concetto

In Renaissance literary criticism, an elaborate or striking metaphor drawing a parallel between two very unlike objects, qualities, or experiences. Gaining currency in the 17th century, it was used in particular of two schools of literature: that of the imitators of Petrarch, and the English metaphysical poets.

The Petrarchan conceit, as employed by Petrarch in his love poems, became more exaggerated by his imitators, notably Tasso and the French and Elizabethan sonneteers. The Petrarchan conceit typically compares the beloved's beauty (or the lover's emotions) to very dissimilar concrete objects, often greatly exaggerated. In many of Petrarch's imitators, this amounts to nothing more than the trite and conventional love imagery which Shakespeare deflates in his sonnet beginning ‘My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun’.

The metaphysical conceit is especially associated with the English metaphysical poets, such as John Donne and George Herbert.