Conceit

In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison. Extended conceits in English are part of the poetic idiom of Mannerism, during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century.

Metaphysical conceit

In English literature the term is generally associated with the 17th century metaphysical poets, an extension of contemporary usage. The metaphysical conceit differs from an extended analogy in the sense that it does not have a clear-cut relationship between the things being compared.Helen Gardner observed that "a conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness" and that "a comparison becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness while being strongly conscious of unlikeness." An example of the latter occurs in John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", in which a couple faced with absence from each other is likened to a compass.

Conceit (disambiguation)

A conceit is an extended metaphor, especially in literature.

Conceit also may refer to:

See also

Conceit (novel)

Conceit is a novel by the Canadian author Mary Novik, published in 2007 by Doubleday Canada.

Set in 17th century London, Conceit is the story of Pegge Donne, the daughter of the metaphysical poet John Donne, a contemporary of Shakespeare. Other fictional characters based on historical people are Donne's wife Ann More, the diarist Samuel Pepys, the fisherman Izaak Walton and, appearing briefly, Christopher Wren. Both old and new St Paul's Cathedral (of which Donne was Dean, 1621-1631) and the Great Fire of London 1666 feature in the novel, which has been praised for bringing London vividly to life. The story is told from the point of view of several characters, including Pegge and her parents Ann and John Donne. Featured in the narrative are Donne's love poems, his Devotions, and his sermons—in particular, Death's Duel, a sermon the moribund Donne preached to Charles I. The novel also draws upon Izaak Walton's 1640 biography, more myth than history, The Life of Dr John Donne, leading Donne scholar Jeanne Shami to call Conceit a "great novel based on a poor one."