In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that
governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and
manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the
reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of
comparison. Extended conceits in English are part of the poetic idiom of
Mannerism, during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century.
Metaphysical conceit In English literature the term is
generally associated with the 17th century metaphysical poets, an extension
of contemporary usage. The metaphysical conceit differs from an extended analogy
in the sense that it does not have a clear-cut relationship between the
things being compared. Helen Gardner observed that "a conceit is a comparison
whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness" and that "a comparison
becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness while being strongly
conscious of unlikeness." An example of the latter would be John Donne's "A
Valediction: Forbidding Mourning ", in which a romantic couple is likened to a
compass. The metaphysical conceit is often
imaginative, exploring specific parts of an experience. John Donne's "The Flea"
is a poem seemingly about fleas in a bed. When Sir Philip Sidney begins a
sonnet with the conventional idiomatic expression "My true-love hath my heart
and I have his". He takes the metaphor literally and teases out a number of
literal possibilities in the exchange of hearts. The result is a fully formed
conceit. Petrarchan conceit
The Petrarchan conceit is a form of love poetry wherein a man's love interest is
referred to in hyperbole. For instance, the lover is a ship on a stormy sea, and
his mistress is either "a cloud of dark disdain" or the sun.
The paradoxical pain and pleasure of lovesickness is often described using
oxymoron, for instance uniting peace and war, burning and freezing, and so forth.
But images which were novel in the sonnets of Petrarch became clichés in
the poetry of later imitators. Romeo uses hackneyed Petrarchan conceits when
describing his love for Rosaline as "bright smoke, cold fire, sick health".
Etymology In the Renaissance, the term indicated
any particularly fanciful expression of wit, and was later used pejoratively of
outlandish poetic metaphors. Recent literary critics have used the
term to mean simply the style of extended and heightened metaphor common
in the Renaissance and particularly in the 17th century, without any particular
indication of value. Within this critical sense, the Princeton
Encyclopedia makes a distinction between two kinds of conceits: the Metaphysical
conceit, described above, and the Petrarchan conceit. In the latter, human
experiences are described in terms of an outsized metaphor, like the stock
comparison of eyes to the sun, which Shakespeare makes light of in his sonnet
130: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun."
Notes ^ Stephen Cushman; Clare Cavanagh; Jahan
Ramazani; Paul Rouzer. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics:
Fourth Edition. Princeton University Press. p. 290. ISBN 1-4008-4142-9.
^ Helen Gardner, The Metaphysical Poets, 1961, "Introduction" p. xxiii.
^ Robert H. Ray. An Andrew Marvell Companion. Taylor & Francis. p. 106.
ISBN 978-0-8240-6248-4. ^ "Sir Philip Sidney. "My true love hath
my heart, and I have his." Love sonnet from "Arcadia."". Luminarium.org.
Retrieved 2013-07-05. ^ Najat Ismaeel Sayakhan. THE TEACHING
PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH POETRY IN THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS. Author House. p.
58. ISBN 978-1-4969-8399-2. References
Lakoff, George and Mark Turner. More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to
Poetic Metaphor. Princeton, NJ: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Preminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and
Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
External links George Herbert, "Praise"
Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, from Wikisource.