Andrew Marvell, Metaphysical Poetry
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- Category: English: Poetic Works
- Date Submitted: 11/22/2013 11:37 PM
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HOW HAS THE COMPOSER OF THE TEXTS YOU HAVE STUDIED CAPTURED INTENSE HUMAN EXPERIENCE AND ENGAGED YOUR RESPONSE AS A READER?
Andrew Marvell was a well renowned metaphysical poet who posed questions concerning the ideological and theological. Metaphysics is defined as a highly abstract branch of philosophy, concerned with the underlying structure of reality that exists beyond the realm of the physical world and our immediate senses. The Renaissance period was a time that openly accepted new ideas and new beliefs. Marvell, whose writing was generally of a witty nature and full of elaborate conceits, challenged universal concepts such as love, fate and time, reflecting on carpe diem in his poems 'The Definition of Love' and 'To His Coy Mistress'.
Marvell’s 'The Definition of Love' is an example of lyric poetry based on poetic conceits, as it puts forth the irrational universal theme of love and its boundaries in the real world. Marvell writes about unrequited passions, insisting that Fate itself acts against true love. Throughout the poem, the persona describes his love’s story. He outlines that it was impossible in the first stanza and accepts this fact in the last. In the second stanza Marvell exaggerated the theme of Despair in his love saying that it is “Magnanimous” and exaggerates further with the use of the personification of hope as a flightless bird as it is “feeble” and “could ne’er have flown,/ But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.” His own feelings of his love are reflected on in the fifth stanza where Marvell uses the concept of parallelism with the imagery; “Us as the distant poles have placed.” One can see this as the persona and the person they have feelings for are standing at the opposite poles of the world, and in this image you can see that they will not meet. In the sixth stanza he gives up on hope declaring that his love is as likely to be returned as “heaven fall[ing]”, in other words, his love will only be returned by some sort of miracle....
Andrew Marvell was a well renowned metaphysical poet who posed questions concerning the ideological and theological. Metaphysics is defined as a highly abstract branch of philosophy, concerned with the underlying structure of reality that exists beyond the realm of the physical world and our immediate senses. The Renaissance period was a time that openly accepted new ideas and new beliefs. Marvell, whose writing was generally of a witty nature and full of elaborate conceits, challenged universal concepts such as love, fate and time, reflecting on carpe diem in his poems 'The Definition of Love' and 'To His Coy Mistress'.
Marvell’s 'The Definition of Love' is an example of lyric poetry based on poetic conceits, as it puts forth the irrational universal theme of love and its boundaries in the real world. Marvell writes about unrequited passions, insisting that Fate itself acts against true love. Throughout the poem, the persona describes his love’s story. He outlines that it was impossible in the first stanza and accepts this fact in the last. In the second stanza Marvell exaggerated the theme of Despair in his love saying that it is “Magnanimous” and exaggerates further with the use of the personification of hope as a flightless bird as it is “feeble” and “could ne’er have flown,/ But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.” His own feelings of his love are reflected on in the fifth stanza where Marvell uses the concept of parallelism with the imagery; “Us as the distant poles have placed.” One can see this as the persona and the person they have feelings for are standing at the opposite poles of the world, and in this image you can see that they will not meet. In the sixth stanza he gives up on hope declaring that his love is as likely to be returned as “heaven fall[ing]”, in other words, his love will only be returned by some sort of miracle....