2. Baroque

The 17^th century in Britain – a period of great turbulence. The long-lasting and bloody agony of feudalism. A period of religious confrontations. Puritans. Political unrest.

Baroque art reflects the tragic view of the world. The world brought out in baroque is torn apart by severe conflicts and contradictions; man suffers from the loss of direction, rootlessness, estrangement.

The term baroque (from Portuguese – irregular pearl) was first used in the 18^th cent. In a derogatory sense to describe the affected, flamboyant art forms of the previous century. The baroque art is characterized by excessive decorativity, extravagance, exuberance, sharp contrasts, pathetic elevation and great intensity of feeling.

Features of baroque art:

1. Antithesis, use of sharp contrasts. Baroque art sees the world as comprised of contrasting elements, disembodied, lacking in unity and harmony. In the sphere of literature, that means bringing together the opposite qualities of playfulness and pomposity, pathos and irony, eroticism and asceticism, tragedy and farce.

2. Symbolism, allegory, emblem. The use of symbols reveals the rational, rhetoric character of baroque art. Baroque art strives to represent the world in allegories, and symbolically interpret it. The poet endeavours to grasp the ever changing reality, which defies true understanding, but can be expressed through a symbol.

3. Elaborate decorativity, excessive ornamentation, well-calculated balance of composition, complexity of images and design.

4. Strong interest in mysticism, irrational religious exultation, which fids expression in extravagant, phantasmagorical vision

Certain features of baroque world-view and aesthetics can already be found in late Shakespeare. They play an important role in metaphysical poetry, and – especially – in John Milton. But Baroque was never as influential in English literature as it was on the continent.

3. Metaphysical Poets.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century there was a succession of poets called the Metaphysical Poets.

Poets grouped under this label usually include:

• John Donne, who is regarded the founder of the school, 1572-1631

• George Herbert 1593-1633

• Cranshaw; Henry Vangham (1621-95); Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

• And some lesser figures like Benlowes, Herbert Of Cherbury, H. King, A. Cowley and Cleveland.

The label was first used by Ben Jonson (despairingly) in his Life of Cowley. Some critics think though that it was coined by Dryden, who complained that Donne ‘perplexed the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy when he should engage their hearts … with the softness of love”.

The term is somewhat misleading, since none of the poets was really interested in metaphysics. Further, these poets had in reality little in common.

Metaphysical poets inclined to the personal and intellectual complexity and concentration. Their work is a blend of emotion and intellectual ingenuity

It is marked by:

- intense feeling combined with ingenuous thought

- elaborate, witty images

- an interest in mathematics, science and geography

- an overriding interest in the soul

They are marked by novelty, paradox, ‘muscular’ rhythm.

They used so-called conceits – unusual striking images, cleverly expressed (often ironic) comparison in which the tenor and vehicle can be related by ingenuous pseudo-logic. A poet could express his relationship to his mistress using mathematical, geographical or astronomical terms. Apparently unconnected ideas or things are yoked together so that the reader is startled out of his complacency and forced to think through the argument.

Metaphysical poetry is less concerned with expressing feeling than with analyzing it, with the poet exploring the recesses of his consciousness.

A metaphysical poem is as often as not an argument in which the whole knowledge of Elizabethan intellectual is called into play: scholasticism, popular superstition, classical learning, new geographical and astronomical discoveries. But all are used with a lightness, a playfulness. The metaphysical conceits were intended to shock or surprise by their unexpected nature. The conceit was often prolonged to several lines, or through an entire poem.

e.g. The Elegy - Going to Bed As his mistress undresses the poet indulges in various geographical images. As he commences love play, he exclaims: “Oh, my America, my new found land!”

Another feature is the use of direct colloquial language. The rhythm is derived from everyday speech.

Their poems seem to be speaking directly across the years to modern times. The twentieth century reevaluated their poetry. The revival started with T.S. Eliot’s celebrated essay ‘Metaphysical poets’ (1921). According to Eliot, the work of these men embody a fusion of thought and feeling that later poets were unable to achieve, because of a dissolution of sensibility, which resulted in works which were either intellectual or emotional, but not both at once. Their virtues of difficulty and newness were felt to relate them closely to modernists.

John Donne.

Biography. Comes from a devout Catholic family (related on his mother’s side to Thomas More). Went to Oxford and Cambridge, but did not take a degree. In 1590-3 (in his early twenties) he denounced his Roman Catholic religion. Was secretary to an important government official (Sir Thomas Egerton), secretly married his employer’s niece.

Was granted a degree in divinity in 1615. In 1621 appointed Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Major works:

• lyric poetry (collected in Songs and Sonnets);

• satires; elegies; the Anniversaries (1601)

• religious poetry (between 1606-1611)

The poetry of Donne represents a sharp break with what was written by most of his contemporaries and his predecessors. Much Elizabethan verse is decorative and flowery. Donne developed a more intellectual form of conceit, highly concentrated images which involve a major element of dramatic contrast or of intellectual strain. The cliches of earlier love poetry – bleeding hearts, cheeks like roses, Cupid shooting arrows – appear in Donne’s poetry only to be mocked. In his conceits he expresses the deep vision of the world.

Donne likes to twist and distort traditional ideas and traditional stanzas and rhythmic patterns. His speech patterns are various and colloquial. At the same time he is fond of the elaborate and intricate. His compressed and elliptical expression often presents difficulty for the reader.

Donne had an unusual gift, rather like that of a modern poet. His colloquial style is equally removed from the dignified, weighty manner of Milton and the sugared sweetness of the Elizabethans.

Song

Go and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me where all past years are,

Or who cleft the Devil’s foot.

Teach me to hear the mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy’s stinging,

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou beest born to strange sights,

Things invisible to see,

Ride ten thousand days and nights

Till age snow white hairs on thee,

Though, when thou return’st, wilt tell me

All strange things that befell thee,

And swear

Nowhere

Lives a woman true and fair.

In his Holy Sonnets he is more traditional in form, but there we also find the same intensity of feeling, insistent imperatives, and the development of an idea into an absolute. He creates a sense of more personal relationship with God, an immediate involvement in Christ’s sufferings.

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Except you enthrall me (captivate), never shall be free

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Henry Vaughan was a friend and follower of Herbert. His poetry is often about Welsh countryside. Whereas Donne and Herbert are poets of experience, Vaughan is a poet of innocence.

Andrew Marvell brings together secular and religious terms, poetry of nature and concern with time.