Cavalier poet

[1] A cavalier was traditionally a mounted soldier or knight, but when the term was applied to those who supported Charles, it was meant to portray them as roistering gallants.

Instead of tackling issues like religion, philosophy, and the arts, cavalier poetry aims to express the joy and simple gratification of celebratory things much livelier than the traditional works of their predecessors.

Commonly held traits certainly exist in cavalier poetry in that most poems "celebrate beauty, love, nature, sensuality, drinking, good fellowship, honor, and social life.

This endorsement of living life to the fullest, for Cavalier writers, often included gaining material wealth and having sex with women.

However, authors like Thomas Carew and Sir John Suckling died years before the war began, yet are still classified as cavalier poets for the political nature of their poetry.

Once the conflict began between the monarchy and the rebellious parliament, the content of the poetry became much more specifically aimed at upholding Royalist ideals.

These men were considered by many to write in a nostalgic tone in that their work promoted the principles and practices of the monarchy that was under philosophical and, eventually, literal attack.

Unlike the Fletchers and Habington, who looked back to "Spenser's art and Sydney's wit," they come under the influence both of the newer literary fashions of Jonson and Fres, and of the revived spirit of cultured devotion in the Anglican church.

In his introduction to The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse Alastair Fowler makes a case for the existence of a third group centering on Michael Drayton and including William Browne, William Drummond of Hawthornden, John Davies of Hereford, George Sandys, Joshua Sylvester and George Wither.