Comment on Dr. Johnson’s views of metaphysical poetry in his ‘The Life of Cowley’. [NU-‘14,‘18]

Comment on Dr. Johnson’s views of metaphysical poetry in his ‘The Life of Cowley’. [NU-‘14,‘18]

Ans. Metaphysical poetry is a poetry which has been inspired by a philosophic conception of the universe. In metaphysical poetry, we find the comprehension of life unified, illumined, intensified and heightened but the poet’s personal consciousness of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, revealing to him in the history of his own soul. A metaphysical poet carries sensation into the boldest conception, profoundest intuition and subtlest and most complex classification.

However, Dr. Johnson has followed Sprat for guidance but he does not fail to give his own ideas and opinions. He has compared two great poets of dissimilar genius – Milton and Cowley. He has shown that Cowley and Milton may be compared but the advantages seems to lie on the side of Cowley. Milton expresses the thoughts of ancients in their language, but Cowley, without much loss of purity and elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conception.

The metaphysical poets usually wrote love poems and religious poems. John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Abraham Cowley and Henry Vaughan wrote both types of poems. According to Dr. Johnson, the love poems of the metaphysicals have a different character and philosophy. Cowley added more perplexities to love. With the passage of time, love also changes its character. Earlier, ‘Flesh’ was an important theme in love, but with the age, it changes in and that can be perceived in him now. Everything is inconstant. Incest is now a taboo and now attraction of flesh withers away. Dr. Johnson emphasises that the tears of lovers are of great poetical accounts and it is difficult to be properly comprehended. The readers have to read it again and again to find its proper meaning.

Dr. Johnson finds two souls are combined and mixed and the two become one in Donne’s love poems. Cowley describes his ‘Mistress’ – bathing wonderful. According to Dr. Johnson, Cowley may be considered to be the best of metaphysical poets and he had a great variety of style and sentiment.

We may conclude with the theory of Dr. Johnson that Cowley was a greater poet than Donne. His style of writing was remarkable. Cowley was a wonderful poet no doubt but it is not fair to comment that in adopting the metaphysical style, he surpassed his predecessors.

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Written & Edited By                    

SHUVASHISH MALLICK

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BIBLIOGRAPHY – Textbook (FBC), A Study Guide (FBC) & Handnote Series (Lecture).