A Formalist Reading of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”

the moral of the poem.

Regarding Diction, the poet uses strong stressed words to make them more powerful: ‘Deserts of vast eternity’ is an outstanding example. Not only that, Marvell’s variation of pace has a pattern of ordinary speech (colloquialism) that shows the flexibility and agility of human voice-according to Emden.

 On the issue of ‘Unified Sensibility’ (blending of passion and thought), Grierson marshals our attention to ‘the sudden soar of passion in bold and felicitous image in- “But at my back I always hear…”. To him, “this passage seems ‘the very roof and crown of the metaphysical love lyric’; at once fantastic and passionate, that combines all the distinctive qualities of the kind, in thought, in phrasing, in feeling, in music.”

To conclude, Formalism considers that human ‘content’ (emotions, ideas and reality) possesses no literary significance in itself, but merely provides a ‘context’ for the functioning of literary devices. “To His Coy Mistress”, which encompasses the male desire for sex, uses several leitmotifs and forms to build a very emotional persuasion. Certainly, the poem itself is a lyric, an argument poem, and full of conceits (radical metaphors) that hinge on paradox, imagery, wit, colloquialism, and after all, unified sensibility. Here, intense emotion of love or the theme of ‘carpe diem’ is formed through some unusual tactics, which produce a witty and humorous style.

Works Cited

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.

Manchester and New York:Manchester University Press, 2nd Revised edition, 2002.

Marvell, Andrew in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University

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