In the context of Elizabethan and Jacobean sonnets, how can
we define conceits?
In literature a conceit is an extended metaphor. There
are basically two types:
1). The Petrarchan
conceit.
Petrarch was a 14th century Italian poet who introduced this kind of
device in his love poems. Typically it would involve some guy, full of woe,
breaking his back to win the love of a cold but beautiful woman. Her eyes would
be compared to the stars, her lips to roses and so on. These conceits became
very clichéd in the poetry of the later Elizabethan writers. Shakespeare
actually kind of ‘took the mickey’ out of its over-use – calling it “false
compare”. In his Sonnet
CXXX he writes:
“My mistress'
eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far
more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white,
why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires
grow on her head”.
2). The metaphysical conceit. In contrast to the
Petrarchan conceit, metaphysical poets used far-out comparisons in their work,
often using everyday objects to form amusing or witty (but often complex)
comparisons. Metaphysical poetry focused on the intense feelings and
experiences people had and the conceit would control the entire poem. A conceit will “express
satire, puns or deeper meanings within the poem, and display the poet’s own
cunning with the words” (Abrams, 1993, p. 113).
‘Conceit’ is basically another word for
"idea" or "concept," and
was used to impress readers by its
cleverness and wit. As previously
stated, often conceits compared really unlikely things to each other, and the
authors liked to show off a bit by demonstrating how they could maintain the
comparison throughout the poem.
Discuss a striking or outrageous example (of a conceit).
John Donne (1572-1631) uses a conceit
in his poem “The Flea” – using the flea to represent the union or bond between
him and the woman who wont sleep with him. He’s trying to convince her that she
might as well have sex with him because the flea has already bitten each of
them so their blood is mixed inside the flea.
“Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that
which thou deny'st me is;
It suck'd me
first, and now sucks thee,
And in this
flea, our two bloods mingled bee”.
He’s saying that the act of sex (which
she denies him) is insignificant compared to their blood being mixed… that the mixing of their blood is
even more spiritual a union than having sex, so they might as well get on with
it. He goes on to say that the flea represents them joined as one, and is as
good as them being married:
“Where wee
almost, yea more than maryed are.
This flea is you
and I, and this
Our mariage bed,
and mariage temple is”.
The woman obviously isn’t convinced
with his argument and kills the flea. He then tries to make her feel really bad
by saying she has committed a crime equivalent to taking three lives (him, her
and the flea) and that as she has sinned so greatly already, she might as well
sleep with him.
“And sacrilege,
three sinnes in killing three.
Cruell and
sodaine, hast thou since
Purpled thy
naile, in blood of innocence?”
He finishes with saying that since
killing the flea, she shouldn’t fear for her honour anymore because having sex
is insignificant in comparison to the transgression she has already committed,
and that just as the flea’s death hasn’t weakened them, nor will having sex
‘weaken’ her virtue.
“Yet thou
triumph'st, and saist that thou
Find'st not thy selfe,
nor mee the weaker now;
Tis true, then
learne how false, feares bee;
Just so much
honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee,
Will wast, as
this flea's death tooke life from thee”.
Abrams, M.H. (1993) The Norton Anthology of English Literature,
6th Ed. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Co.
What does Revard (1997) suggest about the relationship between language,
sex, power and transgression in the English Renaissance?
Revard (1997) is suggesting female
poets were not widely accepted in the English Renaissance. Women were thought to be inferior when it came
to matters of the mind. They triumphed in the realms of beauty and fecundity
and so on, but it was thought that they shouldn’t compete with men in the
intellectual arena and instead remain only the ‘subject’ of thought. Male poets
weren’t having a bar of women writing – female poets weren’t judged on the
merits of their poetry but instead the issue of their sex was foremost.
Revard (1997) says that in
1683, Triumphs of Female Wit was
published in England. It was a book containing three poems in the style
of Pindar. The first ode (said to be written by a woman) defended the rights of
women to engage in higher learning and to write poetry but the second, (written
by a “Mr H”) says this notion was not only incorrect but also outrageous that
it should be expressed in a poem – a form reserved exclusively for men.
The third ode (attributed to a Mr. F)
agrees that woman should be allowed to write. Revard however raises the notion
that a male poet would have difficulty in “praising a woman who is neither a
mistress nor a patron nor a sovereign, but is, rather, a so-called peer in the
poetic profession” (p, 123). He goes on to say “ a man's view of a "learned" woman almost always
involves a man's view of women in general, and assessment of her literary
achievement cannot take place without considering the acceptability of her
competing "equally" in the domain of poetic performance. At stake is
more than the man's monopoly of wit. For if a man and a woman compete in a
literary contest and he
"loses," as a man he also loses the right to
dominate in other areas” (p, 124).
Another issue that Revard discusses is that of a woman’s
natural creativity. It was suggested that if a woman tried to be intellectually
creative that she would dilute the energy that should be applied to the
production of children and therefore threatens the continuation of the species.
Ha!
Revard, S.P. (1997). Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, and the
Female Pindaric in representing women in Renaissance England, edited by C laude
J.Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
