metaphysical poetry research paper

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets

Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 5, 2020 • ( 1 )

There are a handful of indisputable influences on Eliot’s early and most formative period as a poet, influences that are corroborated by the poet’s own testimony in contemporaneous letters and subsequent essays on literature and literary works. Foremost among those influences was French symbolist poet Jules Laforgue, from whom Eliot had learned that poetry could be produced out of common emotions and yet uncommon uses of language and tone. A close second would undoubtedly be the worldrenowned Italian Renaissance poet Dante Alighieri, whose influences on Eliot’s work and poetic vision would grow greater with each passing year.

A third influence would necessarily come from among poets writing in Eliot’s own native tongue, English. There, however, he chose not from among his own most immediate precursors, such as Tennyson or Browning, or even his own near contemporaries, such as W. B. Yeats or Arthur Symons, and certainly not from among American poets, but rather from among poets and minor dramatists of the early 17th century, the group of English writers working in a style and tradition that has subsequently been identified as metaphysical poetry.

The word metaphysical is far more likely to be found in philosophical than literary contexts. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophical inquiry and discourse that deals with issues that are, quite literally, beyond the physical (meta- being a Greek prefix for “beyond”). Those issues are, by and large, focused on philosophical questions that are speculative in nature—discussions of things that cannot be weighed or measured or even proved to exist yet that have acquired great importance among human cultures. Metaphysics, then, concerns itself with the idea of the divine, of divinity, and of the makeup of what is called reality.

That said, it may be fair to suspect that poetry that is metaphysical concerns itself with those kinds of issues and concerns as well. The difficulty is that it both does and does not do that. Thus, the question of what metaphysical poetry does in fact do is what occupies Eliot’s attention in his essay to the point that he formulates out of his considerations a key critical concept that he calls the dissociation of sensibilities.

Eliot’s essay on the English metaphysical poets was originally published in the Times Literary Supplement as a review of a just-published selection of their poetry by the scholar Herbert J. C. Grierson titled Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century: Donne to Butler . In a fashion similar to the way in which Eliot launched into his famous criticism of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in “Hamlet and His Problems” by using an opportunity to review several new works of criticism on the play as a springboard to impart his own ideas, Eliot commends Grierson’s efforts but devotes the majority of his commentary otherwise to expressing his views on the unique contribution that metaphysical poetry makes to English poetry writing in general and on its continuing value as a literary movement or school. Indeed, as if to underscore his opposition to his own observation that metaphysical poetry has long been a term of either abuse or dismissive derision, Eliot begins by asserting that it is both “extremely difficult” to define the exact sort of poetry that the term denominates and equally hard to identify its practitioners.

After pointing out how such matters could as well be categorized under other schools and movements, he quickly settles on a group of poets that he regards as metaphysical poets. These include John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Abraham Henry Cowley, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and Bishop King, all of them poets, as well as the dramatists Thomas Middleton, John Webster, and Cyril Tourneur.

As to their most characteristic stylistic trait, one that makes them all worthy of the title metaphysical, Eliot singles out what is generally termed the metaphysical conceit or concept, which he defines as “the elaboration (contrasted with the condensation) of a figure of speech to the farthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it.”

Eliot knows whereof he speaks. He himself was a poet who could famously compare the evening sky to a patient lying etherized upon an operating room table without skipping a beat, so Eliot’s admiration for this capacity of the mind—or wit, as the metaphysicals themselves would have termed it—to discover the unlikeliest of comparisons and then make them poetically viable should come as no surprise to the reader.

Eliot would never deny that, while it is this feature of metaphysical poetry, the far-fetched conceit, that had enabled its practitioners to keep one foot in the world of the pursuits of the flesh, the other in the trials of the spirit, such a poetic technique is not everyone’s cup of tea. The 18th-century English critic Samuel Johnson, for example, found their excesses deplorable and later famously disparaged metaphysical poetic practices in his accusation that in this sort of poetry “the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.” Eliot will not attempt to dispute Johnson’s judgment, though it is clear that he does not agree with it. (Nor should that be any surprise either. Eliot’s own poetic tastes and techniques had already found fertile ground in the vagaries of the French symbolists, who would let no mere disparity bar an otherwise apt poetic comparison.)

Rather, Eliot finds that this kind of “telescoping of images and multiplied associations” is “one of the sources of the vitality” of the language to be found in metaphysical poetry, and then he goes as far as to propose that “a degree of heterogeneity of material compelled into unity by the operation of the poet’s mind is omnipresent in poetry.” What that means, by and large, is that these poets make combining the disparate the heart of their writing. It is on that count that Eliot makes his own compelling case for the felicities of metaphysical poetry, so much so that he will eventually conclude by mourning its subsequent exile from the mainstream of English poetic practice. It is this matter of the vitality of language that the metaphysical poets achieved that most concerns Eliot, and it is that concern that will lead him, in the remainder of this short essay, not only to lament the loss of that vitality from subsequent English poetry but to formulate one of his own key critical concepts, the dissociation of sensibility.

The “Dissociation of Sensibility”

Eliot argues that these poets used a language that was “as a rule pure and simple,” even if they then structured it into sentences that were “sometimes far from simple.” Nevertheless, for Eliot, this is “not a vice; it is a fidelity to thought and feeling,” one that brings about a variety of thought and feeling as well as of the music of language. On that score—that metaphysical poetry harmonized these two extremes of poetic expression, thought and feeling, grammar and musicality —Eliot then goes on to ponder whether, rather than something quaint, such poetry did not provide “something permanently valuable, which . . . ought not to have disappeared.”

For disappear it did, in Eliot’s view, as the influence of John Milton and John Dryden gained ascendancy, for in their separate hands, “while the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude.” By way of a sharp contrast, Eliot saw the metaphysical poets, who balanced thought and feeling, as “men who incorporated their erudition into their sensibility,” becoming thereby poets who can “feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose.” Subsequent English poetry has lost that immediacy, Eliot contends, so that by the time of Tennyson and Browning, Eliot’s Victorian precursors, a sentimental age had set in, in which feeling had been given primacy over, rather than balance with, thought. Rather than, like these “metaphysical” poets, trying to find “the verbal equivalents for states of mind and feeling” and then turning them into poetry, these more recent poets address their interests and, in Eliot’s view, then “merely meditate on them poetically.” That is not at all the same thing, nor is the result anywhere near as powerful and moving as poetic statement.

While, then, the metaphysical poets of the 17th century “possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience,” Eliot imagines that subsequently a “dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered.” Nor will the common injunction, and typical anodyne for poor poetry, to “look into our hearts and write,” alone provide the necessary corrective. Instead, Eliot offers examples from the near-contemporary French symbolists as poets who have, like Donne and other earlier English poets of his ilk, “the same essential quality of transmuting ideas into sensations, of transforming an observation into a state of mind.” To achieve as much, Eliot concludes, a poet must look “into a good deal more than the heart.” He continues: “One must look into the cerebral cortex, the nervous system, and the digestive tracts.”

CRITICAL COMMENTARY

The point of this essay is not a matter of whether Eliot’s assessment of the comparative value of the techniques of the English metaphysical poets and the state of contemporary English versification was right or wrong. By and large, Eliot is using these earlier poets, whom the Grierson book is more or less resurrecting, to stake out his own claim in an ageless literary debate regarding representation versus commentary. Should poets show, or should they tell? Clearly, there can be no easy resolution to such a debate.

Eliot would be the first to admit, as he would in subsequent essays, that a young poet, such as he was at the time he wrote the review at hand, will most likely condemn those literary practices that he regards to be detrimental to his own development as a poet. Whatever Eliot’s judgments in his review of Grierson’s book on the English metaphysical poets may ultimately reveal, they are reflections more of Eliot’s standards for poetry writing than of standards for poetry writing in general. That said, they should serve as a caution to any reader approaching an Eliot poem, particularly from this period, since he makes it clear that he falls on the side of representation as opposed to commentary and reflection in poetry writing.

In addition to its having enabled Eliot to stake out his own literary ground by offering, as it were, a literary manifesto for the times, replete with a memorable critical byword in the coinage dissociation of sensibility, as Eliot’s own prominence as a man of letters increased, this review should finally be credited with having done far more, over time, than Grierson’s scholarly effort could ever have achieved in bringing English metaphysical poetry and its 17th-century practitioners back to some measure of respectability and prominence. For that reason alone, this short essay, along with Tradition and the Individual Talent and Hamlet and His Problems , has found an enduring place not only in the Eliot canon but among the major critical documents in English of the 20th century.

Share this:

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: American Literature , Analysis of Metaphysical Poets , Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , Bibliography of Metaphysical Poets , Bibliography of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , Character Study of Metaphysical Poets , Character Study of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , Criticism of Metaphysical Poets , Criticism of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , Describe dissociation of sensibility , dissociation of sensibility , dissociation of sensibility eliot , dissociation of sensibility explain , dissociation of sensibility metaphysical poetry , dissociation of sensibility simple language , dissociation of sensibility summary , dissociation of sensibility term , eliot , Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , Essays of Metaphysical Poets , Essays of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , explain dissociation of sensibility , Literary Criticism , Literary Theory , Metaphysical Poets , Modernism , Notes of Metaphysical Poets , Notes of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , Plot of Metaphysical Poets , Plot of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , Poetry , Simple Analysis of Metaphysical Poets , Simple Analysis of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , Study Guides of Metaphysical Poets , Study Guides of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , Summary of Metaphysical Poets , Summary of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , Synopsis of Metaphysical Poets , Synopsis of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , T. S. Eliot , Themes of Metaphysical Poets , Themes of T.S. Eliot’s Metaphysical Poets , What is dissociation of sensibility

Related Articles

• Anglican Notables – Thomas Traherne (Musicians, Authors, & Poets) – 27 September – St. Benet Biscop Chapter of St. John's Oblates

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

metaphysical poetry Recently Published Documents

Total documents.

• Latest Documents
• Most Cited Documents
• Contributed Authors
• Related Sources
• Related Keywords

17th Century British Metaphysical Poetry and Joseph Brodsky: Focusing on John Donne’s Influence on Modern British and American Poetry in the 20th Century

A seventeenth-century theory of metaphysical poetry, metaphysical poetry and the poetic of correspondence, an analysis of metaphysical conceits in john donne’s poems.

In the seventeenth century British literary arena appears a unique school of poetry called “metaphysical school”. The most remarkable characteristic of the metaphysical poetry is the original and arresting conceits. John Donne is the forefather and the most representative of the school. Through analyzing the sources of conceits in John Donne’s poems, this paper attempts to clarify the using of conceits in John Donne’s representative poems, and then summarize the features and unique functions of conceits. It is hoped that it can help readers to have a better understanding of the poet’s poetry, and grasp his thoughts.

Metaphysical Poetry

‘the poetry’s domain is shrinking like a piece of shagreen — and primarily in people’s hearts’.

Kekova’s new interview recorded by E. Konstantinova shows a combined portrait of Kekova as a poet adhering to the ‘neoclassical’ tradition of 20th-c. metaphysical poetry as well as a scholar specialising in works by A. Tarkovsky and N. Zabolotsky and their intertextual relations. The interview raises the issues of contemporary philological research, the tradition of Christian poetics, of ‘sermon’ in literature, and the legacies of the Silver and Golden Ages. According to Kekova, Tarkovsky’s and Zabolotsky’s poetic oeuvres have more in common with the Golden rather than Silver Age, hence their rejection of the delusions of Symbolism and the yearning for philosophical comprehension of their place in the world; she admits to sharing this pursuit as a poet. Kekova’s on point comments to poems by her beloved authors ensure better understanding of her own poetics, and Konstantinova’s questions reveal their semantic and stylistic interconnectedness.

EXPANDED METAPHOR AS A CONCEPTUAL STYLISTIC DEVICE OF METAPHYSICAL POETRY AND METHODOLOGICAL BASES OF THE RESEARCH

N. a. nekrasov and the english pre-romanticists (to the origins of the poetic motif of night).

The paper investigates the literary roots of «night-motifs» in N. Nekrasov`s epic «Who is Happy in Russia?» and his «night» poems «Knight for an Hour» and «Railroad» down to English poetry of XVII–XVIII cc.: metaphysical poetry by H. Vaughan (XVII c.) and greater didactic poem by E. Young (XVIII c.). Both mythological and lyrical «night» motifs of H. Vaughan`s poetry owed to ancient folk traditions of the poet`s Motherland – Wales, with its archaic Celtic language, rituals and sacred festivals (such as Samhein). E. Young`s poem «Complaint or night thoughts on life, death and immortality» (1743–1745) is closely related to later baroque culture, stressing the night-motif in the context of the poet`s contemplation of life, death and christian immortality of human soul. H. Vaughan`s and E. Young`s «night» poetry influenced greatly the sentimentalist and preromantic trends in European poetic traditions of XVIII–XIX cc. N. Nekrasov`s main epic poem with its profound night motifs, though continuing pre-romantic European traditions of H. Vaughan and E. Young, remains greatly indigenous and rooted deeply in both folk and poetic Russian orthodox culture.

Wagnerian Contexts and Wagner’s Codes of T.S. Eliot’s Poetry, 1910-20s

The paper deals with the analysis of reception and poetic transformation of aesthetic concepts and music ideas of Richard Wagner (1813–1883) in the works by T. S. Eliot (1888–1965). The research material includes the poems of the 1910-20s (“Opera”, “Paysage Triste”, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, The Waste Land) as well the essay “Dante” and lectures “The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry”, “The Music of Poetry”. The research is aimed to solve the problem of genesis of Eliot's Wagnerianism and identify the Wagnerian codes for his poetic texts. Following the representatives of literary Wagnerianism Eliot assimilated the ideas of revolutionary art, anti-bourgeois pathos, ideas of synthesis of arts, indivisibility of poetry and music, mythopoesis, etc. The poetry of the 1910–20s reflected Eliot’s interest in a wide cultural context (Wagnerianism and “Wagnerovschina”), Neo-Mythologism, etc. The poetry of this period is characterized by representation of Wagnerian “situations” and plots (the Grail plot), themes, composition strategies (system of leitmotifs, multi-layered text, etc.), music techniques (atonality, “endless melody”, suggestiveness, etc.), the direct quotations from Wagner’s works, etc. The author of the paper suggests that The Waste Land was created as a Gesamtkunstwerk, a complex multi-level poetic intermedial structure incorporating the elements of different arts (music, painting, scenography, dance, etc.).

Chapter 3. How Do We Recognize Metaphysical Poetry?

Export citation format, share document.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

The Metaphysical School of Poetry of the Seventeenth Century

There is common preservation that the term "metaphysical" is utilized to portray a gathering of seventeenth-century English artists, who wrote in a specific way affected by, or in response to, works by John Donne. The chose not many related as such are known as the metaphysical artists, and their works marked as "metaphysical poetry". Precisely what the term metaphysical refers to, or what does it define this aspect requires some explanation. As indicated by the Cambridge Dictionary, metaphysical poetry identifies with the piece of theory that is tied in with getting presence and information"; while theory then again, is "the affective reason in viewing things with the aspect of the present reality and presence. Subsequently, by suggestion, however, till this day there is no fully effective definition of metaphysical poetry, as it requires a variety of characteristics which will be presented in this paper along with the brief history behind the metaphys...

Related Papers

Pouyadou Estelle

Metaphysical poetry was a literary movement which took place from around 1600 to 1650. Shakespeare was one of the main influence of these artists. It was not a school : they did not define themselves as metaphysical poets. There are common points between them, but they do not claim to be part of one single school. There is also no definitive list of metaphysical poets, but one is always present : John Donne. Metaphysical poetry is therefore a blurry term designating an heterogeneous class of artists, which sometimes only applies to a certain part of an artist's corpus of works.

VEDA'S JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE [JOELL]

The poets whom we describe as ‘the metaphysical poets’ are those who wrote during 17th century under the influence of John Donne. There are a large number of poets of the 17th century who are regarded as metaphysical poets. Dr Johnson extended the term metaphysical to designate the group of poets. The work of these poets is characterised by the use of paradoxes, elaborated conceits and abstruse terminology. John Donne is the most prolific metaphysical poet among all. The metaphysical poems sometimes take the form of argument. These poems link intense emotion with intellectual ingenuity. Cleveland, Marvell and Cowley are famous for their secular poetry. Herbert, Vaughan and Crashaw are known for their religious poetry. The primary focus of this paper is to bring out the chief characteristics of metaphysical poets.

Hue Woodson

Gülşah Kazancı

Paonam Sudeep Mangang

While on the one hand, John Donne needs no introduction as a metaphysical poet, on the other hand, due recognition was not given to him for a long time. It was only with the endeavours of T. S. Eliot that he got his due recognition some two centuries after his time. Eliot understood and appreciated the various metaphysical elements Donne used in his poetry. Eliot not only described Donne’s concept of metaphysical poetry to the literary world but he also used many of these metaphysical elements in his poems. This paper is an attempt to relate Eliot with the metaphysical elements of Donne. It also tries to identify what Eliot perceived in the metaphysical poetry of Donne and how he made a tremendous contribution in reviving and further extending the tradition of the seventeenth century metaphysical poetry.

Shajan Noronha

study on some of the metaphysical poets

Muzahid Billah

this is not a complete work but I hope it will help reader to understand the vary basic difference between the two great metaphysical poets of English literature .

Wendy Beth Hyman

“Physics, Metaphysics, and Religion in Lyric Poetry” examines the complex relationship between that seventeenth century poetry loosely defined as “Metaphysical” (especially the work of John Donne) and its investment in questions about the nature of physics, ontology, and human religious experience. It considers the way in which the unique characteristics of Metaphysical verse—its compression, startling images, paradoxes, and dialectical format—made it particularly well-suited for working through intellectual, philosophical, and religious questions.

Shamim Ahmed

Metaphysical poetry came into being in the 17th century. The theme of metaphysical poetry mainly consisted of love and desire with various forms of extended metaphors or metaphysical conceits. The literature was filled with historical and religious references. They also included mentions of geographical and technological advances. John Donne is said to be the pioneer of such practices and Andrew Marvell was a poet who had perfected his type of craft when it came to metaphysical poetry. They are celebrated for their uniqueness and differences.

RELATED PAPERS

Tạp chí Phẫu thuật Tim mạch và Lồng ngực Việt Nam

Nguyễn Phong

Scandinavian Journal of Haematology

Efstathios Stathopoulos

Journal of Engineering Management and Competitiveness

Balachandra Shetty

Anna-Maija Virtala

ACM SIGPLAN Notices

Mingsheng Ying

neil stuart

Mycotaxon -Ithaca Ny-

Iuri Goulart Baseia

Muhammad Faiz

Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation

margarida silverman

Pakistan Journal of Agricultural Research

salam baloch

JAMAL JASSIM

Majalah Kedokteran Andalas

rismalisa fitri

Asociación de la Variable Neurocognitiva de la Atención y la Toma de Decisiones en Jugadores de Futbol Base Sub9 a Sub12 del Club Atlético Bucaramanga S.A Autor: Álvaro Andrés Ardila Villamizar Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia Facultad de Educación Programa de Licenciatura en Educación Física, Recreación y Deportes Bucaramanga, Colombia 2019

Alvaro Andres Ardila Villamizar

Charles Wheeler

Fatemeh Mahdavirad

Cadernos de Educação Tecnologia e Sociedade

elsa morgado

Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical

Gabriel Felipe Vieira

The Astrophysical Journal

Political Research Quarterly

Tiffany D Barnes

Pierre Rasmont

Raoul Engelbert

rian pratama

Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery

Yusuf yagmur

办理拉筹伯大学毕业证 购买澳洲大学文凭LTU毕业证文凭学历

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024