Coy mistress. To His Coy Mistress Analysis 2022-11-02
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"The Coy Mistress" is a poem written by 17th-century English poet and metaphysical master Andrew Marvell. The poem is a plea to a woman to give in to the speaker's advances and become his lover. It is a classic example of the seduction poem, a genre popular in the Renaissance that sought to persuade a woman to give herself to a man using a combination of flattery, persuasion, and sometimes even coercion.
In "The Coy Mistress," Marvell uses a variety of rhetorical devices to try to win over his beloved. One of the most prominent of these is personification, in which he compares the woman to various natural and inanimate objects, such as a "white flower," a "curled wave," and a "veil of glass." These comparisons serve to flatter the woman by likening her to beautiful and rare things, but they also serve to emphasize her resistance to the speaker's advances, as these objects are all hard to capture or possess.
Another rhetorical device that Marvell employs is the use of vivid imagery and sensory language. For example, he describes the woman's eyes as "tigers" that "tear the world" and compares her hair to "the morning sun." These descriptions not only paint a picture of the woman's beauty but also suggest that she is a force to be reckoned with, adding to the sense of challenge and intrigue that the speaker feels towards her.
Despite the speaker's efforts to win the woman over, however, she remains coy and resistant. This is reflected in the poem's structure, which is divided into three stanzas. In the first stanza, the speaker introduces the theme of the poem and compares the woman to various objects. In the second stanza, he begs her to give in to his advances and become his lover. And in the third stanza, he makes a final plea, urging her to seize the moment and give herself to him before it is too late.
Throughout the poem, Marvell uses rhetorical devices and vivid imagery to try to persuade the woman to give in to his advances. While he ultimately fails in his efforts, the poem remains a testament to the enduring power of love and desire and the lengths to which we will go to try to win over the object of our affection.
Coy Mistress Poem Analysis
He is not very sure of what will happen tomorrow. The speaker is nameless just like the mistress he addresses in this three-stanza poem. However, time is not on their side. Thus, the poem directly seeks to horrify the reader with the fact that beauty, if it is not perceived by someone else, will be given into the hands of death. To his coy mistress. In this story, Plato imagines people living in a cave, only ever seeing objects as shadows reflected on the wall from the light of a fire—rather than seeing the objects directly.
In line 25, he uses the impending loss of her beauty as something of a threat, as he reminds her of the ravages of death and decay and how they will destroy what she is trying to preserve by retaining her virginity. To His Coy Mistress, written by the 17th century English poet Andrew Marvell, is an extremely interesting blend of two poetic genres. Where Steinbeck uses a subtle method of discussing women 's rights through setting and symbolism, Ibsen uses an upfront method through his characters dialog. In MacDonald, Hugh ed. In the end, he admits that sex is a compromise.
Non-poets can see what is going on in his works and appreciate it, usually on a distant, intellectual level, but nobody gets quite the kick out of Marvell that other poets do. Death seems to take over the poem, displacing the speaker's erotic energy and filling the poem with dread. The speaker suggests that they put their strength and sweetness in one ball. This catalogue resembles and perhaps parodies the style of Petrarchan sonnet writers, who used standard metaphors to describe their mistresses. The third stanza builds on this argument. This is the same idea that Marvell was writing about three hundred years earlier. No need to refrain from what someone is required to do.
What figurative language does Andrew Marvell use in "To His Coy Mistress"?
Some wits are funny and others are nasty; some wise and some silly; and some witty poets are all about the ways in which their words intertwine with each other in their own pure space, away from the real world. In other words, the differences that we observe in poetic imaginations are the results of the almost infinite varieties of ways different poets resolve these differences. The next lines show that the speaker is not interested in beauty; all that he wants is love and sex, period. Thus, though we cannot make our sun 45 Stand still, yet we will make him run. This quote is significant in the aspect of that the narrator admits that she herself has faults, but males tend to have a better luck with obtaining faults. GradeSaver, 3 January 2014 Web. Sep 2, 2021 What are some examples of allegories in everyday life? Hollow wit, in fact, is often like a joke in that surprise is all that it has to offer.
Metaphysics implies a perception that transcends the limitations of time and space and lathers in larger categories. As ridiculous as this may sound, it serves, rhetorically, as an elaborate and entertaining form of persuasion in which the poet is given the opportunity not only to describe and praise the beloved but to show the breadth and skill of his imagination in an effort to impress and flatter. In a warning stunt, the speaker tells the mistress that once in the coffin, worms will feast on her, robbing her of her virginity and this makes no sense; therefore, it is better for them to have sex before this fate befalls them. The concept of love and lust have been echoing throughout the history of literature. Lines 33-46 Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews.
Likewise, the speaker imagines his lust being reduced to ashes, while the chance for the two lovers to join sexually will be lost forever. Lines 23-24 The image of vast deserts begins a macabre list of comparisons having to do with sterility. The metaphysical poet realizes how fleeting life is and how much, therefore, one can miss in it or simply waste time. The reason that poets use images at all is to make us see things differently than they appear to the naked eye. What is the difference between allegory and metaphor? To make it seem a violation of law of nature. Going back to stanza I, the speaker uses all words that a man can use to convince a woman into having sex.
Lines 8-10 In these lines, the speaker describes the amount of time it would take to love his mistress and how much time she would be allowed to turn his love aside. Instead of demanding that John Adams include the rights of women when drafting new laws, she quietly pleads him to have mercy upon the women by incorporating rights for them inside of his new decrees. Second, metaphor and irony communicate different types of meaning. Others—and this is where Eliot places Andrew Marvell—are wits because of the ways their words reflect an identifiable world, but do it in their own terms. The poem is considered an exemplar of the carpe diem form, in which the speaker urges the addressee to act swiftly and boldly in pursuit of pleasure, given the fleeting nature of human life.
Finally, the sun is personified as being able to "run"; the speaker hopes that they will take charge of time and control it rather than being controlled by it. The poem masquerades as a syllogism, a three-part argument with major premise, minor premise, and conclusion. I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. The narrator uses this instance of hyperbole to suggest to his beloved that, as mortal human beings, we do not have all the time in the world before we grow old and die. Life is short, however, and opportunities must be seized.
If a syllogism is properly constructed, the conclusion is irrefutable. He does not talk about spiritual love so, he seems one-sided. Time, however, is not on their side. There is the theme of time, sex, mortality, freedom, and confinement. So I have decided in the way of my life, if I met a girl who is born to me I will love her full of my heart and never leave her until my last breath. The metaphysical poetry of the 17th century is characterized by a special grandeur of poetic thinking, which sought to give embodiment to large symbolic and philosophical concepts.
