METAPHYSICAL POETRY

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METAPHYSICAL POETRY

• The Whole Experience of Man
• Metabeyond Physicsscience

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What is a metaphysical poetry?

• Explores
• Intellectual
• Bold emotion
• Uses allusionsespecially to philosophy
• Includes images from science, law, medicine,
  religion
• Explores love, God, Soul, Freedom, Nature of
  Reality Reason for Being

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CHARACTERISTICS

• Lyric poemsbrief but intense meditations
• Striking use of wit, irony, wordplay
• called METAPHYSICAL CONCEITS
• Argumentative and persuasive
• affects the metaphysical and perplexes the mind
  
• Written in lines of unequal and varying length
  and rhythms that reflect unpredictable movements
  of an active mind

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METAPHYSICAL CONCEITS

• Especially complex and ingenious figures of
  speech
• A kind of METAPHOR that makes surprising
  connections between two seemingly dissimilar
  things
• Used for an analytical and psychological
  investigation of love and life
• Examples
• A lovers tears are newly minted coins
• The kings court is a bowling alley
• Lovers are holy saints
• Lovers as two prongs of a compass

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WHO and WHEN

• John Donne (The Flea)
• Andrew Marvell (To His Coy Mistress)
• George Herbert
• Ben Johnson
• Robert Herrick (To the Virgins)
• ---------------------------------------------
• 1500s-1600s