Flea - John Doe

John doe is a

metaphysical poet

Metaphysical poems

use conceits or unconventional metaphors to illustrate their point

Major theme in poems

tension between physical desire and religious righteousness

Flea written before

Donne’s marriage to Anne Moore so its more secular and represents a youthful cynical and lustful persona

Pre Anne themes

Carnal love, seduction contrast with Elizabethan courtly love

This poem would

startle an Elizabethan audience

Donne’s work represents

Spiritual journey from love poetry and satires in his youth to religious sermons in later years (intertextuality)

Memento mori

Latin remember you have to die Donne turns it from dreadful to Christian affirmation 

Donne abuses memento mori in the flea

blood life and death as an argument for sexual seduction

Carpe Diem

Latin seize the day and have no regrets

Carpe Diem intertextuality

Just mingle some more and carpe diem mindset we are almost there

Mark

Notice this flea

How little that which thou deniest me

Carpe diem its nothing if we have sex

It sucked me first and now sucks thee

Colloquialism sucked is a euphemism for fucked and repetition of sucked shows excitement

Two bloods mingled be

Compares blood to intercourse

Nor loos of mainhead

still a virgin if we mingle so just do it conforming to purity culture to win her over

before it woo

before marriage represents Donne’s adolescence were he was careless fornicatior

O stay

Stop

Three lives in one flea spare

woman tries to kill flea but he wants to save it

Yea more than the married are

United in the flea intertextuality to one fless

Cloistered

religious allegory to cathedral as nuns are cloistered from world

Walls of jet

black stone precious like sexual union

Self murder

manipulative hyperbole comparing killing the flee to suicide scheming. “Sacrilige” religious allegory guilt tripping

Flea guilty be 

does nothing but suck blood anthropomorphism 

When thou yields’t to me 

hubris creating confidence she will give it up to him

She squashes flee

Sexual union ended without hesitation

Ironic end

woman has the final say speaker only has a say in the argument