Tags
Andrew Marvell, Carpe Diem, English Renaissance, Erotic Poetry, John Gerard, Seventeenth Century, Sweet Potato
Of course, ‘My vegetable love’ starts line 11 of Andrew Marvell’s erotic poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’ (1681). Poised rudely between noun and adjective, the Lover’s ‘vegetable love’ apparently grows ‘Vaster than empires, and more slow’ (Line 12). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the noun vegetable, as we understand it today, is more commonly known as an herb. Therefore, the Lover’s manhood additional reading pleasure