John Donne was born in St Nicholas, Olave Parish, London Between January 24, and June 19, 1572. He came from a Welsh paternal line, and had some claim to gentility. His father was warden of his professional guild as an ironmonger. His mother's family was well known for their intellectualism and their loyalty to the church of Rome. John Heywood, Donne's grandfather was a playwright, along with his great-grandfather John Rastell who was a minor playwright. Many of Donnes family members were imprisoned and executed for their religious faith. His grandmother was the sister of Sir Thomas More, and his brother died in prison.
At a young age, Donne was educated at home by Roman Catholic tutors but soon he and his brother were admitted to Hart Hall, Oxford. To prepare for a legal career, Donne along with his brother, took up residence at the Inns of Court. He participated in the Earl of Essex military expedition to Cadiz which helped his reputation as a poet and eventually lead him to be recommended by Sir Thomas Egerton where he was appointed his secretary. In 1601, Donne was secretly married to Ann More, the sixteen year old niece of Lady Egerton. The marriage was against her fathers wishes and Donne was imprisoned for his offense. This caused him to lose his position as Egerton's secretary and he and his wife became dependant on friends and family for a few years.
Traveling abroad in 1605 with Sir Walter Chute, he became a member of the salon of Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and attracted the attention of King James who urged him to take orders in the church. Donne then wrote a great deal of religious verse which was sent to Magdalen Herbert, mother of George Herbert and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. He finally dedicated himself to seeking advancement within the Anglican church with the publication of Pseudo-Matyr, a work of religious contrivers facing the King-the refusal of Roman Catholics to subscribe to the oath of Allegiance. In 1610, Oxford University awarded on honorary Masters degree to Donne.
Under the patronage of Sir Robert Drury of Hawsted, he composed the Anniversaries. In 1615 he was ordained and in 1617 his wife Ann More died. The fame of Donne as a preacher continued to grow each year. In 1621 he was appointed Dean of St. Pauls Cathedral. But the winter of 1623-1624 was very eventful for Donne. He had contracted relapsed fever and was on the verge of death but kept a record of his illness as an aid to devotion. He published his work Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions immediately. Even when Donne became deathly in 1629 he did not stop preaching. He delivered his last sermon on Ash Wednesday in 1631, it was the famous Death's Dwell. A few weeks later he died on March 31, 1631. It is presumed that John Donne wrote "The Flea" sometime in the latter part of his career but it was not published until after his death.
"The Flea" is a seduction poem. It takes the form of a logical argument making full use of
the casuistries and indeed sophistries of the dialectic of Peter Ramus. In the first of the poem's
three stanzas the persona asks the lady to contemplate a flea h has discerned upon her person.
since his blood and hers are mingled in the flea that has in succession bitten each of them, the
mingling of the bloods that takes place during intercourse (as was then believed) has already
occurred. In the second stanza the persona cautions the lady not to kill the flea. By joining their
bloods the flea has become the place of their joining in marriage, so for her to kill the flea would
be to murder him and also to commit both suicide and sacrilege. In the last stanza, the persona
discovers that the lady has ignored his argument and killed the flea, but he is ready with another
argument. When the lady triumphantly points out that they have survived this death of the flea,
surely she is also showing how false her fears of sex are, since sex involves no greater loss of
blood and no greater death. Implicit in these last lines is the traditional pun on "death," which was
the popular term for sexual climax.. The pun and the poem as a whole illustrate Donne's
characteristic mingling of the sacred and the profane. It should be noted that a love poem on the
subject of the lady's fleas was not an original idea with Donne, but the usual treatment of the
subject was as an erotic fantasy. Donne's originality is precisely in his use of the subject for
dialectic and in the restraint he shows in ending the poem before the lady surrenders, in fact
without indicating whether she does.
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