Metaphysical Poetry.ppt

Metaphysical Poetry The Flea By John Donne Metaphysical Poetry- Definition(1) By itself, metaphysical means dealing with the relationship between spirit to matter or the ultimate nature of reality. The Metaphysical poets are obviously not the only poets to deal with this subject matter, so there are a number of other qualities involved as well:? Use of ordinary speech mixed with puns, paradoxes and conceits (a paradoxical metaphor causing a shock to the reader by the strangeness of the objects compared; some examples: lovers and a compass, the soul and timber, the body and mind) Metaphysical Poetry- Definition (2) The exaltation of wit, which in the 17th century meant a nimbleness of thought; a sense of fancy (imagination of a fantastic or whimsical nature); and originality in figures of speech Abstruse terminology often drawn from science or law Often poems are presented in the form of an argument In love poetry, the metaphysical poets often draw on ideas from Renaissance Neo-Platonism to show the relationship between the soul and body and the union of lovers souls They also try to show a psychological realism when describing the tensions of love. Metaphysical Poetry – Platonic Love(1) ? During the Renaissance, Plato got mingled with Christian and Eastern thought. Through this mingling we get? Platonic love (which is a lot more than you probably think it means). For Plato, beauty proceeds in a series of steps from the love of one beautiful body to that of two, to the love of physical beauty in general, and ultimately to the love of that beauty not in the likeness of a face or hands or in the forms of speech or knowledge or animal or particular thing in time or place, but beauty absolute, separate, simple, everlasting--the source and cause of all that perishing beauty of all other things.? When this scheme is Christianized by equating this ultimate beauty with the Divine Beauty of God, the Renaissance Platonic lover can move in stages through the desire for