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Paper-1 Renaissance Literature

Characteristic of the meta-physical poetry

Metaphysical poetry is a type of lyric poem. The characteristics of metaphysical poetry is about analyzing emotions Instead of expressing emotions. Metaphysical poetry is concerned with man's overall experience.

Metaphysical poetry is the description of a movable group of British sentimental poets of the 17th century. This term was invented by John Dryden a high ranking English poet, literary critic, interpreter, and scriptwriter. This type of poetry is humorous, original, and highly theoretical. It mainly focuses on themes like love, life and existence. Analyzed metaphysical poetry focuses on the whole familiarity of man and it evaluates emotions rather than stating them.

The analysis of Metaphysical poetry by Donne and Herbert points out the following; one must be able to locate moments of emotional climax, discover the polarities, oppositions, or conflicts that shape the poem and decipher phrases that are obscure or tricky.

                                Characteristics

Their style was characterized by wit and metaphysical conceits—far-fetched or unusual similes or metaphors, such as in Andrew Marvell’s comparison of the soul with a drop of dew; in an expanded epigram format, with the use of simple verse forms, octosyllabic couplets, quatrains or stanzas in which length of line and rhyme scheme enforce the sense. The specific definition of wit which Johnson applied to the school was: "...a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike." Their poetry diverged from the style of their times, containing neither images of nature nor allusions to classical mythology, as were common. Several metaphysical poets, especially John Donne, were influenced by Neo-Platonism. One of the primary Platonic concepts found in metaphysical poetry is the idea that the perfection of beauty in the beloved acted as a remembrance of perfect beauty in the eternal realm. Their work relies on images and references to the contemporary scientific or geographical discoveries. These were used to examine religious and moral questions, often employing an element of casuistry (i.e. theoretical reasoning used to resolve moral problems, often evasive or arcane) to define their understanding or personal relationship with God.

Critical opinion

Critical opinion of the school has been varied. Johnson claimed that "they were not successful in representing or moving the affections" and that neither "was the sublime more within their reach." Generally, his criticism of the poets' style was grounded in his assertion that "Great thoughts are always general," and that the metaphysical poets were too particular in their search for novelty. He did concede, however, that "they...sometimes stuck out unexpected truth" and that their work is often intellectually, if not emotionally, stimulating. The group was to have a significant influence on 20th-century poetry, especially through T. S. Eliot, whose essay The Metaphysical Poets (1921) praised the very anti-Romantic and intellectual qualities of which Johnson and his contemporaries had disapproved, and helped bring their poetry back into favour with readers.

Metaphysical poets

Major poets

• John Donne (1572–1631)
• George Herbert (1593–1633)
• Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
• Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)
• Saint Robert Southwell (c. 1561–1595)
• Richard Crashaw (c. 1613–1649)
• Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637 – 1674)
• Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)

Minor poets

The following poets have also been sometimes considered metaphysical poets :

• Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612–1672)
• Thomas Carew (1595–1640)^[12]
• George Chapman (c. 1559–1634)
• John Hall (c. 1627–1656)^[13]
• Edward Herbert (1583–1648)^[14]
• Richard Leigh (1649-1728)^[15]
• Katherine Philips (1632–1664),
• Sir John Suckling (1609–1642)^[16]
• Edward Taylor (c. 1642–1729)

Critics

                           John Donne (1572–1631)

John Donne  was an English poet, satirist, lawyer and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of British society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne’s poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often theorized. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.

Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. He spent much of the money he inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes, and travel. In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, with whom he had twelve children. In 1615, he became an Anglican priest, although he did not want to take Anglican orders. He did so because King James I persistently ordered it. In 1621, he was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He also served as a member of parliament in 1601 and in 1614.

  Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

Andrew Marvell (31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. As a metaphysical poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert. He was a colleague and friend of John Milton. His poems include To His Coy Mistress, The Garden, An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, The Mower's Song and the country house poem Upon Appleton House.

List of works by Andrew Marvell

 List of works by Andrew Marvell does not include all works by poet Andrew Marvell. Poems of disputed authorship are marked with asterisks. Organization is based on the 1993 Everyman's  Library edition.

Lyric poems

• A Dialogue, between The Resolved Soul, and Created Pleasure
• On a Drop of Dew
• The Coronet
• Eyes and Tears
• Bermudas
• Clorinda and Damon
• Two Songs at the Marriage of the Lord Fauconberg and the Lady Mary Cromwell
• A Dialogue between the Soul and Body
• The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn
• Young Love
• To His Coy Mistress
• The unfortunate Lover
• The Gallery
• The Fair Singer
• Mourning
• Daphnis and Chloe
• The Definition of Love
• The Picture of little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers
• The Match
• The Mower, against Gardens

                  Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)

Henry Vaughan (April 17, 1621 – April 23, 1695) was a Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet.

Vaughan and his twin brother, the hermetic philosopher and alchemist Thomas Vaughan, were the sons of Thomas Vaughan and his wife Denise (née Morgan) of 'Trenewydd', Newton, in Brecknockshire, Wales. Their grandfather, William, was the owner of Tretower Court.^[2]
Vaughan spent most of his life in the village of Llansantffraed, near Brecon, where he is also buried.

Works

• Poems with the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Englished
• Peace
• Olor Iscanus
• Silex Scintillans
• Silex Scintillans II
• Mount of Olives
• Flores Solitudinis
• Hermetical Physics
• The Chemist's Key
• Humane Industry
• Thalia Rediviva
• The World
• The Retreat
• The Evening-Watch

         Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)

Abraham Cowley ( 1618 – 1667) was an English poet 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 life and career

His father, a wealthy citizen, who died shortly before his birth, was a stationer. His mother was wholly given to works of devotion, but it happened that there lay in her parlour a copy of The Faerie Queene. This became the favourite reading of her son, and he had read it twice before he was sent to school.

As early as 1628, that is, in his tenth year, he composed his Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe, an epic romance written in a six-line stanza, a style of his own invention. It is not too much to say that this work is the most astonishing feat of imaginative precocity on record; it is marked by no great faults of immaturity, and possesses constructive merits of a very high order.

Two years later the child wrote another and still more ambitious poem, Constantia and Philetus, being sent about the same time to Westminster School. Here he displayed extraordinary mental precocity and versatility, and wrote in his thirteenth year the Elegy on the Death of Dudley, Lord Carlton. These three poems of considerable size, and some smaller ones, were collected in 1633, and published in a volume entitled Poetical Blossoms, dedicated to the head master of the school, and prefaced by many laudatory verses by schoolfellows.

The author at once became famous, although he had not, even yet, completed his fifteenth year. His next composition was a pastoral comedy, entitled Love's Riddle, a marvelous production for a boy of sixteen, airy, correct and harmonious in language, and rapid in movement. The style is not without resemblance to that of Randolph, whose earliest works, however, were at that time only just printed.

In 1637 Cowley was elected into Trinity College, Cambridge,^[3] where he betook himself with enthusiasm to the study of all kinds of learning, and early distinguished himself as a ripe scholar. It was about this time that he composed his scriptural epic on the history of King David, one book of which still exists in the Latin original, the rest being superseded in favour of an English version in four books, called the Davideis, which were published after his death. The epic, written in a very dreary and turgid manner, but in good rhymed heroic verse, deals with the adventures of King David from his boyhood to the smiting of Amalek by Saul, where it abruptly closes.