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    A Study Guide for Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"
    A Study Guide for Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"
    A Study Guide for Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"
    Ebook34 pages27 minutes

    A Study Guide for Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 19, 2016
    ISBN9781535841269
    A Study Guide for Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"

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      A Study Guide for Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" - Gale

      2

      To His Coy Mistress

      Andrew Marvell

      1678

      Introduction

      To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell is a classic carpe diem poem in which a sophisticated and mature man, the speaker in the poem, attempts to persuade his young mistress to yield to his amorous advances. Marvell lived during the seventeenth century in England, a time of radical changes in politics and modes of literary expression. For a while during the Commonwealth Period (1649-1660), drama disappeared, public theaters closed because of fears of immoral influences, and incendiary political pamphlets circulated. The Latin phrase carpe diem or seize the day is a very common literary motif in poetry. This kind of poem usually emphasizes that life is short and time is fleeting as the speaker attempts to entice his listener, a young lady usually described as a virgin. Poets writing carpe diem lyrics frequently use the rose as a symbol of transient physical beauty and the finality of death. Examples include Robert Herrick’s To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time and Edmund Waller’s Go, Lovely Rose. However, Marvell’s poem is a more psychologically complicated and original treatment of this theme. The poem pretends to explore the dramatic argument situation between the man and his mistress when it really hides a concrete address to death; its gripping second section is filled with unusually bold images of sterility, rotting corpses, tombs, and a shocking denial of the procreative activity of sex. To His Coy Mistress does much more than simply celebrate youthful passion and the flesh the way many love poems do. Marvell confronts mortality directly and develops a convincing psychological stance that argues one should capitalize on life’s opportunities. The speaker concludes in a riotous charge to live and to love to the

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