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The Metaphysical Poets Were Men of Learning and to Show Their Learning Was Their Chief Object

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The Metaphysical Poets Were Men of Learning and to Show Their Learning Was Their Chief Object ENGLISH (HONS.) PART-I PAPER-I ABHAY KUMAR CHAUBEY MP COLLEGE, MOHANIA Q- Write about The Metaphysical School of Poet Or The Revival of Metaphysical Poetry Ans- Metaphysical poetry owes its origin in the Jacobean age. Donne is the founder of the Metaphysical school of poetry, who led the revolt against the conventional poetry of the Spenserians. Donne was the leaving force in the rise of the style and its most consistent and extreme adherent. Metaphysical poetry began in the Jacobean age, in the last of the age of Shakespeare. Donne was the leader and founder of the metaphysical school of poetry. The Metaphysical poets were men of learning and to show their learning was their chief object. In Metaphysical poetry we come across obscure and recondite refrences and the vast learning is twisted in such a manner that it becomes very difficult for a reader to follow what the poet really intends to say. Metaphysical poetry was purely intellectual and made an appeal to the intellectuals. Donne was the great Metaphysical poet who taught his followers to indulge in conceits and witticism in poetry, conceit is an instrument by which a metaphysical poet reveals his wit. Conceit is a literary term which means a strained or far fetched comparison of literary figure. Conceits were also employed by Elizabethan poets and dramatist but those were commonly in the nature of ornamentation. Most of the metaphysical are often called mystical poets. In the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan and Traherne there is an expression of a communion with God. The Elizabethan style of poetry was clear. The metaphysical poets threw poetic style to the winds and made the style unduly rugged, coarse and hard. The Metaphysical poets- There are some prominent metaphysical poet. Now we will discuss about their works. John Donne (1572-1631)- John Donne was the son of London merchant, and was born in 1572. He studied from Oxford and Cambridge university of London. He also studied law. Most of Donne’s poem were not published until the collected volume of 1633 , though during his lifetime many had circulated in manuscript among his friends. His sermons are tremendously impressive. As a poet he is well known for his Elegies, the Satires, Songs and Sonnets and the Divine poems. Most of his poetry was written between 1590 and 1614. Dryden and Dr. Jhonson called Donne a metaphysical poet because of his study of scholastic philosophy and his habit to yoke ideas which no one had yet seen together. Donne’s poetry is metaphysical because of his individualism, his exhibition of learning. George Herbert (1593-1633)- He was the saint of the metaphysical school. He was among the greatest writers of poems on sacred subjects. His theory was that a man should take all high gifts to God’s service and he believed that a poet should make the altar blossom with his poetry. The poems in the temple show Herbert’s weal for the church of England. His religious poems are marked with note of devotion and simplicity. Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)- Like Donne and Herbert, Crashaw indulged freely in metaphysical conceit and like them he wrote great religious poetry. His two most characteristic poems are perhaps ‘The Flaming Heart’ and ‘The Hymn to Sant Teresa’. Crashaw’s defects were those of Donne. He indulge in conceits and made his poetry a little obscure. His strangeness and obscurity stand in the way of his poetic greatness. Henery Vaughan (1622-1695)- He is at his best when he deals with themes of childhood and of communion with nature and with eternity. His poem’s ‘The Retreat’ influenced Wordsworth in the composition of his ode on the intimation of immorality from recollections of Early Childhood’. Like Wordsworth, too, he feels nature is infinite beauty and Vaughan sees nature as symbolic of God. Thomas Traherne (1634-1704)- Traherne was not a great poet. He was a mystic like Vaughan and it is his mysticism that links him with the metaphysical. His well known poem ‘The Wonder’ portrays a child’s wonder at the body in which his souls dwells and at the world into which he has been born. Abraham Cowley(1618-1667)- Cowley was an important literary figure of his age. He stands mid-way between metaphysical verse writers and the common sense school of Dryden. Milton himself considered that Cowley was one of the three great English poet’s the other two being Shakespeare and Spenser. Cowley wrote love verses in the fashion of the day, but his love poem’s published in 1647 in the collection called ‘The Mistress’. Andrew Marvells(1621-1678)- Andrew Marvells was the only Puritan among the metaphysical poets. He was a humanist, a wit and a poet. He was not the enemy of wordly and artistic amusement Marvell’s feeling for Nature, though not mystical rises in ‘The Garden’. Some of his love poem’s are graceful as ‘The Galtery’ or slightly ironical denouncing woman’s tricks, artifices and coquetry. Marvell was a satirist and an original writer of vigor. Nature endowed him richly. .
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