English Literature

At the beginning of the 17th century the love poetry of John Donne expressed a strong and independent spirit. He combined in his lyrics passionate emotional intensity with keen and active intelligence displayed in logical analysis and verbal wit, especially the extensive use of puns, equivocations, and the conceit or extended metaphor. All these features in some sense work in a principle of contraries. Dr. Johnson, noted Donne's fondness for conceits, which he called "discordia concors", the "discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike". This kind of peculiar poetic vision and practice, however, had much to do with the kind of culture he inherited, a culture, which, based on medieval world view and ethos, suddenly seemed to change in the face of the Copernican science and new geographical discoveries. Donne faced a moral vacuum and experienced the unstable nature of the universe. So he tried to find out a resolution, first in the Neo-Platonic th...

Dryden once remarked: "Donne affects metaphysics not only in his satires but in amorous verses, too, where nature only should reign." Though Donne was influenced by the sixteenth and the seventeenth century poets, yet he did not tread on the beaten track. His concept of poetry was unconventional. In his poetry, intellect takes the form, primarily, of wit by which heterogeneous ideas are yoked together by violence. The seventeenth century poets labeled his poetry as 'strong line poetry', mainly, on account of his concise expression and his deliberate toughness. In his life, he was never called a metaphysical poet. After his death, his poetry was re-evaluated and some other important features were found in it, which won the name of a metaphysical poet for Donne. Grierson's defines metaphysical poetry as: "Poetry inspired by a philosophical concept of the universe and the role assigned to human spirit in the great drama of existence". This definition is ba...

Donne was the first English poet to challenge and break the supremacy of Petrarchan tradition. Though at times he adopts the Petrarchan devices, yet his imagery and rhythm, texture and colour of his love poetry is different. There are three distinct strains of his love poetry � Cynical, Platonic and Conjugal love. Giving an allusion to Donne's originality as the poet of love, Grierson makes the following observation: "His genius temperament and learning gave a certain qualities to his love poems � which arrest our attention immediately. His love poems, for instance, do have a power which is at once realistic and distracting." Donne's greatness as a love-poet arises from the fact that this poetry covers a wider range of emotions than that of any previous poet. His poetry is not bookish but is rooted in his personal experiences. Is love experience were wide and varied and so is the emotional range of his love-poetry. He had love affairs with a number of women. Some of...

Conceit in Donne's poetry Many of John Donne's poems contain metaphysical conceits and intellectual reasoning to build a deeper understanding of the speaker's emotional state. A conceit can be defined as an extended, unconventional metaphor between objects that appear to be unrelated. Metaphysical conceit is a highly ingenious kind of conceit widely used by the metaphysical poets. It often exploits verbal logic to the point of the grotesque and sometimes creates such extravagant turns on meaning that they become absurd. The metaphysical conceit is characteristic of seventeenth century writers influence by John Donne, and became popular again in this century after the revival of the metaphysical poets. However, Donne is exceptionally good at creating unusual unions between different elements in order to illustrate his point and form a persuasive argument in his poems. By using metaphysical conceits in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mournin...