Thomas Carew went to Italy and it means that he read the Italian literature and the Italian poetry and was influenced by it.
Why we consider him a cavalier?
He was influenced by Ben Jonson and he belongs to this school of the Sons of Ben the influence of Ben Jonson was in the neatness of style. We said about Ben Jonson that he was very neat and was very accurate in his choice of words, so the cavaliers are the same.
He wrote country house poems. When you have a country house, you go to it from time to time to enjoy yourself. This means that country house poems are poems that can be recited while people are enjoying time in a country house. It's a light kind of verse which is used for enjoyment.
All the cavaliers were not interested in the spiritual love but they were interested more in making fun and taking things lightly and they spoke about the physical kind of love more than the spiritual one.
They are very systematic, so every poet will choose for himself stanza forms that he will use to write his poetry. He does not use it in many stanza forms like John Donne for example but they were very precise.
He wrote elegies and he wrote different kinds of poetry. He used heroic couplets. Country house poetry means the light poetry which is mostly lyrics and full of songs. It's not serious but it's for enjoyment.
He was described as a brilliant wit and all the cavaliers depended upon their wits. He is considered second only to Herrick in his passion. He was a very passionate writer and most his poems were about love but light not serious. He did not have the wide range of topics.
He writes in a polished way. Remember that we said that Ben Jonson was mainly interested in the form. He was after perfection as you said especially perfection of form and style. And of course he is very accurate and this is something he took from Ben Jonson. His lyrical poetry was full of music and he was influenced by Ben Jonson who was influenced by John Donne. We said that Ben Jonson himself was influenced by John Donne and the ****************physical poetry. We have a poem called "A song" by Carew.
We said that he is a cavalier….. what is a cavalier?
They are a group of poets that formed school and they were influenced by Ben Jonson. What are the characteristics of their style and their school ….. what made them "cavaliers?
They are known as the courtiers of the King Charles the first. They are famous and they were called the sons of Ben because they used to meet with Ben Jonson sit together and discuss matters of poetry. They followed his example.
The spoke about poetry and contemporary literature and they believed that writing poetry is for enjoyment. They do not write it as a way of living. They were just writing for enjoyment because they were originally rich and that's why they wrote a certain kind of light poetry. And because they were courtiers, they were highly educated. At that time the educated person read classical works, so they were interested in the Latin. They took from those Latin classics the accuracy of form and the way of writing and what is known as the urban civilized wit.
As we said they were influenced by Ben Jonson who was influenced by Donne. So they were influenced by John Donne. They took from John Donne conceits and they derive them like him from scientific fields, philosophy and theology but they didn't use as many conceits as John Donne.
And we said that they took the best of John Donne and they combined it with the best of Ben Jonson and they added to both their elegant urban wit. They were influenced by Ben Jonson in his accuracy of form and they added to both of them their elegant wit. They were aristocrats, so they were writing in an elegant and aristocratic way of writing.