Early 17th c. Verse

1
Early 17th c. Verse

• A Tale of Two Schools?
• The Cavalier Poets---Sons of Ben
• John Donne and the Metaphysicals

2
Some Traditional Cavalier Characteristics

• Balance//Parallelism
• Polite Courtly Diction and Tone
• Octosyllabic Couplets and Caesurae
• ExampleStill to be Neat (p. 1444/)

3
Still to be neat, still to be dressed, As you
were going to a feast Still to be powdered,
still perfumed Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art's hid causes are not found, All is
not sweet, all is not sound. Give me a look,
give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free Such sweet
neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries
of art They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

4
Metaphysical Poets

• Origin of term
• Some characteristics
• Colloquialism (Jonson Donne, for not keeping of
  accent deserved hanging)
• Intellectual complexity
• Argumentation
• Anti-Petrarchanism
• Metaphysical conceits (discordia
  concorsharmonious discord)

5
How Ive Organized this Unit

• Religion, Politics, Love
• Elegy 19 (p. 1283/1393)
• The Two Schools

6
John Donne
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John Donne

• Jack Donne/Dr. Donne
• Keep track of poetic persona

8
The Flea (p. 1263/1373)

• Argumentation
• Metaphysical conceit
• Mixture of secular and religious language

9
Secular/Religious language

• The Canonization (p. 1267/1377)
• The Relic (p. 1280/1390)

10
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning(p.
1275/1385)

• Blending of religious and secular
• Colloquial, intellectually complex, argumentative

11
Carpe Diem Poems

• Herrick To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
  (p. 1659/1762)
• Trochaic tetrameter
• (Trochee stressed, unstressed)
• Flow, movement
• Classical sources

12
Carpe Diem

• Marvell To His Coy Mistress (p. 1703/1796)
• Iambic tetrameter couplets
• (iamb unstressed, stressed)
• Begins with familiar courtly elementshyperbole,
  blazon
• A darker turn

13
Jonson, To Penshurst (p. 1434/1546)

• Sidney family home
• Country house poem
• How is this poem structured?
• Shaped through description of the estate
• Awareness of social hierarchy
• (peasants to kingJonsons background)
• Time also adds order
• Negative contrastclassic Jonson?

14
Lanyer Cookham (1319/1436)

• Elegiac (ll. 7, 9, 14, 128)
• How do pastimes differ from Penshurst?
• (line 161)
• Virtuous women (l. 81 ff)
• Preserving the estate through poem (lines 205-210

15
Marvell

• An Horatian Ode p. 1712/1806
• Whats an ode? An Horatian Ode?
• Historical situation
• Cromwell as a force of Nature
• Depiction of execution
• Comparison to Rome
• Whose side is he on?

16
Marvell

• Bermudas p. 1698/1791
• About a group of Puritan exiles
• Whats left out of this poem?

17
Donnes Holy Sonnets

• Calvinism
• Sonnet 1 1295/1410
• Sonnet 9 Direct Address to God p.1296/1412
• Sonnet 10 Personifying Death
• P. 1296/1412
• Sonnet 14 Violent relationship to God
• P. 12971413

18
Herrick Corrinas Going A-Mayingp. 1658/1760

• Archbishop Laud
• The Book of Sports
• May Day
• Elements of Carpe Diem/Pastoral

19
Herbert The Collar p. 1619/1720

• Shifts in voicing
• Shifts in tense
• Order and outburstexpressing spiritual struggle
• Children of God
• Multiple meanings of the title