METAPHYSICAL POETS

The label is applied to a diverse froup of the 17th-century English poets whose works are marked by
philosophical exploration, colloquial diction, ingenious conceits, irony, and metrically flexible lines.

The term was coined as a pejorative label by the late 17-century poet John Dryden, who found the
intellectual complexities of these poems unappealing.

One key poetic device in Metaphysical poetry is the conceit (an unusually rare or elaborate metaphor or
simile presenting a surprisingly apt parallel between two apparently dissimilar things). A very famous
conceit is John Donne’s simile in his poem “Valediction”. He compares two lovers (he and his wife) to a
compass (one does not work without the other. They are part of the same thing; if one part of the compass
fail, then the circle can’t be drawn. This applied to the couple means that they have to work together in their
relationship, otherwise the will be “doomed” to fail [I wrote this explanation and I’m quite proud of it…
hehehe, Claudia’s help was useful in this explanation]).

Possible question for the exam: Define conceit and give and example (the most famous example is the
compass).

John Donne (1572-1631)

Donne was born in a Catholic family, which meant that he could not expect any kind of public career; he was
not even allowed to receive a university degree (in order to get a university degree at the time, students had
to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the doctrine that defined Anglicanism). He converted to
the Church of England in the 1590s, and about twenty years later in 1615 he was ordained and started a
distinguished career as a court preacher and later as dean o St Paul’s.

His poetic production is generally divided into two kinds of poems:

• Love poetry, assumed to have been written before he started his ecclesiastical career.

• Religious poetry, in his years as a cleric and a dean of St Paul’s Cathedral.

This chronological division is not all together clear. He did not publish during his lifetime but circulated his
works through his friends so they could read them.