![Abraham Cowley by Sir Peter Lely](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Abraham_Cowley_by_Sir_Peter_Lely.jpg)
The term Metaphysical poets was coined by the critic
Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of 17th-century English poets whose work was characterised by the inventive use of
conceit An extended metaphor, also known as a conceit or sustained metaphor, is the use of a single metaphor or analogy at length in a work of literature. It differs from a mere metaphor in its length, and in having more than one single point of contact bet ...
s, and by a greater emphasis on the spoken rather than lyrical quality of their verse. These poets were not formally affiliated and few were highly regarded until 20th century attention established their importance.
Given the lack of coherence as a movement, and the diversity of style among poets, it has been suggested that calling them
Baroque poets after their era might be more useful. Once the Metaphysical style was established, however, it was occasionally adopted by other and especially younger poets to fit appropriate circumstances.
Origin of the name
In the chapter on
Abraham Cowley
Abraham Cowley (; 161828 July 1667) was an English poet and essayist born in the City of London late in 1618. He was one of the leading English poets of the 17th century, with 14 printings of his ''Works'' published between 1668 and 1721.
Early ...
in his ''
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
''Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets'' (1779–81), alternatively known by the shorter title ''Lives of the Poets'', is a work by Samuel Johnson comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during th ...
'' (1779–81), Samuel Johnson refers to the beginning of the 17th century in which there "appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets". This does not necessarily imply that he intended "metaphysical" to be used in its true sense, in that he was probably referring to a witticism of
John Dryden
''
John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...
, who said of
John Donne:
He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love. In this...Mr. Cowley has copied him to a fault.
Probably the only writer before Dryden to speak of the new style of poetry was
Drummond of Hawthornden
William Drummond (13 December 15854 December 1649), called "of Hawthornden", was a Scottish poet.
Life
Drummond was born at Hawthornden Castle, Midlothian, to John Drummond, the first laird of Hawthornden, and Susannah Fowler, sister of the ...
, who in an undated letter from the 1630s made the charge that "some men of late, transformers of everything, consulted upon her reformation, and endeavoured to abstract her to metaphysical ideas and scholastical quiddities, denuding her of her own habits, and those ornaments with which she hath amused the world some thousand years".
Criticism
The Augustans
Johnson's assessment of "metaphysical poetry" was not at all flattering:
The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and, to show their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and, very often, such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables... The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
Johnson was repeating the disapproval of earlier critics who upheld the rival canons of
Augustan poetry, for though Johnson may have given the Metaphysical "school" the name by which it is now known, he was far from being the first to condemn 17th-century poetic usage of
conceit An extended metaphor, also known as a conceit or sustained metaphor, is the use of a single metaphor or analogy at length in a work of literature. It differs from a mere metaphor in its length, and in having more than one single point of contact bet ...
and word-play.
John Dryden
''
John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...
had already satirised the Baroque taste for them in his ''
Mac Flecknoe
''Mac Flecknoe'' (full title: ''Mac Flecknoe; or, A satyr upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T.S.''Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', Oxford University Press, 2004, ) is a verse mock-heroic satire writte ...
'' and
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719) was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richar ...
, in quoting him, singled out the poetry of
George Herbert
George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devoti ...
as providing a flagrant example.
20th-century recognition
During the course of the 1920s,
T.S. Eliot did much to establish the importance of the Metaphysical school, both through his critical writing and by applying their method in his own work. By 1961
A. Alvarez
Alfred Alvarez (5 August 1929 – 23 September 2019) was an English poet, novelist, essayist and critic who published under the name A. Alvarez and Al Alvarez.
Background
Alfred Alvarez was born in London, to an Ashkenazic Jewish mother and a ...
was commenting that "it may perhaps be a little late in the day to be writing about the Metaphysicals. The great vogue for Donne passed with the passing of the Anglo-American experimental movement in modern poetry."
A further two decades later, a hostile view was expressed that emphasis on their importance had been an attempt by Eliot and his followers to impose a "high Anglican and royalist literary history" on 17th-century English poetry.
But Colin Burrow's dissenting opinion, in the ''
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
'', is that the term 'Metaphysical poets' still retains some value. For one thing, Donne's poetry had considerable influence on subsequent poets, who emulated his style. And there are several instances in which 17th-century poets used the word 'metaphysical' in their work, meaning that Samuel Johnson's description has some foundation in the usage of the previous century.
However, the term does isolate the English poets from those who shared similar stylistic traits in Europe and America. Since the 1960s, therefore, it has been argued that gathering all of these under the heading of
Baroque poets would be more helpfully inclusive.
Defining the canon
There is no scholarly consensus regarding which English poets or poems fit within the Metaphysical genre. In his initial use of the term, Johnson quoted just three poets:
Abraham Cowley
Abraham Cowley (; 161828 July 1667) was an English poet and essayist born in the City of London late in 1618. He was one of the leading English poets of the 17th century, with 14 printings of his ''Works'' published between 1668 and 1721.
Early ...
,
John Donne, and
John Cleveland. Colin Burrow later singled out
John Donne,
George Herbert
George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devoti ...
,
Henry Vaughan
Henry Vaughan (17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695) was a Welsh metaphysical poet, author and translator writing in English, and a medical physician. His religious poetry appeared in ''Silex Scintillans'' in 1650, with a second part in 1655.''Oxfo ...
,
Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell (; 31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend ...
, and
Richard Crashaw
Richard Crashaw (c. 1613 – 21 August 1649) was an English poet, teacher, High Church Anglican cleric and Roman Catholic convert, who was one of the major metaphysical poets in 17th-century English literature.
Crashaw was the son of a famous ...
as 'central figures', while naming many more, all or part of whose work has been identified as sharing its characteristics.
[Colin Burrow, "Metaphysical poets (act. c. 1600–c. 1690)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press]
accessed 7 May 2012
/ref>
Two key anthologists in particular were responsible for identifying common stylistic traits among 17th-century poets. Herbert Grierson's ''Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century'' (1921) was important in defining the Metaphysical canon. In addition, Helen Gardner's ''Metaphysical Poets'' (1957) included 'proto-metaphysical' writers such as William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
and Sir Walter Raleigh and, extending into the Restoration, brought in Edmund Waller
Edmund Waller, FRS (3 March 1606 – 21 October 1687) was an English poet and politician who was Member of Parliament for various constituencies between 1624 and 1687, and one of the longest serving members of the English House of Commons.
S ...
and Rochester
Rochester may refer to:
Places Australia
* Rochester, Victoria
Canada
* Rochester, Alberta
United Kingdom
*Rochester, Kent
** City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area
** History of Rochester, Kent
** HM Prison ...
. While comprehensive, her selection, as Burrow remarks, so dilutes the style as to make it "virtually coextensive with seventeenth-century poetry".
Late additions to the Metaphysical canon have included sacred poets of both England and America who had been virtually unknown for centuries. John Norris was better known as a Platonist philosopher. Thomas Traherne
Thomas Traherne (; 1636 or 1637) was an English poet, Anglican cleric, theologian, and religious writer. The intense, scholarly spirituality in his writings has led to his being commemorated by some parts of the Anglican Communion on 10 October ...
's poetry remained unpublished until the start of the 20th century. The work of Edward Taylor
Edward Taylor (1642 – June 29, 1729) was a colonial American poet, pastor and physician of English origin. His work remained unpublished for some 200 years but since then has established him as one of the foremost writers of his time. His poe ...
, who is now counted as the outstanding English-language poet of North America, was only discovered in 1937.
A sense of community
Johnson's definition of the Metaphysical poets was that of a hostile critic looking back at the style of the previous century. In 1958 Alvarez proposed an alternative approach in a series of lectures eventually published as ''The School of Donne''. This was to look at the practice and self-definition of the circle of friends about Donne, who were the recipients of many of his verse letters. They were a group of some fifteen young professionals with an interest in poetry, many of them poets themselves although, like Donne for much of his life, few of them published their work. Instead, copies were circulated in manuscript among them. Uncertain ascriptions resulted in some poems from their fraternity being ascribed to Donne by later editors.
A younger second generation was a close-knit group of courtiers, some of them with family or professional ties to Donne's circle, who initially borrowed Donne's manner to cultivate wit. Among them were Lord Herbert of Cherbury
Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (or Chirbury) KB (3 March 1583 – 5 August 1648) was an English soldier, diplomat, historian, poet and religious philosopher of the Kingdom of England.
Life
Early life
Edward Herbert was the ...
and his brother George, whose mother Magdalen was another recipient of verse letters by Donne. Eventually George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and Richard Crashaw, all of whom knew each other, took up the religious life and extended their formerly secular approach into this new area. A later generation of Metaphysical poets, writing during the Commonwealth, became increasingly more formulaic and lacking in vitality. These included Cleveland and his imitators as well as such transitional figures as Cowley and Marvell.
What all had in common, according to Alvarez, was esteem, not for metaphysics but for intelligence. Johnson's remark that "To write on their plan it was at least necessary to read and think" only echoed its recognition a century and a half before in the many tributes paid to Donne on his death. For example, Jasper Mayne
Jasper Mayne (1604 – 6 December 1672) was an English clergyman, translator, and a minor poet and dramatist.
Mayne was baptized at Hatherleigh, Devon, on 23 November 1604, and educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He then e ...
's comment that for the fellow readers of his work, "Wee are thought wits, when 'tis understood". Coupled with it went a vigorous sense of the speaking voice. It begins with the rough versification of the satires written by Donne and others in his circle such as Everard Gilpin and John Roe. Later it modulates into the thoughtful religious poems of the next generation with their exclamatory or conversational openings and their sense of the mind playing over the subject and examining it from all sides. Helen Gardner too had noted the dramatic quality of this poetry as a personal address of argument and persuasion, whether talking to a physical lover, to God, to Christ's mother Mary, or to a congregation of believers.
Elegists
A different approach to defining the community of readers is to survey who speaks of whom, and in what manner, in their poetry. On the death of Donne, it is natural that his friend Edward Herbert should write him an elegy full of high-flown and exaggerated Metaphysical logic. In a similar way, Abraham Cowley marks the deaths of Crashaw and of another member of Donne's literary circle, Henry Wotton
Sir Henry Wotton (; 30 March 1568 – December 1639) was an English author, diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1614 and 1625. When on a mission to Augsburg, in 1604, he famously said, "An ambassador is an honest gentlema ...
. Here, however, though Cowley acknowledges Crashaw briefly as a writer ("Poet and saint"), his governing focus is on how Crashaw's goodness transcended his change of religion. The elegy is as much an exercise in a special application of logic as was Edward Herbert's on Donne. Henry Wotton, on the other hand, is not remembered as a writer at all, but instead for his public career. The conjunction of his learning and role as ambassador becomes the extended metaphor on which the poem's tribute turns.
Twelve "Elegies upon the Author" accompanied the posthumous first collected edition of Donne's work, ''Poems by J.D. with elegies of the author’s death'' (1633), and were reprinted in subsequent editions over the course of the next two centuries. Though the poems were often cast in a suitably Metaphysical style, half were written by fellow clergymen, few of whom are remembered for their poetry. Among those who are, were Henry King and Jasper Mayne
Jasper Mayne (1604 – 6 December 1672) was an English clergyman, translator, and a minor poet and dramatist.
Mayne was baptized at Hatherleigh, Devon, on 23 November 1604, and educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He then e ...
, who was soon to quit authorship for cleric
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...
al orders. Bishop Richard Corbet's poetry writing was also nearly over by now and he contributed only a humorous squib. Other churchmen included Henry Valentine (fl 1600–1650), Edward Hyde (1607–1659) and Richard Busby
Richard Busby (; 22 September 1606 – 6 April 1695) was an English Anglican priest who served as head master of Westminster School for more than fifty-five years. Among the more illustrious of his pupils were Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Rob ...
. Two poets, Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland
Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland PC (c. 1610 – 20 September 1643) was an English author and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1642. He fought on the Royalist side in the English Civil War and was killed in action at the ...
and Thomas Carew
Thomas Carew (pronounced as "Carey") (1595 – 22 March 1640) was an English poet, among the 'Cavalier' group of Caroline poets.
Biography
He was the son of Sir Matthew Carew, master in chancery, and his wife Alice, daughter of Sir John Rive ...
, who were joined in the 1635 edition by Sidney Godolphin
Sidney Godolphin is the name of:
* Sidney Godolphin (colonel) (1652–1732), Member of Parliament for fifty years
* Sidney Godolphin (poet) (1610–1643), English poet
* Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin (c. 1640–1712), leading British poli ...
, had links with the heterodox Great Tew Circle
The Great Tew Circle was a group of clerics and literary figures who gathered in the 1630s at the manor house of Great Tew, Oxfordshire in southern England, and in London.
Lord Clarendon referred to the Circle as "A college situate in a purer ai ...
. They also served as courtiers
A courtier () is a person who attends the royal court of a monarch or other royalty. The earliest historical examples of courtiers were part of the retinues of rulers. Historically the court was the centre of government as well as the official ...
, as did another contributor, Endymion Porter
Sir Endymion Porter (1587–1649) was an English diplomat and royalist.
Early life
He was descended from Sir William Porter, sergeant-at-arms to Henry VII, and son of Edmund Porter, of Aston-sub-Edge in Gloucestershire, by his cousin Angela, ...
. In addition, Carew had been in the service of Edward Herbert.
Isaac Walton
Izaak Walton (baptised 21 September 1593 – 15 December 1683) was an English writer. Best known as the author of '' The Compleat Angler'', he also wrote a number of short biographies including one of his friend John Donne. They have been col ...
's link with Donne's circle was more tangential. He had friends within the Great Tew Circle but at the time of his elegy was working as a researcher for Henry Wotton, who intended writing a life of the poet. This project Walton inherited after his death, publishing it under his own name in 1640; it was followed by a life of Wotton himself that prefaced the collection of Wotton's works in 1651. A life of George Herbert followed them in 1670. The links between Donne's elegists were thus of a different order from those between Donne and his circle of friends, often no more than professional acquaintanceship. And once the poetic style had been launched, its tone and approach remained available as a model for later writers who might not necessarily commit themselves so wholly to it.
Characteristics
Free from former artificial styles
Grierson attempted to characterise the main traits of Metaphysical poetry in the introduction to his anthology. For him it begins with a break with the formerly artificial style of their antecedents to one free from poetic diction or conventions. Johnson acknowledged as much in pointing out that their style was not to be achieved "by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery and hereditary similes".
European Baroque influences, including use of conceits
Another characteristic singled out by Grierson is the Baroque European dimension of the poetry, its "fantastic conceits and hyperboles which was the fashion throughout Europe". Again Johnson had been partly before him in describing the style as "borrowed from Marino and his followers". It was from the use of conceits particularly that the writing of these European counterparts was known, ''Concettismo'' in Italian, ''Conceptismo'' in Spanish. In fact Crashaw had made several translations from Marino. Grierson noted in addition that the slightly older poet, Robert Southwell (who is included in Gardner's anthology as a precursor), had learned from the antithetical, conceited style of Italian poetry and knew Spanish as well.
The European dimension of the Catholic poets Crashaw and Southwell has been commented on by others. In the opinion of one critic of the 1960s, defining the extent of the Baroque style in 17th-century English poetry "may even be said to have taken the place of the earlier discussion of the metaphysical". Southwell counts as a notable pioneer of the style, in part because his formative years were spent outside England. And the circumstance that Crashaw's later life was also spent outside England contributed to making him, in the eyes of Mario Praz, "the greatest exponent of the Baroque style in any language".
Crashaw is frequently cited by Harold Segel when typifying the characteristics of ''The Baroque Poem'', but he goes on to compare the work of several other Metaphysical poets to their counterparts in both Western and Eastern Europe. The use of conceits was common not only across the Continent, but also elsewhere in England among the Cavalier poets, including such elegists of Donne as Carew and Godolphin. As an example of the rhetorical way in which various forms of repetition accumulate in creating a tension, only relieved by their resolution at the end of the poem, Segel instances the English work of Henry King as well as Ernst Christoph Homburg's in German and Jan Andrzej Morsztyn
Jan Andrzej Morsztyn (1621–93) was a Polish poet, member of the landed nobility, and official in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was '' starosta'' of Zawichost, Tymbark and Kowal. He was also pantler of Sandomierz (1647–58), Royal S ...
's in Polish. In addition, Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is given as a famous example of the use of hyperbole
Hyperbole (; adj. hyperbolic ) is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. In rhetoric, it is also sometimes known as auxesis (literally 'growth'). In poetry and oratory, it emphasizes, evokes strong feelings, and ...
common to many other Metaphysical poets and typical of the Baroque style too.
Wordplay and wit
The way George Herbert and other English poets "torture one poor word ten thousand ways", in Dryden's phrase, finds its counterpart in a poem like "Constantijn Huygens
Sir Constantijn Huygens, Lord of Zuilichem ( , , ; 4 September 159628 March 1687), was a Dutch Golden Age poet and composer. He was also secretary to two Princes of Orange: Frederick Henry and William II, and the father of the scientist Ch ...
’ ''Sondagh'' (Sunday) with its verbal variations on the word 'sun'. Wordplay on this scale was not confined to Metaphysical poets, moreover, but can be found in the multiple meanings of 'will' that occur in Shakespeare's "Sonnet 135". and of 'sense' in John Davies’ "That the Soul is more than a Perfection or Reflection of the Sense". Such rhetorical devices are common in Baroque writing and frequently used by poets not generally identified with the Metaphysical style.
Another striking example occurs in Baroque poems celebrating "black beauty", built on the opposition between the norm of feminine beauty and instances that challenge that commonplace. There are examples in sonnets by Philip Sidney
Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who popularize ...
, where the key contrast is between 'black' and 'bright'; by Shakespeare, contrasting 'black' and various meanings of 'fair'; and by Edward Herbert, where black, dark and night contrast with light, bright and spark. Black hair and eyes are the subject in the English examples, while generally it is the colour of the skin with which Romance poets deal in much the same paradoxical style. Examples include Edward Herbert's "La Gialletta Gallante or The sun-burn'd exotic Beauty" and Marino's "La Bella Schiave" (The Beautiful Slave). Still more dramatically, Luis de Góngora
Luis de Góngora y Argote (born Luis de Argote y Góngora; ; 11 July 1561 – 24 May 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet and a Catholic priest. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widely considered the most prominent ...
's ''En la fiesta del Santísimo Sacramento'' (At the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament) introduces a creole dialogue between two black women concerning the nature of their beauty.
Much of this display of wit hinges upon enduring literary conventions and is only distinguished as belonging to this or that school by the mode of treatment. But English writing goes further by employing ideas and images derived from contemporary scientific or geographical discoveries to examine religious and moral questions, often with an element of casuistry
In ethics, casuistry ( ) is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances. This method occurs in applied ethics and ju ...
. Bringing greater depth and a more thoughtful quality to their poetry, such features distinguish the work of the Metaphysical poets from the more playful and decorative use of the Baroque style among their contemporaries.
Platonic influence
Ideas of Platonic love had earlier played their part in the love poetry of others, often to be ridiculed there, although Edward Herbert and Abraham Cowley took the theme of " Platonic Love" more seriously in their poems with that title.
In the poetry of Henry Vaughan, as in that of another of the late discoveries, Thomas Traherne
Thomas Traherne (; 1636 or 1637) was an English poet, Anglican cleric, theologian, and religious writer. The intense, scholarly spirituality in his writings has led to his being commemorated by some parts of the Anglican Communion on 10 October ...
, Neo-Platonic
Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a chain of thinkers. But there are some ide ...
concepts played an important part and contributed to some striking poems dealing with the soul's remembrance of perfect beauty in the eternal realm and its spiritual influence.
Stylistic echoes
Long before it was so-named, the Metaphysical poetic approach was an available model for others outside the interlinking networks of 17th century writers, especially young men who had yet to settle for a particular voice. The poems written by John Milton while still at university are a case in point and include some that were among his earliest published work, well before their inclusion in his ''Poems'' of 1645. His ''On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
''On the Morning of Christ's Nativity'' is a nativity ode written by John Milton in 1629 and published in his ''Poems of Mr. John Milton'' (1645). The poem
describes Christ's Incarnation and his overthrow of earthly and pagan powers. The poem ...
'' (1629) and "On Shakespear" (1630) appear in Grierson's anthology; the latter poem and "On the University Carrier" (1631) appear in Gardner's too. It may be remembered also that at the time Milton composed these, the slightly younger John Cleveland was a fellow student at Christ's College, Cambridge, on whom the influence of the Metaphysical style was more lasting.
In Milton's case, there is an understandable difference in the way he matched his style to his subjects. For the 'Nativity Ode' and commendatory poem on Shakespeare he deployed Baroque conceits, while his two poems on the carrier Thomas Hobson were a succession of high-spirited paradoxes. What was then titled "An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare" was included anonymously among the poems prefacing the second folio publication of Shakespeare's plays in 1632. The poems on Thomas Hobson were anthologised in collections titled ''A Banquet of Jests'' (1640, reprinted 1657) and ''Wit Restor’d'' (1685), bracketing both the 1645 and 1673 poetry collections published during Milton's lifetime.
The start of John Dryden
''
John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...
's writing career coincided with the period when Cleveland, Cowley and Marvell were first breaking into publication. He had yet to enter university when he contributed a poem on the death of Henry Lord Hastings to the many other tributes published in ''Lachrymae Musarum'' (1649). It is typified by astronomical imagery, paradox, Baroque hyperbole, play with learned vocabulary ("an universal metampsychosis"), and irregular versification which includes frequent enjambment. The poem has been cited as manifesting "the extremes of the metaphysical style", but in this it sits well with others there that are like it: John Denham's "Elegy on the death of Henry Lord Hastings", for example, or Marvell's rather smoother "Upon the death of the Lord Hastings". The several correspondences among the poems there are sometimes explained as the result of the book's making a covert Royalist
A royalist supports a particular monarch as head of state for a particular kingdom, or of a particular dynastic claim. In the abstract, this position is royalism. It is distinct from monarchism, which advocates a monarchical system of governm ...
statement. In the political circumstances following the recent beheading of the king, it was wise to dissemble grief for him while mourning another under the obscure and closely wrought arguments typical of the Metaphysical style.
The choice of style by the young Milton and the young Dryden can therefore be explained in part as contextual. Both went on to develop radically different ways of writing; neither could be counted as potentially Metaphysical poets. Nor could Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
, yet his early poetry evidences an interest in his Metaphysical forebears. Among his juvenilia appear imitations of Cowley. As a young man he began work on adapting Donne's second satire, to which he had added the fourth satire too by 1735. Pope also wrote his " Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" (1717) while still young, introducing into it a string of Metaphysical conceits in the lines beginning "Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age" which in part echo a passage from Donne's "Second Anniversary".[Maynard Mack, "Wit and Poetry and Pope" in ''Collected in Himself'', University of Delaware 1982]
Volume 1, pp. 38–40
/ref> By the time Pope wrote this, the vogue for the Metaphysical style was over and a new orthodoxy had taken its place, of which the rewriting of Donne's satires was one expression. Nevertheless, Johnson's dismissal of the 'school' was still in the future and at the start of the 18th century allusions to their work struck an answering chord in readers.
Notes and references
Bibliography
* A. Alvarez, ''The School of Donne'', London 1961
* "Elegies upon the Author" i
''Poems by J.D. with elegies of the author’s death''
London 1633
* Gardner, Helen, ''The Metaphysical Poets''. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957)
* Grierson, Herbert J.C.,
Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the Seventeenth Century
', Oxford, 1921
* Johnson, Samuel
extracted from '' Lives of the Poets'' (London 1780)
* Segel, Harold B., ''The Baroque Poem: a comparative survey'', New York 1974
External links
17th Century English Literature Metaphysical Poets
– ''Luminarium'' website anthology
Metaphysical Poetry – Timeline, Context, Biographies of Various Poets, Critical Analysis
– Crossref-it.info
{{Schools of poetry
*
17th-century literature
17th-century literature of England
Baroque writers
British poetry
British poets
English literary movements