Early Modern Metaphysical Literature


Book Description

Early Modern Metaphysical Literature illuminates now-obscured aspects of cultural negotiation and denaturalization germane to numerous Metaphysical texts. Examining poetry and prose by Donne, Marvell, Lanyer, Crashaw, and Edward Herbert, this book challenges readers to recognize the provocative strangeness of these writings in their original contexts and today.




The Metaphysical Poets


Book Description

The Metaphysical Poets provides an introduction to the work of six strikingly various and original poets- Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan, Marvell and Traherne. By closely examining how the poems work, the book aims to help readers at all stages of proficiency and knowledge to enjoy and critically appreciate the ways in which fantastic and elaborate styles may express private intensities. The emphasis is on the differences covered by the term 'Metaphysical' and on the rich and strange diversity of the poets' inner lives. The book examines the expressive forms of interiority, the characteristic inward turn of Metaphysical wit, and compares the wit of its six poets with the non-introspective wit of poets such as Cowley, the Cavaliers and the Augustans. The discussion of each poet is preceded by a 'Life' in which the biographical facts, personal, cultural and political, are treated with a view to illuminating the concerns of the poems.




Four Metaphysical Poets


Book Description

This anthology poems by John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell and Thoma




The Metaphysical Poets


Book Description

These poems are done by 17th-century writers who devised a new form of poetry full of wit, intellect and grace, which we now call Metaphysical poetry. They wrote about their deepest religious feelings and their carnal pleasures in a way that was radically new and challenging to their readers. Their work was largely misunderstood or ignored for two centuries, until 20th-century critics rediscovered it.




Seven Metaphysical Poets


Book Description

Robert Ellrodt's study of seven poets--springing from his wide-ranging three-volume work, Les Poètes métaphysiques anglais--challenges the postmodernist assumption that no definite or constant self can be traced in the works of a writer. Distinct modes of self-awareness, different emphases in the perception of time and space, and various ways of grasping the sensible and the spiritual, the human and the divine, jointly or separately characterize the minds of Donne and George Herbert, Crashaw and Vaughan, Lord Herbert, Marvell, and Traherne. Fundamental mental structures affect their attitudes to love, death, and God, and dictate their privileged modes of composition and expression. Without neglecting the relations between these individual traits and the general evolution of thought from classical antiquity to the Renaissance, or the immediate cultural environment in which each poet wrote, this critical study maintains the primacy of individual choice, of the "unchanging self." The book is not based on a theory, but on a close scrutiny of the characteristic interplay of personal modes of thought and sensibility.




Rethinking the Mind-Body Relationship in Early Modern Literature, Philosophy, and Medicine


Book Description

This book explores a neglected feature of intellectual history and literature in the early modern period: the ways in which the body was theorized and represented as an intelligent cognitive agent, with desires, appetites, and understandings independent of the mind. It considers the works of early modern physicians, thinkers, and literary writers who explored the phenomenon of the independent and intelligent body. Charalampous rethinks the origin of dualism that is commonly associated with Descartes, uncovering hitherto unknown lines of reception regarding a form of dualism that understands the body as capable of performing complicated forms of cognition independently of the mind. The study examines the consequences of this way of thinking about the body for contemporary philosophy, theology, and medicine, opening up new vistas of thought against which to reassess perceptions of what literature can be thought and felt to do. Sifting and assessing this evidence sheds new light on a range of historical and literary issues relating to the treatment, perception, and representation of the human body. This book examines the notion of the thinking body across a wide range of genres, topics, and authors, including Montaigne’s Essays, Spenser’s allegorical poetry, Donne’s metaphysical poetry, tragic dramaturgy, Shakespeare, and Milton’s epic poetry and shorter poems. It will be essential for those studying early modern literature, cognition, and the body.




Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture


Book Description

""The marvelous follows us always" - or so the Italian philosopher Francesco Patrizi asserted in 1587. The essays in this book collectively make the case that this assertion could be an epigraph for the Renaissance. For Wonder was a concept absolutely central to the early modern period. Encompassing both inquiry and astonishment, "wonder" indeed followed the Renaissance everywhere - into redefinitions of the mind, the body, art, literature, the known world. Often called the age of discovery, the Renaissance should also be seen as the age of the marvelous." "However, defining just what la maraviglia would have meant for Patrizi and his age is no small task." "This volume, then, seeks to explore early modern views of wonder and the marvelous by revealing the complexity of la maraviglia in the Renaissance."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexuality,1570-1640


Book Description

Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexuality, 1570-1640 brings together twelve new essays which situate the arguments about the multiple constructions of sexualities in prose fiction within contemporary critical debates about the body, gender, desire, print culture, postcoloniality, and cultural geography. Looking at Sidney's Arcadia , Wroth's Urania , Lyly's Euphues ; fictions by Gascoigne, Riche, Parry, and Brathwaite; as well as Hellenic romances, rogue fictions, and novelle, the essays expand and challenge current critical arguments about the gendering of labour, female eroticism, queer masculinity, sodomy, male friendship, cross-dressing, heteroeroticism, incest, and the gendering of poetic creativity.







The Metaphysical Poets


Book Description

John Milton, Thomas Carew, Sir William Davenant, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, Sir Walter Ralegh, Robert Southwell, John Donne, Richard Crashaw form part of the 17th century poets who became known as metaphysical. In this anthology Dame Helen Gardner has collected together those poets who although never self consciously a school, did possess in common certain features of argument and powerful persuasion.