Shakespeare Studies: What's New?
Shakespeare Studies Links
Early Mod Research Links
OTHER ENGLISH LIT LINKS
Helpful links:
http://www.maryadams.net/classpages/donne/donne_mets.htm#Robert%20Herrick http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/robert_herick.htm
Some (Very)
General Characteristics of 17th Century Lyrics:
Metaphysical and Neoclassical/Cavalier "Schools"
NEOCLASSICAL/CAVALIER (esp. Ben Jonson)
I. SUBJECT MATTER
A. Social/Public — emphasizes the qualities people have in common and especially those which lead to social organization.
B. Generalized — depicts basic human types, events, emotions, interactions.
C. Orderly — represents (or points to) a static world of order and hierarchy, in which human and natural entities or relations are presented in their most permanent and enduring aspects.
II. TECHNIQUE
A. Formal — careful workmanship, a polished effect, use of traditional forms of poetry: ode, elegy, satire, panegyric.
B. Functional — emotional content often subordinate to a larger, frequently social, poetic purpose: whether a graceful compliment (as in a Cavalier lyric), or a profound, didactic meditation (as in many odes), or a satiric call for reformed manners.
C. Objective — presents its materials as having been dispassionately gathered from observations of the surrounding world.
III. CASE STUDY — JONSON (Neoclassicist)
A. Usually impersonal in tone.
B. Clear and straightforward in expression.
C. Ample use of symmetry, balance, antithesis, parallel structures, all contributing to a sense of order and stability.
D. Frequent use of closed forms, such as the closed couplet.
E. Plain (or even "blunt") in style — largely unequivocal, restrained in exploitation of ambiguity; often restrained in feeling, diction, and imagery.
F. Optimistic (although largely conservative), emphasizing this world and all its attributes.
G. Images especially drawn from classical sources.
H. Employs or experiments with a variety of classical genres.
METAPHYSICAL (esp. John Donne)
I. SUBJECT MATTER
A. Individual and idiosyncratic — emphasizes personal qualities which often differ from the norm in world-view and expression.
B. "Medieval" or correspondential — presents a world animated by the doctrine of sympathies, in which humans, with their passions and experiences, can be meaningfully compared to anything in the physical and spiritual worlds.
C. "Mystical" or dynamic — suggests a world of hidden or fleeting significances, best understood when one focuses on its most transient or changeable aspects.
II. TECHNIQUE
A. Informal — Colloquial expression often joined with experimental verse forms which imitate or stress the speaker's thought-processes or passions.
B. Emotive — often conveying emotions via highly intellectual arguments and comparisons.
C. Subjective — materials drawn from personal experience or associations, often based on theology, natural philosophy, or arcane (supernatural) arts and sciences.
III. CASE STUDY — DONNE
A. Personal, introspective in tone.
B. Deliberately difficult in meaning and expression ("strong lines" requiring careful reading and reasoning).
C. Extensive use of paradox, irony, and ambiguity.
D. Uses or creates forms which mirror the stages of developing passion or thought; can distort and/or adapt a conventional form to fit an individualized conception or expression.
E. Argumentative, often richly rhetorical and dramatic in presentation; idiosyncratic in both diction and imagery, suggesting the intensity of real feeling.
F. Pessimistic — emphasizing the inconstancy and mutability of this world, with frequent references to a spiritual and/or transcendent realm.
G. Imagery drawn from Biblical, philosophical, and occult sources, but also from everyday concerns and the practical arts.
NOTE: Such categorizing is useful, but tends to reduce each poet to his most obvious and consistent attributes. Not every poetic performance a poet might enact fits these outlines; in the case of poets like Shakespeare and Milton especially, the works often elude and even defy attempts at categorization. Don't make the common mistake of assuming that, because the neoclassical emphasis is one of the control and regularity, that metaphysical poems are uncontrolled and accidental; or that because metaphysical poems often use irony and ambiguity, that the meaning of neoclassical poems is automatically obvious. Each school is perfectly capable of using the methods of the other. Study each individual poem for its own identity and purpose.
Other Neoclassical poets: Herrick, Carew (at
times), Marvell (at times)
Some Cavalier poets: Carew (at times), Suckling, Lovelace
Other metaphysical poets: Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan, Marvell (at times)
