The Flea

“Gender, Genre, and Donne’s ‘The Flea’” by Gina Filo (2019)

The article, written in part as an expression of the current interest in gender politics, spotlights the character of the woman the speaker is trying to entice. The poem is a typical Renaissance power play in that it does not recognize the legitimacy of the female perspective. The article examines the subtle shifts in the chauvinistic speaker’s attitude toward his potential lover as she stays unimpressed by his enticements. The article suggests that the speaker grows increasingly testy and by the end decidedly misogynistic as the woman preserves her virtue. The article in the end posits much about the character of the woman based on what she does not say and the opportunities to speak that she is denied.

“Explicating Donne’s ‘The Apparition’ and ‘The Flea’” by Laurence Perrine (1990)

The argument, presented by one of the most respected scholars in poetry studies, presents a helpful summary of the conventional reading of the poem as a one-sided poem of seduction. The speaker reveals an uncanny lawyerly ability to argue and uses the flea to both convince the woman to make love and to suggest that their lovemaking will be sweet and fulfilling and nowhere near the monumental moral and spiritual crisis the world makes sex out to be. The essay looks at the three stanzas as each stanza moving the argument like a legal brief: if this…then that…and therefore this. The poem (and Perrine’s reading) leaves open the question of whether the speaker succeeds in his conquest.

“A Man, a Woman, and the Insect that Consummated Their love: Passion and Metaphysical Conceit in John Donne’s ‘The Flea’” by Allen C. Cohen (2002)

A rewarding exploration into the role of the flea, the article brings into its reading much critical scientific data from Donne’s era. Written by an entomologist, the article rings fascinating levels of symbolic potential in the Renaissance perception of the flea. In addition, the essay explores how Donne introduces the symbol of blood that at once suggests the loss of virginity, the parasitical nature of the flea, and the blessed sacrament of Communion and the Precious Blood of Christ. The article cautions against modern readings of the flea as little more than nuisance to suggest that, for the Renaissance, fleas were a clear and pressing danger.

Literature Today Reenacts John Donne’s “The Flea”

Interestingly, what few readings of the poem are available through conventional social media platforms tend to be women reading the poem, ironic given that the woman herself is never heard from. Apart from the wide-range of high school and college Intro to Lit projects posted on YouTube in which students read the poem but are not up to Donne’s subtle rhythms and clever rhymes, the most impactful reading may seem a stretch: a kind of dramatic presentation offered from the website Literature Today and Yesterday. The reading, posted in 2015, features two actors in full Renaissance garb reenacting the entire seduction scene, including an up-close image of a blood-swollen flea perched precariously on the man’s finger. The woman plays the role perfectly using only facial responses. The man’s delivery is spot-on, the ardent lover is at once persistent and charming and is up to Donne’s tricky metrics. And the whole scene is played out against appropriate Baroque music. Quite fun.