Eve is seen as the reason that human’s mortality. This mortality caused fear amongst the citizens of the early sixteenth century, and authors sought to immortalize their love in poetry. These poets could not truly write about love after the end of the medieval age because of their fear of death and religious ideologies. Poets used literary techniques such as hyperbole to exaggerate their love, making it nonsensical and artificial. One poet of the early modern era parodies the traditional love poems ideals and gives the audience a more modern view.
In the poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” Andrew Marvell transforms images of time into a symbol of humanity to challenge traditional love poetry as it existed in this age. Marvell utilizes temporal imagery to protest the ideal love that poets of this age insisted on, as a means to argue that we are limited by our humanity. The speaker starts off by telling his lover that if there was enough time and enough space: “world enough, and time” (l. 1), then they would be able to lavishly spend their time.
Marvell’s detailed descriptions that love has the ability to transgress the boundaries of time and space takes aim at the over utilized cliches and hyperboles that the average contains. When faced with the issue of death, Marvell gives a modern view on how to spend the limited time humans are given on earth. Marvell discusses that if the speaker had enough time, he would complement his lover and admire her. “An hundred years should go to praise Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead gaze. Two hundred to adore each Breast: But thirty thousand to the rest. An Age at least to every part,
The Essay on Love Has No Age
When talking about choosing a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a partner for company in the life, people will always consider the age of the person they are falling in love with. Age is a hot topic in marriage. This essay is talking about a concept that once two people who are both in genuine love and audacious, age does nothing to their romance. It is based on a short novel, Audacious, Brock Adams. ...
And the last Age should show your Heart. ” (ll. 13-18) He would focus on “every part” (l. 17) of her body until he got to the “heart”. The heart in this situation is both a metaphor for sex and a metaphor for love. Marvell is making the argument that love poetry is nothing but lust wrapped up in beautiful imagery. The speaker would prefer to spend his life being aware of the limitations of time, instead of living in the world of poetry like the poets of this time. In William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18”, he discusses the issues of love being restricted by time by confronting the commitment of love when faced with death.
The speaker wants his love to last forever and his lover to continue being both youthful and beautiful. Shakespeare finds a solution to this problem: “But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade/ Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow’st/ Nor shall death brag thou wandr’st in his shade/ When in eternall lines to time thou grow’st. ” The repetition of “eternall” in this passage shows that the speaker will immortalize his lover’s beauty in his lines of poetry, so they need not fear the cold embrace of death. Their love will continue on whenever someone reads his prose.
Shakespeare’s ideals contrast with Marvell’s contemporary views of living life to the fullest, instead of fearing the afterlife. By employing throughout the poem imagery of time, Marvell reminds the reader that all humans are limited by our mortality. Next, Marvell addresses the problem of the original love poetry with images of time to implore the audience to live for the moment. In this second stanza, Marvell discusses the “But” (l. 21) because he does not have time to sit around and waste their limited time. “Times winged Charriot hurrying near” (l. 2) creates the imagery of time as a chariot and that time is chasing them towards their death. The speaker wants to rush his love into seizing the moment and hopefully having sex with him. The speaker talks about death as “deserts of vast Eternity”. There is no thought of a loving afterlife. There are no illusions of God. The speaker believes that the only thing that greets us after death is darkness and emptiness. Marvell continually reminds his audience about humanity and develops one depressing thought after another.
The Essay on The Use Of The Word Love
Six months after I met a young man, he expressed to me how much he loved me. Being sixteen years old, I thought it to be very flattering but I could not accept him saying this to me. The word, love in the romantic sense, is something that would take so much out of me to say to a person. Love is something that you express to someone that you can not, in any way, see living your life without. The ...
Other poets of this age tried to console their lovers that everlasting life exists if their love is pure. Edmund Spenser’s “Sonnet 75” discusses the idea that true love is the gateway to heaven. This poem begins in the sand, where the speaker is writing his lovers name in the sand “But came the waves and washed it away” (l. 2).
This represents not only the passing of time, but humanity itself, as writing his lovers name in the sand is a human act. “Sonnet 75” encounters the same problem as traditional poetry of this age- death.
Evidentially, all life has to die, so why waste your time dedicated to one person. Once again, Spenser’s solution is conventional of poetry of this time and contrasts with Marvell’s avant-garde viewpoint. Spenser’s “Sonnet 75” brings forward the conclusion that true love brings you to heaven and that love is a force worthy of salvation. “My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, And in the hevens wryte your glorious name. Where whenas death shall all the world subdew, Our loue shall live, and later life renew. ” (ll. 1- 14) Spenser comes to the same conclusion as Shakespeare in “Sonnet 18”, that they shall live together in heaven after death and that their love shall be immortalized through prose: “Our loue shall live, and later life renew”. Once again, this traditional viewpoint contrasts with Marvell’s view that due to our humanity, we must live for the moment and not worry about the consequences because death is final. There is no heaven or afterlife and life is finite. Marvell wants to implore his readers to live for the moment.
