English literature

The Renaissance period: 1550–1660 > Early Stuart poetry and prose > The Metaphysical poets

Writers responded to these conditions in different ways, and in poetry three main traditions may broadly be distinguished, which have been coupled with the names of Spenser, Jonson, and John Donne. Donne heads the tradition that 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson labeled for all time as the Metaphysicals; what unites these poets as a group is less the violent yoking of unlike ideas to which Johnson objected than that they were all poets of personal and individual feeling, responding to their time's pressures privately or introspectively. This privateness, of course, was not new, but the period in general experienced a huge upsurge of contemplative or devotional verse.

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    The transition from medieval to Renaissance
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  The Renaissance period: 1550–1660
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    Literature and the age
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    Elizabethan poetry and prose
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      Development of the English language
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      Sidney and Spenser
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      Elizabethan lyric
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        Jonson
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        The last Renaissance dramatists
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    Early Stuart poetry and prose
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      The Metaphysical poets
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        Donne
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        Donne's influence
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      Jonson and the Cavalier poets
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      Milton
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  Additional Reading
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      Early Stuart poetry and prose
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