Name : Nidhi P. Jethava
Paper : Literature of Ezabethan and Restoration Periods.
Roll No – 14
Enrollment no. -306920200009
Email id – jethavanidhi8@gmail.com
Batch – 2020-22 ( MA
SEM-1)
Submitted to – S.B. Gardi Department of English,
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar
University
Hello,
In this blog I am going to discuss about Metaphysical poetry, which is my assignment topic. So, I am going to discuss about Metaphysical poetry in details.
Metaphysical poetry-
According to R.G.Cox, “The interest shown by our age is the period from the Donne To Marvell, especially in the poetry of metaphysical wit, amounts almost to a rediscovery......To those of our own time who have struggled to bring poetry break into the widest range of experience, and to fuse thought and feeling in one act of imaginative apprehension, Donne and his followers have seemed to be particularly relevant.”
The
term
metaphysical was allocated to a group of the 17th century poets more
or less by accident, John Dryden, writing in an uncomplimentary way of John Donne,
said :
He affects the metaphysics, not
only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature should only reign:
and perplexes the minds of the sex with
nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts and
entertain them with the softnesses of love.”
Dr. Johnson picked up the word to
attached to it “ a race of a writers, that may be termed the
metaphysical poets". In spite of later
attempt to free the writers concerned from this label, it has struck, and it
has its use. The dictionary definition of “metaphysics” is :Theological
philosophy of being and knowing” and CF “metaphysical” is “best on abstract
general reading over subtle; incorporeal”. Obviously, Donne and his fellow
poets could not be labelled “metaphysical” in the usual ,sense least of incorporeal. They are not poet who write of the philosophical
speculations, as Lucretius, the Roman
philosopher and poet, or John Milton did. Yet they are intensely interested in
the speculations current in their time and as the critic J.B. Leishman among
others has pointed out, they use philosophy, theology and Popular science in
their imagery. These poets lived at a
time of intellectual excitement; And they shared the interest of the educated men and women of
their day: medicine, psychology, scientific Discovery and geographical
exploration were subjects of discussion and debate, and the lively, energetic mind of man like a Donne found the subjects
fascinating in themselves and a rich sources of illustration in his poetry if “metaphysical”
may be interrupted freely as showing a deep interest in the way in which human
beings live, relate to one another and to God, then this poet (Donne, Herbert, Crashaw,
vaughan and Marvell) may be called “metaphysical”, however oddly the label was
first applied.
Reading this poets is to
be challenged in a way different from 18th and 19th
century poets : emotion and intellect
are called to action at the same time, and inextricably. As the poet produce a vision of what we may call
the “whole” human being, so they demanded a lot response. At first right, their
poetry may appear dmanting because some of its references are difficult for a
modern reader. we are not familiar with the “science” of Alchemy (the transmutation
of base metals into gold) and perhaps
find it difficult to appreciate the depth of fear, the spacious and hatred
found between Christian whose theological disputes resulted in persecution, imprisonment
and even death. If these idea are alien to our society, we readily understand, perhaps more easily then generations
between poet and ourselves, that Human beings are not just emotional or just intellectual,
but are composed of body, mind and Soul (however
we may interpret “soul”) which, as a modern medicine and psychology show us, are interrelated and
interdependent.
This sense of the wholeness
of human life is a strong in metaphysical poetry and once difficulties of
detail have been overcome it is
enormously attractive to the modern reader. Human being are not compartmentalised:
they are seen as affected by their
emotions, their knowledge and their beliefs. It is this sense of wholeness
which is the bases of metaphysical wit
in that it allowed in demands, that desperate part of experience are brought together to illuminate each other
and so to illuminate also our understanding.
Historically
and Religious Background.
The early seventeenth century was an age of a transition. Much of what we consider the “modern mind” began during that period. The religious breakdown of the established order with the dreams of Reform and social rebirth by Levellers and Diggers Puritans and Anabaptists, quicker and sceptics the transformation of England from an agriculture to a manufacturing country; the transformation of state itself from organic Garden to “joint stock company”; the secularization of life; the beginning of a modern science and theology- these were symptomatic of scope and depth of change characteristic of that period. Furthermore, these changes took place through “blood and confusion”, as Oliver Cromwell remarked, and involved Revolution (civil war), Restoration (of monarchy) and new historical identity.
The
heritage of Queen Elizabeth I who died in 1603, was one of the peace and
prosperity. it was also one of centralisation. Although her monarchy had begun
as an absolute one, she delegated her
authority wisely, and Patriotism was loyalty
to the queen. Religion and politics very closely linked. Elizabeth is
the supreme head of Church of England, maintain religious tolerance as a
puritan and Catholic more minorities strengthened. Elizabeth and development in
Science were great, and include new discoveries in navigation, astronomy,
cartography and medicine. England camp
to accept the Copernican view of the earth instant of a Ptolemaic system.
James I, formerly James VI of Scotland, took the English throne in 1603 at the death of Elizabeth I. Though he was widely hailed at first, English man become rapidly disillusioned with him. James did not understand the people he ruled, nor the nature of his office. He allowed his favourites and the Spanish government to influence him; his failure to recognise the rising power of parliament, His aversion to rigid views of absolute monarchy, and the luxury and corruption of his court, all caused opposition and conflict that followed. Under his rule, religious schisms widened, and puritanism and Roman Catholicism become more militant in their fight against the established Church of England. political strife, intermingled with growing religious dissension was brought to a head by his insistence on the oneness of Church and state.
AGE OF DOUBT AND
SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS :
In such circumstances, the
spirit of the age became one of doubt and scientific analysis. The stretching
of space in astronomy and geography, and the recognition of the great,
unexplored territories in an expanding world threw man’s place in the scheme of
things into doubt. Both pessimism and optimism were offshoots of this need and
quest for authority, the former as a natural manifestation of man’s insecurity
in a world increasingly governed by scientific law in different to man’s
position in the universe; the latter, as a natural assertion of man’s greater
control of his environment and a better life. It was an age of Psychology, of
biography, and of self-analysis at all social levels, as the works of Issak
Walton, John Donne or Robert Burton show; it was also an age of scientific
materialism as the works of Bacon and Newton show.
The conflict between
Church and state led men to wonder which was superior, with the answer resting
in man’s own conscience. The questioning of civil authority, of where true
sovereignty should lie, made it possible to rebel against a King. The growth of
a middle class, the rise of political parties, and the estrangement of the
Puritans led to a long Civil War. Charles I, who began his rules in 1625,
following the death of his father, was beheaded in 1649, whereupon a
commonwealth was begun by the Puritans, leading to the eventual military
dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell, who nevertheless brought some measure of peace
and stability to a turbulent England. Yet the idea of a military dictatorship
was abhorrent to Englishmen and upon Cromwell’s death, parliament invited
Charles II, in exile in France, to return to England and resume the rule of the
Stuart Kings in 1660.
With the restoration of
the English throne, 60years of turmoil and transition came to an end. The
literature of these 60years manifests the dominant characteristics of this
period: a divided and Janus-like character. It was an age of geniuses, as
Alfred North Whitehead remarked. But it is extremely difficult to say whose age
was- Hobbe’s or locke’s , Ben Jonson’s or Donne’s, Milton’s or Dryden’s,
Newton’s or Lancelot Andrew’s. And it is equality difficult to identify the
question of reality that governed it. It
strives to hold together matter and mind, flesh and spirit, self and God, old
and new learning, the secular and the religious – in short, the great tensions
of man’s creative life that the metaphysical poets epitomised. When Andrew
Marvell followed Cromwell’s Coffin in 1658, his fellow -mourner had been John
Dryden (1631-1700), mater of satire and the mock-heroic. With Dryden, and with
the Restoration theatre of Wycherley, Otway and Congrave, literature became
public and social, its themes became personalities and the conventions of
society. The metaphysical blend of wit and personal devotion was left far
behind.
Citation
1. Douglas Bush, English
Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, O.U.P., 1962.
2. Edwin Honig, The Major Metaphysical Poets of the Oscar Williams (eds)
3. Gerald 1. Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Hammond
(ed), The Metaphysical Poets, Macmillan, 1974. (Case Book Series)
4.Grierson, H.J.C. (ed), Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the
Seventeenth Century. Oxford, 1921
5. Helen C. White, The Metaphysical Poets, Collier Books, New York, 1966
6.Patricia Beer, An Introduction to the Metaphysical Poets, Macmillan,
London, 1972
7. R.G. Cox, A study of Literature from Donne to Marvell in From Donne
to Marvell.
Pelican, 1956
8.Seventeenth Century Washington Squares Press: New York, 1969
9. T.S. Eliot, The Metaphysical Poet in Selected Essays Faber, 1932.
Words : 1647
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Sentences : 68
paragraph : 53
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