Thursday, January 22, 2009

Analysis of "The Flea"

At first when I read Donne's "The Flea" I was extremely confused. I think it is a very difficult poem to analyze but after reading the footnotes and then rereading the poem several times I think I might be beginning to understand. It seems to me as though the speaker is trying to seduce a woman into having sex with him. He begins by saying in the first few lines that the flea has bitten both himself and the woman he is speaking to, and that it isn't a big deal. He then seems to begin to compare the flea that has bitten each of them to a sexual relationship that should, in his opinion, occur between the two of them. He says it cannot be said "A sin, nor shame nor loss of maidenhood" and would like his speaker to believe that having sex with him would be none of those things either. The speaker sums it all up in the last stanza by stating that the flea did little harm to the woman, and the sexual relationship wouldn't take away her honor. I'm not sure I would have been able to come up with any of this without the footnotes at the bottom, but with the information presented to me this is what I believe the poem may be saying.

1 comment:

  1. Good analysis. I definitely agree that without the footnotes, this poem would have been an interesting one to analyze. The flea, back then, represented something very different from what it does now.
    Did you figure out what the line "And cloisered in these living walls of jet" means? I couldn't find "cloisered" in the dictionary. I'm wondering if it's the same as "cloistered" which means secluded and shut out from the world. It seems to fit.

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