Coy Mistress Thesis
Love in To His Coy Mistress
In Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress the poem 's speaker attempts to persuade "his coy mistress" to have sex with him. As “he is aware of his imminent death as he is of hers”1 he wants his desire to be fulfilled here and now. Thus I introduce my thesis as follows: Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress argues that, in a world where death rules supreme and time is limited, life’s true meaning and purpose can only be found in physical (i.e. sexual) pleasure. My thesis is based on the analysis of the three sections which complete a logical argumentative pattern (“Had we . . .”, “But . . .”, “Now therefore . . .”)2
In the first section (l. 1- l. 20) the speaker tells his mistress what they could achieve in their relationship if they had time. It is a very traditional …show more content…
21- l. 32) the real world. He stresses that the time the speaker and the Mistress live in is an empirical time following Francis Bacon’s philosophy. The memento mori theme is obvious and death is near. There is a sudden speed-up of time. Hence “the lovers do not have time to waste on protracted courtship rituals.”10 The logic of the lover’s argument is the logic of carpe diem: seize the day. It was a well-worn logic in the Renaissance, as it has been since the time of Horace.
Using images such as “time’s winged chariot” (l. 22), a classical allusion to the threatening Phoebus Apollo, which represents death or the sun measuring time, the speaker’s purpose is to frighten the Mistress with death. Another image of death used to evoke fear of the Mistress is the one of “deserts of vast eternity” (l. 24), which are characterized as “dry, barren Saharas of sand; the very opposite of the fertilising waters of the Ganges and the familiar tide of the Humber, which for Marvell spelt home.”11 This means that the afterlife of the Mistress shall be empty, dreary and infertile if they do not have sex in the current
In Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress the poem 's speaker attempts to persuade "his coy mistress" to have sex with him. As “he is aware of his imminent death as he is of hers”1 he wants his desire to be fulfilled here and now. Thus I introduce my thesis as follows: Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress argues that, in a world where death rules supreme and time is limited, life’s true meaning and purpose can only be found in physical (i.e. sexual) pleasure. My thesis is based on the analysis of the three sections which complete a logical argumentative pattern (“Had we . . .”, “But . . .”, “Now therefore . . .”)2
In the first section (l. 1- l. 20) the speaker tells his mistress what they could achieve in their relationship if they had time. It is a very traditional …show more content…
21- l. 32) the real world. He stresses that the time the speaker and the Mistress live in is an empirical time following Francis Bacon’s philosophy. The memento mori theme is obvious and death is near. There is a sudden speed-up of time. Hence “the lovers do not have time to waste on protracted courtship rituals.”10 The logic of the lover’s argument is the logic of carpe diem: seize the day. It was a well-worn logic in the Renaissance, as it has been since the time of Horace.
Using images such as “time’s winged chariot” (l. 22), a classical allusion to the threatening Phoebus Apollo, which represents death or the sun measuring time, the speaker’s purpose is to frighten the Mistress with death. Another image of death used to evoke fear of the Mistress is the one of “deserts of vast eternity” (l. 24), which are characterized as “dry, barren Saharas of sand; the very opposite of the fertilising waters of the Ganges and the familiar tide of the Humber, which for Marvell spelt home.”11 This means that the afterlife of the Mistress shall be empty, dreary and infertile if they do not have sex in the current