The Erotic Wit of Herrick's "The Parcæ": Mythic Revision and a Metaleptic Pun on "Die"

• Published in: ANQ (Lexington, Ky.) Vol. 35; no. 3; pp. 279 - 281
• Main Author: Blaine, Marlin E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Routledge 03.07.2022; Taylor & Francis Inc
• Subjects: Culture; Donne, John (1572-1631); Literature; Mythology; Poetry; Renaissance literature; Renaissance period; Scaliger, Julius Caesar (1484-1558); Word play
• ISSN: 0895-769X; 1940-3364
• DOI: 10.1080/0895769X.2020.1817725

Commentary on Robert Herrick's epigram "The Parcæ, or Three Dainty Destinies. The Armilet" has concentrated on its reimagining of the grim and dreadful Fates or "Parcæ" of classical mythology as pretty girls and pointing out precedents for bracelets made of hair in poems by John Donne and in seventeenth-century culture more broadly. While the surprising "daintiness" of the "Destinies" and the nature of the object they are crafting certainly merit that attention, the witty turn at the poem's end has not been explicated or acknowledged in critical discussions. That turn involves a complex and indirect pun on the unstated but implied verb "die," with the sexual implications that that word often carries in Renaissance literature. It is important to recognize this pun because a witty concluding turn is often regarded as a hallmark of the epigrammatic form; indeed, Julius Caesar Scaliger, arguably the most important literary theorist in the early modern period, called it the anima or soul of the epigram (Citroni 39).