Choose two poems and show in what ways you think they demonstrate the use of argument in John Donne's poetry.

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Amy Clark

Choose two poems and show in what ways you think they demonstrate the use of argument in John Donne’s poetry.

John Donne is considered to be one of the greatest of the English Metaphysical poets.  He broke away from the “decorative and flowery” verse that characterized most poetry during the Elizabethan period to develop his own unique style.  His poetry is rich in metaphor, wit and honesty.  These are used by Donne to describe his views on the world.  Donne uses argument in his poetry for many different purposes such as an for an expression of feeling, for seduction and persuasion, a declaration for his love, to harness, console and comfort emotion.  The two poems that I think demonstrate his use of argument best are The Flea and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.

The Flea is a poem of seduction enticing the women in to bed with him, it exhibits Donne’s metaphysical love-poem mode, his aptitude for turning even the least likely images into elaborate symbols of love and romance.  This poem uses the image of a flea that has just bitten the speaker and his beloved to sketch an amusing conflict over whether the two will engage in premarital sex.  A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is one if Donne's most famous and also probably his most direct statement of his ideal of spiritual love.  For all his erotic sensuality in poems, such as The Flea, Donne professes a devotion to a kind of spiritual love that transcended the merely physical, which this poem portrays.  Donne anticipates a physical separation from his beloved and it describes a way of looking at their parting that will help them to avoid the mourning forbidden by the poem’s title.  

The Flea is directed at an unwilling woman who refuses to yield to the lover’s desires.  Interaction between the subject of the argument in the poem and the speaker does occur, although she does not actually have a spoken voice in the poem Donne paraphrases it.  A sense of her voice is portrayed in the poem and we get the feeling that she is not convinced by Donne’s claims that they have been united in the flea and this is shown by the change in rhythm.

“…Though use make you apt to kill me, / Let not to this, self murder added be...”

She threatens to kill the flea.  After she does actually kill it Donne asks what crime has the poor flea committed other than taking a minute drop of her blood.  She doesn’t answer but Donne interprets her words.

“…Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou/ Find’st not thyself, not me the weaker now…”

She says that both of them are alive so at that she point in the poem she has won the argument.  Donne replies by using an oxymoronic phrase ‘Tis true, then learn how false’, which is saying that her argument is true, they are unscathed.  The extraordinary way in which the mistress is present throughout the poem makes it dramatically visual.  Valediction: Forbidding Mourning differs to the Flea in the sense that it doesn’t have any interaction between the speaker and the subject.  He speaks for the both of them in the poem and only speaks of his opinion not hers.  Izaak Walton, who wrote the Life Of Dr John Donne speculated that this poem might have been written for Donne’s wife, Anne, before he departed on a trip to the continent with Sir Robert Drury in 1611, has speculated it.

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The tone of The Flea is generally quite exaggerated, either being serious or with humour.  The language is very over dramatic and is quite hyperbolic.  For example the opening of the second stanza, ‘Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare’ is melodramatic and is quite desperate and by saying ‘Oh stay’- its almost pleading.  However the tone is not constant it varies.  It can be very demanding, by stating ‘Confess it’ Donne is saying admit it, which is somewhat aggressive.  The reader gets the impression that Donne is almost sulky that the flea has indulged in something that ...

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