Cavalier poets
In the history of English literature, a number of poets whose works were written during the reign of King Charles I during the English Civil War and in the subsequent interregnum , i.e. between 1640 and 1660, are called cavalier poets .
The English poets of this time are mostly divided into two different "schools". The term cavalier poets is mostly used to differentiate it from the metaphysical poets (the " metaphysical poets "). While the poems of the metaphysicals are characterized by religious inwardness and an increasingly enigmatic expression, the cavaliers dealt with secular subjects in an easily accessible, pleasantly dignified diction, especially classical courtly subjects such as the transfiguration of love and feudal loyalty. Politically, the cavalier poets united in the domestic political turmoil of the time an attitude loyal to the king.
The most important influence on the cavaliers exercised Ben Jonson made, continue to be the cavalier poets mostly Sir John Suckling , Sir Richard Fanshawe , William Habington , Robert Herrick , Richard Lovelace , Aurelian Townshend , William Cartwright , Thomas Randolph , James Shirley and Edmund Waller counted . Thomas Carew occupies a middle position between metaphysicals and cavaliers .
literature
- James Loxley: Royalism and Poetry in the English Civil Wars: The Drawn Sword . Macmillan, Basingstoke 1997, ISBN 0333660757 .
- Earl Roy Miner: The Cavalier Mode from Jonson to Cotton . Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1971, ISBN 0691062099 .
- Lois Potter: Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641-1660 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 1989, ISBN 0521255120 .
- John Stubbs: Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War . Viking, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-670-91753-2 .