Showing posts with label The Metaphysical Poets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Metaphysical Poets. Show all posts
It is the difference between the intellectual poet and the reflective poet. ....
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The Metaphysical Poets
It is the difference between the intellectual poet and the reflective poet.......- explain.
Eliot in his essay, "The Metaphysical Poets", in order to show that the metaphysical poets are not 'a digression from the main current' and they have a unified sensibility, makes a distinction between the Victorian poet(reflective) and the metaphysical poet (intellectual).
According to Eliot, there is a gradual dissociation of sensibility between "the time of Donne or Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time of Tennyson and Browning." According to Eliot, "Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a size." But the metaphysical poets can feel as well as think - "A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility." Victorians poets either feel or think. They are not simultaneous in feeling or thinking. According to Eliot, "when a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disperate experience" and by this process they create a new one.
Though in this essay Eliot objects against Tennyson and Browning, he is somehow grateful to them. Eliot uses Browning's dramatic monologue in his many early works. Eliot borrows also from Tennyson in his many poetry. And in his "Preludes", he refers directly to Tennyson's poem, "Maud". Eliot had a private admiration for him, but he is suffering from anxiety of influence, that's why, he can't directly acknowledge their genius.
According to Eliot, there is a gradual dissociation of sensibility between "the time of Donne or Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time of Tennyson and Browning." According to Eliot, "Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a size." But the metaphysical poets can feel as well as think - "A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility." Victorians poets either feel or think. They are not simultaneous in feeling or thinking. According to Eliot, "when a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disperate experience" and by this process they create a new one.
Though in this essay Eliot objects against Tennyson and Browning, he is somehow grateful to them. Eliot uses Browning's dramatic monologue in his many early works. Eliot borrows also from Tennyson in his many poetry. And in his "Preludes", he refers directly to Tennyson's poem, "Maud". Eliot had a private admiration for him, but he is suffering from anxiety of influence, that's why, he can't directly acknowledge their genius.
and often Cowley
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Donne
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employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically metaphysical (35-39)
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The Metaphysical Poets
Donne and often Cowley, employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically metaphysical; the elaboration of a figure of speech to the furthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it. (35-39)
This line has been taken from Eliot's one of the major essays "The Metaphysical Poets". Eliot actually writes this essay to answer to the objection raised by Johnson about the metaphysical poets.
Dr. Samuel Johnson used the term 'metaphysical'in his " The Life of Cowley". He used the term 'metaphysical' as a pejorative one. He said that "the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together" by these poets. And among his objections the very 1st one is the use of conceit. The Metaphysical Poets "employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically metaphysical." This conceit is "the elaboration of a figure of speech to the furthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it." Helen Gardner observed that "a conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness."
However, Eliot here used the example of Cowley who compares the world to a chess board in his poem "To Destiny". Though Cowley also uses the conceit, Donne in his "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" makes "the comparison of two lovers to a pair of compass."
This use of conceit is made frequent and popular in the modern eta by Eliot. He himself used it in "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" where he compares evening with "e
Dr. Samuel Johnson used the term 'metaphysical'in his " The Life of Cowley". He used the term 'metaphysical' as a pejorative one. He said that "the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together" by these poets. And among his objections the very 1st one is the use of conceit. The Metaphysical Poets "employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically metaphysical." This conceit is "the elaboration of a figure of speech to the furthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it." Helen Gardner observed that "a conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness."
However, Eliot here used the example of Cowley who compares the world to a chess board in his poem "To Destiny". Though Cowley also uses the conceit, Donne in his "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" makes "the comparison of two lovers to a pair of compass."
This use of conceit is made frequent and popular in the modern eta by Eliot. He himself used it in "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" where he compares evening with "e
The question is to what extent the so called metaphysical formed a school - explain.
Eliot in his essay "The Metaphysical Poets" is trying to establish that the metaphysical school of poetry is the continuation of the main stream of literature. At the very beginning of the essay Eliot says that we must admit that the term 'movement' is more preferable than 'school'. Because 'school' is a static passive classification, but 'movement' is an active dynamic term of asserting poetic identity. According to Eliot, metaphysical school becomes a movement for its dynamic continuity in the Jacobsen period, and even behind the Jacobean period.
In order to prove his argument , Eliot refers to many metaphysical poets like Townshend, Lord Herbert, Donne, Bishop King, Vaughan, Crashaw, Cowley etc. He says that one cannot tell that metaphysical poetry belongs to any particular age, but it spreads over many period. It is a vast domain of writing, an ideological movement. The early metaphysical poets like Donne, Townshend belong to the Elizabethan Age, late Elizabethan Age and again the poets like Marvel are the poets of Caroline Period and Restoration Period. And not only that but Chapman who is a dramatist also writes metaphysical verse. It proves that metaphysical poetry does not belong to a particular genre of literature, but it has a vast connotation - "The poetry of Donne (to whom Marvel and Bishop King are sometimes nearer them any of the other authors ) is late Elizabethan, its feeling often very close toChapman."
Eliot again says, Courtly poetry has also a limited life, started from Jonson and ended with Prior - "The courtly poetry is derivative from Jonson, who borrowed literally from the Latin; it expires in the next century with the sentiment and witticism of Prior." But metaphysical poets return "through the Elizabethan period to the early Italians" and even influence the late Victorian poets like Rossetti, Thompson and barloque poets of the 17th century. Again Cowley influences Wordsworth in his writing of pindaric ode namely "Immortality Ode".
Thus Eliot proves that metaphysical poetry is the continuation of the main stream of literature, not " a digression from the main current."
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