'Jonson and Donne’s Influence on the Cavalier Poets: A Critical Analysis Essay\r'

'Poetry is never divorced from the contexts at heart which the poet himself is necessarily part of. This is to say that numbers is a product of the poets’ political, economic, historical, cultural and knowing contexts. much(prenominal) being the case, one whitethorn say that it is through the aforementioned contexts that verse captures the spirit of the durations. The first half of the seventeenth Century witnessed both the booming of the slope poetic tradition and science. Such lucky however, did not come easily for the tautness existing between different frameworks; metaphysical and scientific.\r\nSee lots: how to write a critical analysis outline\r\nThis endeavor seeks to explicate Ben Jonson and John Donne’s similarities and differences and how they mold the English poetic tradition as manifested in the works of their successors. Ben Jonson is considered as the earliest theoretician and practitioner of neoclassicism. Such an confinement is made poss ible by Jonson’s get down to fuse together absolute themes like civility and public worship within the realm of critical man diversity which heavily characterized post-Medieval thought.\r\nThis is to say that the value of Jonson’s work lies in its capacity to curb the traditions of the ago with the rapidly changing world and the differing worldviews that emerged in the success of the scientific enterprise. Jonson’s neoclassicism makes itself manifest in his pursuance of the innocent principle of the honest and didactic routine of poetry. In Jonson’s epigram c all tolded To My absolute English Censurer, he writes: â€Å"To thee my mien in epigrams seems new/ When both it is the old way and the new…/Prithee believe still, and not count on so fast;/Thy faith is all the knowledge that thou hast”.\r\nThe foregoing transportation system strengthens the claim that Jonson pursues the classical principle of the ethical and didactic functi on of poetry. Jonson’s idiom on civility and public holiness may be seen as an attempt on his part to save that which is cracking and valuable in itself in the past which, as he reckons, should be assimilated into the present. On the early(a) hand, John Donne seems to be more(prenominal) interested in the psyche quite an than the public. Metaphysical poetry, as it figures in Donne’s works are more ‘ psycheal, more private.\r\nAs one may make believe observed in the development of Donne’s poetry, he is more concerned with the individual and the philosophical questions which preoccupy the individual as he finds himself shattered, snap between the plain collapsing grasp of Medieval thought and the patently promising future of scientific thinking. Such philosophical questions may vary among individuals notwithstanding in the case of Donne, his concern seems to be the internal conflicts within an individual in his attempt to understand his relation t o other human beings and more importantly, his relation to the Divine.\r\nThat Donne is torn between Medieval thought and scientific thinking makes itself manifest when he writes in the Holy Sonnets (1-4): â€Å"Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you/As in time but knocke, breathe, shine and seek to resort;/That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’ and construction/Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. ” Although Jonson and Donne differs significantly on the focus of their poetry, which are, the public or the individual, knight or metaphysical, both poets’ style and vestigial theoretical commitments influenced the chevalier of poets; their successors.\r\nNaturally enough, much of the influences of the Cavalier poets are derived from the master himself, that is, Jonson quite a than Donne. In a real sense, the domineering poets’ lyricist orientation in hurt of their profundity is simpler than that of the Metaphys icals like Donne. Consider Robert Herrick’s To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time (1648). He writes: â€Å"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, /Old time is still a-flying; /And this same flower that smiles today, /tomorrow will be dying. There is, however, a authoritative fusion of both traditions (that is, the Cavalier and the Metaphysical) in the poems of other Cavalier poets; exhibiting the characteristics of both.\r\nIn To Althea, From Prison, Richard Lovelace, a prominent chevalier poet writes: â€Å" pock walls do not a prison make, /Nor iron bars a chicken coop;…/If I have freedom in my love, and in my soul am free, /Angels unaccompanied that soar above/Enjoy such liberty. Although Lovelace’s opening lines talk some the usual object of affection of the cavalier poets, the quoted passage near the end of the poem (that is, ‘stone walls do not a prison make’) presents a kind of profundity which, for the most part, characterizes metaphysical po etry. In the final analysis, although there are certain differences in the poetry of Ben Jonson and John Donne as they represent two different poetic traditions, it is plausible to maintain that both poets, in their own right, opened new pathways for the flourishing of the English poetic tradition.\r\n'