Renaissance versus Modernism: Continuities and Discontinuities in the Poetry of John Donne and T.S. Eliot

This paper examines the interconnectedness of traditions in English literature, focusing on metaphysical poetic tradition and modernist poetic tradition. It considers John Donne’s poetry as an epitome of the former, and T.S Eliot’s as an experimentation of the latter. This study builds on the existing perspectives on the two traditions. It establishes that classical poetic tradition bequeaths poetic forms as foundation for other poetic traditions, including the metaphysical poetry and English modernist poetry. Metaphysical poets bring in their innovations to classical poetic forms to formulate a distinct sub-genre of English poetry that is largely characterised by conceit. The same extant poetic forms cross over to the phase of modernist poetic experimentations, and recreate another distinct subgenre characterised by disjointedness, free verse, imagism, amongst other features. This paper concludes that continuities in English poetry remain typical features of classical poetic features while discontinuities are atypical features regenerated by relative thematic concerns of succeeding periods of poetic experimentations, after the classical period.

Keywords: Renaissance John Donne Modernism T.S. Eliot Continuities Discontinuities

Author

• Babatunde Ezekiel Adigun,
  Department of English, University of Uyo, Nigeria
  adigunbabatunde03.ab@gmail.com