John Donne- The Flea (2)

The poem is inspired by the Italian "amoretti", a witty love poem that often used the motif of an insect as a vehicle for the chaste unionof lovers.
Donne takes the genre to outrageous lengths as he argues that the flea has sanctified their union and has become a marriage temple
The central conceit rlies on the belief that sexual intercourse involved the mingling of bloods of the male and the female.
The flea then becomes a microcosm for the bed
The poem works through it's bathetic tone - the speaker declaims his arguments as though the lover were truly guilty of murder or sacrilege, when the event that has occured is the squashing of a flea.
Additionally, fleas were said to reproduce without intercourse, and Donne inverts this belief to persuade the unwilling lover that there will be as little chance of reproduction from their union as a union of fleas.
Both the reader and the person being addressed are asked to "Mark but this flea".
The didactic tone is maintained through the poem as the speaker presents logic taken to its extreme in the pronouncement of the flea as sexual surrogate.
The hard "c" and "k" sounds in the poem create the impression of an agressive wit.
Their blood has been mixed within the flea yet the female still retains her chastity.
The…

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