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Overview
“The Flea” is an erotic poem by the English poet John Donne, written sometime between 1595 and 1615
. Donne is famous for his shocking conceits, and he doesn’t disappoint in this poem, the speaker of which likens the mixing of blood in a flea to the mingling of sexual fluids in a “marriage bed!” For a seventeenth-century reader, this conceit may not have seemed as outlandish as it does today. Indeed, Donne was likely inspired by a popular medieval poem in which a lover looks on jealously as a flea helps itself to his mistress’s body.Read a summary & analysis, an analysis of the speaker, and explanations of important quotes from “The Flea.”
