In this video, we're going to be discussing
metaphysical poetry.
So, metaphysical poetry starts happening around
the Renaissance, which you've learned in your
history class.
This is a rebirth of learning.
Poets are getting even more creative.
Shakespeare is on the scene, so it's the 1600s,
late 1500s.
The metaphysical poets weren't even friends
or anything, but this push for creativity
during the Renaissance made metaphysical poetry
what it was.
The fundamental aspect of metaphysical poetry
is that the work is characterized by the usage
of conceits.
Some of you may have had the word "conceit"
on your vocabulary flashcards, so you know
that a conceit is an exaggerated comparison.
The conceits that these poets were using were
extremely inventive, and usually the poems
had to do with thinking about love or religion,
or sometimes death and like I said, this is
going on in seventeenth century England, like
Shakespeare, but he wasn't a metaphysical
poet.
Don't misunderstand me mentioning him in this
video and think that he was.
The metaphysical poets were using these exaggerated,
sometimes grotesque, comparisons as a sort
of reaction against the overly elevated language
of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan poets.
Rather than comparing a woman to a blossoming
flower, the metaphysical poets might have
compared her to a more industrial tool, or
something equally as (seemingly) random.
To break down the roots of the word "metaphysical",
meta means "above or beyond" and physical
means "earthly or concrete," so the metaphysical
poets moved concrete symbols beyond their
meaning into more philosophical symbols, as
we'll see in just a minute.
So, back to what a conceit is.
If you haven't had conceit as one of your
vocabulary words, it's kind of like a metaphor.
It's an exaggerated comparison between two
very unlike things.
And, in a conceit, the two things are so unalike
that the reader doesn't even want to compare
them.
It's an uncomfortable comparison, but the
poet skillfully makes the comparison acceptable
to the reader.
The way you unpack the meaning of a conceit
is you pull out the associations you may have
with the two things being compared.
One example is this very famous poem, "The
Flea" by John Donne, whom we'll talk more
about in a minute.
It says, "Oh stay!
Three lives in one flea spare where we almost,
yea more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this our marriage-bed
and marriage-temple is."
OK take a second and reread that.
Pause the video if you need to.
So, in other words, what John Donne is saying
here is, "Oh stay!" or "Don't go!
This little flea has my blood, your blood,
and its own blood.
And so our bodily fluids are already mixed
in the flea, so we might as well have sex
even though we're not married."
So, John Donne uses this flea as kind of the
idea of "We're already mixed together in there,
so madame let's go ahead and get in bed."
So, the comparison between the flea and marriage
is not one that one would normally make.
If someone said to you that fleas are closely
related to sex, you might laugh or think they're
weird, but the metaphysical poets make it
work.
Once he's finished the poem, you can understand,
like, "Oh, I can see how that would work."
Going back to John Donne, it looks like "John
Don-nay" or something like that, but it is
pronounced "Dunn," like "You're done with
that assignment."
His most famous poem is "A Valediction Forbidding
Mourning" which we'll examine a bit of later
on.
As I said, John Donne wrote during the late
1500s, early 1600s, so he was alive at the
same time as Shakespeare.
I'm not sure if they knew each other or not,
but that would be neat if they did.
