Background Notes – To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell – Additional Biographical notes
- 17th century poet
- Metaphysical poet – part of a group who in early 1600s were concerned with the subject of what it is to be human
- Tended to concentrate on those aspects that seem to set humans aside from other animals
- Work was characterized by the use of wit, irony and wordplay
- Often comic in nature, metaphysical poems deal with serious topics underneath
- Metaphysical poems are lyric poems, often structured as arguments, dealing with love, the romantic, man’s relationship to God
Poem – Key Background
- Reflects the boundaries of excess – often focus on entanglements of sex and condescension
- Is a ‘carpe diem’ poem – speaker tells his beloved that they should ‘seize the day’ (refers to poems in which the speaker tries to persuade an attractive person to take present advantage of youth and good looks, to give in to love now, before Time and Age have taken their toll
- Much of the poem’s IRONY comes from reader seeing the speaker’s logic as suspicious
- Structure is key to speaker’s point/argument
- Uses rhyming couplets – create key contrasts and comparisons at times
- Imagery/Figurative Language – key to speaker’s argument
- Uses verse paragraphs – not stanzas
- Features Tone and Attitude shifts – where? For what effect?
- Uses conceits – exaggerated metaphor or simile
- Uses hyperbole, allusions, elevated language
- Point of view – first person at times; second person at times; title is in third person
- Enjambments – lines running into each other – for what effect?
- Generally uses iambic tetrameter – a light, lyrical rhythm (8 syllables – 4 ft. – per line)
- Uses pauses, sarcasm, understatement
- Uses syllogism – logical argument structure (major premise; followed by minor premise; followed by conclusion) If; But; Therefore