CONTEXT

1. Introduction................................................................................

2. Definition of Metaphysical poet.................................................

3. Characteristics & of Metaphysical poetry..................................

4. History of Metaphysical age.......................................................

5. Poets of Metaphysical age..........................................................

6. Life & Works of John Donne.....................................................

7. Life & Works of Andrew Marvell...............................................

8. Factors of Metaphysical poetry...................................................

9. Compare & Contrast between these two poets..........................

* Virginity, Sexuality & Seduction...........................

* Concept of Wit.............................................................

* Passionate Thinking.................................................

* The Dream...................................................................

* Religion........................................................................

* Death and the Hereafter.........................................

* Love as both physical and spiritual...................

* Interconnectedness of humanity..........................

* Fidelity..........................................................................

* Paradoxes....................................................................

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 * Imagination................................................................
* Symbolism..................................................................
* Love & Beauty...........................................................
* Conception of the Universe...................................
* Metaphysical Conceits and Images.....................

10. Conclusion...................................................................................

11. Bibliography.................................................................................

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 Acknowledgement

By the name of Allah I feel so grateful of his blessing, I finally success to

complete this assignment for course Metaphysical poetry which code is
ENG-1312. I also like to expand my deepest gratitude to all those who
have directly and indirectly guided me in writing this assignment. Many
people especially our classmates have made valuable comment
suggestions on this assignment which gave me an inspiration to improve
my assignment.

I also like to give a very big thanks to S.M. Minhazul Mridul, our lecturer
who give us passion and encouragement , and for doing an excellent
job, advice to us to ensure our assignment is successful also spend his
time to keep on eye to see our work made the best work. The beautiful
thousands thanks just for our Sir.

In the nutshell, although criticism is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow, I

can now look back and agree that greatly strengthened the final
proceed. As people always said to success, we must take pains. So
success will be more steps taken if we are doing great sacrifice.

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 Introduction
The metaphysical school of poetry occupies a unique place in the history of English
poetry. By the end of 16th century and beginning of 17th century the great
Elizabethan poetry tire out itself signs of decadence were visible everywhere .
Everything was conventional artificial in very little sense we find original or
remarkable. There was much sugared melody and romantic extravagant but there
is no any kind of intellectual thing. Its main reason of cause is metaphysical.

In the first decades of the 17th century there was revolt against outdated and
Elizabethan poetry.....

Metaphysician in poetry is the

Fruit of the renaissance tree

Becoming over-ripe and

Approaching putrescence

The school metaphysical poetry is also known as the school of john Donne. The
leaders of the revolts were Ben Jonson and John Donne both of them were
forcefully personality who attracted staunch followers and founded school. John
Donnes poetry is remarkable for its concentrated passion, intellectual, agility and
dramatic power .he writes his on intellectual spiritual and amorous experiences
his sonnet song holy sonnet etc. and are best example of his varied experience.
He is the founder of so called metaphysical school. In this school leading poets
are Richard Crashw, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and Abraham Cowley.

Literary meaning of meta means beyond and physics means physicanatual. It

was Dryden who first used the word metaphysical in the connection with
Donnes poetry and he wrote Donne effects the metaphysical thus metaphysical
word used for Donne and his follower.

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Metaphysical age is known as the age of John Donne. A term used to group
together certain 17th-century poets, usually DONNE, MARVELL, VAUGHAN and
TRAHERNE, though other figures like ABRAHAM COWLEY are sometimes included
in the list. Although in no sense a school or movement proper, they share common
characteristics of wit, inventiveness, and a love of elaborate, stylistic, man
oeuvres. Metaphysical concerns are the common subject of their poetry, which
investigates the world by rational discussion of its phenomena rather than by
intuition or mysticism.

DRYDEN was the first to apply the term to 17th-century poetry when, in 1693, he
criticized Donne.

Gather the flowers,

but spare the buds......... Love built on beauty,
Andrew Narvell soon as beauty , dies.......
Jhon Donne

Metaphysical poet, any of the poets in 17th-century England who inclined to the
personal and intellectual complexity and concentration that is displayed in the
poetry of John Donne, the chief of the Metaphysical. Their work is a blend of
emotion and intellectual ingenuity, characterized by conceit or wit.

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Definition of metaphysical poetry
First of all the term metaphysical poetry refers to a specific period of time and a
specific set of poets. In 17th-century England, there was a group of poets who,
while they did form a formal group, have been considered the metaphysical poets.
There are, in most lists, nine poets that belong, and they are as follows: John
Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Edward Herbert, Thomas Carew, Richard
Crashaw, Andrew Marvel, Richard Lovelace and Sir John Suckling. METAPHYSICAL
POETRY, in the full sense of the term, is a poetry which, like that of the Divina
Commedia, the De Natura Rerum, perhaps Goethe's Faust, has been inspired by a
philosophical conception of the universe and the rle assigned to the human spirit
in the great drama of existence.

Metaphysical

Meta Physical
(Beyond) (physical world)

These poems were written because a definite interpretation of the riddle, the
atoms of Epicurus rushing through infinite empty space, the theology of the
schoolmen as elaborated in the catechetical disquisitions of St. Thomas, Spinoza's
vision of life sub specie aeternitatis, beyond good and evil, laid hold on the mind
and the imagination of a great poet, unified and illumined his comprehension of
life, intensified and heightened his personal consciousness of joy and sorrow, of
hope and fear, by broadening their significance, revealing to him in the history of
his own soul a brief abstract of the drama of human destiny.

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 Its themes are the simplest experiences of the surface of life, sorrow and joy, love
and battle, the peace of the country, the bustle and stir of towns, but equally the
boldest conceptions, the profoundest intuitions, the subtlest and most complex
classifications and 'discourse of reason', if into these too the poet can 'carry
sensation', make of them passionate experiences communicable in vivid and
moving imagery, in rich and varied harmonies. The way to tell a metaphysical
conceit from a regular metaphor is that they often exhibit an analytical tone,
contain double meanings, show logical reasoning, and have paradoxes, symbolism,
and wit. While one or two of these elements might be missing from any given
piece, there should be the majority of them present. Its a passionate thing,
Heterogeneous ideas ..... violently yoked together.

Age of John
Age of Donne / Age of Milton
Shakespeare Transitional age

Romantic Neo-Classic
a) Heart a) Head
b) passion/emotion b) Intellect/ reason
c) exuberance/spontaneity c) Order/discipline
d) Imagination d) Logic

The word 'meta' means 'after,' so the literal translation of 'metaphysical' is 'after
the physical.' Basically, metaphysics deals with questions that can't be explained
by science. It questions the nature of reality in a philosophical way. In this type of
poetry, we find two type of love. Such as
LOVE

i) spiritual i) Physical
ii) soul-soul ii) Body-body
iii) platonic iii) Freudian
iv) Emotional iv) Sensual
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 LOVE

a) Secular a) Non- secular

b) Earthly b) Divine
c) Non-religious c) Religious
d) Man- Woman d) Human-God

Characteristics:
1. Intellectually rigorous, scholastic, dialectical, subtle .
2. Argumentative using logic, syllogisms or paradox in persuasion.
3. Concentrated complex and difficult thought
4. Dramatic, with abrupt aggressive opening but modulating tones.
5. Style concise, succinct, epigrammatic
6. Use of conceits; commonplace medieval topics with lots of comparisons to
unusual, unexpected things or images called conceits or extended
metaphors.

Sexual Spiritual Philosophical

Religious Metaphysical Emotional

Love related Related with Abstract

Good

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Example of Metaphysical poetry

As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew

From nature, I believe them true.
They argue no corrupted mind
In him; the fault is in mankind.

Swift.............

History of Metaphysical poetry

The term metaphysical" as applied to English and continental European poets of
the seventeenth century, was used by Augustan poets John Dryden and Samuel
Johnson to reprove those poets for their unnaturalness. As Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe wrote, however, The unnatural, that too is natural," and the metaphysical
poets continue to be studied and revered for their intricacy and originality. John
Donne, along with similar but distinct poets such as George Herbert, Andrew
Marvell, and Henry Vaughn, developed a poetic style in which philosophical and
spiritual subjects were approached with reason and often concluded in paradox.
This group of writers established meditationbased on the union of thought and
feeling sought after in Jesuit Ignatian meditationas a poetic mode. The
metaphysical poets were eclipsed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by
romantic and Victorian poets, but twentieth-century readers and scholars, seeing
in the metaphysicals an attempt to understand pressing political and scientific
upheavals, engaged them with renewed interest. In his essay "The Metaphysical
Poets," T. S. Eliot, in particular, saw in this group of poets a capacity for devouring
all kinds of experience.

Donne (1572 1631) was the most influential metaphysical poet. His personal
relationship with spirituality is at the center of most of his work, and the
psychological analysis and sexual realism of his work marked a dramatic departure

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from traditional, genteel verse. His early work, collected in Satires and in Songs
and Sonnets, was released in an era of religious oppression. His Holy Sonnets,
which contains many of Donnes most enduring poems, was released shortly after
his wife died in childbirth. The intensity with which Donne grapples with concepts
of divinity and mortality in the Holy Sonnets is exemplified in "Sonnet X [Death, be
not proud]," "Sonnet XIV [Batter my heart, three persond God]," and Sonnet XVII
[Since she whom I loved hath
paid her last debt].

Herbert (1593 1633) and Marvell (1621 1678) were remarkable poets who did
not live to see a collection of their poems published. Herbert, the son of a
prominent literary patron to whom Donne dedicated his Holy Sonnets, spent the
last years of his short life as a rector in a small town. On his deathbed, he handed
his poems to a friend with the request that they be published only if they might aid
any dejected poor soul. Marvell wrote politically charged poems that would have
cost him his freedom or his life had they been made public. He was a secretary to
John Milton, and once Milton was imprisoned during the Restoration, Marvell
successfully petitioned to have the elder poet freed. His complex lyric and satirical
poems were collected after his death amid an air of secrecy.

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 Poets of

Metaphysical age

George Chapman John

Donne Abraham Cowley

Metaphysical
age

George Herbert Katherine Philips

John Hall

Andrew Marvell Edward Herbert

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 Life & Works of John Donne
John Donne was an English poet, satirist, lawyer and priest. He is considered the
pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for
their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin
translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for
its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to
that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterized by abrupt openings and
various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his
frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough
eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional
Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and
mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense

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knowledge of British society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism.
Another important theme in Donnes poetry is the idea of true religion, something
that he spent much time considering and theorizing about. He wrote secular
poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery
of metaphysical conceits.

Born: John Donne was born in Bread Street, London. His father was a well to do
ironmonger, who died suddenly in 1576 (4), his mother the daughter of John
Heywood. She numbered Sir Thomas More amongst her other ancestors. His
mothers family was very strongly Roman Catholic and two of her brothers were
Jesuits.

Education: Donnes early education was undertaken by Jesuits. In 1583 (11), he

entered Hart Hall, Oxford, and in 1586 (14) he moved to Cambridge, where he
studied for a further three years. He received no degree as he would not take the
Oath of Supremacy. Between 1589 (17) and 1591 (19), he travelled in Europe,
visiting both Italy and Spain. On his return he began to read law first at Thavies Inn
in 1591 (19), then Lincolns Inn in 1592 (20). His younger brother Henry also
entered Thavies Inn, where he was arrested along with a Catholic priest, William
Harrington, and both were imprisoned. Henry died soon after in an epidemic in the
prison, and Harrington was publicly executed at the beginning of 1594 (22).

Adventure and first poem: Donne decided not to pursue his legal career,
disappearing from the records of Lincolns Inn at the end of 1594, but his bawdy
tale, Epithalamium, was probably written for a celebration at Lincolns Inn in 1595
(23). He joined in the Earl of Essexs raid on Cadiz in 1596 (24), according to one of
his letters, partly out of a desire for personal profit, and partly to forget an
unfortunate love affair. He made a second sea expedition with the Earl of Essex,
this time to the Azores, in 1597 (25), at the conclusion of which he wrote:

Long voyages are long consumptions

And ships are carts for executions.

Falls in love and is undone: At the same time he fell in love with his employers
niece, Anne More. He was thirty, she fifteen. She was also his social superior, and

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when her father learnt of their secret marriage some two months after the event,
he had the bridegroom, the officiating priest and the lawyer who had acted as
witness thrown into prison. Donne was soon released, but Egerton dismissed him
from his post, and he now found himself an outsider.

Unemployment and suicidal thoughts: By 1606 (34) Annes

father relented somewhat, and provided a small income for their
upkeep, but Donne was unable to find suitable employment. He
refused a living in a rural parish near York in 1607 (35), and it was
at this time that he wrote Biathanatos (Violent Death), in which
he discussed and attempted to justify suicide. The essay was not
published until 1647 (d16).

Serious illness: In the winter of 1623 (51) a serious illness, from

which it was thought he would die, prompted him to write his
Devotions on Emergent Occasions (1624, 52), which included his
famous words : No man is an island entire of itself, every man is a
piece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod be washed away by the Sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a Promonterie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy
friends or of thine own were; Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am
involved in Mankinde: And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it.

Final sermon and death: He preached his final sermon to the court in Whitehall
Palace on 25th February 1631 (59), a sermon which became known as Deaths
Duell, and he died on 31st March, having posed in a shroud for a sketch portrait,
from which an engraving was made for the frontispiece of Deaths Duell. It was
also used by Nicholas Stone in producing his funerary monument, which now
stands in St Pauls Cathedral.

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Major Works of John Donne

Life of Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell an English metaphysical poet, Parliamentarian, and the son of a
Church of England clergyman (also named Andrew Marvell). As a metaphysical
poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert. He was a colleague
and friend of John Milton.

Birth
Marvell was born in Winestead-in-Holderness, East Riding of Yorkshire, near the
city of Kingston upon Hull. The family moved to Hull when his father was
appointed Lecturer at Holy Trinity Church there, and Marvell was educated at Hull
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Grammar School. A secondary school in the city is now named after him. His most
famous poems include To His Coy Mistress, The Garden, An Horatian Ode upon
Cromwell's Return from Ireland, The Mower's Song and the country house poem
Upon Appleton House.

Education
He attended Hull Grammar School, then Trinity College, Cambridge where he had
two poems printed in the Musa Cantabrigiensis in 1637 (16) and 1638 (17), one in
Greek, the other Latin. He received his BA in 1638 (17), but abandoned his MA
studies on his fathers accidental death by drowning in 1641 (20).

First Works

Though in poems written between 1645 and 1649 he had evinced royalist
sympathies, Marvell seems to have been attracted by the strong personality of
Oliver Cromwell, and in 1650 he wrote "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return
from Ireland." Commonly acknowledged a masterful piece of political poetry, this
ode has occasioned some controversy as to the degree of unqualified admiration
with which the poet regards the military harshness of the Puritan general.

For 2 or 3 years beginning in 1651, Marvell was tutor to Mary Fairfax, daughter of
Lord General Fairfax, a retired Commonwealth general who lived at Nun Appleton,
and here he wrote some memorable poems. Among them are the lovely "Music's
Empire" and "Upon Appleton House, to My Lord Fairfax," a complex and
sophisticated compliment to Mary Fairfax consisting of almost 400 octosyllabic
couplets in which landscape description serves emblematically to convey political
and philosophical ideals.

Travel & first Employment: He then travelled abroad in France, Holland,

Switzerland, Italy and Spain between 1642 (21) and 1646 (25), and in 1650 (29)
became tutor to Mary Fairfax (later Duchess of Buckingham), the twelve year old
daughter of the retired Lord General Thomas Fairfax.

Lyric poetry: It was during his time at the Fairfaxs Nun Appleton House that he
wrote most of his English lyric poetry, including To His Coy Mistress.

Politics, pamphlets and satirical verses: Back in England he became associated

with the opposition to the kings chief minister, the Earl of Clarendon, making
speeches in the House of Commons, and writing satirical verses. In 1672 (51) he
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wrote the pamphlet for which he was best known in his own
lifetime, The Rehearsal Transposd, in support of Charles IIs
moves to extend toleration to religious dissenters. He wrote of
the Civil War that the cause was too good to be the subject of a
conflict, and he published A Short Historical Essay, concerning
General Councils, Creeds, and Impositions, in Matters of Religion
in 1676 (55), in which he commented that the truth usually lies
somewhere in the middle, but that men generally look for it at
the extremities. In 1677 (56) he published An Account of the
Growth of Popery, and Arbitrary Government in England, in
which he warned that there were plots afoot to bring about
tyranny and restore popery, a circumstance that he saw as
destructive to the happiness and interest of the country.

Death
He died suddenly of a fever in 1677 (56). His poetry was published as
Miscellaneous Poems posthumously in 1681 (d4), brought to print by a Mary
Palmer, who claimed to be his wife. Though she succeeded in acquiring the
administration of his estate, no other hard evidence has been found to support her
claim that they were in fact married.

Marvell's poetic style : Marvells poetry is often witty and full of elaborate
conceits in the elegant style of the metaphysical poets. Many poems were inspired
by events of the time, public or personal. The Picture of Little TC in a Prospect of
Flowers was written about the daughter of one of Marvell's friends, Theophila
Cornwell, who was named after an elder sister who had died as a baby. Marvell
uses the picture of her surrounded by flowers in a garden to convey the transience
of spring and the fragility of childhood. This poem's title is ironically echoed by
John Ashbery's poem "The Picture of Little JA in a Prospect of Flowers."

Major works of Marvell

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 Compare & Contrast between John Donne
& Andrew Marvell
The metaphysical school of poetry occupies a unique place in the history of English
poetry by the end of 16th century and beginning of 17th century the great
Elizabethan poetry tire out itself signs of decadence were visible everywhere
.everything was conventional artificial in very little sense we find original or
remarkable. There was much sugared melody and romantic extravagant but there
is no any kind of intellectual thing. Its main reason of cause metaphysical.
Metaphysician in poetry is the Fruit of the renaissance tree Becoming over-ripe
and approaching putrescence

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1. Virginity, Sexuality & Seduction

2. Concept of Wit

3. The Ecstasy

4. The Dream

5. Religion

6. Death and the Hereafter

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7. Love as both physical and spiritual

8. Interconnectedness of humanity

9. Fidelity

10. Paradoxes

11. Imagination

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12. Symbolism

13. Love & Beauty

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Conclusion
To conclude with comparing and contrasting Donne and Marvells poetry they had
essentially the same goal. The comparison lies in their similar goal to convince
their prospective women to sleep with them. Donnes construction of the female is
simple and degrading towards all women because his superiority complex lets him
think he can overpower this woman. Marvells construction of the female is quite
the opposite; he sees his mistress as an equal and regards her very highly. He also
constructs the female as beautiful and in his poem, admires certain aspects of his
mistress beauty. Although Donne and Marvells construction of the female is
different, the goals of their poems are the same.

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 Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/marvbi
b.htm
http://www.poemhunter.com
http://www.theguardian.com/
http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk
http://www.britannica.com/
http://www.enotes.com/
http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/poetry/metaph
ys.htm

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http://education-portal.com
http://teaching.shu.ac.uk/ds/english/essayguide/ess
ays/essay2.htm

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