaphysical poets are in the anthology? (AO 4)

Task: Language Questions Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. The mistress, therefore, has no reason to resist the poet’s advances. Sleeping with him will prove no more sinful than being bitten by the flea. In fact, because their blood has been combined it’s as if they’ve already slept together. The lady, then, resists the poet’s advances in order to preserve her honour, denying him the pleasures of a sexual encounter. Questions: What conceit is the narrator placing in front of his female guest? (Explain it in your own words) In the context of the time in which this poem was written, how important is a woman’s virginity? Is Donne’s conceit disrespectful or disregarding of a woman’s virginity?

Questions: Task: Language Questions Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead; Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two; And this, alas ! is more than we would do. Donne suggests that having sex outside of marriage is not a sin – How are women who have sex outside of marriage today viewed socially? ‘And pamper’d swells’ – How can the flea swollen with blood be viewed sexually? What language technique is this ? ‘Yet this enjoys before it woo’ – How does Donne develop his conceit in this line of the poem? A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead – what technique is Donne using here and why ? In what ways is the line, ‘And this, alas ! is more than we would do’ manipulative?

Task: Language Questions O stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, yea, more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. The poet claims that the mingling of their bloods in the flea’s body is a kind of marriage. He suggests that it is a more meaningful and profound union than any conventional marriage. Questions: ‘…and marriage temple is. ’ – What other examples of religious iconography can you find? ‘…three lives in one’ – how could this line have a double meaning? (think about the Holy Trinity) What metaphor does Donne use in these four lines?

Task: Language Questions Though parents grudge, and you, we're met, And cloister'd in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Questions: What ‘grudge’ would the woman’s parents have regarding their daughter having sex outside of marriage? Line 15 brings the religious element forward: How does "cloistered" have a double meaning? What does the "living walls of jet" describe?

Task: Language Questions Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee? Questions: Who does the narrator call ‘cruel and sudden’, and why? Whose blood is the ‘blood of innocence’? What language technique is being used by the author, and what feeling does it evoke in the audience? How can the word ‘guilty’ have polysemic interpretations?

Task: Language Questions Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now. 'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be; Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee. Questions: What ‘false fears’ is the narrator making reference to? The narrator fails to get his lover to have sex with him, how does this denial reflect in the tone at the end of the poem?

Task: Language Questions Lexical Sets or Lexical Sex ? Questions: There are lexical sets of SEX/ LOVE/ MARRIAGE (and probably DEATH) in the poem Can you find them ?

Task: Structure Questions • How could you decribe the style of this poem, how would you catagorise it and why? • How many stanzas does this poem have? What does the number of stanzas suggest? • Is there a rhyme or beat structure present in this poem?

Structure and Language… • The Flea • The rhyme scheme in each stanza is similarly regular, in couplets, with the final line rhyming with the final couplet: AABBCCDDD. • Three stanzas in total which are also three ideas in progress. • The stress pattern in each of the nine-line stanzas is 45455 • This poem alternates metrically between lines in iambic tetrameter and lines in iambic pentameter.

Plenary • The poet is attempting to persuade a young lady into bed. The two of them, however, are not married. • The lady is concerned, therefore, that yielding to his advances will destroy her honour and virtue. This is especially true because she still has her “maidenhead”, or virginity. • The poem is divided into three stanzas of nine lines each. In stanza one, the speaker shows a flea to a young woman he is trying to coax to sleep with him and argues that because it bit him and then her, their blood is joined in the flea's body, which is almost like being joined sexually.