The witty expression and novel ideas are fundamental to poetic purpose. However, the playfulness of metaphysical poetry is not frivolous. In the Monarch of Wit Leishman draws attention to the element of playfulness, characterised by the use of puns and conceits, as typical of Donne’s poetry.

“They played with thoughts,” said Sir Walter Scott, “as the Elizabethans had played with words.” Scott’s perception is that wit is the salient feature of metapgysical poetry is corroborated by critics like J. They had their own thoughts and they worked out their own manner of expressing them. They endeavoured to be singular in their thoughts and were careless of their diction.” They did not feel obliged to follow the trodden path. The metaphysical poets in Johnson’s words, desired “to say what they hoped had been never said before. Characteristics of Metaphysical School Delight in Novel Thought and Expression The important metaphysical poets – Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Cvashaw, Carew and Marvell – bear some common trends in their thoughts and indicate some common technique in their mood of expression. In metaphysical love poetry as well as religious verses, such characteristic features are sufficiently indicated, and they may well be illustrated with reference to some such man tear, as Donne, Vaughan, Herbert, Crashaw and Marvell.Īs a matter of fact, metaphysical poetry does not denote any particular fantastic trend, but bears several special features, which constitute its originality as well as popularity. But this is not true account, and this poetry does not denote any queer or vague trend, but rather beare, as noted already, a number of special features which give it a distinctive merit and become the source of its originality. Of course, it is very often loosely defined as something fantastic, abstruse, or vague.

Metaphysical poetry has, thus, come to mean a specific type of poetry, with certain characteristic features, common to the group of poets, following Donne. Since then a group of poets, who wrote under the influence of John Donne, has been termed as metaphysical poets. Samuel Johnson subsequently employed the word to attach it to ‘a race of writers, that may be termed as the metaphysical poets’. John Dryden, while writing on John Donne, mentioned the ‘metaphysics’ – ‘He affects the metaphysics’. The concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘metaphysics’ as ‘theoritical philosophy of being and knowing’ and ‘metaphysical’ as based ‘on abstract general reasoning: over-subtle incorporcal.’ The term ‘metaphysical was applied more or less accidentally to designate a particular group of poets.

Herbert metaphysical poet