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Sunday, December 13, 2009
Metaphysical poetry
Metaphysical poetry in English literature
The metaphysical poets were a group of 17th-century poetswho concerned themselves with the experience of man and the nature of being on the world. What is our place within the world and how to best define that place? Taking up the philosophy of metaphysics, first set forth by Aristotle, the metaphysical poets wrote of experience, including love, romance, beauty, imagination and man’s relationship with God. Less concerned with expressing feeling than with analyzing it .metaphysical poetry is marked by bold and ingenious conceits, metaphor, drawing something forced parallels between apparently dissimilar ideas or things complex and subtle thought, frequent use of paradox and adramatic directness of language.
Although in no sense a school or movement proper, they share common characteristics of wit, inventiveness, and a love of elaborate stylistic maneuvers. Metaphysical concerns are the common subject of their poetry, which investigates the world by rational discussion of its phenomena rather than by intuition or mysticism.
WHAT IS METAPHYSICAL POETRY?
Metaphysical poetry is concerned with the whole experience of man, but the intelligence, learning and seriousness of the poets means that the poetry is about the profound areas of experience especially - about love, romantic and sensual; about man's relationship with God - the eternal perspective, and, to a less extent, about pleasure, learning and art. Metaphysical means dealing with the relationship between spirit to matter or the ultimate nature of reality
Metaphysical poems are lyric poems. They are brief but intense meditations, characterized by striking use of wit, irony and wordplay. Beneath the formal structure (of rhyme, meter and stanza) is the underlying (and...