The Rape of the Lock as a Mock-heroic Poem

When Pope called the poem “an heroicomical poem”, he intended to mean it a mock-epic. He could assume that his eighteenth century readers, educated in the classical and knowledgeable about epic, would recognise that it was a mockery. Besides, the mock-epic, which Boileau had established as a distinctive p[oetic genre with his poem Le Lutrin, was well-suited to the eighteenth century. Unlike the burlesque, which lampoons the epic, it plays off a high sense of the heroic against the diminished scale of contemporary life. In this confrontation, Pope might be expected to have a clear allegiance to the classical epc poets. His veneration of the classical antiquity is on record in the Essay on Criticism, and his low opinion of the general character of contemporary life is evident in the Moral Essays and Intimations of Horace. It is worthy of remark therefore that in The Rape of the Lock Pope presents a world dominated by trivialities in terms of an epic grandeur. The fashionable society of the beaux and belles is not only allowed the defects but also the advantages of its scale. In the midst of its ironies the poem delights in the exotic preparations and instruments of Belinda’s toilet and in the exquisiteness of the sylphs. It extends rapturous complimentary to Belinda and expresses genuine sympathy for the pathetic fate of the belles it mocks.
Many of Pope’s jokes in the poem derive their significance from the epic tradition. Epic subjects were grand; for instance, the Trojan War (Iliad), the founding theme (Aeneid), the Fall of Man (Paradise Lost) were narrated at length in twelve or more books, each consisting of several hundred lines. The epic hero also traversed a wide geographical area encountering battles, romantic interludes, journeyed by land and sea and even descended into the underworld. From on high the gods watched the human drama, intervening when they chose at critical moments. Success for the hero was dependent upon the subplot of divine intrigue as well as his own courage and skill. The mock heroic imitated the most recognisable aspects of the epic, its form and elevated language. It used an inflated style to ridicule the pretensions and pomposity of minor quarrel. Pope also borrowed elaborate phrases and similes from the great epics of the western tradition. The joke lies in his applying this elevated language to “the life of the modern ladies in the idle town”, as he deprecatingly described the subject of "The Rape of the Lock" in a letter to a lady friend.
Pope consciously imitates the epic opening in his first twelve lines, which may be called the invocation in the approved epic manner. He too will ‘sing’ his subject whose importance he indicates by inverted syntax and elevated language: “dire offence”, “mighty contest”, “tasks so bold”. He addresses the muse in order to invoke inspiration. His tone does gather declamatory epic ring as he commands the goddess: “Say what strange motive…?” At some points we begin to sense that Pope is not mocking the epic form so much as laughing at his subject. Once we realise that we are reading a mock-epic, it casts a different light on the apparent solemnity and dignity of Pope’s propositions and invocation. The first hint of the mock-epic comes from the third line of the poem when Pope credits a human being, Caryll, rather than the muse with inspiring his poem. The lines from five to six have the effect of an anticlimax:
“Slight is the subject, but not so the praise If she inspire and approve my lays.”
As for the supernatural machinery, which neoclassical criticism considers indispensable for an epic, Pope reveals remarkable inventiveness. The sylphs of "The Rape of the Lock" are Pope’s mocking recreation of the gods who watch over the heroes of epics and guide their fortune. It is nicely fitting that Pope’s supernatural beings, who are supposed to imitate Homer’s deities and Milton’s angels, are tiny, frail and powerless. Although they are an amalgam of epic machinery, Rosicrucian lore, an English tale…, they are essentially Pope’s inventions. As for epic battles, the game of ombre at the centre of the poem is presented in terms of a mighty epic contest, catching repeated echoes of Trojan War and the war in the heavens. As for the epic underworld, there is an effective counterpart in the Cave of Speen in "The Rape of the Lock", which is contrasted with the Golden glittering beauty of Belinda’s delightful environment.
Pope was also mindful of the fact that a mock-epic should have a moral just as an epic does. Clarissa’s speech in "The Rape of the Lock"opens out the moral of the poem about the fashionable society. The speech can be taken as an attempt to redefine for contemporary women a concept of honour, which apply to male epic heroes. In the world of belles, honour becomes courage to face decay with humour and duty, to use the power of beauty well.

Chaucer: Realism

Literature is the mirror of its age. Supreme literary artist is one who becomes a mouthpiece and provides a real picture of his age with its minute details. Chaucer is a perfect representative of his age. He is in true sense a social chronicler of England. His poetry reflects the 14th century not in fragment but as a complete whole.
Realism of Chaucer in “The Canterbury Tales” not gives us the impression that whatever has been described is real in the ordinary sense of the word. Realism is not reality; it is a collective term for the devices that give the effect of reality. 
Chaucer represented life in its nakedness.
“What he has given is a direct transpiration of daily life.”
Chaucer's principle object of writing poetry was to portray men and women truthfully without any exaggeration and to present an exact picture of average humanity. He painted life as he saw it, and he saw it with so observant eye that it seems that he was viewing all the events as well as characters through a kaleidoscope. Because of his this quality his epoch, “The Prologue of the Canterbury Tales” has become one of the vivid epoch of history. Moreover he is a man of the world so he mixes with all types of mankind and he observes the minute peculiarities of human nature. “The Canterbury Tales” is not only a long poetical piece but a social history of England. He exposes almost all the aspects of his age as well as of the people along with the detail of their appearance, sex profession, attire and conduct. 
Chaucer shed off the influence of the French and Italian models based on fantasies and dreams, upon which he had worked for so long and entered the abundance of his own real self. He worked like a true interpreter or chronicler, relating in a most realistic manner, the stories he had heard, without change of wording or tone.
The setting of “The Canterbury Tales” is highly realistic. A pilgrimage was one of the most common sights in the fourteenth century England. To relate the stories of these pilgrims, Chaucer gives the illusion, not of an imaginary world, but of real one. The more real the world of his setting is, the more his tales by contrast seems like tales, even though some to them deal with real everyday life. Unlike Boccaccio, who in his tales quickly slips back into frank artificiality, Chaucer held consistently to realism throughout “The Canterbury Tales”.
Gifted with an acute power of observation Chaucer sees things as they are, and he possesses the art of printing them as he sees them. He does not project the tint of his likes and dislikes, views and prejudices on what he paints.
“Chaucer sees what is and paints it as he sees it.”
In the portrayal of characters in “The Prologue” he gives us his minute and delicate records of details in dress, behaviour, which makes it a mime of observation as from the portrait of Prioress:
“She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle,Ne wette hir fyngres in hir sauce depe,Wel koude she carie a morsel, and wel kepeThat no drope no fille upon hir brest.”
In “The Canterbury Tales” Chaucer has blended laughter and tears, the comic and tragic as is found in life with such case and grace, that his story-telling seems like a veracious picture of real life. Though his pilgrimage is remote form our experience, yet we feel that this is what we might see if we could turn the clock back few centuries.
Chaucer as a realist presents before us in The Canterbury Tales the pulsating life of the common people. Chaucer’s pilgrims talk of “their purse, their love affairs or their private fends”. Their vision is confirmed to the occurrences within their parish. This is the typical vision of the common people which is realistically presented by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales.
Chaucer’s depiction of the Shipman represents the salient features of the trade. The Merchant is another important figure who signifies the changed conditions of Chaucerian society.
Chaucer has introduced a number of artificial elements, but he does it so skillfully and artistically that the impression of realism he creates, makes us forget them. He is “devilishly” sly, and deceives us as he should with the most innocent air in the world.
In the words of Hazlitt:
“There is not artificial, pompous display, but a strict parsimony of the poet’s material like the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived.”
It would be quite justifiable to call Chaucer as a realist of high rank because his principle object has been to portray men and women trustfully without an acute power of observation. He sees things as they are and describes them as he really sees them. 

Chaucer: A Humorist

Humour is an essential ingredient of Chaucer's poetry and the back-bone of “The Prologue and The Canterbury Tales”. All the characters in The Prologue have been humorously described. Humour, infact, makes Chaucer’s characterization distinct. A humorist is one who is quick to perceive the funny side of the things and who has the capacity to laugh and makes other laugh at what is absurd or ridiculous or incongruous.

Chaucer is called the first humorist of English literature. No English literary work before him reveals humour in the modern sense. And Chaucer is a greater humorist than Boccaccio. Chaucer’s humour is consistent all pervasive and intense as we find in Shakespeare’s plays. He paints all the characters in “The Prologue” in a humorous manner. The Knight is as gentle as a maid; the Squire is too sentimental in his love to sleep at night; the Friar has relations with the bar-maids instead of the poor; the Parson is too innocent and Clerk is too studious. Chaucer even does not spare himself and says:

“My wit is short, ye may well understonde”

His humour has refined and sophisticated touches and it does not offend anybody. For example, when he tells us that Prioress is so amiable and pleasant in her manners that she takes paints to imitate the manners of the court we cannot know whether he is praising her or laughing at her affection:

And full pleasant and amiable of port;
And peyned hire to counterfete cheere
Of court, and been es’attich of manere,

But his humour is of the finest type. It is pleasant and sympathetic because he is a man of pleasant temperament. He knows that every human being has one type of defect or others. He pinpoints the defect in a light manner with a view to cure them, not for degrading the victim. His attitude is positive. So, when he says that the Friar lisps a little out of affection and when he plays on a harp, his eyes twinkles in his head like sparkling stars on the frosty night, we do not hate him or his affection, rather we just laugh at him at this weakness.

Chaucer’s humour is also tinged with pity. It makes us thoughtful of the weakness of his victim and we start pitying him. For example, when he tells us that the Monk is more interested in riding, hunting and other worldly pursuits than in religious activities we pity him and wish him better. It means that his humour carries a sound message.

Chaucer’s humour is, of course, satirical but it is sugar coated. Hs purpose is to awake the people against realities of life. His age is of romantic idealism and people are blind to the realities of life. His satire is not corrosive but gentle and mild. Secondly, he is not a zealous reformer. He satirizes only these characters that cannot be reformed at any cost, e.g. the Summoner, and the Pardoner who are extremely corrupt. Here he openly passes remarks about their dishonesty and corruption.

Most of the time, Chaucer’s humour takes the form of irony because it relieves the bitterness of satire. For example, the use of the world “Worthy” for the most unworthy characters brings a tickling irony except for the “Worthy” Knight. Chaucer employs different sorts of irony. He has made an ample use of irony by contract in “The Prologue”. For example, after talking about the bravery, skill, experience and grandeur of the Knight, he tells us that in his behaviour he is as gentle as a maid and cannot harm anyone.

“And of his port as meeke as is a mayde”

He also employs irony be exaggeration when he says the Prioress has all the manners of eating because she knows how to carry a morsel and how to keep. She does not let any morsel fall from her mouth and she does not dip her fingers deep in the sauce. This is all exaggeration because these things do not account for manner and everyone knows them well.

He creates irony by situation too. For example, he describes those qualities of the Monk, which are not worth of his religious rank i.e. he is a good rider and brave man.

A monk there was, a fair for the maistrie,
An outridere, that lovede venerie;
A manly man, to been an abbot able.

In this way, he creates an ironical situation, which makes us think since he is a Monk, he should not do this. His actions are set in contrast with is situation as a Monk.

Chaucer’s humour is wide in range. It covers all kinds of humour from downright jokes to good-natured strokes when he paints the physical appearances of characters. For example, he describes Reeve:

Ful longe were his legges and ful lene,
Y-lyk a staf, ther was no calf y-sene

Then, he says, that the Doctor of Physic is the greatest physician because he has the knowledge of astronomy.

In the description of the Shipman, he creates humour by incongruity when he says that he is a good fellow because he steals wine and has no prick of conscience.

In conclusion, we can say that critics may be divided in opinion as to Chaucer’s right to be called the father of the English poetry, but there can be no question that he is the first great English humorist. 

Chaucer: Art of Characterization

On the aisle of English poetry, Chaucer flourishes the fantastic colours of his words and paints different characters of his age with minute observation. Indeed, he is a great painter who paints not with colours but with words. Undoubtedly, he has:

“The Seeing Eye, the retentive memory, the judgment to select and the ability to expound.”

His keen analysis of the minutest detail of his characters, their dresses, looks and manners enable him to present his characters lifelike and not mere bloodless abstractions.

His poetical piece, “The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” is a real picture gallery in which thirty portraits are hanging on the wall with all of their details and peculiarities. Rather it is a grand procession with all the life and movement, the colour and sound. Indeed, 

“His characters represent English society, morally and socially, in the real and recognizable types”.

And still more representative of humanity in general. So, the characters in Chaucer's “The Prologue” are for all ages and for all lands.

Chaucer is the first great painter of character in English literature. Infact, next to Shakespeare he is the greatest in this field. In “The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” the thirty portraits traced by Chaucer give us an excellent idea of the society at that time. Except for royalty and aristocracy, on one hand and the robbers or out casts on the other, he has painted in brief practically the whole English nation.

The thirty pilgrims, including the host, belong to the most varied professions. The Knight and the Squire presents the warlike element of the society. The learned and liberal vocations are signified by the Man of Law, the Doctor, the Oxford Clerk and the Poet himself. The Merchant and the Shipman stand for the higher commercial community while the Wife of Bath, an expert Cloth maker represents the traders and manufacturers. Agriculture is represented by the Ploughman, the Miller and the Franklin. The upper servants like Manciple and the Reeve and the lower servant like Yeoman and the Cook represent the town and Country between them. The Monk from his monastery, the Prioress from her convent, her attendant priests, the village Parson, the roaming Friar, the Pardoner and the Summoner sufficiently cover the casual categories of the religious order in those days.

To preserve the distinctions among these typical characters, Chaucer has indicated the differences in their clothes, manner of speech, habits and tendencies representing the common traits and the average characteristics of each profession. These personages, therefore, are not mere phantasms of the brain but real human begins.

These characters represent various types of contemporary society. They are no longer mere dummies or types but owing to their various peculiarities, their arguments and agreement and their likes and dislikes we recognize them as real living beings, true to the mould in which all human nature is cast.

His world is almost freak-free and his characters are perfectly lifelike. Some of them are so modern that they seem to be living today. The old Knight is an example of the chivalrous character which is found in every generation. The Squire is just the typical man of any day.

“He was as fresshe as is the monthe of May”

The Merchant has all the vanity which comes from the growing of wealth, while the Man of Law like lawyers of all times, is pilling up fees and buying land. We recognize in him the typical lawyer of our own day:

“Nowhere so bisy a man as he ther was”
And yet he seemed bisier than he was. 

There are characters like the Prioress, the Monk, the Franklin, the Reeve, the Summoner, the Pardoner, and the Wife of Bath whom we do not identify at first. But none of them is really extinct. They have changed their name and profession but their chief part is an element of humanity. That is why when we accompany the Pilgrims on their way we feel quite at home and have no feeling of being among aliens. 

Chaucer’s art of characterization is superb. He looks at his characters objectively and delineates each of the men and women sharply and caressingly. His impression of casualness, economy, significance and variety of every detail are examples of that supreme art which conceals art.

Infact, there is a different method of almost every pilgrim. He varies his presentation from the full length portrait to the thumb-nail sketch, but even in the brief sketches, Chaucer conveys a strong sense of individuality and depth of portraiture. 

Chaucer’s method of portraying characters is a scientific manner by differentiating them by means of their obvious distinctions. It was for the first time in European literature that a writer proved himself clearly conscious of the relation between individuals and ideas. Moreover, Chaucer’s characters are consistent and instead of being static, they grow and develop in the course of the tale, like living human beings. They give their opinions on the stories that have been told and these comments reveal their dominant thoughts, their feelings and the objects of their interests.

Thus Chaucer is the master in the art of characterization.

The Metaphysical Poets

1) DEFINITION OF METAPHYSICAL POETRY
According to T. S. Eliot, it is extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry. The difficulty arises when we are to decide what poets practised it and in which of their poems. The poetry of Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, Cowley and Donne is usually called metaphysical. However, it is difficult to find any precise use of metaphor, simile or other conceit, which is common to all these poets. Donne and often Cowley, “employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically metaphysical: the elaboration of a figure of speech to the farthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it”. Donne develops a comparison of two lovers to a pair of compasses. Sometimes we find in them “a development by rapid association of thought which requires considerable agility on the part of the reader”. Donne is more successful than Cowley because in developing comparisons, he uses brief words and sudden contrasts: 


“A bracelet of bright hair about the bone”

where the most powerful effect is produced by the sudden contrast of the associations of “bright hair” and of “bone”. So it is to be maintained that metaphysical poetry is the elaboration of far-fetched images and communicated association of poet’s mental processes.
Johnson employed the term ‘metaphysical poets’, apparently having Donne, Cleveland and Cowley chiefly in mind. In their poetry, he remarks:

“the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together”.

The force of this accusation lies in the fact that often the ideas are yoked but not united. But this is not blameworthy in itself, as it has been practised by a number of poets and even by Johnson himself. Johnson, shrewd and sensitive critic, Eliot concludes, failed to define metaphysical poetry by its faults.
Eliot adopts the opposite method to define metaphysical poetry. Instead of calling these poets metaphysical, he calls them “the poets of the seventeenth century”. He assumes that these poets were the direct and normal development of the precedent age. Without prejudicing their case by the adjective ‘metaphysical’, we may consider “whether their virtue was not something permanently valuable”.
Eliot lays emphasis on the synthetic quality in these poets. Eliot praises the metaphysical poets for their successful attempt to unite what resists unification. To unite thought and feeling, the poetic and unpoetic, form and content, was the main quality of the metaphysical poets. Eliot points out the difference by dividing the poets into two kinds: intellectual poets and reflective poets. 
“Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their though as immediately as the odour of a rose. A though to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly merging disparate experience; the ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular fragmentary”.
In the mind of the poet experiences are related to one another and from new wholes.

2) DISSOCIATION OF SENSIBILITY
The poets of the 17th century possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience. They are simple, artificial, difficult or fantastic. In the 17th century dissociation of sensibility set in and Milton and Dryden, the two great poets carried on with this process. While the language became more refined, the feeling became cruder. The language became unnatural and artificial. But this development of language reduced the importance of feeling. The logical conclusion of the influence of Milton and Dryden was that:

“The sentimental age began early in the 18th century and continued. The poets revolted against the ratiocinative”. 

In Shelley and Keats, there are traces of a struggle towards unification of sensibility. But they died and reflective poets Tennyson and Browning held the ground. If there had been no gap between the 17th and 18th centuries, poets like Donne would not have been called metaphysical. The poets in question have, like other poets, various faults.

3) THE METAPHYSICAL POETS AND THE MODERN AGE
It is not a permanent necessity that poets should be interested in philosophy, or in any other subject. But our present civilization demands the poets to be difficult. 

“Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and refined results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning”. 
Hence we get something which looks very much like the conceit. If this is done, the poets of the present age will draw closer to the metaphysical poets, because both use obscure words and simple phrasing.

4) CONCLUSION
In the end, Eliot defends the metaphysical poets that the charges such as quaintness, obscurity, wittiness and unintelligibility are found even in serious poets. The metaphysical ideas are not simply the possession of this group of poets. They are found in other poets as well.
From this essay we can draw three conclusions: First, the main quality of the metaphysical poets is their fidelity to thought and feeling, an attempt to merge into one whole the most heterogeneous ideas; secondly, if dissociation of sensibility has not taken place during the 17th century and a gap had not occurred, they would not have been called metaphysical; thirdly, modern poets are tending to become like them in their use of language and ideas and hence the metaphysical poets are in the direct current of English poetry. 

John Donne: a love poet

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 them were lasting and permanent, other were only of a short duration.

Donne is quite original in presenting the love situations and moods.

The “experience of love” must produce a “sense of connection” in both the lovers. This “sense of connection” must be based on equal urge and longing on both the sides.

“The room of love” must be shared equally by the two partners.

Donne magnifies the ideal of “Sense of connection” into the physical fulfillment of love.

"My face in thine eyes thine in mime appears"

This aspect of love helps him in the virtual analysis of the experience of love. Donne was a shrewd observer who had first hand knowledge of “love and related affairs. That is why in almost all his poems, he has a deep insight.

His love as expressed in his poetry was based not on conventions but on his own experiences. He experienced all phase of love – platonic, sensuous, serene, cynical, conjugal, illicit, lusty, picturesque and sensual. He could also be grotesque blending thought with passion.

Another peculiar quality of Donne’s love lyrics is its “metaphysical strain”. His poems are sensuous and fantastic. Donne’s metaphysical strain made his reader confused his sincerity.

Donne’s genius temperament and learning gave to his love poems power and fascination. There is a depth and rang of feeling unknown to the majority of Elizabethan poets. Donne’s poetry is startlingly unconventional even when he dallies, half ironically, with the hyperboles of petrarch.

Donne is realistic not an idealistic. He knows the weakness of Flesh, the pleasure of sex, the joy of secret meeting. However he tries to establish a relationship between the body and the soul. Donne is very realistic poet.

Grierson distinguished three distinct strains in it. First there is the cynical strain. Secondly, there is the strain f conjugal love to be noticed in poems like “valediction: forbidding mourning”. Thirdly, there is platonic strain. The platonic strain is to b found in poems like “Twicknam Garden”, “The Funeral”, “The Blossoms”, and “The Primroses”. These poems were probably addressed to the high-born lady friends. Towards them he adopts the helpless pose of flirtations and in high platonic vein boasts that:

Different of sex no more we know
Than our Guardian Anglles doe

In between the cynical realistic strain and the highest spiritual strain, there are a number of poems which show an endless variety of mood and tone. Thus thee are poems in which the tone is harsh, others which are coarse and brutal, still other in which he holds out a making threat to his faithless mistress and still others in which he is in a reflective mood. More often that not, a number of strains and moods are mixed up in the same poem. This makes Donne as a love poet singularly, original, unconventional and realistic.

Whatever may be the tone or mood of a particular poem, it is always an expression of some personal experience and is, therefore, presented with remarkable force, sincerity and seriousness. Each poem deals with a love situation which is intellectually analyzed with the skill of an experienced lawyer.

Hence the difficult nature of his poetry and the charge of obscurity have been brought against him. The difficulty of the readers is further increased by the extreme condensation and destiny of Donne’s poetry.

The fantastic nature of the metaphysical conceits and poetry would become clear even we examine a few examples. In “Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” true lovers now parted are likened to the legs of a compass. The image is elaborated at length. The lovers are spiritually one, just as the head of the compass is one even when the legs are apart. One leg remains fixed and the other moves round it. The lover cannot forget the beloved even when separated from her. The two loves meet together in the end just as the two legs of the compass are together again, as soon as circle has been drawn.

At other times, he uses equally extravagated hyperboles. For example, he mistakes his beloved to an angel, for to imagine her less than an angle would be profanity.

In Donne’s poetry, there is always an “intellectual analysis” of emotion. Like a clever lawyer, Donne gives arguments after arguments in support of his points of view. Thus in “Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” he proves that true lovers need not mourn at the time of parting. In “Canonization” he establishes that lovers are saints of love and in “The Blossome” he argues against the petrarchan love tradition. In all this Donne is a realistic love poet. 

John Donne a metaphysical poet

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 based on the metaphysical poetry of Dante, Goethe and Yeats. So “metaphysical” is applicable to poetry who is highly philosophical or which touches philosophy.

Combination of passion and thought characterizes his work. His use of conceit is often witty and sometimes fantastic. His hyperboles are outrageous and his paradoxes astonishing. He mixes fact and fancy in a manner which astounds us. He fills his poems with learned and often obscure illusions besides, some of his poems are metaphysical in literal sense, they are philosophical and reflective, and they deal with concerns of the spirit or soul.

Conceit is an ingredient which gives a special character to Donne’s metaphysical poetry. Some of his conceits are far-fetched, bewildering and intriguing. He welds diverse passions into something harmonious.


“When thou weep’st, unkindly kinde,
My lifes blood doth decay.”



“When a teare falls, that thou falst which it bore,”

“Here lies a she-sun and a he-moon there”

“All women shall adore us, and some men.”

His approach is based on logical reasoning and arguments. He provides intellectual parallels to his emotional experiences. His modus operandi was “to move from the contemplation of fact to a deduction from it and, thence, to a conclusion”. He contemplates fidelity in a woman but, in reality, draws it impossible of find a faithful woman.


“No where
Lives a woman true, and faire.”

He does not employ emotionally exciting rhythm. His poetry goes on lower ebb. Even his love poems do not excite emotions in us. Even in a “Song” while separating, he is logical that he is not parting for weariness of his beloved.


“But since that I
Must dye at last, ’tis best,
To use my selfe in jest
Thus by fain’d deaths to dye;”

His speculations and doctrines are beyond common human experience. His ideas are beyond the understanding of a layman and are a blend of intellect and emotions making his approach dialectical and scholastic. He asks his beloved in “The Message” to keep his eyes and heart because they might have learnt certain ills from her, but then, he asks her to give them back so that he may laugh at her and see her dying when some other proves as false to her as she has proved to the poet.

Donne was a self-conscious artist, therefore, had a desire to show off his learning. In his love poetry, he gives illustrations from the remote past. In his divine poems, he gives biblical references like the Crucification.


“Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?”

“Get with child a mandrake roote.”

“But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall.”

Metaphysical poetry is highly concentrated and so is Donne’s poetry. In “The Good Morrow”, he says


“For love, all love of other sights controules.”

“For, not in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt’ring bright, can love inhere.”

“Hee that hath all can have no more.”

His poetry is full of arguments, persuasion, shock and surprise. Instead of conventional romantic words, he used scientific and mathematical words to introduce roughness in his poetry; e.g. he used the words ‘stife twin compasses’, ‘cosmographers’, ‘trepidation of the spheres’ etc.

His style is highly fantastic, curt and he uses rough words. He rejects the conventional style which was romantic, soft and diffused.

Paradoxical statements are also found in his poems. In “The Indifferent” Donne describes constancy in men as vice and ask them:


“Will no other vice content you?”

In “The Legacy” the lover becomes his own ‘executor and legacy’. In “Love’s Growth” the poet’s love seems to have increased in spring, but now it cannot increase because it was already infinite, and yet it has increased:


“No winter shall abate the sring’s increase.”

He deals with the problem of body and soul in “The Anniversarie” of the individual and the universe in “The Sunne Rising” and of deprivation and actuality in “A Noctrunall”. In his divine poems he talks about the Crucification, ransom, sects / schism, religion, etc.

Donne is a coterie poet. He rejects the Patrarchan tradition of poetry, adopted by the Elizabethans. The Elizabethan poetry was the product off emotions. He rejected platonic idealism, elaborate description and ornamentation. He was precise and concentrated in poetry while the Elizabethan are copious and plentiful in words.

Seventeenth century had four major prerequisites; colloquial in diction, personal in tone, logical in structure and undecorative and untraditional imagination, which were also present in Donne.

To conclude, he is more a seventeenth century poet than a metaphysical poet. There are some features in his poetry which differentiate him e.g. he is a monarch of with and more colloquial than any other seventeenth century poet. If other seventeenth century poet bring together emotions and intellect, he defines emotional experience with intellectual parallels etc. Still he writes in the tradition of the seventeenth century poets.