Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

A critical study tracing how Platonic and Neo‑Platonic ideas, mediated through Ficino and Plotinus, shaped English non‑dramatic poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Treating the period’s verse as an integrated cultural expression rather than a series of individual cases, it analyzes how Platonic notions of beauty and the soul underlie poetic formulations of holiness, temperance, chastity, heavenly and earthly love, and the nature and eternity of God and matter. Drawing on classical texts and translations, the essay offers close readings of representative poems to show how Platonic metaphysics and aesthetics were adapted to Christian moral and devotional discourse.