What words would you associate with this flea? Engage What words would you associate with this flea? This is a poem about sexual desire. Are there connections between your words?

Fleas Fleas were a common part of everyday life in the Tudor and Stuart periods. Due to a lack of regular washing or changing of clothes people and animals often suffered from insect bites from fleas and ticks. Fleas can’t fly but jump from person to person, often taking blood from more than one source. The adult fleas only eat fresh blood. Definition: wingless insects with mouthparts adapted for piercing skin and sucking blood. The flea body is hard, polished, and covered with many hairs and short spines directed backward, which also assist its movements on the host. The tough body is able to withstand great pressure, likely an adaptation to survive attempts to eliminate them by mashing or scratching. Even hard squeezing between the fingers is normally insufficient to kill a flea. It is possible to eliminate them by pressing individual fleas with adhesive tape or softened beeswax or by rolling a flea briskly between the fingers to disable it then crushing it between the fingernails. Fleas also can be drowned in water and may not survive direct contact with anti-flea pesticides.

A 17th Century seduction poem The Flea by John Donne A 17th Century seduction poem

Learning objectives: Learning Outcomes: Literacy Objective To analyse how meanings are shaped in texts, including how variations in language, form and context shape and change meanings. Learning objectives: To be able to write an analysis of John Donne’s ‘The Flea’ using appropriate terminology AO1) and contextual factors (AO4) to support my understanding. Learning Outcomes: The pronoun ‘I’ must always have a capital letter. Literacy Objective

Assessment Objectives A-Level English Exam Component 1 Poetry The question requires candidates to select poetry from the anthology, and make connections between their selected poetry and a previously unseen text printed on the examination paper. In preparation for the unseen text in this examination, learners will need to read a range of texts published post-1914, including post-1914 poetry, prose fiction, drama and non-literary texts. Assessment Objectives This section assesses AO1, AO2, AO3 and AO4. Today’s lesson Revising terminology and how to analyse poetry.

Who was John Donne? John Donne (b. 1572 d. 1631) English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor. John Donne was born into a Catholic family at a time when the practice of the Catholic religion was illegal. Religion played a large part in this life and he eventually went on to become an Anglican priest. He was later appointed the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral.

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Conceit This poem is the cleverest of a long line of sixteenth-century love poems using the flea as an erotic image, a genre derived from an older poem of Ovid. Donne’s poise of hinting at the erotic without ever explicitly referring to sex, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to exactly what he means, is as much a source of the poem’s humor as the silly image of the flea is; the idea that being bitten by a flea would represent “sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead” gets the point across with a neat conciseness and clarity that Donne’s later religious lyrics never attained.

Notice the use of caesura: what is the effect of this? Stanza 1 Imperative sentence mood and repetition of the verb ‘mark’ MARK but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is ; It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ; Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ; And this, alas ! is more than we would do Stative verb puts pressure on his lover Dynamic verb has sexual connotations Fronted conjunction and end focus on the verb ‘be’ tripling Sexual imagery Sibilant alliteration gives the stanza a seductive tone. Notice the use of caesura: what is the effect of this?

Stanza 1 What is John Donne trying to achieve with this poem? What reaction is he hoping for from the woman that he is talking to? What is he using the flea as a metaphor for in this verse? How successful do you think the metaphor is in this verse? MARK but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is ; It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ; Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ; And this, alas ! is more than we would do

Stanza 2 Inverted syntax – emphasis on the imperative verb ‘spare’ Dramatic interjections and hyperbole Religious imagery of marriage and three part god O stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, yea, more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. Though parents grudge, and you, we're met, And cloister'd in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Comparative adjective Demonstrative pronoun Repetition of noun marriage Imperative mood to explain that she is apt to kill him, he says, but he asks that she not kill herself by killing the flea that contains her blood; he says that to kill the flea would be sacrilege, “three sins in killing three.” Declarative mood to state that though their parents grudge their romance and though she will not make love to him, they are nevertheless united and cloistered in the living walls of the flea.

Stanza 2 John Donne’s metaphor has progressed in this verse. What does the flea now represent? What signs can you see that the woman is not convinced by his argument? How is the flea described in this verse? What religious ideas are included in this verse? O stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, yea, more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. Though parents grudge, and you, we're met, And cloister'd in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Stanza 3 Interrogative mood Syndetic pair Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee? Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now. 'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ; Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee. Verb ‘purpled’ Inverted syntax Fricative alliteration alliteration Declarative mood

Verse 3 The woman has killed the flea in between verses two and three. What is her argument? How does the poet adapt his argument after the loss of the flea? How has the poet’s argument gone full circle? Having read the entire poem, how successful a metaphor do you think the flea is for the purpose of seduction? Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee? Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now. 'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ; Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

Form and structure This poem alternates metrically between lines in iambic tetrameter and lines in iambic pentameter, a 4-5 stress pattern ending with two pentameter lines at the end of each stanza. The poem's main rhythmic unit is the iamb: a short, unaccented syllable followed by a long, accented syllable: This flea is you and I, and this Our mar-riage bed, and mar-riage tem-ple is (lines 12-13) Thus, the stress pattern in each of the nine-line stanzas is 454545455. The rhyme scheme in each stanza is similarly regular, in couplets, with the final line rhyming with the final couplet: AABBCCDDD. Each time we get a new rhyme, we're also getting a new idea. The rhyme words are very simple, usually limited to one syllable: this/is, thou/now, met/jet. The most commonly used rhyme words are "thee" and "be." Notice, too, Donne's clever pairing of "me," "thee," and "be" at the end of the poem. He manages to unite the couple in rhyme, if not in real life.

Form and structure

Lexis and imagery

Main ideas and themes Religion & Marriage Sex & Desire Add any quotes which support these themes Religion & Marriage Sex & Desire