Metaphysical Poets 3301-LB1001
This course will be devoted to the analysis of a wide selection of the seventeenth-century English poems written by John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan, Thomas Traherne and other poets, who are known as Metaphysical Poets. Special attention will be paid to recurring motifs, themes, images or philosophical ideas characteristic of the poetry of that period.
The course will open with a short survey of critical approaches to metaphysical poetry, from Dr Samuel Johnson to contemporary criticism. An attempt will be made at finding some characteristic features of this poetry, as far as language, style and imagery are concerned, in the broader context of the continental Baroque (e.g. similarities and differences between the English metaphysical conceit and the baroque concetto will be discussed).
The first group of poems to be analysed will be love lyrics, mostly those composed by John Donne and Andrew Marvell. The main focus of this analysis will be the modification of the Petrarchan tradition to be observed in these poems.
One of the aims of this course will also be a presentation of the seventeenth-century literary, cultural and philosophical trends reflected in the metaphysical poetry. Hence there is a selection of poems referring to country life, pastoral ideal, Nature-Art opposition, Neo-Platonism, New Philosophy and its discoveries and theories, contemporary emblem books, courtly masque, optical experiments in visual arts, etc.
Last but not least, there is a considerable choice of religious poems to be analysed at the end of the course; mostly those written by George Herbert and John Donne, but also poems by Marvell, Crashaw, Vaughan and Traherne.
Type of course
Learning outcomes
A student will acquire basic information about:Metaphysical Poets and will develop his/her analytical skills.
Bibliography
Corns, Thomas N., ed. The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry. Donne to Marvell, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Dawson, Terence and Dupree, Robert Scott, eds. Seventeenth-Century English Poetry. The Annotated Anthology, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Docherty, Thomas. John Donne Undone, London & New York: Methuen, 1986.
Donne, John. Poetical Works, edited by Herbert J. C. Grierson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Gardner, Helen (ed), The Metaphysical Poets, Penguin Books, 1957.
Koyré, Alexandre. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1957; Polish edition: Od zamkniętego świata do nieskończonego wszechświata, translated by Ola i Wojciech Kubińscy, Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo słowo / obraz terytoria, 1998.
Marvell, Andrew. The Complete Poems, edited by George de F. Lord, London: David Campbell Publishers Ltd, Everyman's Library, 1984.
Pelc, Janusz. Barok - epoka przeciwieństw, Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1993.
Tayler, Edward William. Nature and Art in Renaissance Literature, New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1964.
Additional information
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