Cavalier poets

Cavalier poets is a broad description of a school of English poets of the 17th century, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War. Much of their poetry is light in style, and generally secular in subject. They were marked out by their lifestyle and religion from the Roundheads, who supported Parliament and were often Puritans (either Presbyterians or Independents).

A Cavalier was originally a mounted soldier or knight, but this term changed and by the late sixteenth century the term also implied roistering gallant. When Cavalier was first used as a name for the men who were fighting for King Charles it was meant as an insult. But like many others words and names that evolve with time, the title Cavalier was eventually embraced by those people whom the title applied to.

Cavalier poetry was associated with the royalist cause and therefore reflected royalist values. The cavalier poets were retrospective and nostalgic. The poetry celebrates beauty, love, nature, sensuality, drinking, elegance, and often ironic ease. Once the war was underway this poetry turned to be about explicitly political verse that commented on the conflict at hand. Cavalier Poetry is filled with direct language and clear-cut expressions and images, whereas metaphysical poetry uses complicated metaphors and unfeasible imagery. The strength of Cavalier poetry was in its shortness and directness. It was easy to understand and did not confuse the readers with intricate imagery and deep meaning. Although short and somewhat simple, cavalier poetry was supposed to coincide with their motto “Carpe Diem” translating to “seize the day.”

The use of such direct language displays the individualistic personalities of the cavalier poets. The Cavalier Poets felt that life was much too enjoyable to attempt to understand and study deep and meaningful literature. They focused on things that were meaningful to them such as day-to-day humanity and activities.

Cavalier poetry is an offspring of a poetic marriage between Ben Johnson and John Donne.

The best known of the Cavalier poets are Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling.

Most of the Cavalier poets were courtiers, with notable exceptions: Robert Herrick, for example, was not a courtier but his style marks him as a Cavalier poet.

Issues of classification

According to The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia^[1]

The foremost poets of the Jacobean era, Ben Jonson and John Donne, are regarded as the originators of two diverse poetic traditions—the Cavalier and the metaphysical

English poets of the early seventeenth century are crudely classified by the division into Cavaliers and metaphysical poets, the latter (for example John Donne) being much concerned with religion. The division is therefore along a line approximating to secular/religious. It is not considered exclusive, though, with Carew (for example) falling into both sides, in some opinions ('metaphysical' was in any case a retrospective term). The term 'sacred poets' has been applied, with an argument that they fall between two schools:

Herbert, Crashaw and Vaughan form, not, indeed, a school of poetry, but a group with definite links connecting them. Unlike the Fletchers and Habington, who looked back to “Spenser’s art and Sydney's wit,” they come under the influence both of the newer literary fashions of Jonson and Fres, and of the revived spirit of cultured devotion in the Anglican church.^[2]

Others associated with the Cavalier tradition, according to Skelton, include Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Aurelian Townshend, William Cartwright, Thomas Randolph, William Habington, Sir Richard Fanshawe, Edmund Waller, and James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose. Because of the influence of Ben Jonson, the term Tribe of Ben is sometimes applied to poets in this loose group (Sons of Ben applies properly only to dramatist followers of Jonson).

In his introduction to The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse Alastair Fowler makes a case for the existence of a third group centering around Michael Drayton and including William Browne, William Drummond of Hawthornden, John Davies of Hereford, George Sandys, Joshua Sylvester and George Wither.

Notes

External links

• Cavalier poets

See also

• Cavalier song