| The term "metaphysical poetry" is used
to describe a certain type of 17th century poetry. The term was
originally intended to be derogatory; Dryden, who said Donne
"affects the metaphysics," was criticizing Donne for being too
arcane. Samuel Johnson later used the term
"metaphysical poetry" to describe the
specific poetic method used by poets like Donne.
Metaphysical poets are generally in rebellion against the
highly conventional imagery of the Elizabethan lyric. The
poems tend to be intellectually complex, and (according to the
Holman Handbook), "express honestly, if
unconventionally, the poet's sense of the complexities and
contradictions of life." The verse often sounds rough
in comparison to the smooth conventions of other poets; Ben
Jonson once said that John Donne "deserved hanging"
for the way he ran roughshod over conventional rhythms.
The result is that these poems often lack lyric smoothness, but
they instead use a rugged irregular movement that seems to suit
the content of the poems.
For an example of metaphysical rebellion against lyrical
convention, one can look at Donne's Holy Sonnet 14. The
sonnet is a highly conventional art form, and one would expect a
smooth iambic pentameter line. But notice all the stressed
syllables in the first lines of this poem, and how hard it is to
read them in the conventional iambic pentameter pattern:
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for You
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, oe'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
In addition to challenging the conventions of rhythm, the
metaphysical poets also challenged conventional imagery.
Their tool for doing this was the metaphysical conceit.
If you remember, a conceit is a poetic idea, usually a
metaphor. There can be conventional ideas, where there are
expected metaphors: Petrarchan conceits imitate the
metaphors used by the Italian poet Petrarch. Metaphysical
conceits are noteworthy specifically for their lack of
conventionality. In general, the metaphysical conceit will use
some sort of shocking or unusual comparison as the basis for the
metaphor. When it works, a metaphysical conceit has a
startling appropriateness that makes us look at something in an
entirely new way. The classic metaphysical conceit is Donne's
comparison of the union between two lovers to the two legs of a
compass in "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning." In
Holy Sonnet 14, there are other surprising metaphors--comparing
God to a violent invader and a rapist, for instance.
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