John Donne is the spearhead of the Metaphysical school of
poets, famous for their conceitful style. Conceit is a typically Metaphysical trope,
operative as a distant and far-fetched comparison between two radically unlike objects
with a stress on wit and intellectual appeal. It is often defined as a violent yoking of
heterogeneous elements or ideas. It is device of condensation in Metaphysical
verse.
In Valediction: A Forbidding Mourning, the conceit
involves a comparison between the twin spirits of the lovers and the two legs of the
compass. One remains stagnant in its central position while the other rotates around it
in a pursuit of love, as it were. This odd and rather peculiar comparison is operative
at the level of sarcasm and undercuts the cliched romantic imagery regarding Platonic
lovers.
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