The Life of Cowley : Summary

Summary

“The Life of Cowley” is a famous critical prose work by Samuel Johnson. Here he criticizes the metaphysical poets. We know that in critical literature the good is appreciated and the bad is criticized. In this literary work, Johnson criticizes the metaphysical poets and highlights their good points in them. Jonson raises several objections against metaphysical poets in his literature. Cowley was a 17th-century metaphysical poet. Johnson highlights metaphysical poets by discussing Cowley’s biography.

Introduction to Metaphysical Poets: Johnson begins by introducing metaphysical poets. Johnson in his “The Life of Cowley,” praises the excellent intelligence of the metaphysical poets. But he criticizes this class of poets for their excessive use of Conceit or Metaphysical Conceit. These metaphysical concepts often destroy the poem’s playfulness and make the poem unemotional.

But whatever Jonson criticizes, the metaphysical poets invented a new concept. They did not show the love physically but showed the love from Soul to Soul ie from one soul to another soul. The idea they invented gave birth to a new type of poetry.

Criticism of Metaphysical Poetry: Johnson divides poetry into “mimetic” and “pragmatic”. He strikes at metaphysical poetry from these two different perspectives. According to Johnson, the first failure of the metaphysical poets was that Aristotle’s first characteristic of true poetry, namely that “poetry must be a living art imitated from nature”, was not found in their literature at all. They have neither imitated life nor imitated nature in the practice of poetry. As a result, their poetry was far from the truth of life.

Johnson discusses the second aspect of their failure, saying that their poetry did not move readers in the way that real poetry would. Johnson praises their literary work, but Johnson tries to prove that metaphysical poems cannot provide solace in the way that a melodious, coherent, and beautiful true literary work satisfies the reader and soothes the reader’s heart. To prove this point, Jonson questions the main subject of metaphysical poetry, “Wit”, the kind of intelligence they portray in their poems.

Criticism of Metaphysical Poets for Use of Wit: Jonson presents “wit” in two separate figures to criticize them. According to Alexander Pope, “wit” is what is thought about but not expressed clearly. Based on this definition, Johnson says that metaphysical poets are a complete failure. Because they expressed their single thoughts and were very careless in the choice of words in poetry. They used their personal thoughts in the poem. Johnson then explains another definition of “wit”. “Wit” is what is natural and what is new. After giving this definition Johnson says that metaphysical thinking is quite new but it is not natural at all. And because of their unusual thinking, these poems have become an annoyance in the reader’s mind.

Use of Conceits in Poetry by Metaphysical Poets: Johnson criticizes metaphysical poets for their use of conceits in their poems. Conceits are comparisons between two distant things. The complaint here is that the metaphysical poets used their fabricated conceits in their poems.

Metaphysical poets exposed through Abraham Cowley: Johnson highlights the faults of the metaphysical poets first and the good points to a lesser extent. Through his interpretation of the life story of Abraham Cowley, Johnson shows that metaphysical poets express all their thoughts together in a way that does not look good to the ordinary eye. Johnson calls Cowley the best of all metaphysical poets.

In response to Johnson’s criticism of the metaphysical poets through his works, T.S. Eliot wrote a literary criticism entitled “Metaphysical Poets” and answered all of Johnson’s questions and made metaphysical poets from zero to heroes. And since then till today no literary man has dared to criticize the metaphysical poets. Truly the metaphysical poets were geniuses.