Metaphysical Poetry and Pastoral: Genre in Relation to Value Judgements and History

I turn in Chapter Three to two genres that are discussed in the earliest of the Lives, metaphysical poetry, analysed in the first life, and the pastoral elegy, one of the main topics of the third life. My contention is that Johnson begins the Lives by establishing metaphysical poetry as a genre, an accomplishment, I believe, that led him to assert that this first life was his favourite. Treating metaphysical poetry as a genre enabled him to discriminate between those examples of the genre that are merely ingenious as distinct from the more successful poems offering new and useful insights. The critic’s task is to explain why a literary work is or is not recommended to the reader.