Ben Johnson was a leading figure of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. He created "types" of human behaviors based on the medieval theory of the four humours. Johnson is known for his stylish satires such as Volpone and The Alchemist. Other notable figures included Beaumont and Fletcher, known for their comedy The Knight of the Burning Pestle. The King James Bible was also a major project of this time. Major poets included the Metaphysical poets John Donne and George Herbert, who wrote on Christian mysticism and eroticism. Theater remained popular but was closed during the Puritan Revolution.

2.  Leading figure  Ben Johnson
 Middle Age aesthetics
 Theory of humours 
 Human behaviours result from 4 humours :
blood, phlegm ,black bile and yellow bile
 Humours correspond with  air, water, fire and
earth
 Therefore, Johnson creates “types”.
 Stylish satires
 Volpone (1605 or 1606),The Epicoene (1609)The
Alchemist (1610)

3.  Other important figures 
 Beaumong and Flether –The Knight of the
Burning Pestle (comedy)
 Made people realize how feudalism and
chivalry turned into snobbery and deceit
 Other popular style  revenge play (tragedy)
 Popularized by JohnWebster andThomas
Kyd

4.  The King James Bible – huge translation
project (1604-1611)
 Standard Bible of the Church of England
 Led by James I himself with 47 scholars

5.  Major poets  John Donne, George Herbert
 Subjects  Christian mysticism and eroticism
 Extensive use of paradox and oximorons.

6.  Metaphysical Poets: John Donne, George
Herbert, Richard Crashaw, HenryVaughan,
Andrew Marvell
 Cavalier Poets: Ben Jonson and his followers
(Richard Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Edmund
Waller, Sir John Denham).The Sons of Ben.
 Puritans: Andrew Marvell, John Milton

7.  Theatre:
 imitators of Shakespeare (Webster, Ford, Middleton, etc.)
 Variety of comedies and masques by Ben Jonson
 Theatres closed during the Puritan Revolution
 Sonnet:
 gradually goes out of fashion in the Jacobean period;
Donne used it for religious purposes, and Milton for
political purposes
 New forms and genres:
 Heroic couplets, verse satires, essays, biographies

9.  ‘The proportion of the
world disfigured is.’

10.  Radical break from Petrarchan tradition: ‘Donne has
purged English poetry of pedantic weeds’, he has
replaced ‘servile imitation’ with ‘fresh invention’’
(Carew)
 Distorts traditional rhythmic and stanza patterns:

11.  Not a ‘school’: no organised group but strong
influence of Donne’s style on a generation of poets
before 1660
 Not ‘metaphysical’: ‘it is not philosophical poetry in
any real sense, although it uses the concepts and
vocabulary of philosophy’
 Main features: colloquial language; the poem takes
the form of a philosophical argument with another
person; brings in a range of discordant images

12.  Conceit (concetto): ‘a figure of speech that establishes an
elaborate parallel between two seemingly dissimilar or
remote objects or ideas’
 Petrarchan: emotional; the subject is compared extensively to an
object (love is war)
 Metaphysical: intellectual; striking analogies between two dissimilar
things (a flea is a marriage bed)
 Wit: ‘intellect’, ‘intelligence’, ‘creative intelligence’; describes
Donne’s poetic style, which combines ideas in an
‘unexpected, paradoxical, and intellectually challenging and
pleasing manner’

13.  Sonnet: here: a synonym for ‘love lyric’
 Addressed to flesh and bone women

15.  19 religious sonnets, written in the last years
of his life
 English sonnet form
 Same combination of passion and intellectual
argument as in the love poems but the
passion is more complex: hope and anguish,
fear and repentance

17.  TheTemple: a collection of religious poems
 Contest between secular wit and religious devotion
 Spiritual struggle rather than auto-biographical
sincerity, as in Donne
 Symbolical objects: the human body is a church
building
 Remarkable variety of stanza forms, including
pattern poems: ‘Easter Wings’

19.  Shakespeare’s friend, rival playwright and
fellow actor
 Poet, literary dictator; professional writer
 Classicist and Renaissance Humanist: ‘a
perfect playwright’

20.  Comedies of humours: eccentricities of our ruling passions
ridiculed; Every Man in His Humour (1598)
 Classical tragedies: derived fromTacitus, Juvenal, Seneca;
Sejanus (1610), Catiline (1611)
 Satiric comedies: based onTerence and Plautus; Volpone
(1606), The Alchemist (1610)
 Poetry: occasional poems, elegies, compliments,
dedications, songs, epigrams

21.  24 sonnets between 1630-58: five in Italian,
the rest in English
 A variety of occasions: public and private, but
no love sonnets; not a sequence