This document provides context and analysis for the poem "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell. It summarizes that the poem depicts the speaker urging his mistress to engage in sexual acts before they die, referencing the pleasures of different body parts. However, the document notes that the poem ignores the economic hardship and Black Plague epidemic that were affecting London at the time. Specifically, it states that in 1664-1665, the Black Plague killed around 68,000 people in London. So while the poem depicts leisure and sexuality, it fails to acknowledge the very real poverty and disease that would have impacted the implied culture and historical period.

1. “To His Coy Mistress” : Implied
CultureVs Historical Fact
Name :- Upadhyay Devangan S.
Paper :- Cultural Studies
Semester :- 02
Department :- English
Submitted to :- M.K Bhavnager University
Guide by :- Dr. Dilip barad
Gmail :- upadhyaydevangana27@gmail.com

2. Andrew Marvell
( 1621 – 1678) at first
wrote poems on love
nature an religion in
which he mixed
delight in the
pleasures of life with
impel puritan poetry.

3. “To His Coy MisTress”
‘I would Love you ten years before the
floods’
‘An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at lest to every part,’
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;’

4. ‘And your quaint honour turn to
dust,
And into ashes all my lust:’
‘Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,’
‘Thus, though still, yet we will
make him run.’

5. Implied Culture
Thus might appear to be
the culture and the era
of the speaker his Lady –
and his implied reader.
But what does he not
show?
As he selects these
rich and multifarious
allusions, what does
he ignore from his
culture?

6. He ignored Poverty and
Economical condition
This era least one quarter of the
European population was below
the poverty line.
In the second and especially in third
stanza he alludes to future death and
dissolution. But wealth and leisure and
sexual activity are his currency, his coin for
present bliss.

7. What is Historical Fact ?
A historical fact is a fact about
the past. It answers the very
basic question, "What
happened?"Yet beyond merely
listing the events in
chronological order, ...

8. 1664 – 65That was
when the London
populace was faced
with old horror one
that had revenged
Europe as early as
A. D. 542.

9. The Middle age of 14th
century killing
millions, perhaps 25
million Europe alone.

10. Black death in the
Great Plague of
London.
From July to
October it killed
some 68,000 person
and a total of 75,000
in the course of the
epidemic.

11. Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of the
PlagueYear” (722)
Speaker and his Lady – knew it
after all maybe too well, Maybe
that is why that real world is so
thoroughly absent from the poem.

12. ThankYou….