What is it about?
This article analyzes Andrew Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress through the lens of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, focusing on how the poet uses metaphors of time to structure the poem’s persuasive argument. While the poem is traditionally classified within the carpe diem (“seize the day”) literary tradition, the authors show that Marvell does much more than simply repeat familiar motifs. Instead, he creatively reorganizes entrenched time metaphors such as time is a resource, time moves, time is a destroyer, and events are actions to present a sophisticated argumentative structure. The paper demonstrates how the first two stanzas build a premise—first imagining unlimited time, then foregrounding time’s destructive advance—while the third stanza provides the conclusion: the lovers must transcend objective time through passionate intensity. By combining hyperbole, metonymy, and metaphor, Marvell constructs an alternative conceptual universe that reframes the carpe diem motif and enhances the poem’s emotional and logical force.
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Why is it important?
This work is important because it demonstrates how Cognitive Linguistics can deepen the understanding of literary texts, showing concretely how metaphors shape thematic structure and persuasion. The article reveals that Marvell’s poem is not simply an example of carpe diem rhetoric, but a highly original reworking of time‑related metaphors that organizes the entire poem as a premise–conclusion reasoning schema. By showing how Marvell reverses or creatively manipulates standard conceptual metaphors—for example, transforming “time devours us” into “we devour time”—the analysis uncovers the poem’s innovative conceptual architecture. The study also contributes to Cognitive Poetics, illustrating how figurative language can construct alternative conceptual worlds and how metaphorical framing profoundly influences emotional and argumentative effects in poetry.
Perspectives
Writing this article allowed me to bring together literary analysis and cognitive‑linguistic theory in a way that sheds new light on a widely studied poem. I especially valued the opportunity to show how Marvell’s handling of time metaphors goes beyond convention, creating a persuasive structure that both engages the imagination and challenges the reader’s assumptions about love, mortality, and urgency. By examining how conceptual metaphors interact, shift, or reverse within the poem, I hoped to illustrate how poets can manipulate everyday conceptual patterns to produce striking literary effects. My aim was to contribute not only to Marvell scholarship but also to the growing field of Cognitive Poetics, where linguistic theory meets literary creativity.
Professor Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza
University of La Rioja
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Time and Cognition in Marvell’s “To his Coy Mistress”, Cognitive Semantics, August 2015, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/23526416-00102004.
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