To His Mistress Going to Bed

Question 1

Overview:

Answer 1

Donne subverts the typical use of an elegy as he builds an argument to persuade his lover to sleep with him. A range of complex conceits are used, however the argument ultimately fails as the woman remains fully dressed by the end of the poem and unmoved by Donne’s argument.

Question 2

Structure:

Answer 2

• heroic couplets - strength of their argument.

Question 3

Context:

Answer 3

• An elegy was meant to be a long poem typically written in couplets.
• Roman poets such as Ovid often wrote them with an erotic theme.
• Donne subverts Petrarchan conventions of the lover being remote and unobtainable.

Question 4

Imagery of war and combat:

Answer 4

• Implies a combat approach to seducing the women - potential aggression.
• Links to the reference of the woman as being a piece of land.
  “Is stir’d with standing though I never fight” - pun.

Question 5

Wit and euphemism:

Answer 5

“Until I labour, I in labour lie.”

Question 6

Allusion to the age of discovery:

Answer 6

• “O my America! my new found land,”
• uses it alongside a legal semantic field - licence my roving hands”
  “My seal shall be”

Question 7

Argument undermined at the end:

Answer 7

“What needs though more covering than a man”
- implication that this is a genuine attempt at seduction - perhaps supposed to be comical.