baroque: eccentric or lavishly ornate in style. The term in used more precisely in music and in art history that it is in literary history, where it mostly refers to the artificial poetic styles of the early 17th century, especially known as Gongorism or Marinism after the Spanish poet Luis de Gongogra and the Italian poet Giovanni Battista Marini. In English the ornate poetic style of Sir Thomas Browne may be called baroque, as may be strange conceits of the metaphysical poets especially Richard Crashaw. Some critics have tried to extend the term to works of Milton and later works of Shakespeare.