Marvell is perhaps mocking the traditional love poem that speaks of undying affection and advocates a more direct and practical approach to romance, ‘Rather at once our time devour/Than languish in his slow-chapped power’. In To His Coy Mistress the tone is humorous, ‘The grave’s a fine and private place/But none, I think, do there embrace’. This could be due to their wit and irony that often makes them sound unaffected or removed from the subject.
However, the critic Samuel Johnson, who reputedly came up with their catchy nickname, described them as unsuccessful in ‘representing or moving the affections’.
The Metaphysical poets used metaphors with an unrivalled eloquence, particularly when referring to love. Marvell also references colonial territories – ‘Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side/Shouldst rubies find’ – when speaking of love. Although the focus is on the lover, we can infer from his reference a sense of pride in the development of the British empire, in its size and reputation. In The Sun Rising Donne depicts the bedroom containing his lover as a world in itself, ‘… tell me/Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine/Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me’. Although Donne uses a colonial metaphor explicitly in this poem – ‘O my America! my new-found-land/My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d’ – there are more subtle references in several other of his poems. ‘Licence my roving hands, and let them go/Before, behind, between, above, below’, this rhyming couplet in To His Mistress Going to Bed makes reference to the licence that explorers would obtain from monarchs before setting sail. Therefore if you had conquered territory you would probably be at liberty to do some flag planting in another location: the bedroom. Discovering new terrain containing valuable resources, furthering the reaches of ‘the empire’ and having an American town named after you were, if John Donne is to be believed, the peak of manhood.
It could be said that nothing embodies classical ideas of masculinity more accurately than the act of conquering. This group of Baroque poets also used the colonisation of America at that time to inspire poetic imagery, and they would typically link ideas of discovery and imperialism to love.
Galileo and Newton made scientific discoveries and observations that threw doubt on religious ideas, and William Harvey was the first physician to describe the full circulation of blood through the body. The Metaphysical Poets were active during the seventeenth century, a time of great scientific advancement and political turmoil.
0 kommentar(er)
