METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS IN THREE MODERN POETS • WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THEm THEMES, STYLE AND TECHNIQUE

Abstract

This study aims at throwing light on the increasing interest in Metaphysical poetry in the Modem age, especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To achieve this aim it attempts to apply the major themes and techniques of the seventeenth century Metaphysical school of poetry to three remarkable Modem poets, namely, T. S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. In the process of illustrating the affinity between the seventeenth century Metaphysical poets and the Modems under investigation, the researcher employs the comparative method that helps to put each Modem poet side by side with one or more of the old Metaphysicals, especially John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan and George Herbert. Yet, that is not to say that all Metaphysical poets were identical but that each had his own unique qualities which are pointed out when compared to the Modem poets.

To help the reader understand the growing interest in Metaphysical poetry in the Modem age, Chapter One of this thesis attempts to relate the two eras (the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries on the one hand and the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the other), focusing on the similar social, political, economic and religious elements that could link these eras together.