Metaphysical poets

The metaphysical poets were a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them. The label "metaphysical" was given much later by Samuel Johnson in his Life of Cowley. These poets themselves did not form a school or start a movement; most of them did not even know or read each other. Their style was characterized by wit, subtle argumentations, "metaphysical conceits", and/or an unusual simile or metaphor such as in Andrew Marvell’s comparison of the soul with a drop of dew. Several metaphysical poets, especially John Donne, were influenced by neo-Platonism. One of the primary Platonic concepts found in metaphysical poetry is the idea that the perfection of beauty in the beloved acted as a remembrance of perfect beauty in the eternal realm. In a famous definition Georg Lukács, the Hungarian Marxist aesthetist, described the school's common trait of "looking beyond the palpable" and "attempting to erase one's own image from the mirror in front so that it should reflect the not-now and not-here" as foreshadowing existentialism (as quoted in The Aesthetics of Georg Lukács by B. Királyfalvi (1975)). Though secular subjects drew them (in particular matter drawn from the new science, from the expanding geographical horizons of the period, and from dialectic) there was also a strong casuistical element to their work, defining their relationship with God.

Origin of the name

In Life of Cowley Samuel Johnson refers to the beginning of the seventeenth century in which there "appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets". This does not necessarily imply that he intended metaphysical to be used in its true sense, in that he was probably referring to a witticism of John Dryden about John Donne. "He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love. In this . . . Mr. Cowley has copied him to a fault." Probably the only writer before Dryden to speak of a certain metaphysical school or group of metaphysical poets is Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649), who in one of his letters speaks of "metaphysical Ideas and Scholastical Quiddities." The first mention of "metaphysical poets" comes in Johnson's The Lives of the Poets (1781). Their poetry was influenced greatly by the changing times, new sciences and the new found debauched scene of the 17th century.

Metaphysical poets

• George Chapman
• John Donne
• George Herbert
• Andrew Marvell
• Saint Robert Southwell
• Thomas Traherne
• Henry Vaughan

The following poets have also been sometimes considered metaphysical poets:

• Thomas Carew
• Abraham Cowley
• Richard Crashaw
• Edward Herbert
• Richard Leigh
• Richard Lovelace
• Katherine Philips
• Sir John Suckling
• Edward Taylor

The group was to have a significant influence on 20th-century poetry, especially through T. S. Eliot, whose essay The Metaphysical Poets (1921) helped bring their poetry back into favour with readers.

Notes and references

Further reading

• Gardner, Helen, The Metaphysical Poets, [London] Oxford University Press, 1961, 1967; originally published by Penguin Books 1957.
• Grierson, Sir Herbert J.C., Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1921.

External links

• 17th Century English Literature Metaphysical Poets - Luminarium website anthology