Metaphysical Poetry · PDF file Metaphysical Poetry The Metaphysical poets were a loose group of similarly-minded poets working in the 16th and 17th centuries. They rebelled against

Metaphysical Poetry The Metaphysical poets were a loose group of similarly-minded poets working in the 16th and 17th

centuries. They rebelled against the strict, structured nature of the sonnet form and began working

in their own ways, expressing novel ideas in inventive poetic forms. These poets also aimed at a less

polite, more colloquial and playful, entertaining style of writing. Some of them wrote in a distinctly

secular manner, focussing on love, sex and relationships. Other poets considered religious life and

love in great detail.

“Metaphysical” is drawn from two Greek words: “Meta”, meaning beyond and “Physika”, meaning

of the physical. This form of poetry aims to think and speak beyond the physical world. Most of

these poems therefore begin in the very real, visceral, physical world and then extend beyond this to

deal with life, love, morals, religion, time and existence. The poetry is very often compact in its ideas

and images; it employs analogy and has been described, over the years, as being very difficult and

dense in its content, images and ideas. Indeed, Jonson complained that many of Donne’s poems are

excessively difficult to understand. Jonson felt that Donne’s poems, some written to women, are too

difficult for women to understand!

Metaphysical poetry has several important features:

1] the conceit--"farfetched," "combination of dissimilar images," "heterogeneous ideas yoked by

violence together"—the conceits show far greater intellectuality than Petrarchan conceit.

2] complexity & obscurity:

3] paradox:

4] exaggeration, hyperbole:

5] rebellion against Petrarchan and Elizabethan poetic conventions:

6] colloquial language:

7] natural speech rhythms or extreme distortions of metrical patterns--"modulation so imperfect

that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables":

8] irregular lines and stanzas:

9] argumentative form and content:

10] persona & situation--like dramatic monologue in many cases.

(http://post.queensu.ca/~cjf1/10_Metaphysical_Characteristics.pdf)

http://post.queensu.ca/~cjf1/10_Metaphysical_Characteristics.pdf

Metaphors are a popular way of compacting ideas in Metaphysical poetry. These poets drew

heavily from their time and built comparisons based on geography, exploration, new worlds

and ideas and conquering both new worlds and potential lovers. The metaphors created are

known for being unusual and interesting. These poets often yoked together strikingly

different images or ideas in metaphors. This unusual conceit is a hallmark of Metaphysical

poetry.

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John Donne 1572-1631

John Donne was one of the leading metaphysical poets of the Renaissance, with a hugely

varied body of work ranging from sermons to sonnets, and elegies to pamphlets. A

contemporary of Shakespeare, he is known for both his love poetry and religious verse,

and often used complex conceits, such as extended

metaphors, with startling impact.

Donne was born in London in 1572 into a Catholic family at a

time when Catholicism was illegal. He studied at both Oxford

and Cambridge but could not graduate because of his faith.

After university he became a soldier and fought on the

continent and then returned to a promising civil service

career. But Donne effectively stalled his own career when he

secretly married his employer's teenage niece, Anne More.

Her uncle was furious and had him arrested. Though he was

later released from prison, he found it hard to find

employment, and over the coming years he would be unable

to support his increasingly large family without charitable

help.

When King James I came to power, Donne converted to the

Church of England and moved towards religious poetry,

writing prose attacking the Catholic faith. In 1615, in a final change of fortune, Donne

took holy orders and rose quickly in his profession to become the Dean of St Paul's

Cathedral in London. Towards the end of his life he wrote the famous Holy Sonnet X

(Death be not Proud). He died in 1631, and his work was never published in his lifetime.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poets/john_donne.shtml

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 No Man Is An Island

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thy friend's

Or of thine own were:

Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

George Herbert 1593–1633

Nestled somewhere within the Age of Shakespeare and the Age of Milton is George

Herbert. There is no Age of Herbert: he did not consciously fashion an expansive literary

career for himself, and his characteristic gestures, insofar as these can be gleaned from

his poems and other writings, tend to be careful self-scrutiny rather than rhetorical

pronouncement; local involvement rather than broad social engagement; and complex,

ever-qualified lyric contemplation rather than epic or dramatic mythmaking. This is the

stuff of humility and integrity, not celebrity. But even if Herbert does not appear to be

one of the larger-than-life cultural monuments of seventeenth-century England—a

position that virtually requires the qualities of irrepressible ambition and boldness, if not

self-regarding arrogance, that he attempted to flee—he is in some ways a pivotal figure:

enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skillful and

important British devotional lyricist (religious poet) of this or any other time.

Herbert is also important, especially in the seventeenth century, not only as a poet but

as a cultural icon, an image of religious and political stability held up for emulation

during tumultuous times. Much of his early popularity owes something to the carefully

crafted persona of "holy Mr Herbert" put forth by the custodians of his literary works and

reputation. Herbert is sketched as one who exchanged the advantages of noble birth and

worldly preferment for the strains of serving at "Gods Altar," one whose "obedience and

conformitie to the Church and the discipline thereof was singularly remarkable," and

whose "faithfull discharge" of the holy duties to which he was called "make him justly a

companion to the primitive Saints, and a pattern or more for the age he lived in."

Herbert becomes a model of harmonious, orderly, non-controversial devotion for whom

faith brought answers and commitment to the social establishment, not divisive

questions and social fragmentation.

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THE AGONY

Philosophers have measured mountains,

Fathom'd the depths of seas, of states, and kings,

Walk'd with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains

But there are two vast, spacious things,

The which to measure it doth more behove:

Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.

Who would know Sin, let him repair

Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see

A man, so wrung with pains, that all his hair,

His skin, his garments, bloody be.

Sin is that Press and Vice, which forceth pain

To hunt his cruel food through every vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay,

And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike

Did set again abroach; then let him say

If ever he did taste the like.

Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,

Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

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Andrew Marvell 1621-1678

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Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, Parliamentarian, and the son of a

Church of England clergyman (also named Andrew Marvell). As a metaphysical poet, he

is associated with Joh