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George Herbert's Metaphysical Poetry

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Metaphysical poetry comes into being as a kind of rebellion against the precedent of Golden Poetry. "Not only is it extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry, but difficult to decide what poets practise it and in which of their verses" (Eliot.)
If we try to define the Metaphysical Poetry we can say that it is poetry that moves from the image to the conceit, from the visual to beyond the visual. George Herbert was among a group of poets together with John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Abraham Cowley and more, who were considered metaphysical poets. "It is difficult to find any precise use of metaphor, simile, or other conceit, which is common to all the poets and at the same time important enough as an element of style to isolate these poets as a group" (Eliot.) "It is to be observed that the language of these poets is as a rule simple and pure; in the verse of George Herbert this simplicity is carried as far as it can go--a simplicity emulated without success by numerous modern poets. The structure of the sentences, on …show more content…

We can see that same unorthodox usage of a banal concept such as love in another Metaphisical poet: John Donne. Donne in his poems also uses very unconventional ways to describe love, and also was criticized by Jonson for his unconventional method. In his poem "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning", he uses ideas from the world of mathematics and geography (a compass) in order to describe the two lovers. For Jonson it is a “combination of dissimilar images, the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together." Namely, he sees no connection between compasses and lovers. Herbert, in his poems, uses this simple idea of love and transcends it into something

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