Hedonist and Theologist Narratives in French Baroque Poetry and Spiritual Verses by the English Metaphysicals: Poetising Author’s Experience vs Sacralising Privy Feelings

Abstract

In the poetic diversity of Western European Baroque, the worldview was dominated by the search for unity in the contradictions of existence, which almost always immersed the man in a theological context. This is especially evident in the works by the seventeenth-century English Metaphysicals, whose unique style is considered from the perspective of the European continental poetic tradition. At the same time, appealing to French Baroque poetry as a specific literary phenomenon compared to Donne’s school in England is determined by the historical and creative process that produces individual strategies of poetising an author`s experience vs sacralising privy feelings. The article discusses the originality of the means of poetic expression of worldview principles in French Baroque poetry and English metaphysical school, which are expressed in close connection with the author’s paradigms of hedonistic-religious vs spiritual vision of reality. These means are actualised at the image-plot and structural levels that determine the methodology based on conceptual approaches to comparative analysis with elements of hermeneutic, imagological, stylistic, and cultural-historical methods. The article emphasises that the profound considerations about the origins of the universe in love poems with hedonistic motives bring the works of the French authors (Théophile de Viau) closer to the verses of the English ones, who discuss serious issues of human existence, religion, world order, etc. (A. Marvell) even in love poems. The religious works of the French poets (d’Aubigné, de Sponde, La Ceppède) contrast with metaphysical ideas about the transcendent world (J. Donne, G. Herbert, F. Quarles, Н. Vaughan) precisely by interpreting the Baroque themes of the transience of earthly existence, imperfection of human being, that are represented defectively from the perspective of style. Metaphysical tension and emotional release of the most secret movements of the soul raise the spiritual verses to the level of contemplative poetry.