17th Century Poetry

Though John Donne did not necessarily intend to begin a poetic school, 20th-century critics have called his poetry

along with that of George Herbert and others (Henry Vaughn and Richard Crashaw) "metaphysical poetry"

The hallmark of metaphysical poetry is the metaphysical conceit (informing metaphor)

Like the conceits in Petrarchan poems, metaphysical conceits also contain an element of tension and strain

unlike the emotional strain of a Petrarchan conceit ("my love is like to ice and I to fire"),

metaphysical conceit has elements of intellectual strain and compression

hard to understand because of its strangeness and reliance on background knowledge

textbook metaphysical conceit can be found in John Donne's poem "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," in which the poet compared himself and his absent love to two legs of a compass used for drawing circles

It can be hard to understand how his love is like a compass, but if the reader strains the imagination, it can be done

Donne also used the metaphor as a sexual joke

Metaphysical poetry

• highly intellectualized
• use rather strange imagery
• use frequent paradox and contain extremely complicated thought

George Herbert

Common Metaphysical questions
1. Does God exist?
2. Is there a difference between the way things appear to us and the way they really are? Essentially, what is the difference between reality and perception?
3. Is everything that happens already predetermined? If so, then is free choice non-existent?
4. Is consciousness limited to the brain?

son of an eminent Welsh family, also rejected life at court for a life of ministry

also known as a metaphysical poet, though his poetic style was completely different than Donne's

Herbert wrote emblematic poems (poems shaped to resemble what they talk about), such as "The Altar,"

poems that used metaphysical conceits, as in the poem "Easter" that compared Christ's stretched ligaments on the cross to the strings of a musical instrument

But Herbert's poetry, unlike Donne's, was usually smooth, rhythmic and plain, like the style of a sermon

-Read Robert Herrick, Delight in Disorder, His Farewell to Sack, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Sir John Suckling, Song; A Ballad upon a Wedding; Out upon It!
Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta, Going the Wars; The Grasshopper; To Althea, from Prison
Andrew Marvell, The Coronet, Bermudas

-Complete CPA assignment