The art of seduction is a universal "hot" topic conversed by both men and women regardless of their race and culture. It is the means to satisfy our most primitive and biological desire as a human being which exactly seems to be the reason for it to have a long history. The art of seduction is the art of persuasion, ultimately an application utilized to reach one goal; to meet our sexual desire. This objective seems to be exactly what John Donne and Andrew Marvell are both seeking to accomplish in their poems; "The Flea" and "To His Coy Mistress". There are countless tactics and techniques in the art of seduction and both of the poems illustrate the speakers" own stratagem in convincing their target. In these poems, Marvell and Donne both facilitate language reflecting the comparable imageries to each other in the process of their practical pursuit for pleasure.
In "The Flea", the speaker is lying in bed with his paramour seeking for her virginity. Although it may be feasible, I will neglect the possibility that the speaker could be a woman trying to seduce a man for the sake of my argument. In the course of his tempt, the speaker discovers the presence of a flea and realizes that it had bitten them both. He uses this incident conveniently as ammunition for his argument in the respect of what he is trying to achieve. Here, he asserts, "And in this flea our two bloods mingled be." (Donne, line 4) realizing that their "blood mingling" in the flea symbolizes them being one, presumably a reflection from the concept of sex during their period.
In the next stanza, he puts his reasoning into action simply by arguing that they should have sex because something equivalent had already happened in the body of a flea. He immediately supports this argument by asserting, "O stay, three lives in one flea spare, / Where we almost, yea, more than married are." (Donne, line 10-11), a reference for the Christian notion of marriage, which declares that man and woman shall be one flesh.
