Metaphysical Poetry

The Seventeenth Century

In the early seventeenth century, intellectuals increasingly challenged conventional ways of conceiving the world and questioned traditional social and natural hierarchies, especially in the following fields of knowledge:
Philosophy (the Great Chain of Being) Astronomy (Ptolomaic system) Science Biology and medicine (humoural theory) World exploration, geography

Models of the Solar System

Ptolemaic model of the solar system

Copernican model of the solar system

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ptolemaic_system_2_(PSF).png

Source: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/retrograde/copernican.html

Metaphysical Poetry
critiques and challenges past poetic traditions and received knowledge employs the terminology and abstruse arguments of the medieval Scholastic philosophers (Abrams 215). Scholastics were known for using the dialectical (or Socratic) method: a dialogue between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject, who wish to establish the truth of the matter by dialogue, with reasoned arguments; not the same thing as debate where each side is wedded to its argument is often centred around a metaphysical conceit which is startling, an ingenious extended metaphor which often contains an explicit paradox (a statement which seems on its face to be logically contradictory or absurd, but which turns out to be interpretable in a way that makes sense). Moreover, a metaphysical conceit is a kind of Discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike The most heterogenous ideas are yoked by violence together (Samuel Johnson, 1709-84) employs wit

Work Cited Abrams, M.H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 9th edn. Thomson-Wadsworth, 2009.

reflected in a work of literature (William Davenant, 1606-68). The seventeenth century was obsessed with wit: defining it, analysing it, amplifying it, using it, rejecting it, and using it to reject it. Wit variously and alternately and sometimes simultaneously signifies in the seventeenth century:
Ingenuity Fancy Inventiveness Flagrant sophistry [twisted logic; specious but fallacious reasoning; employment of arguments which are intentionally deceptive. (OED def. 1.)] Adroit (or skilful) craftsmanship Facile wordplay Complexity of thought and statement Baroque (or ornate) excess Arcane (or obscure) imagery Strained conceits Mere cleverness High and low humour The agile manipulation of standard tropes The startling discovery of unsuspected resemblances between unlike phenomena (ie. the use of metaphysical conceits) The perception of the order and connectedness of the Creation, and truth, sometimes apprehended as through a veil darkly.

Wit Wit is not onely the luck and labour, but also the dexterity of the thought

Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is ; Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; Thou knowst that this cannot be said A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead, Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered swells with one blood made of two, And this, alas, is more than we would do. Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, nay more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is; Though parents grudge, and you, we are met, And cloistered in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that, self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it sucked from thee? Yet thou triumphst, and sayst that thou Findst not thy self nor me the weaker now; Tis true; then learn how false fears be: Just so much honour, when thou yieldst to me, Will waste, as this fleas death took life from thee.

The Flea

Batter my heart, three-personed God (Holy Sonnet 14)

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, oerthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurpd town, to another due, Labour to admit you, but O, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, viceroy = governor But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, fain = gladly But am betrothed unto your enemy. Divorce me, untie or break that knot again; Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Except = Unless Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Great Chain of Being:

a theory that suggests there is a natural order which mirrors divine order: that social hierarchies are reflections of a divine hierarchy Men Monarch God Reason Women Nobility Angels Will Children Commons Humans Passions Animals Plants

On my first son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy: Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the just day. O could I lose all father now! For why Will man lament the state he should envy, To have so soon scaped worlds and fleshs rage, And, if no other misery, yet age? Rest in soft peace, and asked, say, Here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry. For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such As what he loves may never like too much.

Easter Wings

Terms
Amphibology: a deliberate ambivalence achieved through grammatical structure. In On my first son, the first line could be read farewell child who was my joy or farewell child and farewell joy. Pattern (or Concrete) poetry: poetry which experiment with the layout of the poem on the page, sometimes forming pictures; often the printed shape outlines the subject of the poem.