 Metaphysics › the study of the ultimate reality beyond our everyday world, including questions about God, creation, and the afterlife  These poets are known for using symbols and images from the "physical" world to spin complicated arguments about such "metaphysical" concerns.  They are known especially for the use of wit, which involves a lot of wordplay

 the most outstanding of the English Metaphysical Poets  born in London to a prominent Roman Catholic family but converted to Anglicanism during the 1590s  entered the University of Oxford at age 11 where he studied for three years › According to some accounts, he spent the next three years at the University of Cambridge but took no degree at either university.  began the study of law at Lincoln's Inn, London, in 1592, and he seemed destined for a legal or diplomatic career.

 was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal, in 1598 › His secret marriage in 1601 to Egerton's niece, Anne More, resulted in his dismissal from this position and in a brief imprisonment.  principal literary accomplishments during this period were Divine Poems (1607) and the prose work Biathanatos (c. 1608, posthumously published 1644), in which he argued that suicide is not intrinsically sinful.  became a priest of the Anglican Church in 1615 and was appointed royal chaplain later that year.  In 1621was named dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. › attained eminence as a preacher, delivering sermons that are regarded as the most brilliant and eloquent of his time.

 poetry embraces a wide range of secular and religious subjects  wrote › cynical verse about inconstancy › poems about true love › lyrics on the mystical union of lovers' souls and bodies › satires and hymns depicting his own spiritual struggles

 a figure of speech which makes an unusual and sometimes elaborately sustained comparison between two dissimilar things.

 imitate the metaphors used by the Italian poet Petrarch.  used in love poetry, exploits a particular set of images for comparisons with the despairing lover and his unpitying but idolized mistress. › the lover is a ship on a stormy sea, and his mistress "a cloud of dark disdain“ › the lady is a sun whose beauty and virtue shine on her lover from a distance  The paradoxical pain and pleasure of lovesickness is often described using oxymoron › uniting peace and war › burning and freezing

 characteristic of seventeenth-century writers influenced by John Donne  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.  draws upon a wide range of knowledge, mainly using highly intellectual analogies; its comparisons are elaborately rationalized. › "The Flea" compares a flea bite to the act of love › In "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" separated lovers are likened to the legs of a compass, the leg drawing the circle eventually returning home to "the fixed foot"

 It is opposite to the rich melodies with smooth rhythm and flow and the idealized view of sexual love which constituted the central tradition of Elizabethan poetry › especially in writers like the Petrarchan sonneteers and Spenser  It adopts a diction and meter modeled on actual speech.  It is usually organized in the dramatic or rhetorical form of an urgent or heated argument. › first drawing in the reader and then launching the argument  It puts to use a subtle and often outrageous logic.  It is marked by realism, irony and often a cynicism in its treatment of the complexity of human motives.  It reveals a persistent wittiness, making use of paradox, puns, and startling parallels.

 Stellar example of Donne’s use of the conceit  Belief he wrote poem to his wife before he went away on a long holiday with his friends.  Theme: › true, spiritual love vs. physical love

 Imagery: › Parting of two lovers is likened to death of a virtuous man. › Lovers are likened to planetary bodies. › Lovers are likened to the two points of a compass.

 No one’s sure when Holy Sonnets were written. › Many people think that Donne composed them after the death of his wife in 1617  weren’t published until 1633, two years after his death.