Why has Donne's poetry been described as 'Metaphysical'?

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Why has Donne’s poetry been described as ‘Metaphysical’?

To answer this question one needs to define the term ‘Metaphysical’ because, although it can be applied to any poetry dealing with spiritual or philosophical matter, it is complicated by the fact that it is now generally only applied to a group of seventeenth century poets.  Therefore as David Reid has aptly remarked it is a “particularly fuzzy term” and therefore it is “futile to try for watertight definition”.  The first problem is that behind the term, ‘Metaphysical,’ lies a history of different critical approaches – Giordano Bruno, the first critic to attempt a conceptual formulation of “concettismo”, as the ‘Metaphysical’ style was known in Italy, concluded that ‘Metaphysical poetry’ was essentially concerned with perceiving and expressing the universal correspondence in his universe.  However, Samuel Johnson wrote that “about the beginning of the seventeenth century [in England] there appeared a race” of Metaphysical poets and therefore the problem is that there are different descents of critical views about the term.  

Furthermore Johnson talks of a “race” of these poets but the problem is that there is not such a line of descent as this statement would suggest.  There are connections between poets, who are classed as ‘Metaphysical’, like Dunne, Cowley, Hubert and Marvell, but only here and there; for example in The Definition of Love Marvell writes in a Donneish vein but that does not mean they have similar styles.  The problem is that most of the poets who are classed as Metaphysicals are all highly individual and that is what they all have in common –  but this is hardly a basis for defining what a Metaphysical is. “It would be going too far to say that the Metaphysicals are like a constellation, the appearance of their being a group depending upon point of view rather than real connections between them, but the connections between them are certainly tenuous”. Another problem about defining this literary category is that it runs into other groupings in the seventeenth century, namely the House of Ben, which were influenced by Edmund Spenser, and the Cavalier poets, who were influenced by Johnson.  For example Clement Paman’s Good Friday is a beautiful and personal poem that combines Spenserian water – fantasy with conceits in the manner of Donne. Therefore, although a concrete definition of the term cannot be made, there are some general characteristics of Metaphysical poetry which are – firstly, an extravagant style, the use of  conceits, puns and paradoxes and abstruse terminology, often drawn from the science of the day, secondly, an intellectual style that expresses a highly individual angle on the world; thirdly, Metaphysical poets are wits, university – educated men and finally, a trouble with the state power, religion leading to a general estrangement from the world.

The Metaphysical style is an extravagant style; that is not to say their extravagance is idle decoration but “is expressive of singularity, of individual self – consciousness or individual estrangement from the world”.  This is very obvious in Donne’s poetry because he often employs the use of paradox, conceit and what his contemporaries labelled ‘Donne’s strong lines”.  ‘Strong lines’ are not lines of poetry but expressions made arresting and difficult through abrupt or riddling syntax, or alternatively through paradox or conceit.  In The Ecstasy this is evident in 1. 32-

“We see we saw not what did move”

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A complicated puzzle is created by the phrase “We see we saw not” and this is also seen later in the poem, 11.51 – 52:

“They are ours, though they are not we, we are

The intelligence, they are the sphere”

This strong line is similar in difficulty of phrasing but there is also the additional use of the intellectual conceit on a metaphysical idea of planetary motion.  His remarkable flow of invention and his flair for bizarre compounds are evident throughout his works : “a sundial in a grave”,

The Will (1.51) and “A bracelet of ...

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