Poetry by Thomas Carew

PRIMARY SOURCE: "An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul's, Dr. John Donne" and "To Ben Jonson" (1640)

Context

• Publication: Carew wrote throughout the 20s and 30s, and associated with the Jonson circle in the Caroline court. Carew was made gentleman of the Privy Chamber Extraordinary and Sewer in Ordinary to the King (dining planner). Carew's courtly output was mixed: he borrowed from Giordano Bruno's philosophy for Coelum Britannicum, and translated nine Psalms, despite his reputation for witty society poems and libertine ethics. Poems printed by John Dawson for Thomas Walkley in 1640. Quarto. EEBO link.
• Scholarship: Carew's drawn attention as a master of late Caroline courtly poetry, a successor to Jonson and Donne, and an earlier commentor on contemporary English poetry.
• Why I'm reading it: The Canon, the court, formalism.

Content

• Form: Iambic pentameter couplets.
• Genre: 
• Elegy. 
• Ode.
• Conceit:
• The elegy begins with a lament and memento mori based on Donne's passing. The poem then praises Donne's rhetorical powers of convention and invention. Ultimately, the poem praises Donne as a priest of both Apollo and God.
• The ode begins by praising Jonson's powers as a censor to bad poetry, but then switches to praising the harmony in his lines and characters: all showing the same mind, but all different. Other poets aspire to match his craft, but he is justly greater than them.