...ABSTRACT John Donne is acknowledged as the master of metaphysical poetry and is admired for his talent and magnificent wit exercised in his writing. Metaphysical poetry is a special branch of poetry that deals with the pedagogic use of intellect and emotion in a harmonic manner. The basic praxis of metaphysical poetry is to highlight the philosophical view of nature and its ambience concerning human life. Despite criticisms from various corners, Donne and his other companions remained busy with their work to concentrate on metaphysical poetry to portray the feelings and sentiments of human beings by dint of their skillful and artful literary accomplishments. This paper is to address the outstanding performance of John Donne in the arena of metaphysical poetry and it endeavours to make a critical assessment of the diverse issues allembracing metaphysical poetry as well as to establish the relevance of metaphysical poetry in the literary realm. ______________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION ―Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere‖ The Sun Rising: John Donne The startling conversational lines marvellously enumerate the poet‘s intense appeal to spread the beams of sun on the lovers‘ world as a mark of illuminating the macrocosmic world and beckon the readers to enter into a new realm of poetry with a sense of attachment and belonging between different objects of nature...
Words: 2975 - Pages: 12
...Metaphysical Poetry: Much More Than Wit The two main views of metaphysical poetry, as composed by poets A.E. Housman and T.S. Eliot, are vastly different. Eliot’s view of metaphysical poetry is a very positive and respectful one. He admires the uniqueness of the metaphysical poets when he describes them as “reflective poets” as opposed to merely intellectual ones. Eliot says they have the ability to “feel their thought as immediately as the odor of a rose,” compared to the strictly thought-driven traditional poetry of lyrical poets. Housman’s view is significantly more harsh and critical. In reference to metaphysical poetry, he says that “poetry, as a label for this particular commodity, is not appropriate.” According to Housman, similes and metaphors, which are primary factors in metaphysical poetry, are “things inessential to poetry.” He describes the far-fetched paradoxes of metaphysical poets as “wit,” not poetry. Despite Housman’s negative claims regarding metaphysical poetry, there are several works of metaphysical poets, such as John Donne, that have proven to be very effective. In Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 14,” often referred to as “Batter My Heart,” there is a plethora of evidence of the work’s overall effectiveness as a poem in the poet’s use of poetic devices. The poem is written in first person and the speaker is someone who is struggling with sin and is desperately seeking the guidance of God, who is intended to be the recipient of the speaker’s message. ...
Words: 1238 - Pages: 5
...q) Define Metaphysical poetry answer) Metaphysical poetry is a form of poetry that has its roots in the 17th century England. The term Metaphysical poets was coined by the 18th century poet Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of English poets of the 17th century, who were not affiliated with each other in any way. These poets were generally interested in metaphysical issues and even though they never read or saw each others works but all of them had a common method of examining these issues, hence a common ground in regards to the theme or topic of their work . In simple terms, the term Metaphysics is comprised of two words: meta and physics, Meta means beyond and physical means physical nature. Thus, Metaphysical poetry means poetry that goes beyond the physical world of the senses and explores the spiritual world. Poetry which deals with correlation between the real world and the after-world, concrete and abstract, soul and being, as well as reality and perception using philosophical methodology is called Metaphysical Poetry." The work of metaphysical poets was characterized by wit and the innovative use of metaphors, known as Metaphysical Conceits (elaborate and far fetched comparisons of two dissimailar things which have very little in common) and by speculation about topics such as love, life, god, religion and afterlife. The use of conceit in this form of poetry was made to develop a comparison which is exceedingly unlikely but is nonetheless intellectually...
Words: 451 - Pages: 2
...2014 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne In 1572, John Donne, an English poet was born in London, England in the year 1572.Due to his family believing in the Roman Catholic Tradition; he attended Trinity College at a very young age. Because of this tradition, John displayed the knowledge and laws of religion in majority of his works. However, in 1621, he converted to the Church of England, taking up teaching, thus becoming a famous preacher. Five years later he was appointed in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London Dean. Because of this knowledge and charismatic character, he was easily one of the most influential people in London. Throughout his works, John became known as the founder of the Metaphysical poetry; using vivid images and extended metaphors to portray thoughts and feelings. This theory also uses philosophy and religious as a platform, working in imagery from art as well. John Donne preferred to write poetry with strong rhythm, intense language, strange and bold imagination. ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ is known as one of John’s calmest and understanding poems. Considering the fact that his marriage was not accepted by his father in law, the thought of distance between two lovers really occurred in his life. That allows this poem to have a universalized personal experience that he conveyed to his readers. The principal theme of the poem is that lovers remain united even when they are physically separated. Donne proves his idea by argument, conceits, passion...
Words: 1172 - Pages: 5
...British Lit / Test Two Review Essay Questions 1. The genre of “The Fairie Queen” is a romantic epic. Epic poetry is the highest form of poetry; long and episodic. It is a narrative that contains many adventures, a central character, journey to hell, gods and goddesses, and it starts in the middle (in medias res). The Fairie Queen is allegorical of the Protestant Reformation. It contains many biblical allusions supporting the Protestant faith and criticizing Catholicism. It is written in Spenserian stanza, stanzas of nine iambic lines; the first eight are pentameters and the ninth is hexameter with the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc. 2. The term Renaissance translates into “rebirth”. This was a great revival of art, literature, and learning in Europe; marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world. The Renaissance began in Europe around 1390; this was around the same time of the Canterbury Tales. The Renaissance did not begin in England until1485. It was so late coming to England because of the civil war due to the “power struggle” between the House of York and the House of Lancaster. This Civil War was called the War of the Roses. The two houses fought until they killed each other off and in 1485, King Henry took crown and this was the beginning of the Tudor Dynasty. England finally had a level of peace allowing its people to acknowledge and then take part in this renewal of life, vigor, and interest. 3. The difference in doctrine between Protestantism...
Words: 2370 - Pages: 10
...John Donne the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. noted for their strong, sensual style and includesonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. 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 English society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism. 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 *metaphysical poets: work was characterized by the inventive use of conceits, and by speculation about topics such as love or religion. The Metaphysical Poets are known for their ability to startle the reader and coax new perspective through paradoxical images, subtle argument, inventive syntax, and imagery from art, philosophy, and religion using an...
Words: 455 - Pages: 2
...History and anthology of English literature Analysis of poetry Holy Sonnet Death be not proud John Donne John Donne was an English poet, satirist, lawyer and a cleric in the Church of England, who is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His poems are famous for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, and so on. His poem is famous for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterized by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. He always habitually uses the dramatic or everyday speech rhythms. He is the pioneer of modern poet. In this semester, we learn a poem is written by John Donne, which gives me the deep impression. Is "Death be not proud". "Death be not proud" is his masterpiece of metaphysical poem, is written around 1610 and first published posthumously in 1633. It is the tenth sonnet of Donne's posthumously published Holy Sonnets. This poem is addressed to Death, telling him not to be proud, because death is not to be feared. This poem explains death is the moment while joy is eternal after death. Besides, it also shows sleep is a type of death, and that it is pleasurable. In addition, he uses bold description of practices; the rhythm of the poem is more powerful. In the poem imagine is newness and bolder, and it's mainly dominated by death. By means of terrorist imagination...
Words: 1122 - Pages: 5
...Anniversary’ as two poems written by John Donne possess certain similarities, largely through Donne’s use of extended metaphor in both to portray his feelings of love. However, elements of these poems can also be seen as to greatly juxtapose with ‘A Valediction’ focussing on the concept of ‘greater love’ enduring distance whilst ‘The Anniversary’ seems to portray the same love, though enduring time. Both poems convey a sense of ‘higher love’ - a highly spiritual experience. In ‘A Valediction’ Donne writes of ‘Dull, sublunary lovers’ in comparison to himself and his wife, using assonance to amplify the portrayal of these lovers as heavy-sounding and truly physical rather than anything more spiritual. The adjective ‘dull’ creates a lack of brightness about most lovers in comparison to Donne, whilst as he adds ‘Whose soul is sense’ Donne uses sibilance to continue the peaceful and gentle air of the poem in order to replicate his love, rather than to portray the love of the ‘Dull, sublunary lovers’. Donne’s ‘refin’d’ love (syntactically placed at the end of the line for further weight in describing the innate majesty of Donne’s love) connotes that of a diamond – a precious commodity in the 17th century – to describe the rich wealth of his love to his wife, but also its rarity, whilst Marxist literary theorists perceive this to be a reference to Donne’s ‘hardly attainable’ love, only truly expressible in the higher classes. In ‘The Anniversary’ , Donne too uses the concept of love described...
Words: 1354 - Pages: 6
...JOHN DONNE – THE SUN RISING – NOTES Again, an aubade like the Good Morrow, hence two poems should be studied together. The Sunne Rising belongs to John Donne’s Songs and Sonnets. It is a companion poem to The Good-morrow and should be studied alongside it. Both poems share the central conceit that the lover's world is a microcosm excluding all outside demands or realities. In fact, the world outside barely exists. The tone of the two poems is similar, too, being celebratory, idealistic and yet jocular and quite outrageous in the hyperbole. This has come to be one of Donne's best known love poems. The first stanza The whole of The Sunne Rising is a far-fetched apostrophe to the sun, which is personified quite disrespectfully. Donne calls it ‘Busie old foole’ and ‘Sawcy pedantique wretch’. Conventionally, love poetry is aware of the seasons, particularly Spring, and the seasons are, of course, defined by the sun. Donne wants to reverse this. The lovers should define their own seasons and the sun should keep out of the business. Rather, it should do fairly ordinary, trivial things like ‘chide/ Late schoole boyes’ and other people who need to get up in good time. The second stanza Having established in his mockery of the sun the lovers' own timekeeping, Donne then gives the sun a job that would benefit the lovers. The sun can tour the earth and report back if there is anything of value or of royalty that is not already here in the lovers' bedroom, that is to say, in each other...
Words: 1035 - Pages: 5
...John Donne, a seventeenth-century English poet, was born in London in 1572 and known for his ingenuous style of writing (Bloom 10). According to Christopher Moore, an English writer, Donne’ poetry is colloquial in diction and has the flexibility and liveliness of spoken language which imparts an energy and force perfectly capturing his mercurial jumps in thought and description; his poetry is filled with unusual images and metaphor for the fact most of it deals with love and relations between the sexes (Moore 12). Besides “The Flea,” “The Good Morrow,” and others, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is another famous masterpiece for which John Donne is recognized. Izaak Walton, a contemporary of John Donne, stated that “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” was addressed to Donne’s wife, Anne More, on the occasion of his leaving for a continental trip in 1611 (Bloom 63). Donne’s poem is a good example that shows his metaphysical wit, a term was conferred on him along with his followers, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, and others by Samuel Johnson, a critic and essayist in the eighteenth-century (Bloom12). To sum up, Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (Apr 84) is such a love and farewell speech among which he uses a series of simile, symbolism, and analogy to express his feelings and comfort his wife while he is abroad. Donne, in the first two stanzas, uses the image of virtuous men’s death as a metaphor to his separation from his wife to tell her their love is so great...
Words: 1132 - Pages: 5
...developed in directions set largely in France. Epic and Elegy gave way to romance and Lyric. English writing revived fully in English after 1360 and flowered in the reign of Richard II (1372-99). It gained a literary standard in London English after 1425 and developed modern forms of verse, prose and of Drama. The conquest of England in 1066 by William of Normandy displaced English as medium of literature. The language of new rulers was French. Saxons dealing with the King had to learn French and French was the language of court and the law for three centuries. Four genres of Middle English are: i. 1. Fabliau 2. Lyric 3. Dream Allegory 4. Ballad Geoffrey Chaucer Chaucer is the best story teller and the narrative poet. Chaucer tells his stories in a most effective way. He has the knack of transforming an old tale into a new one in such a manner that its appeal increases manifold and its human interest becomes perennial (lasting/permanent). An important feature of Chaucer's descriptive power is that his individual portrait also represents the type. Initially perhaps the sketches were devised to provide representatives of the chief classes of English society under the higher nobility. The portraits of the pilgrims are not all drawn in the same way. It is true that Chaucer...
Words: 2856 - Pages: 12
...John Donne was born in 1572 and died in 1631; he was a very religious man and had been ordained a priest at the age of 50. Donne was a well-known metaphysical poet and was also known to be very appreciative of women, and so this would typically show through his writing of poetry. Donne's poem "The Flea" was written in the 17th century and so would be perceived very differently in modern times to what it would have been when it was written. The type of love that is shown in "The Flea" would be described as desperate love, this is shown through the style in which its written, a conceit, this means there will be lots of imagery in it. Christina Rossetti lived between 1830-1894, during her life she volunteered at the 'fallen woman' refuge, was a very religious woman and was proposed to on two different occasions, but declined both because of religious differences. Rossetti was a pre-raphaelite poet of the 19th century, which is evident from her poetry. "Amen" was written hundreds of years after "The Flea", therefore the way either of them are to be perceived will be very different. The theme of love shown in "Amen" is loss of love, this could be because Rossetti possibly regrets rejecting two marriage proposals. The poem of "Amen" that I studied was a cropped version of the original, and so only had three stanzas. From this I learned that these three stanzas were based on the seasons, which changed when the next verse started, this is use of pathetic fallacy which is to be expected...
Words: 1107 - Pages: 5
...“Language of Love” in Elegy XIX: “To His Mistress Going To Bed”. | Poetry Semester Essay | | Telan Hamer | 18184626Tutor : Tamsyn Allies | | The poetic works of John Donne has been afforded high acclaim when it comes to his use of language in the dominion of love. In his elegy “To His Mistress Going To Bed”, he beckons for his lover to be bedded with him, describing her beauty as he tries to influence her to disrobe. Donne, in this poem, makes visible the way in which love and desire can be expressed in language attiring his poems with extended metaphor, metaphysical conceit and masterful wit, to the extent to which one may re-read the poem simply to savour the way in which Donne has sculpted his imagery. “To His Mistress Going To Bed” is seen to fall under the poetic genre known as ‘the blazon’, a genre of poetry that glorifies a woman by focusing on certain desirable body parts whilst using appropriate metaphor. Hence, the main focus of this essay will be to provide a commentary on the use of “the language of love” with reference to Donne’s blazon, by highlighting a series of appropriate examples that will provide a platform to analyse what it is that Donne is trying to convey in his poem, and how he accomplishes its conveyance. The examples will be analysed with reference to how the poet incorporates certain aspects of language such as diction, form, style, tone, rhetoric, and his use of figures of speech. The opening lines of the poem invite us into the speakers...
Words: 1750 - Pages: 7
...The Legend of Good Women. Prose Treatises Treatise on the astrolabe. Short Poems The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse ,Truth, Gentilesse, Merciles Beaute, Lak of Stedfastnesse, Against Women Unconstant. Geoffrey Chaucer Thomas Malory's (1405-1471) : Morte d'Arthur. work: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (by anonymous). 1500-1660: The English Renaissance 1500-1558: Tudor Period (Humanist Era) The Humanists: Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) : Utopia, The History of King Richard the Third, The Life of Pico della Mirandola, The Four Last Things, A Dialogue Concerning Tyndale, The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation and Sadness of Christ . Sir Thomas More John Skelton (1460-1529): A ballade of the Scottysshe Kynge John Skelton Sir Thomas Wyatt(1503-1542): My Lute Awake! Once, As Methought, Fortune Me Kissed They Flee From Me The restful place ! renewer of my smart It may be good, like it who list In faith I wot not what to say There Was Never Nothing More Me Pained Patience ! though I have not Though I Cannot Your Cruelty Constrain Blame Not My Lute My Pen ! Take Pain The heart and service to you proffer'd Is It Possible? And Wilt Thou Leave Me Thus? Since so ye please to hear me plain Forget Not Yet The Tried Intent What Should I Say! Sir Thomas Wyatt. The Renaissance Period consists of four subsets: 1. 1558-1603: The Elizabethan Age (High Renaissance): William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Comedies: All's Well...
Words: 1263 - Pages: 6
...considered evil which made stories more conservative, harsh and heroic. One of the famous medieval text includes Thomas Malory and the Morte D’Arther. The text is a fusion of historical and pre-Christian magical elements. On the other hand, the renaissance was quiet different to medieval period, it was the rebirth of individualism, humanism and free thinking. Renaissance writing, by contrast showed interest in writing, arts and culture. One of the key philosophical elements of the renaissance was the rise of humanism and precursor to the age of enlightenment. Renaissance literature and arts became more invested in the hands of rich and powerful. One of the famous renaissance text includes a Petrarchan sonnet called the Holy Sonnet 10 by John Donne. The sonnet has a lot of religious and biblical context of god, death and eternal life. It highlights the insignificance of death that it should not be feared, it reveals human dignity and happiness and individual freedom. These 2 texts from the medieval and the renaissance had strong beliefs and valued religious/ heroic figure in society which hugely affected people’s faith and value. During the Medieval ages there was a lot of dynamic changes in belief, language, law and leadership increasing the establishment of the powerful Christian church. One of the well-known text that has some of these characteristics is...
Words: 1021 - Pages: 5
