In Robert Herrick’s poem, The Vine, the author recounts an erotic dream about his lover, Lucia. In the dream, his “mortal part” is “metamorphosed to a vine” that surrounds his lover. The vine reference is presumably phallic, and I was somewhat surprised by Herrick’s blatant sexual aggression. The repetition of the word “enthralled” to describe the vine’s effect on Lucia highlights this aggression, and she is described as a prisoner who “could not freely stir.” Although Herrick’s early tone is highly sexualized and almost disturbingly aggressive, his humor towards the end is a reminder that the poem is merely recounting a dream. His ability to poke fun at himself and his dream lightens the overall tone of the poem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Robert Herrick’s poem, The Vine, the author recounts an erotic dream about his lover, Lucia. In the dream, his “mortal part” is “metamorphosed to a vine” that surrounds his lover. The vine reference is presumably phallic, and I was somewhat surprised by Herrick’s blatant sexual aggression. The repetition of the word “enthralled” to describe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-romancing-the-sonnet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-2202-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}