The Effect of The 20th Century Revival of Interest In Metaphysical Poetry Upon Critical Theory

תקציר

The rapid increase in Donne's modern prestige became an active partner of critical theory. In reviving the seventeenth-century culture modern critics grew able to admire, understand and measure the imaginative creation of that period and, hence, reinterpret it anew. More important, the recognition of the metaphysrcals' accomplishments was funnelled into a search for self- understanding. Soon John Donne entered the mainstream of critical response and was considered, as Roston put it, "the standard of excellence against which other poets were to be measured" (1974, 1). Critical theorists like Grierson, Eliot Ransom, Brooks, Tate, Read, George Williamson and many others, each motivated by his own discoveries, tried to establish modern principles by which they could approach metaphysical poetry and according to which modern poetry should be measured. In other words, they analysed metaphysical poetry using modern techniques and defined modern poetry in accordance with the standards of the metaphysical. Their approach was considered by Tuve to be a confusion of periods.