Product Description

John Milton, Thomas Carew, Sir William Davenant, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, Sir Walter Ralegh, Robert Southwell, John Donne and Richard Crashaw are some of the 17th century poets who became known as "metaphysical". In this anthology, Dame Helen Gardner has collected together those poets who, although never self consciously a school, did possess in common certain features of argument and powerful persuasion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127354 in Books
• Published on: 1973-06-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Customer Reviews

A comprehensive collection of the Metaphysical poets.
This book gives you not only a comprehensive collection of the Metaphysical poets, but also helpful information on the poets and their poems. Although it is not a study guide, if you are interested and excited by these poems, this is an excellent book to work through. Also featuring some of the lesser known Metaphysicals, it contains all the most pervasive poets and poems also. I am currently using this book in conjunction with my English Literature A level, and have found it more than amply fits the course. An excellent anthology of these unusual and emotionally engaging poets.

Feeling a little elderly
The choice of poems is good, though a bit conservative: Gardner has a tendency to value not particularly striking Anglican poems just because of their devotional stance, and unlike Grierson's earlier collection she is a bit reluctant to acknowledge the eroticism of poets in this tradition. So you might find Colin Burrow's 2006 replacement volume a bit more lively--it has a more substantial introduction and notes, too.

A useful and rewarding anthology
Helen Gardner has done a great job here of providing us with an interesting and varied anthology of metaphysical poetry. There are some major English poets included here - John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and Henry Vaughan making up the bulk of the material. Metaphysical poetry is challenging and certainly requires more effort than one would need to read, say, the Romantics. But the rewards are there to be had. Not just for undergraduates, these poems are for us all.