John Donne's Songs and Sonnets

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John Donne's Songs and Sonnets | Critical Overview

Donne enjoyed a good reputation as a poet in the generation after his death, but by the end of the seventeenth century, critics such as John Dryden and Alexander Pope faulted his poetry for the lack of regularity in its rhythm and the blatant sexuality of its content. Dryden first used the term “metaphysical” to criticize Donne’s “excessive use of philosophy,” and Samuel Johnson used it to describe poets who wrote to “show their learning.” Johnson also criticized Donne for what became known as the “metaphysical conceit,” in which (says Johnson) “the most heterogeneous...

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