ENGL 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Metaphysical Poets, Circulatory System, Petrarchan Sonnet
24 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
Donne is associated with a group of poets referred to as the metaphysical poets. Metaphysical = outside of the natural world, something that cannot be observed outside of nature, intangible ideas; used as an insult. Disparaging term applied by writers and critics of the later 17th and 18th century, when tastes had changed. Saw these poets as excessively difficult; overly complicated analogies; rough almost controversial metre, too much verbal ornamentation. Were not read until 20th century thanks in larger part to t. s. Eliot did critics begin to read these early. Interested in the scientific and technological progress of the world, and this is reflected in his writing. In most ways, that matter the early seventeenth century was, for most english people, hardly different from the late sixteenth. In writers like donne, though, we can see signs of changes to people"s conceptions of their world, their place in it, and themselves.
