Saturday, February 12, 2011

In Andrew Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress," how does the speaker exaggerate the activities the lovers would engage in if they had enough time?

The poem "To His Coy Mistress" is full of hyperbole (or extreme exaggeration for poetic effect). The first lines that show this are:



I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews (7-10)



The flood that the speaker refers to here is the one in the Old Testament of the Bible, which Noah and his family lived through. The conversion of the Jews referred to is supposed to happen at the end of the world, when Jesus returns and the Jews all realize that Christians were right the whole time. In other words, the speaker would love his mistress for a long time.


He goes on to call it his "vegetable love" (11) and say it would grow more slowly than empires (12). The speaker goes on to talk about how long he would dwell on each part of his lady's body:



An hundred years should go to praise


Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;


Two hundred to adore each breast,


But thirty thousand to the rest;


An age at least to every part,


And the last age should show your heart.



The speaker finishes off the stanza by declaring that this is what he would do, were it possible, because of how much he loves her and how she deserves it. Meanwhile, all of these lines are full of sexual innuendos and winking imagery.


However, the poem in its entirety is a syllogism, a logical argument with two things that are supposedly true, which together produce a conclusion. The first stanza supposes that the speaker should love his mistress in this elongated way in order to love her properly. The second stanza says that time is coming for them all and will kill them long before they get all that loving done. The obvious conclusion, then, is that the lady needs to just give in to the speaker's seduction, while they still can love each other.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What are hearing tests?

Indications and Procedures Hearing tests are done to establish the presence, type, and sever...