Puritan Poetry

Introsuction to Puritan Poetry

Spenserian Poetry

1. Phineas Fletcher (1582 – 1650)
2. Giles Fletcher (1588 – 1623)
3. George Wither (1588 – 1667)
4. William Browne (1590-1645)
5. William Drummond (1585-1649)

Cavalier Poetry

• They were all associated with Charles I, and they believed in ideal of Renaissance man: Who was a lover, a soldier, a gallant, a man of affairs, a musician and a poet.
• This was the first expression of romanticism in the 17th century. Important themes of their poems: carpe diem or seize the day.
• Dr Munib Ayob said, ” Cavilier poets reflect the lighter side of the life and literature in the 17th century the gay, hopeful, passionate and amorous kind of poetry.”

1. Thomas Carew (1594 – 1640)
2. John Suckling (1609-1642)
3. Richard Lovelace (1618 – 1657)

Metaphysical poetry

• John Dryden was first to use the term “Mettaaphysic” in his Discourse Concerning Satire, he used it for only one person: Donne, he said “Donne in poetry, affects the Metaphysics.”
• Samuel Johnson extended it to a group of poet in his The Lives of the Poets, he stated”about the beginning of the 17th century appeared a race of writers that may be termed as the metaphysical poets”. He believed that metaphysical poets only wanted to “show their learning”. In their poetry, “The most heterogeneous ideas were yoked together with violance.”
• Common characteristics of Metaphysical poetry:
  1. Subtle, complex, concentrated thoughts.
  2. Intellectually rigorous.
  3. Employs bold and ingenious conceits, known as metaphysical conceits. Johnson called it “A combination of dissimilar images”. e.g. in his poem A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Donne compares the two lovers to a compass.
  4. Employs unusual images from different fields of knowledge: history, geography, astronomy, alchemy, mathematics.
  5. It has a dramatic quality and conflict to it and often opens aggressively.
  6. Frequently makes use of paradox.
•  The elevation of metaphysical poets owes a great deal to HC Grierson’s Introduction to Metaphysical lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century published in 1912.
• After this the reputation of metaphysical soared as a result of TS Elit’s critical essay: The Metaphysical Poets. Association of sensibility is a feature of metaphysical poem, while we find dissociation of sensibility in Victorian poetry. TS Eliot comparing Donne to Wordsworth and Tennyson says, “Tennyson and Browning are poets and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.”
• Both Dryden and Johnson used the term in negative sense to criticize the excesses of this group of poets

1. John Donne – 1573 – 1631
2. George Herbert (1593-1633)
3. Richard Crashaw (1613 – 1649)
4. Henry Vaughan (1621-1695)
5. Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
6. John Milton (1608-1674)
7. Edmund Waller (1606-1687)
8. Sir John Denham (1615 – 1669)
9. Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667)