Literally meaning a ‘concept’, an ingenious comparison between things seemingly unlike. Shakespeare’s sonnet which begins “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” makes fun of standard Renaissance conceits which were to an extent modelled on those of Petrarch (1304-74). “Metaphysical conceits,” used in the early seventeenth century by Donne and others, established connections between many aspects of the new sciences, the world of commerce, and human existence. Mocked by Johnson, they were reinstated in critical respect by T.S Eliot. Donne’s “Valediction forbidding Mourning” builds a famous conceit around the idea of ‘compasses’:
Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy...
2554 words
Citation: Reid, David. "Conceit". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002; last revised 30 December 2004. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=213, accessed 16 December 2025.]
