The Baroque Manifestations Of Love In Metaphysical Poetry

Love is a theme to which many poets in all cultures have dedicated their lines. In Medieval English poetry, poets either avoided concerning the topic of amatory love or repelled it with morality, and the renaissance poets also had some inclination towards the sublimation of unworldly love. The seventeenth century was marked by violent clashes of politics and religion and of church and state, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the Jesuits, forming a new dynamic cosmology which is different from the western traditional cosmology. Out of the chaos did the new style of Baroque come to life. The progress in philosophy and science made scholars start to doubt man's position in the universe and their life on earth. Poets in the seventeenth century were trapped in the dichotomy of body and spirit. On one hand they wanted to pursue the pleasures of physical love; on the other hand, they desired to breakthrough the imprisonment of the secular world and ascend to the spiritual realm, seeking Mystical Union with God. So, the love poetry of the metaphysical poets deviates from the sublimed, surreal and idolized Petrarchan lyrics either in content or in form.Love, according to Stanley Stewart, is intuitive and irrepressible guided by free will whose choice of objects to love can disclose the prominent features of man's nature. This thesis tries to explore the baroque manifestations of love in metaphysical poets of John Donne, Richard Crashaw, George Herbert and Andrew Marvell with an aim to explore their inner worlds' interacting with the social macrocosm.The first chapter is an introduction about the development of people's concept over love in history, the historical background of the seventeenth century, general characteristics of the baroque style and Metaphysical poetry as well as literature review.Chapter Two is dedicated to Baroque manifestations in profane love. This part analyzes the reasons why metaphysical poets favored sensuous love, studies the erotic images they used in demonstrating their earthly love and tries to touch upon the baroque sensibility displayed in the erotic love poetry of Metaphysical poets.The third chapter "Love in meditation" discusses the content of sacred love, and poets' pursuit for Mystical Union through meditation so as to get away from mutability and transitoriness. A close study is carried out upon the image of light to illustrate the significance of light in their meditation.The fourth chapter analyzes the baroque rhetoric the metaphysical poets applied in expressing the conflicts in the poets' love preference:metaphysical conceits, paradoxes and hyperboles.The last chapter deals with the significance of Baroque study in literature, concludes the three Baroque manifestations of love in metaphysical poetry, declares the significance and limitations of this research and gives the author's expectations.