Metaphysical and Cavalier Poetry

1. Metaphysical and Cavalier Poetry Warhol, Remake of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, 1482), c.1984

2. METAPHYSICAL POETRY: HISTORICAL CONTEXT Elizabethan Age [ELIZABETH] (1558-1603) The Jacobean Age [JAMES] (1603-1625) William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick THE CAROLINE ERA [CHARLES] (1625-1649) Donne, Jonson, Andrew Marvell, Richard Lovelace THE PROTECTORATE [CROMWELL] (1649-1660) John Milton, John Bunyan

3. METAPHYSICAL POETRY: THE JACOBEAN ERA • James I believed in the Divine Right of Kings • English custom limited this absolutism—he understood that he could make law only with the consent of Parliament. • Parliament in 1600: • Was still an instrument of the crown. • Met for a limited time and intended for emergencies. • Was used to complain or reproach the monarch and to consent to new taxes

4. METAPHYSICAL POETRY: THE JACOBEAN ERA • There was a good bit of political and religious unrest in England during this period (First English Puritans left for America during this time ) • English Catholics planned an attack on Parliament to rid the kingdom of its heretic leader (Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605. ) • James preferred an Episcopalian organization as better suited to a divinely ordained monarchy, BUT he was rather tolerant of different Christian sects. He even appointed several Puritans to key positions

5. CAVALIER POETRY – THE CAROLINAN ERA • The conflicts between the King and the Parliament continued to grow • Parliament no longer accepted the Divine Right of Kings, particularly with regard to Foreign Policy • He did not have Parliamentary support because he took a Catholic wife amidst the ongoing conflicts between Protestants and Catholics (And Puritans and Anglicans) • Tensions escalate, and a civil war breaks out. Oliver Cromwell launches a trial against Charles…and he is actually beheaded in 1649

6. Metaphysical Poetry- Definition By itself, metaphysical is “the reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses” (OED). It deals with the relationship between concrete forms and spiritual or emotional constructs. Courtesy of Google Images

7. METAPHYSICAL POETRY - QUALITIES The Metaphysical poets are obviously not the only poets to deal with these subject matters, so here are some qualities that define the movement: • Poems presented in the form of an argument • Approbation of wit • Use of ordinary speech mixed with puns • Use of scientific terminology • Paradoxes and Conceits

8. METAPHYSICAL POETRY - THE CONCEIT • A conceit is an extended metaphor that often relies on logic (or manipulates it to prove a point) • A conceit offers unconventional and surprising comparisons, and in doing so, they encourage the reader to see the subject in a whole new light • For the metaphysical poets, the most common subjects of these conceits were love/a lover and God/faith

9. Metaphysical Poetry- PLATONIC LOVE For Plato, “beauty proceeds in a series of steps from the love of one beautiful body to that of two, to the love of physical beauty in general, and ultimately to the love of that beauty ‘not in the likeness of a face or hands or in the forms of speech or knowledge or animal or particular thing in time or place, but beauty absolute, separate, simple, everlasting--the source and cause of all that perishing beauty of all other things.’” (qtd. In Connor)

10. Metaphysical Poetry- Platonic Love Plato's "Symposium“ defined two types of love: • Vulgar love is an earthly love that relies on physical attraction and/or the need to procreate. • Divine love is a superior love that transcends bodily needs and worships someone’s “supreme beauty”(Plato) Metaphysical poems are considered Neo-Platonic because they often show the relationship between the soul and body and the union of lovers' souls

11. PLATONIC LOVE – CLARIFICATION * Platonic love has come to mean a love between individuals which transcends sexual desire and attains spiritual heights, but that definition is an oversimplification of Plato’s argument (Connor) During the English Renaissance, Divine Love was idealized and recoined Platonic Love*

12. JOHN DONNE - THE METAPHYSICAL MAN Courtesy of Google Images

13. CAVALIER POETRY - HISTORY An early seventeenth-century movement, centered on Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, John Suckling, Richard Lovelace, and Henry Vaughn. A cavalier was traditionally just a mounted soldier or knight, but because of the civil unrest in England at that time, Charles’ “soldiers” were called the Cavaliers (as opposed to the Puritan Roundheads) Courtesy of Google Images

14. CAVALIER POETRY - VALUES They accepted the ideal of the Renaissance Gentleman - a man who is at once lover, soldier, man ofaffairs, musician, and poet, but they reject the notion of Christian chivalry (“Cavalier Poetry”) Cavalier poets were considered Heretics by the Puritans and other conservative Christians Courtesy of Google Images

15. CAVALIER POETRY – QUALITIES The Cavalier poet’s primary purpose was to entertain. His work almost always espoused the values of “Carpe Diem” Common Cavalier techniques include: • Use of conversational style that followed natural speech patterns • Use of regular, rhythmic patterns • Use of metaphors.

16. Works Cited AND REFERENCED Connor, Marguerite. “Metaphysical Poetry”. http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/~eng/resume/marguerite/marguerite_cv.htm Lynch, Jack. “Cavalier Poets” http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/ The Cavalier Poets: An Anthology. New York: Dover Publications, 1996. A collection of 120 works from four Cavalier poets: Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace. The Metaphysical Poets. New York: Penguin Classics, 1960. A comprehensive resource to selections from Renaissance poetry, including a large selection from John Donne and George Herbert. This is a good overview to metaphysical poetry.