Weeks 4-6. Questions 4, 5 and 6

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 14^th 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”.

Literary College (2009). Retrieved from http://literarycollage.blogspot.co.nz/2009/05/petrarchan-conceit-vs-metaphysical.html

Abrams, M.H. (1993) The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6^th 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.