Lecture notes by Prof. Sacaria Joseph, St.

Xavier’s College, Kolkata

 Anglo-Saxon Period (450 – 1066)
Middle English Period (1066-1500)

The Middle English Period is divided into the following three periods

Anglo—Norman Period 1066-1350

The Age of Chaucer 1350-1400
Period of the English & the Scottish Chaucerians 1400-1500

Renaissance (1516 – 1625)

 The literary landscape
of English Renaissance can be divided into the following three periods:

1) The Early English Renaissance (1516 – 1558)

2) The Peak of English Renaissance (1558 – 1603): The Age of Elizabeth.

3) The Decline of Renaissance (1603 – 1625): The Jacobean Age.

 1) The Early English Renaissance (1516 – 1558)

The Early English Renaissance was dominated by two poets:

Thomas Wyatt (1503 – 1542)

Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey) (1517 – 1547)

2) The Peak of English Renaissance (1558 – 1603):The Age of Elizabeth.

Philip Sidney (1554 – 1586) Poet

Edmund Spenser (1552 – 1599) Poet
Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) Poet
Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) Poet
Thomas Campion (1567-1620) Poet
John Hoskins (?-1638) Poet
Henry Constable (1562-1613) Poet

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) Dramatist

Ben Jonson 1572 –1637 Poet & Dramatist
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) Poet & Dramatist
John Lyly (1554-1606)
 3) The Decline of Renaissance (1603 – 1625):
The Jacobean Age.

Ben Jonson 1572 –1637 Poet & Dramatist

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) Poet & Dramatist

John Donne (1572 – 1631) Poet

Michael Drayton (1563 – 1631) Poet
Henry Wotton (1568-1630) Poet
Thomas Lodge (1557-1625) Poet

John Webster (1580 – 1634) Dramatist

Francis Beaumont (1584 – 1616) Dramatist
John Fletcher (1579–1625) Dramatist
 After
The Jacobean Age (1603 – 1625)

is
The Caroline Age (1625-1660)

The Metaphysical poetry belongs to the Caroline Age of the 17th century
 The Literature of the 17th century
can be divided into literature belonging to two specific periods:

1) Literature of the Puritan Age or the Age of Milton (1600-1660)

2) Literature of the Restoration Period or the Age of John Dryden (1660-1700).

1) Literature of the Puritan Age or the Age of Milton (1600-1660) is further
divided into two periods:

A) Literature of the Jacobean Age (1603–1625)

B) Literature of the Caroline Age (1625-1660) which comprises three

other schools of poetry:

1) Cavalier poetry
2) Puritan poetry
3) Metaphysical poetry

Puritan Age? Jacobean Age? Caroline Age?

 Puritan Age / Age of Milton

Elizabethan Age (the period of the reign of Elizabeth I of England from 1558–1603)
comes to an end as the Puritan Age, also known as the Age of Milton (1600—1660)
begins.

During the period, it was the standards of the Puritans that prevailed in England,
and hence, the name, Puritan Age.

The Puritans were the English Protestants of the 16th and 17th centuries, who
sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, arguing that
the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more
Protestant).

The greatest literary figure of the period was John Milton (1608-1674) who was a
Puritan, hence the name, Age of Milton.
 Jacobean Age (1603–1625)

The Jacobean Age is named after James I of England who ruled England from 1603
to 1625.

He also ruled Scotland from 1567 to 1625 as James VI. The Latin form of the English
name, James, is Jacobus. ‘Jacobean’ is the adjective of Jacobus.
 Caroline Age (1625-1660)

The Caroline age is named after Charles I who ruled England from 1625 to 1649. (He
was born in 1600. He was the monarch of the three kingdoms — England, Scotland,
and Ireland — from 1625 until his execution in 1649).

The Latin form or the English name, Charles is Carolus. Caroline is the adjective of
Carolus. Though Charles I was executed in 1649, the period (Caroline age) is
extended up to 1660, the year of his son Charles II’s return to the throne.
 Political Background of the Caroline Age (1625-1660)

A civil war in England marked the entire Caroline period. The war divided the
people into two factions: one loyal to the King and the other opposed to him.

The crisis in England actually began with James I in the Jacobean Age (1603 –
1625), who believing in the Divine Right of Kings ignored the English parliament
and pursued an autocratic and repressive administrative policy.

Consequently, the Puritans, who had become a powerful force in the social life
of the age, began a movement for social and constitutional reforms.
The repressive policies that James I started did not die with him. His son Charles I
who succeeded him in 1625 continued with his father’s policies.

The hostilities between Charles I and the British Parliament resulted in two English
civil wars (one from 1642 to 1646, and another from 1648 to 1649) fought between
the Cavaliers or Royalists and the Roundheads or the Parliamentarians.

During the war, Charles I was defeated and executed on 30 January 1649. His son,
Charles II, was exiled to France.

Cavaliers or Royalists? Roundheads or the Parliamentarians?

 Cavalier
was the name used by Parliamentarians as a supporter of King Charles I and his son
Charles II during the English Civil War. They were also known as Royalists. They
included the Court, the Church and the wealthy class of the north.

Three meanings of the term, ‘Cavalier.’

1) a gallant or chivalrous man, especially one serving as escort to a woman of

high social position; a gentleman.

2) A mounted soldier or a knight.

3) A supporter of Charles I of England in his struggles against Parliament; he is

also called Royalist.
Roundhead was the name given to the supporters of the Parliament during the
English Civil War.

They got this name from their custom of wearing their hair cut short.
They were also known as Parliamentarians.

The roundheads included the puritans, the merchants, the workers, and the
middle class in general.

The goal of the Roundhead party was to give the Parliament supreme control over
executive administration.
With the execution of Charles I, England was declared a Commonwealth or a
Republic.

However, all the power was concentrated in the hands of Oliver Cromwell, a
leading general of the Roundheads in the civil wars. He assumed full control of the
government in 1653 under the title, Lord Protector of England, Scotland and
Ireland.

On his death, in 1658, his son Richard Cromwell took his place. Two years later, in
1660, the parliament restored monarchy by inviting, Charles II, the son of Charles I
from his exile in France.

With the return of Charles II, the Cromwellian Regime came to an end and the
British monarchy was Restored.
 Poetry in the Caroline Age (1625-1660)

The Caroline Age is an age of three schools of poetry:

1 — Cavalier Poetry

2— Puritan Poetry

3 — Metaphysical poetry.
 1— Cavalier Poetry

Cavalier poets were a group of 17th-century English poets associated with the
court of Charles I.

They got the name, ‘Cavaliers,’ because, of their loyalty to Charles I during the
English Civil Wars, as opposed to Roundheads, who supported Parliament.

The Cavaliers often wrote love lyrics addressed to mistresses with fanciful names
like Anthea, Althea, Lucasta, or Amarantha. They also wrote of war, honour,
loyalty and their duty to the king. Their finely finished verses were marked by
their sense of wit and directness.

Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, Edmund Waller and Richard
Lovelace were the noted cavalier poets.
 Puritan Poetry

Puritans were a 16th and early 17th century protestant group who wanted to
reform the Church of England of all its Catholic characteristics on the model of the
Geneva-based French theologian and Protestant reformer, John Calvin (1509-1564)
and his Reformed Church.

They were of the opinion that the Church of England was only partially reformed.

The Puritan poets were the very opposite of the cavalier poets. They wrote about
loftier things with strong religious undertones.

John Milton and Andrew Marvell were the two important Puritan poets.
 Meaning of the term, ‘Metaphysics’

The word metaphysics is hard to define. Since the Greek term, ‘meta’ means
‘after’ or ‘beyond,’ the term, ‘metaphysics’ denotes that which comes after or lies
beyond the physical.

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the basic causes and
nature of things. It is an enquiry into the ultimate structure and constitution of
reality—i.e., of that which is real.

It is an enquiry into the ultimate nature of reality, as opposed to appearance; as

the study of the world as a whole; and as a theory of first principles.
Metaphysics is the study of being and reality. Therefore, it asks fundamental
questions such as: ‘Is there a God?’ ‘What is the place of human persons in the
universe?’ ‘What is matter made of?

Major types of Western metaphysical theory include Platonism, Aristotelianism,

Thomism, Cartesianism, Idealism, Realism, and Materialism.

Unlike as the term, ‘metaphysics,’ tires in indicate, the metaphysical poetry does
not deal with any of these philosophical issues. However, they do deal with the
question of mind, soul eternity etc.

(Cartesianism is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes (a 17th

century French philosopher) and its subsequent development by other 17th century
thinkers, such as Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes is often
regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural
sciences).
 Definition of Metaphysical Poetry

In his article, “What is Metaphysical Poetry?” W. Bradford Smith defines

metaphysical poetry in the following words:

“Metaphysical Poetry is a paradoxical inquiry, imaginative and intellectual, which

exhausts, by its use of antithesis and contradiction and unusual imagery, all the
possibilities in a given idea. This idea will predominantly be a psychological
probing of love, death, or religion as the more important matters of experience in
the life of the poet, and will be embodied in striking metaphorical utterance or in
the use of the common (familiar) or the scientific word.”
‘Metaphysical Poets’ is a term used to group together some 17th-century poets
who have certain commonality in their approach to writing poetry.

Noted Metaphysical Poets Other poets who sometimes are also

included in the list are the following.

John Donne (1572 – 1631)

Thomas Traherne (1636 – 1674),
Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678)
Abraham Cowley (1618 -1667)
George Herbert (1593 – 1633)
Thomas Carew (1595 – 640)
Henry Vaughn (1621 –1695)
Richard Crashaw (1613 –1649) (These three are included in the list
because they were either directly or
indirectly influenced by John Donne)
In fact, it is difficult to give a comprehensive definition of metaphysical poetry or
list the exact number of poets who practised it.

Nevertheless, while talking about metaphysical poets, John Donne is often the
fixed point of reference.

The best metaphysical poetry was written between 1595 and 1660.
 How did these poets get the name ‘Metaphysical Poets?’

The metaphysical poets did not call themselves ‘metaphysical poets.’ The name
came into use after the death of the so-called metaphysical poets. John Dryden
has a role in coining the term ‘Metaphysical Poets.’

The term ‘metaphysical,’ was first used by John Dryden (1631–1700) in order to
criticize the unnaturalness in the poems of this group of 17th-century poets.
Dryden disliked and disapproved of John Donne’s philosophical speculations, and
stylistic excesses, particularly his extravagant conceits and his tendency towards
hyperbolic abstractions.
Therefore, in his 1693 essay, “A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of
Satire” Dryden criticized Donne’s poetry saying: “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 softness of love.”
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) also has a role in coining the term, ‘Metaphysical
Poets.’ Taking a cue from Dryden’s remarks, the English poet and essayist, Samuel
Johnson, coined the term, ‘Metaphysical Poets’ to describe John Donne and his
poetic descendants in his book, Lives of the English Poets, a collection of short
biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during the 18th
century.

While discussing the life of Abraham Cowley, in Lives of the English Poets, Johnson
noted that “about the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of
writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets.”

He used the term ‘metaphysical poets’ as a kind of nickname for this group of
poets. He went on to say that “the metaphysical poets were men of learning, and
to show learning was their whole endeavour.”
Johnson consolidated the argument of Dryden in his work. He described the far-
fetched nature of their comparisons as “a kind of discordia concors; a combination
of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently
unlike.”
(discordia concors = harmonious discord: harmony or unity gained by combining disparate or
conflicting elements).

Neither Dryden nor Johnson were philosophers; therefore, neither of them knew
the exact meaning of the term ‘metaphysical.’

Therefore, out of sheer ignorance about the meaning of the term ‘metaphysical,’
they used it in order to talk about the poetry of a group of 17th century poets,
namely, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughn, George Herbert, Richard
Crashaw.

In fact, in their case, the term, ‘metaphysical poets’ is a misnomer.

According to T S Eliot, These poets in question should be referred to by the term
‘metaphysical poets,’ because, the term is consecrated by use; and therefore, the
question of the rightness or the appropriateness of the term does not matter any
longer.

Over the years, the term, ‘Metaphysical Poetry’ has actually come to refer to a poetic
style rather than the subject matter.

T. S. Eliot in his 1921 essay, The Metaphysical Poets, admired the stunning capacity of
the Metaphysical poets for their ability to merge varying experiences in their poetry.

When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating
disparate experiences; the ordinary man‘s experience is chaotic, irregular, and
fragmentary. Whether he falls in love or reads the philosophy of Spinoza, these two
experiences remain in him as two distinct experiences. However, in the mind of the
poet, these experiences are always forming new wholes.
“A thought to Donne was an experience: it modified his sensibility... the ordinary
man... falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do
with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the
mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.” – T.S. Eliot
(1921).

In his essay, 'The Metaphysical Poets' (1921), which helped bring the poetry of Donne
and his contemporaries back into favour, T. S. Eliot argued that their work fuses reason
with passion; it shows a unification of thought and feeling which later became
separated into a ‘dissociation of sensibility.’

“Argument and persuasion, and the use of the conceit as their instrument, are the
elements or body of a metaphysical poem. Its quintessence or soul is the vivid
imagining of a moment of experience or of a situation out of which the need to argue,
or persuade, or define arises. Metaphysical poetry is famous for its abrupt, personal
openings in which a man speaks to his mistress, or addresses his God, or sets a scene,
or calls us to mark this or see that.” -- -- Helen Gardner (Literary Critic).
 Religious Dimension of Metaphysical Poetry

The metaphysical poets lived and wrote in a predominantly religious age, especially,
Puritan age. Most of the famous metaphysical poets were religious poets; they wrote
on matters concerning religion keeping in mind the universe unified in God.

Donne’s poems fall into different categories — 1) secular poems; 2) religious poems.

While love is the predominant theme in many of his secular poems his religious poem
deal with the theme of the transitory and fallen nature of the world; the meanness and
insignificance of man; the transitoriness of this world and ha happiness it provides; the
sufferings of the soul imprisoned in the body; human mortality that turns the human
person towards Christ for deliverance.

Born into and raised Catholic faith, John Donne, embraced Anglican faith, the faith of
his country.
Some argue that his conversion into Anglicanism may be attributed to the Renaissance
spirit in him resulting in his leaning towards nationalism. However, his conversion to
Anglican faith can largely be seen as a result of his scepticism towards many of the
religious dogmas of the Catholic Church.

All his life, Donne he lived with conflicts in his mind — 1) conflict between his old
Catholic faith and his new Anglican faith; 2) conflict between ambition and asceticism.

After conversion, he was not at peace. Therefore, he prayed for God’s mercy and grace
so that so he might be able to build his faith on a sound foundation. His poem, “A
Hymn to God the Father,” depicts his arrival at a firm faith. It is perhaps the
culmination of his spiritual quest. Such is the spiritual dimension of his religious
poetry.

His Holy Sonnets, also known as the Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets are a moving
record of Donne’s struggle in his spiritual journey towards God.
George Herbert has been called the ‘saint’ of the metaphysical school. His approach
to God and Christ is full of intimate tenderness.

Herbert had two distinguished followers — Henry Vaughan and Richard Crashaw.
They acknowledged their debts to Herbert, but they had tempers fundamentally
their own.

Henry Vaughan is temperamentally a mystic. He is at his best while dealing with

such themes as childhood, communion with nature, and eternity. Henry Vaughan’s
thoughts concerning childhood, in his poem, The Retreat, are largely echoed by
Wordsworth in the “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood.”

His poem, “The World,” has the following daring image:

I saw eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light.
All calm as it was bright.
Thomas Traherne is not a great poet; however, he contemplates the beauty of
God’s universe till it stirs in him a mystic response. Like Vaughan, he idealises
childhood as the age in which a human being is nearest to God.

Richard Crashaw was the only Roman Catholic among the metaphysical poets; and
Andrew Marvell, Milton’s secretary, the only Puritan. Crashaw is quite undisciplined
and given to moods of religious exaltation and excitement.

He has a taste for daring images and metaphysical conceits. For instance, he
describes the eyes of Mary Magdalene in The Weeper as

Two walking baths; two weeping motions;

Portable and compendious oceans.
Metaphysical Poetry: A Revolt against Elizabethan Poetry
Broadly speaking, we can say, what came to be called ‘metaphysical poetry’ was the
result of a revolt against the conventional romanticism of Elizabethan love poetry (from
1558 to 1603 is the Elizabethan Period).

In reaction to the deliberately smooth and sweet tones prevalent in the 16th century
verse, the metaphysical poets adopted a style that is energetic, uneven, and rigorous.

The metaphysical poets were inclined towards the amalgamation of heterogeneous ideas
and disparate images, use of intricate rhythm, realism, obscurity etc. This approach,
according to Samuel Johnson, resulted in the deliberate mixture of different styles.

According to Johnson, this is nothing but the violation of poetic decorum.

Popularity of the Metaphysical poets in the 20th century
The metaphysical poets were eclipsed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the
Romantic (for 1798 to 1837 is Romantic Period) and the Victorian poets (from 1837 to
1901 is Victorian period).

However, the twentieth century readers and scholars perceived in the metaphysical
poetry an attempt to understand the pressing political and scientific upheavals.
Therefore, they read the metaphysical poetry with renewed interest.

The two essays of Eliot, “The Metaphysical Poets” and “Andrew Marvell” contributed to
the immense popularity of and the interest in the Metaphysical poetry in the twentieth
century.
Metaphysical poetry a School or Movement?
The use of the term, ‘Metaphysical Poets,’ to talk about a group of diverse writers does
not necessarily mean that they shared a common world view. All the metaphysical poets
do not write exactly in the same manner. All of them are strongly marked individuals
with their own world views.

In no sense they are a school proper. The only thing common to them is that they had a
common poetic style and a way of organizing thought. They share some common
characteristics of wit, inventiveness, and a love for elaborate stylistic manoeuvres.

The English metaphysical poetry from John Donne to Thomas Traherne should be treated
not as a type, but as a movement.
Poetic Approach of the Metaphysical poetry
Unlike poets in the Petrarchan and Spenserian tradition, a metaphysical poet
attempts to establish a logical connection between his emotional feelings and
intellectual concepts so that readers are compelled to think afresh instead of a
passive reading of the poems.
(Francesco Petrarca known as Petrarch was a 14th century Italian poet and Edmond
Spenser was a 16th century English poet)

Therefore,
Metaphysical poems primarily hinge on, to put in the Eliotian phrase, a
unification of sensibility – the marvellous fusion of head and heart, of intellect
and emotion, of thought and passion.
Metaphysical poetry handled the philosophical and spiritual subjects with
reason.

Therefore, certain philosophical subtlety or intellectual rigor is very

characteristic of their poetry.

The metaphysical poets established meditation—based on the union of

thought and feeling as a poetic mode.

It combined the colloquial with the ingenious.

Metaphysical Conceit
In general, like similes and metaphors, a conceit establishes a relationship
between two things by comparison.

However, a conceit goes a step further in establishing a relation between two

things that have no apparent connection. Hence, we can say, that a conceit brings
together paradoxical images.

“A conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness, or,
at least, more immediately striking. All comparisons, discover likeness in things
unlike: a comparison becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness
while being strongly conscious of unlikeness.”
– Helen Gardner
As mentioned earlier, in his comments on Abraham Cowley, Samuel Johnson in his
famous 18th century essay, The Lives of the Poets observes (with a bit of hostility
to the metaphysical poets) their fondness for using “combination of dissimilar
images” and their “discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike.”
Herein, we can say, lies the foundation of conceit.

A conceit often combines subtle argument, wit and learned imagery.

(Learned imagery is the result of images and references from diverse spheres of
cosmology, geography, science, philosophy, alchemy, theology, law and even from
colonial enterprise).

Conceits have been tried by poets earlier, for instance, the Petrarchan sonneteers
had their own ways of introducing conceits in their poetry.

Elizabethan poetry, both dramatic poetry and lyric poetry are full of conceits.
 Both Petrarchan sonneteers and the Elizabethans poets
employed conceits for the sake of ornamentation.

Let us consider an example.

In first four lines of Thomas Wyatt’s translation of Petrarch’s Rime 140, there is an
interesting conceit which lies in love being compared to a knight or a warrior who
with bold pretence flaunts his presence by means of a banner. The poem depicts
love in terms of a battle.
The personified love (depicted as male) who resides in the heart of the narrator,
presses against his face so boldly that it leads the narrator to express to his
emotions. In other, words, his emotions resulting from being smitten by love
shows upon his face. The narrator is foolishly overwhelmed by emotions of love.

The lover’s action of pressing against the narrator’s face is compared to the bold
pretenses of a warrior who shows off his banner in the battlefield in order to make
his presence felt.

The longe love that in my thought doth harbour

And in mine hert doth keep his residence,
Into my face presseth with bold pretence
And therein campeth, spreading his banner.
The first quatrain introduces a principal player in the story of the sonnet, namely,
‘love.’ The sonnet is built around the conceit of love as a warrior or a knight.
However, this conceit is not used for neither for argument nor for persuasion, nor
to prove a point. It is used for mere ornamentation.

If the Petrarchan and Elizabethan poets used conceits for ornamentation and
embellishment, the metaphysical poets employed conceits for persuading,
developing an argument, explaining an idea, carrying idea forward and proving a
point.

As Helen Gardner says,

The “metaphysical conceit aims at making us concede justness while admiring
ingenuity.”
In A Valediction Forbidding Morning, John Donne compares a man who travels
and his beloved who stays at home to a pair of compasses:

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul fixt foot makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’other do

This kind of far-fetched comparison is what Samuel Johnson described as “a kind

of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult
resemblances in things apparently unlike.”

In fact, what Johnson said pejoratively, i.e., "The most heterogeneous ideas are
yoked by violence together,” in Metaphysical poetry, is an appropriate
observation.
A noteworthy example of conceit is found in John Donne’s poem, ‘The Flea.’ The
speaker in the poem tells his beloved (who resists his attempt to consummate
their love before their marriage) that the physical union he desires with her is not
in itself a significant event, because, a similar union has already taken place within
the flea.
He argues that they are already married, made one flesh, through a flea which has
bitten them both and sucked their blood and thus mingled their beings within his
tiny body.
O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
In The Flea, a flea is likened to a church (marriage temple). In The Canonization by
John Donne, the lovers are linked to canonized saints.
In his Twicknam Garden, John Donne likened love to a spider. Just as spider
has the ability to infuse poison into everything, love has the ability to
transubstantiate all.
The spider Love, which transubstantiates all
And can convert manna to gall.

In Andrew Marvell’s poem, To His Coy Mistress, the narrator compares the growth
of his love for his mistress to the slow growth of vast empires like that of the vast
British empire that covered much of the earth’s surface while at its peak in the
nineteenth century.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow
The comparison of the lovers to “amorous birds of prey” in the poem is another
significant conceit.
Undissociated Sensibility in Metaphysical Poetry
The most important characteristic of the metaphysical poets is their striving after,
what T. S. Eliot calls ‘undissociated sensibility.’

Dissociation of sensibility is a term first used by T. S. Eliot in his essay, “The

Metaphysical Poets.” It refers to the way in which intellectual thought was
separated from the experience of feeling in seventeenth century poetry. Eliot
writes in the essay about the metaphysical poets:

“The poets of the seventeenth century, the successors of the dramatists of the
sixteenth, possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of
experience. They are simple, artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as their predecessors
were; no less nor more than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Guinicelli, or Cino. In the
seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never
recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of
the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden.”
Eliot says that if the Metaphysical poets of the 16th and the early 17th century
were trying to bring thought and feelings together, the poets of the late 17th
century did just the opposite.

Eliot claims that the metaphysical poets were “constantly amalgamating

disparate experience,” and thus expressing their thoughts through the experience
of feeling, while the later poets did not unite their thoughts with their emotive
experiences and therefore expressed thought separately from feeling.

He explains that the dissociation of sensibility is the reason for the “difference
between the intellectual and the reflective poet.”

The earlier intellectual poet, Eliot writes, “possessed a mechanism of sensibility

which could devour any kind of experience.”
When the dissociation of sensibility occurred, “[the] poets revolted against the
ratiocinative [marked by, or skilled in methodical and logical reasoning], the
descriptive; they thought and felt by fits, unbalanced; they reflected.”
Thus dissociation of sensibility is the point at which and the manner by which this
change in poetic method and style occurred; it is defined by Eliot as the loss of
sensation united with thought.
The Metaphysical poets are constantly amalgamating disparate experiences and
forming new wholes out of materials so diverse as ‘reading Spinoza, falling in
love and smelling the dinner cooking.’
They connect the abstract with the concrete, the remote with the near,
the physical with the spiritual, and the sublime with the commonplace and
sometimes during moments of the most serious meditation breaks into a note of
sardonic humour or pathetic frivolity.
This juxtaposition and, sometimes, interfusion of apparently dissimilar or exactly
opposite objects often pleasantly thrills us into a new perception of reality.

Eliot uses John Donne’s poetry as the most prominent example of united
sensibility and thought. He writes, “[a] thought to Donne was an experience; it
modified his sensibility.”

Eliot’s apparent appreciation of Donne’s ability to unify intellectual thought and

the sensation of feeling demonstrates that he believes dissociation of sensibility
to be a hindrance in the progression of poetry.

Eliot asserts that despite the progress of refined language, the separation
between thought and emotion led to the end of an era of poetry that was “more
mature” and that would “wear better” than the poetry that followed.
Wit in Metaphysical Poetry
 Wit: Cambridge Dictionary Definition

 the ability to use words in a clever and humorous way.

 a person skilled at using words in a clever and humorous way.

 Wit: Oxford Dictionary Definition

 the capacity for inventive thought and quick understanding; keen

intelligence.

 a natural aptitude for using words and ideas in a quick and inventive way to
create humour.
‘Wit’ can mean ‘cleverness’ and ‘intelligence.’ During the Elizabethan period (1558–
1603), the term, ‘wit,’ was used in the context of a person’s skill in conversation and
writing.

While referring to a poet’s ‘imagination’ and ‘skill’ in writing, the Elizabethans used the
term, ‘wit.’ The purpose of wit for the Elizabethans was decorative and ornamental.

The use of wit was very conspicuous in the plays of Shakespeare. In his Twelfth Night,
he writes: “Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”
In the 17th century, the term, ‘wit’ meant a special quality of human mind, intelligence
and imagination. Therefore, ‘wit’ may be understood as:

 the ability to think or communicate with remarkable verbal ingenuity

 a great sense of humour
 an impressive touch of irony
 a startling sense of the relationship between seemingly incongruous, contrasting
or dissimilar things.

Appealing simultaneously both to our intellect and to our sense of humour, ‘wit’
evokes laughter.
 Inferior forms of wit
lie
in the use of
paradox, pun, oxymoron & word-play.

Superior forms of wit

lie
in the use of
conceits — assembling of ideas that are dissimilar or incongruous.

Conceit is the cause; and wit is the effect.

 Wit & Metaphysical Poets

In the hands of the Metaphysical poets, wit came to signify a clever or ingenious use of
reason to compare and contrast highly dissimilar things in order to develop a
persuasive argument.

In his poem, Ode of Wit, Abraham Cowley (1618–1667),

a second generation Metaphysical poet, writes:

In a true piece of wit, all things must be

Yet all these things agree
As in the Ark join’d without force or strife
All creatures dwelt, all creatures that had life
 Using the analogy of Noah’s Ark,
Abraham Cowley
explains that just as Noah without any form of force or coercion brought every living
creature harmoniously together in his Ark, diverse and dissimilar elements being
harmoniously brought together is the dynamics and essence of wit.

Interestingly,
Cowley spends the major part of his ode in explaining
what wit is not and in the penultimate stanza explains what wit is.
Metaphysical poets of the 17th century dealt with a serious questions of life such as
Existence, God, Human etc. Interestingly enough, they handled these issues combining
large doses of wit.

The interest of the metaphysical poets in discoveries of voyagers, new theories in

politics, religion or science, astrology, alchemy contributed to their sense of ‘wit’ in
their poetry.

According to Samuel Johnson, Donne’s wit lay in the discovery of hidden resemblances
in dissimilar things. His wit is the result of weighty thought and brooding imagination.
 John Donne has been called
“the monarch of wit.’

In his poem, John Donne

An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul's, Dr. John Donne,
Thomas Crew writes the following lines on Donne:

Here lies a king, that rul’d as he thought fit

The universal monarchy of wit.
Theme of Love
 Metaphysical poetry,
both uses as well as rejects notions of love fostered by Petrarchan love
poetry.

Petrarch (1304-74)

the Italian poet, wrote love poems addressed to an idealised lady called Laura
who may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (an
ancestor of the Marquis de Sade). Petrarch had had actually no relationship
with Laura.
 The lover in Petrarchan love poetry who is constant in his devotion to his
mistress is often sick, sad and dying of unrequited love.

The mistress remains chaste, aloof, distant and remote not reciprocating his
love.

For the lover she remains an idealised unattainable object of love and desire
and worship from afar; and she inspires all his poems. Such approach to love
came to be known as courtly love.

The Petrarchan convention of love established certain parameters for the

later Elizabethan love poetry.
Donne sometimes makes use of the Petrarchan formula of love. For instance,
in Twicknam Garden the poet is dying from unrequited love, a direct link to
Petrarch.

But Donne also sceptically challenges this Petrarchan formula of male-female

equations of love. For example, sometimes he presents women as sexually
inconstant, unfaithful and promiscuous as in Go and catch a falling starre.
Donne’s use of startlingly non-romantic imagery as in The Flea also reflects a
challenge to the conventions of Petrarchan form.

A result of Donne’s rejection of the Petrarchan conventions is the lady in most

of his poems being no longer chaste, aloof or remote, but in the bedroom
with the lover. She is no longer the heroine of the conventional courtly love.
The poet lover is no longer a passive servant but an active lover.
Unlike the Petrarchan poets, in general, the metaphysical poets tried to
reanimate their poetic lines to resemble more closely the actual verbal
exchanges of people.

They organized their poems in the form of arguments with a reluctant

mistress, a friend, God, Death, or the poet himself.

If Petrarch celebrates the frustrated longing of unreciprocated love in his

poems, Donne celebrates the need for mutual love as the highest state of
being.

As love reaches the pinnacle of spiritual power in the poems, it seems

enduring, constant and capable of transcending the physical world.
Love can counter the processes of decay that characterise the natural world.
This can be seen in The Good-Morrow.

The act of sexual union is also often likened to a religious act as in The Flea
(though perhaps the link to religion here is more part of Donne’s persuasive
power). These religious links continue with The Canonization and The Ecstasy.

The idea of mutual love in Donne is set against transitory material world. The
private little room of love contrasts with the outside world of princes,
explorers, lawyers and merchants who are all preoccupied with material
concerns.
This can be seen in The Good-Morrow and The Sun Rising where the
experience of mutual love gives the poet a new perspective from which the
rest of the world looks insignificant.

The two lovers create a new whole and one is incomplete without the other.
In The Good-Morrow they are two halves of the world, namely, two
hemispheres.

Some of the poems discuss the bitter disillusion that can be created by love.
Some poems, such as Love's Alchemy, despair that love can ever be a
completely fulfilling experience.

Others, such as Go and catch a falling star are deeply cynical about the
possibility of finding a faithful woman.
Obsessive Awareness Human Mortality
 The Elizabethans
were acutely aware of death.

This awareness is often presented in the visual art of

the day in the form of a ‘memento mori’ or a skull
painted at the side of paintings to remind the viewers
of the brevity and vanity of human life.

This awareness that life is short and fragile, and it can

be cut off at any moment permeates the Metaphysical
poems.
 In his poem, Elegy On His Mistress,
the lover says:

“O ! if thou die before,

My soul from other lands to thee shall soar.” John Donne

In The Canonization,
the lover “can die by it, if not live by love.”
 Death Be not Proud
John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, John Donne
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
 In Andrew Marvell’s, poem, To My Coy Mistress, the
lover tells his lady

“But at my back I always hear

Andrew Marvell
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near.”

“The grave's a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.”
Argument
Almost every metaphysical poem is constructed out of an argument that often tends to
be persuasive and rhetorical in nature. In some, the argument is more striking than in
others. Andrew Marvell’s To My Coy Mistress, John Donne’s poems, The Flea and The
Ecstasy are good example of such use of argument, persuasion and rhetoric.

The Flea presents a desperate lover, trying to woo his beloved with logical and earnest
solicitation for the physical consummation of their love.

And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be

Confess it . . . . . .
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. . ..
Many Metaphysical poems are built up on a logical structure (which is sometimes
called the dialectic, the use of argument to come to the logical conclusion regarding a
statement).

The lover in To My Coy Mistress presents his reason for the immediate consummation
of his love for her mistress through striking a syllogism. The three-tier structure of the
poem suggest its syllogistic format.

Similarly, John Donne’s Love’s Growth is a good example for a poem that follows a
series of logical progressions signalled by 'But if ...,’ ‘And yet ...,’ 'If ...', ‘For ...’ and ‘As
....’ Similarly, Donne’s The Good- Morrow is structured to move from past to present to
future.
The sense of argument is at times used to challenge the opening statement: in Love's
Growth, for example, the poem begins admitting that love is liable to change; but the
argument eventually transcends this.

“Argument and persuasion, and the use of the conceit as their instrument, are the
elements or body of a metaphysical poem. Its quintessence or soul is the vivid
imagining of a moment of experience or a situation out of which the need to argue,
or persuade, or define arises.” -- Helen Gardner.

Metaphysical poetry, therefore, is difficult understand; it demands an intellectual effort

on the part of the reader.
Conciseness
In general, Metaphysical poetry is very concise to the point of being epigrammatic.

When it to comes to brevity or conciseness Metaphysical poetry is like the essays of

Bacon. Usually the poems are short in length with a tremendous economy of words.
Nothing is explained in detail. Look at the conciseness of Andrew Marvell:

The Grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.
One has to dwell long on the ideas presented in these closely woven and tightly knit
poems with commendable economy of words in order to really understand their
significance.

Remember what Polonius says in Hamlet. He says, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

Precise and conciseness of expression is an essential characteristic of astute,

perceptive, or witty remarks. That is the hallmarks of Metaphysical poetry.
Humour
Metaphysical poetry is characterised by a sense of humour. Some of the emotional
situations and important ideas or arguments, in Metaphysical poetry are accompanied
by a sense of humour. The humour often helps in controlling the excessive emotion.

…then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace
-- To My Coy Mistress
Language and Versification
According to Wordsworth, the language of poetry should ‘the natural language of
impassioned feeling.’

The metaphysical poets deliberately avoided conventional impassioned poetic

expressions as they had lost their meaning through overuse.

The metaphysical poets tried to convey the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct
language while the conventional poetry tries to convey every thought, even the most
trivial one, in the most fantastic language.

They used a language that was neither entirely poetic nor entirely prosaic. It definitely
has a colloquial touch. That explains Donne’s use of abrupt, dramatic and
conversational opening of many of his poems.
 “I wonder by my troth ...” --The Good Morrow

“Busy old foole, unruly Sunne” --The Sunne Rising

“For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love.” --The Canonization

The versification of the metaphysicals, like their diction, is a little coarse and jerky in
contrast to the honeyed smoothness of much of Elizabethan poetry.
The versification of the metaphysical poets, like their diction, is a little coarse and
jerky in contrast to the honeyed smoothness of much of Elizabethan poetry.

In terms of versification, the poems move between regular patterns of iambic rhythm
and an urge to break free of the regular rhythm into more spontaneous writing. The
first two lines of The Good-Morrow illustrate this tension of the metaphysical poetry.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
The first line begins using the iambic rhythm; but it is immediately disrupted in the
second line where the stress begins with an irregular stress on the first word, ‘Did.’
I won / der, by / my troth, / what thou / and I
Did, till / we loved? / Were we / not weaned / till then?

This in effect emphasises the opening rhetorical question. It also reveals a sense of
amazement at his finding of love.

The poem is written in iambic meter. All the lines except the last line in each stanza are
in iambic pentameter. The last line of each stanza is iambic hexameter (six-feet line).
Their revolt of the metaphysical poets against the prevailing poetic conventions
appears to be for two reasons:

1) Their desire to startle

2) Their desire to approximate poetic to direct, unconventional colloquial speech.

Donne and his followers very often throws all prosodic considerations to the winds
and distributes their stress not according to the metre but according to the sense.