THE METAPHYSICAL POETS

The term metaphysical was first used by John Dryden (a poet of the XVII century) in his essay on Satire. Dryden meant it as a negative definition of a poetry that seemed too difficult and with little formal charm: in a word, too philosophical.

The man who gave the term popularity was Samuel Johnson, better known as Doctor Johnson. In his "Life is Cowley" (one of the metaphysical poets) Doctor Johnson's remarks were critical yet appreciative of the metaphysical poets, but they were ignored for the reminder of the XVII and XIX centuries.

At the beginning of the XVII century, a new principle had come to be the most important element in their art for a certain group of poets: Wit. Wit, which originally meant intelligence, was now interpreted as a particular kind of skill with words, the ability to create unusual, unexpected images.

This tendency could be seen all over Europe, for example in Spain in the poetry of Luis De Gongora (1661-1727) and in Italy in that of Giambattista Marino (1569-1625) and the literary movement known as Marinismo or Concettismo.

The poets used a curious bland of irony, serious reflection, philosophising, unusual imagery and a combination of colloquialism with highly intellectual vocabulary.

They added an element of surprise by the use of unexpected metaphors from different sources.  

The elaborate style was not totally new. We can find it in Shakespeare's sonnets and early plays especially in the comedies.

Unusual images were already characteristic of Euphuism or Sydney's literary language: in "Arcadia" a wounded knight's armour blushed, that is was red with blood because it had not been able to better defend his owner.   

The metaphysical poetry differs in two ways from the previous movement:

-        The insistence on elaborate style and the search for the unusual. In other poets such devices are used occasionally, in the metaphysicals they are the basis of poetry.

-        The intellectualism of the poet's work. The conceit (an elaborate metaphor in which two dissimilar objects are compared, very often with the intent of surprising or shocking the reader), introduced into English poetry with the Petrarchan sonnet, was brought to perfection by the metaphysical poets.   

The modern revaluation of metaphysical poetry was largely due to T. S. Eliot's influential essay (1921). Eliot found in those poets precisely what he believed modern poetry was lacking: an intellectual strength combined with a deep passion (in Eliot's words "sensual thought").