17th Century Metaphysical Poetry MCQs

William Drummond of Hawthornden is credited with coining the term 'metaphysical', although it was Dryden who first applied it critically to Donne, and Johnson who later established it as the name of a poetic school.

Dryden used the phrase 'Donne affects metaphysics' in his 'Discourse Concerning Satire' (often referred to as 'Discourse on Satire'), marking the first critical use of the term in connection with Donne.

In his 'Life of Cowley', part of the Lives of the Poets, Johnson grouped Cowley with Donne as belonging to a 'metaphysical school', which is what gave the term its lasting critical currency. The Preface to Shakespeare, Rasselas and the Life of Milton are all Johnson's, but none of them establishes the label.

H.J.C. Grierson's anthology and introduction were instrumental in reviving scholarly and critical attention to the metaphysical poets in the twentieth century, alongside T.S. Eliot's later essay.

T.S. Eliot's essay 'The Metaphysical Poets' argued that these poets fused thought and feeling into a single unified sensibility, a quality he felt later poetry had lost.

Poets such as Donne rejected the exaggerated Arcadian pastoral convention of idealized shepherds and shepherdesses inherited from poets like Spenser, seeking instead a more intellectual and realistic mode.

The term combines 'meta' (beyond) and 'physical' (nature), so 'metaphysical' literally denotes something that goes beyond the physical or natural world.

Lewis's metaphor suggests that metaphysical poetry represents Renaissance poetic tendencies pushed to an excessive, almost decaying extreme, rather than a wholesome new beginning.

John Donne is regarded as the leading poet of the metaphysical school; his dramatic lyrics characteristically address a variety of listeners, including a mistress, a friend, God, Death, or the poet himself.

Grierson observed that Donne's metaphysical quality arises not only from his learning but from his profound reflective engagement with experience and his psychological curiosity.

Metaphysical poetry is known for intellectual complexity, bold conceits, abrupt dramatic openings, and paradox — not for smooth, melodious pastoral diction, which is instead characteristic of the Spenserian tradition the metaphysicals rejected.

Johnson's comment criticizes the obscurity that resulted from Donne's ostentatious display of learning across many fields, which made his poetry difficult for common readers to follow.

Donne systematically argues, through both logical and astronomical reasoning, that the lovers' spiritual union transcends physical separation, so that outward mourning is unnecessary and even harmful.

Donne's celebrated conceit compares the souls of the two lovers to the two legs of a drawing compass, one fixed and one moving, yet always connected.

In 'The Sun Rising,' Donne's conceit transforms the lovers' bedroom into the entire world, with the two lovers themselves embodying its hemispheres.

Gardner's definition highlights that the metaphysical conceit works by yoking together objects that are essentially unlike, forcing the reader to perceive an unexpected intellectual likeness between them.

Johnson's famous phrase criticizes the metaphysical poets' tendency to forcibly combine widely dissimilar ideas or images into a single conceit, producing striking but sometimes strained effects.

Donne and the other metaphysical poets drew allusions from a very wide range of fields - mythology, scholastic philosophy, contemporary science, chemistry, geography and exploration - which is what gives their poetry its characteristic intellectual density.

Eliot argued that later English poetry suffered from a 'dissociation of sensibility,' a separation of thought from feeling, whereas the metaphysical poets had successfully fused the two into a unified sensibility.

Donne's treatment of love and sex broke from the idealized Petrarchan convention, offering a frank and unconventional approach that reflected the individualism emerging with the Renaissance.

Donne's use of an unconventional, colloquial rhythm and tone marked a deliberate departure from the formal, ornate style typical of Elizabethan poetry that preceded him.

Metaphysical poems are noted for their dramatic quality, frequently opening with an abrupt, aggressive statement or address that plunges the reader directly into a scene or argument.

A paradox is a statement that seems logically contradictory or absurd on the surface but, on closer reflection, expresses a deeper or valid truth — a device metaphysical poets used frequently.

Prior to Grierson's anthology and Eliot's critical essay, the metaphysical poets had not enjoyed wide popularity or critical esteem; it was these twentieth-century interventions that restored their reputation.

Metaphysical poetry is best characterized as a distinctive fusion of intellectual rigor and genuine emotional intensity, expressed through devices such as wit, paradox, and the elaborate conceit.