This week, we are going to look at some poems and try to identify the school of thought that each belongs.
All we have to do is try to remember what the different schools of thought in England during the Enlightenment Era and what the Enlightenment period was all about.
Remember that there are three schools of thought: the metaphysical, puritan and the cavalier schools or intellectual movements.
We must remember that the Enlightenment Period is the era of reason which came at the heels of the Renaissance. One writer describes it as a period of “confluence ideas and activities.”
This intellectual movement heralded a new age of egalitarianism and progress for humanity. There was progress, prosperity, upward movement which rejects the organized doctrinal creed of the Roman Catholic Church.
So in England, although the three literary movements of metaphysical, puritan and cavalier began as late renaissance movements, they are definitely parts of the Enlightenment. They recorded freedom of expression which is definitely humanism and both adherence to religion (puritan/metaphysics) and rejection of religion (cavalier), both parts of enlightenment stance.
Poems from Different Literary Movements
Ask Me No More
Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
Delight in Disorder
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes, a wantonness
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction…
To Lucasta, Going to the Wars
Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chest breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
The Flesh and the Spirit
In secret place where once I stood
Close by the Banks of Lacrim flood,
I heard two sisters reason on
Things that are past and things to come.
One Flesh was call’d, who had her eye
On worldly wealth and vanity;
The other Spirit, who did rear
Her thoughts unto a higher sphere…
Absalom and Ahitophel
Th’ inhabitants of Jerusalem
Were Jebusites: the town so call’d from them;
And theirs the native rights –
But when the chosen people grew more strong,
The rightful cause at length became the wrong:
And every loss the men of Jebus bore,
They still were thought God’s enemies the more.
The Good Morrow
Let sea – discoverers to new world
Have gone,
Let maps to others, worlds on
Worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each
Has one, and is one.
The Sun Rising
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Let school boys and sore prentices,
To tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices, …
Going by all that we have read about the different poetries of these three literary movements of The Puritans, The Metaphysical and the Cavalier, I am sure you are able to identify their poems from the representative poems above.
The first three poems belong to the Cavalier poets: Ask Me Now by Thomas Carew; To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time and Delight in Disorder, both by Robert Herrick and To Lucasta by Richard Lovelace.
The fourth and fifth poems are Puritan: The Flesh and the Spirit by Anne Bradstreet; Absalom and Ahitophel by John Dryden.
The sixth and seventh poems are Metaphysical poems: The Good Morrow and The Sun Rising both by John Donne.
Merry Christmas!
