Poetry Movements & Poetry History at World of Poets

Cavalier poets is a broad description of a school of poets, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War. They were marked out by their lifestyle and religion from the Puritans on the Parliamentarian side; much of their poetry is light in style, and generally secular in subject.

The best known of the Cavalier poets are Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling.

Most of the Cavalier poets were courtiers, with notable exceptions: Robert Herrick, for example, was not a courtier but his style marks him as a Cavalier poet.

Style

In fact the common factor that binds the cavaliers together is their use of direct and colloquial language expressive of a highly individual personality, and their enjoyment of the casual, the amateur, the affectionate poem written by the way. They are 'cavalier' in the sense, not only of being Royalists (though Waller changed sides twice), but in the sense that they distrust the over-earnest, the too intense. They accept the ideal of the Renaissance Gentleman who is at once over, soldier, wit, man of affairs, musician, and poet, but abandon the notion of his being also a pattern of Christian chivalry. They avoid the subject of religion, apart from making one or two graceful speeches. Often they illustrate "carpe diem" themes such as time passing, joy being transient, and the future is uncertain.

Text excerpted from: Robin Skelton, The Cavalier Poets, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1960. 9-10.

Issues of classification

According to The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia[1]

The foremost poets of the Jacobean era, Ben Jonson and John Donne, are regarded as the originators of two diverse poetic traditions: the Cavalier and the metaphysical.

English poets of the early seventeenth century are rudely classified by the division into Cavaliers and metaphysical poets, the latter (for example John Donne) being much concerned with religion. The division is therefore along a line approximating to secular or religious. It is not considered exclusive, though, with Carew (for example) falling into both sides, in some opinions (metaphysical) was in any case a retrospective term). The term 'sacred poets' has been applied, with an argument that they fall between two stools:

Herbert, Crashaw and Vaughan form, not, indeed, a school of poetry, but a group with definite links connecting them. Unlike the Fletchers and Habington, who looked back to Spenser's art and Sydney's wit, they come under the influence both of the newer literary fashions of Jonson and Donne, and of the revived spirit of cultured devotion in the Anglican church. F. E. Hutchinson, Cambridge History of English and American literature.

Others associated with the Cavalier tradition, according to Skelton, include Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Aurelian Townshend, William Cartwright, Thomas Randolph, William Habington, Sir Richard Fanshawe, Edmund Waller, and James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose. Because of the influence of Ben Jonson, the term Tribe of Ben is sometimes applied to poets in this loose group (Sons of Ben applies properly only to dramatist followers of Jonson).

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About Poetry Movements & Poetry History at World of Poets

Poetry movements is the history of poetry, and of the world. If you study the movements of every poetry school, and you can because we have listed all the poets involved in those movements, then you are basically approaching history through poetry. There are many schools of poetry, from the Spasmodic Poets to World War 1 Poetry; from Dymock Poets to the New York School, they are all here for you to learn about poetry and history. The poets who shaped our world represent a large group of men and women, not just American Poets, British Poets, Black Poets, but poets of the New Formalism, the Cavalier Poets, and the poets of the Nuyorican Movement. You will be surprised which famous poets were allied with which other great poets. If you have never studied the rich heritage of the schools of poetry and their movements, you will love this section of our poetry site!