Platonism in English Poetry of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Volume 9) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1903 Excerpt: ... desire of the seeker after wisdom and beauty. Such a conception saved a large body of English poetry from degenerating into that form of erotic mysticism which Crashaw's later poems reveal; and in which there is no elevation of the mind away from the lower range of, sense enjoyment, but only an introversion of the 'physical life into the intimacies of spiritual experience. II. EARTHLY LOVE The influence of Platonism upon the love poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England is felt in two distinct forms. In the first place, the teachings of that philosophy were used to explain and dignify the conception of love as a passion having its source in a desire for the enjoyment of beauty; and in the second place, the emphasis laid by Platonism upon the function of the soul as opposed to the senses resulted in a tendency to treat love as a purely spiritual passion devoid of all sensuous pleasure. In the first phase the teachings of Platonic theory were made to render service according to the conventional love theory known as Petrarchism; and in its second phase Platonism contributed its share in keeping alive the so-called metaphysical mood of the seventeenth-century lyric. According to the conventional method of Petrarchism, the object of the poet's love was always a lady of great beauty and spotless virtue, and of a correspondingly great cruelty. Hence the subjects of the Petrarchian love poem were either the praise of the mistress's beauty or an account of the torment of soul caused by her heartless indifference. By applying the doctrines of Platonism to this conventional manner, a way was found to explain upon a seemingly philosophic basis the power of the lover's passion and of beauty as its exciting cause. The best example in English of this a...