Let’s Get it On (Let’s Love, Baby): A Psychoanalytic Approach to “To his Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell’s most famous poem, “To his Coy Mistress,” is thought of by critics as an epitome of the carpe diem poem (Wheeler 90). The carpe diem style of poetry dates back to Horace’s Odes, where the phrase “seize the day” is thought by critics to have originated, and was rediscovered and made popular in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century by writers such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Robert Herrick. The idea began as simply “seize the day” but was transformed during the renaissance into a mix of a carpe diem poem and a lover’s complaint, as many were used in attempt to persuade a young lady to yield to the speaker’s sexual advances (Scruton). “To his Coy Mistress” is similar in the way that the speaker is using the basis of “carpe diem” to convince his “lady” into engaging in sexual activity with him. However, many analyses of this poem simply accept the speaker’s logic of “we must make love because we will one day die” but do not delve into the motivations of the speaker. Why is it so vital that he has sex with this woman? Why does his argument fail if it is logically correct? In my essay, I am going to apply a psychoanalytic lens to the poem and uncover the unconscious motivations of Marvell’s speaker through connotation, metaphor, and symbolism.

Sex, Death, and Society: A Psychoanalytic Perspective of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The conflict between civilization and nature is a well-known, and well-discussed, feature of the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. For example, in his essay “Nature and the Inner Man in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” William F. Woods discusses the juxtaposition between culture and nature and how this ultimately affects the development of Sir Gawain’s “inner man.” However, I think this idea of brutish, primal nature versus the moral, civilized society, when applied to Sir Gawain, can be looked at through a psychoanalytic lens, specifically focusing on Freudian theory. The id, ego, and superego are the components that make up Sigmund Freud’s famous tripartite theory of personality, and my goal within this essay is to expand psychologically upon Woods’ and other critics’ theory of culture versus nature to examine the characters of The Green Knight, Lord Bertilak, and Sir Gawain as physical representations of the superego, the id, and the ego, respectively and discuss how, through this approach, a new, unconscious motive for Sir Gawain’s quest appears.