Thomas N. Corns
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128830
- eISBN:
- 9780191671715
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128830.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This book studies the relationship between literature and the political crises of the English Civil War. It explores the ways in which the literary culture of the period changed and survived in ...
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This book studies the relationship between literature and the political crises of the English Civil War. It explores the ways in which the literary culture of the period changed and survived in radically shifting circumstances and conditions of extreme adversity, and examines the ways in which old forms developed and new forms emerged to articulate new ideologies and to respond to triumphs and disasters. Included in the book's discussion of a wide range of authors and texts are examinations of the Cavalier love poetry of Herrick and Lovelace, Herrick's religious verse, the polemical strategies of Eikon Basilike, and the complexities of Cowley's political verse. The book also provides an important new account of Marvell's political instability, while the prose of Lilburne, Winstanley, and the Ranters is the subject of a long and sustained account which focuses on their sometimes exhilarating attempts to find an idiom for ideologies which previously had been unexpressed in English political life. Through the whole study runs a detailed engagement with Milton's political prose, and the book ends with a consideration of the impact of the Civil War and related events on the English literary tradition, specifically on Rochester, Bunyan, and the later writing of Milton.Less
This book studies the relationship between literature and the political crises of the English Civil War. It explores the ways in which the literary culture of the period changed and survived in radically shifting circumstances and conditions of extreme adversity, and examines the ways in which old forms developed and new forms emerged to articulate new ideologies and to respond to triumphs and disasters. Included in the book's discussion of a wide range of authors and texts are examinations of the Cavalier love poetry of Herrick and Lovelace, Herrick's religious verse, the polemical strategies of Eikon Basilike, and the complexities of Cowley's political verse. The book also provides an important new account of Marvell's political instability, while the prose of Lilburne, Winstanley, and the Ranters is the subject of a long and sustained account which focuses on their sometimes exhilarating attempts to find an idiom for ideologies which previously had been unexpressed in English political life. Through the whole study runs a detailed engagement with Milton's political prose, and the book ends with a consideration of the impact of the Civil War and related events on the English literary tradition, specifically on Rochester, Bunyan, and the later writing of Milton.
Derek Hirst and Steven N. Zwicker
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199655373
- eISBN:
- 9780191742118
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199655373.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This brief conclusion examines the meaning of words and texts both withheld from and issued to the world — the puzzling condition of Marvell's texts.
This brief conclusion examines the meaning of words and texts both withheld from and issued to the world — the puzzling condition of Marvell's texts.
Stephen Bardle
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199660858
- eISBN:
- 9780191749001
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660858.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 has commonly been understood as representing a return to political stability and religious consensus following the tumultuous civil wars and Commonwealth ...
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The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 has commonly been understood as representing a return to political stability and religious consensus following the tumultuous civil wars and Commonwealth period. By analysing oppositional, underground texts from 1660–1670 this new study contributes to an ongoing historical re-evaluation of the Restoration period. Stephen Bardle provides a new literary historical narrative of what was in fact one of the most tumultuous periods in English history, when terrible plague, the Great Fire of London, and a brutal war against the Dutch quickly undermined the popularity of the new government. At the heart of the nation’s troubles was a highly divisive religious settlement, enforced through the notorious ‘Clarendon Code’, and which unleashed wave upon wave of religious and political persecution. This book tells the story of three writers who fuelled the flames of opposition by contributing illicit texts to a small yet intense public sphere via the literary underground. Key texts by Andrew Marvell including ‘The Garden’ are set in the context of under-explored works by the poet and pamphleteer George Wither and the indomitable satirist Ralph Wallis. The book draws upon extensive archival research and features neglected manuscript and print sources. As an original study of the Literary Underground which sheds light on the vibrancy of political opposition in the 1660s, this book should be of interest to students of radicalism as well as seventeenth-century historians and literary scholars.Less
The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 has commonly been understood as representing a return to political stability and religious consensus following the tumultuous civil wars and Commonwealth period. By analysing oppositional, underground texts from 1660–1670 this new study contributes to an ongoing historical re-evaluation of the Restoration period. Stephen Bardle provides a new literary historical narrative of what was in fact one of the most tumultuous periods in English history, when terrible plague, the Great Fire of London, and a brutal war against the Dutch quickly undermined the popularity of the new government. At the heart of the nation’s troubles was a highly divisive religious settlement, enforced through the notorious ‘Clarendon Code’, and which unleashed wave upon wave of religious and political persecution. This book tells the story of three writers who fuelled the flames of opposition by contributing illicit texts to a small yet intense public sphere via the literary underground. Key texts by Andrew Marvell including ‘The Garden’ are set in the context of under-explored works by the poet and pamphleteer George Wither and the indomitable satirist Ralph Wallis. The book draws upon extensive archival research and features neglected manuscript and print sources. As an original study of the Literary Underground which sheds light on the vibrancy of political opposition in the 1660s, this book should be of interest to students of radicalism as well as seventeenth-century historians and literary scholars.
Raymond Joad
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199560509
- eISBN:
- 9780191701801
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199560509.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Milton Studies, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The poems presented here by Abraham Cowley, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and George Wither are all state-of-the-nation poems that invoke the presence of national angels. Milton and Wither raise ...
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The poems presented here by Abraham Cowley, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and George Wither are all state-of-the-nation poems that invoke the presence of national angels. Milton and Wither raise questions about the relationship between the islands and the kingdom. Cowley's Cromwell, driven by an evil angel, retorts to Marvell's ‘Angelic Cromwell’. Marvell may have known Wither's poem, and also Wither's later poem on Cromwell's riding accident, which construes a complex and qualified mode of praise. All of these writings are rooted in an account of the nature and offices of angels that was common in early modern Britain. And all engage in a dialogue that is founded upon a sense of the imaginative possibilities of angels.Less
The poems presented here by Abraham Cowley, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and George Wither are all state-of-the-nation poems that invoke the presence of national angels. Milton and Wither raise questions about the relationship between the islands and the kingdom. Cowley's Cromwell, driven by an evil angel, retorts to Marvell's ‘Angelic Cromwell’. Marvell may have known Wither's poem, and also Wither's later poem on Cromwell's riding accident, which construes a complex and qualified mode of praise. All of these writings are rooted in an account of the nature and offices of angels that was common in early modern Britain. And all engage in a dialogue that is founded upon a sense of the imaginative possibilities of angels.
Edward Holberton
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199544585
- eISBN:
- 9780191719981
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199544585.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This book shows that the Protectorate's instabilities helped to generate lively and innovative poetry. Protectorate verse explores the fault-lines of a culture which ceaselessly contested the ...
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This book shows that the Protectorate's instabilities helped to generate lively and innovative poetry. Protectorate verse explores the fault-lines of a culture which ceaselessly contested the authority of its own institutions, including the office of Protector itself. This study reads poems by Andrew Marvell, Edmund Waller, John Dryden, and a number of writers who will be less familiar, in a cross-section of institutional contexts, including an embassy to Sweden, Oxford University, parliamentary crises, and a state funeral. It finds that their poetry often proves difficult to align with established ideas of the political and cultural contests of the age, because it becomes entangled with cultural institutions which were transforming rapidly. The readings of this book challenge previous representations of Protectorate culture as a phase of conservative backsliding, or pragmatic compromise, under a quasi-monarchical order. Protectorate verse emerges as nuanced and vital writing, which looks beyond the personality of Oliver Cromwell to the tensions that are shaping his power. Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectectorate argues that it is precisely through being contingent and compromised that these poems achieve their vitality, and become so revealing.Less
This book shows that the Protectorate's instabilities helped to generate lively and innovative poetry. Protectorate verse explores the fault-lines of a culture which ceaselessly contested the authority of its own institutions, including the office of Protector itself. This study reads poems by Andrew Marvell, Edmund Waller, John Dryden, and a number of writers who will be less familiar, in a cross-section of institutional contexts, including an embassy to Sweden, Oxford University, parliamentary crises, and a state funeral. It finds that their poetry often proves difficult to align with established ideas of the political and cultural contests of the age, because it becomes entangled with cultural institutions which were transforming rapidly. The readings of this book challenge previous representations of Protectorate culture as a phase of conservative backsliding, or pragmatic compromise, under a quasi-monarchical order. Protectorate verse emerges as nuanced and vital writing, which looks beyond the personality of Oliver Cromwell to the tensions that are shaping his power. Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectectorate argues that it is precisely through being contingent and compromised that these poems achieve their vitality, and become so revealing.
Nicholas McDowell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278008
- eISBN:
- 9780191707810
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278008.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This book is about the things which could unite, rather than divide, poets during the English Civil Wars: friendship, patronage relations, literary admiration, and anticlericalism. The central figure ...
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This book is about the things which could unite, rather than divide, poets during the English Civil Wars: friendship, patronage relations, literary admiration, and anticlericalism. The central figure is Andrew Marvell, renowned for his ‘ambivalent’ allegiance in the late 1640s. Little is known about Marvell's associations in this period, when many of his best-known lyrics were composed. The London literary circle which formed in 1647 under the patronage of the wealthy royalist Thomas Stanley included ‘Cavalier’ friends of Marvell such as Richard Lovelace but also John Hall, a Parliamentarian propagandist inspired by reading Milton. Marvell is placed in the context of Stanley's impressive circle of friends and their efforts to develop English lyric capability in the absence of traditional court patronage. By recovering the cultural values that were shared by Marvell and the like-minded men with whom he moved in the literary circles of post-war London, we are more likely to find the reasons for their decisions about political allegiance. By focusing on a circle of friends and associates we can also get a sense of how they communicated with and influenced one another through their verse. There are innovative readings of Milton's sonnets and Lovelace's lyric verse, while new light is shed on the origins and audience not only of Marvell's early political poems, including the ‘Horatian Ode’, but lyrics such as ‘To His Coy Mistress’.Less
This book is about the things which could unite, rather than divide, poets during the English Civil Wars: friendship, patronage relations, literary admiration, and anticlericalism. The central figure is Andrew Marvell, renowned for his ‘ambivalent’ allegiance in the late 1640s. Little is known about Marvell's associations in this period, when many of his best-known lyrics were composed. The London literary circle which formed in 1647 under the patronage of the wealthy royalist Thomas Stanley included ‘Cavalier’ friends of Marvell such as Richard Lovelace but also John Hall, a Parliamentarian propagandist inspired by reading Milton. Marvell is placed in the context of Stanley's impressive circle of friends and their efforts to develop English lyric capability in the absence of traditional court patronage. By recovering the cultural values that were shared by Marvell and the like-minded men with whom he moved in the literary circles of post-war London, we are more likely to find the reasons for their decisions about political allegiance. By focusing on a circle of friends and associates we can also get a sense of how they communicated with and influenced one another through their verse. There are innovative readings of Milton's sonnets and Lovelace's lyric verse, while new light is shed on the origins and audience not only of Marvell's early political poems, including the ‘Horatian Ode’, but lyrics such as ‘To His Coy Mistress’.
James Kuzner
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748642533
- eISBN:
- 9780748651580
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642533.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate ...
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Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. This study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton presents a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. The author analyses Renaissance literary texts in the context of classical, early modern, and contemporary political thought to add to how we think about selfhood in the present. The book also offers illuminating new readings of the place that English Renaissance figures occupy in histories of friendship, the public sphere, and selfhood more generally. The study draws radical and republican thought into sustained conversation, and locates a republic for which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to offer as it is what community guards against. The book questions whether vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be, at a time when the drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify almost any state action.Less
Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. This study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton presents a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. The author analyses Renaissance literary texts in the context of classical, early modern, and contemporary political thought to add to how we think about selfhood in the present. The book also offers illuminating new readings of the place that English Renaissance figures occupy in histories of friendship, the public sphere, and selfhood more generally. The study draws radical and republican thought into sustained conversation, and locates a republic for which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to offer as it is what community guards against. The book questions whether vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be, at a time when the drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify almost any state action.
Edward Holberton
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199544585
- eISBN:
- 9780191719981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199544585.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Chapter 1 asks how Bulstrode Whitelocke's embassy to Sweden in 1653–4 helped to establish the legitimacy of the Protectorate on the European stage. Using previously unexamined manuscript diaries and ...
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Chapter 1 asks how Bulstrode Whitelocke's embassy to Sweden in 1653–4 helped to establish the legitimacy of the Protectorate on the European stage. Using previously unexamined manuscript diaries and papers, it shows Whitelocke's struggle on the one hand to demonstrate his cultivation and fluency in the languages of courtly display, and on the other to maintain a distinctively ‘English’ plainness in his behaviour. Three Latin poems, by Andrew Marvell, Daniel Whistler, and Charles Wolseley, are examined which in diverse ways support Whitelocke's strategies. They exploit and bend the protocols of diplomatic negotiation, and suggest shared cultural identities that might consolidate Anglo–Swedish amity to the exclusion of England's diplomatic rivals. The poems play a sophisticated game for different kinds of legitimacy, weaving deft elaborations of topics associated with panegyric to Christina into quasi-naïve projections of foreign policy, subtly conditional praise, and pointed nostalgia.Less
Chapter 1 asks how Bulstrode Whitelocke's embassy to Sweden in 1653–4 helped to establish the legitimacy of the Protectorate on the European stage. Using previously unexamined manuscript diaries and papers, it shows Whitelocke's struggle on the one hand to demonstrate his cultivation and fluency in the languages of courtly display, and on the other to maintain a distinctively ‘English’ plainness in his behaviour. Three Latin poems, by Andrew Marvell, Daniel Whistler, and Charles Wolseley, are examined which in diverse ways support Whitelocke's strategies. They exploit and bend the protocols of diplomatic negotiation, and suggest shared cultural identities that might consolidate Anglo–Swedish amity to the exclusion of England's diplomatic rivals. The poems play a sophisticated game for different kinds of legitimacy, weaving deft elaborations of topics associated with panegyric to Christina into quasi-naïve projections of foreign policy, subtly conditional praise, and pointed nostalgia.
Edward Holberton
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199544585
- eISBN:
- 9780191719981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199544585.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
The first parliament of the Protectorate would not accept the powers allotted to it by the constitution, and refused to ratify the Instrument of Government. As the crisis undermined the state's ...
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The first parliament of the Protectorate would not accept the powers allotted to it by the constitution, and refused to ratify the Instrument of Government. As the crisis undermined the state's legitimacy, republican colonels in the army attempted a coup. I look closely at how Waller's A Panegyrick to My Lord Protector and Marvell's The First Anniversary responded to these events, particularly at the force of circumstance in the rhetoric of these poems and in their different perspectives on the Protectorate's cultural possibilities. Waller's Panegyrick articulates a historical opportunity to be seized, identifying a juncture at which interests might be reconceptualized to form the political foundations of a new, unifying imperium; The First Anniversary more plainly exposes the fragility of the Protectorate settlement. It unpacks institutional cruces that the Panegyrick elides, yet makes of the anniversary's uncertainties persuasions for readers to move beyond partisan entrenchments.Less
The first parliament of the Protectorate would not accept the powers allotted to it by the constitution, and refused to ratify the Instrument of Government. As the crisis undermined the state's legitimacy, republican colonels in the army attempted a coup. I look closely at how Waller's A Panegyrick to My Lord Protector and Marvell's The First Anniversary responded to these events, particularly at the force of circumstance in the rhetoric of these poems and in their different perspectives on the Protectorate's cultural possibilities. Waller's Panegyrick articulates a historical opportunity to be seized, identifying a juncture at which interests might be reconceptualized to form the political foundations of a new, unifying imperium; The First Anniversary more plainly exposes the fragility of the Protectorate settlement. It unpacks institutional cruces that the Panegyrick elides, yet makes of the anniversary's uncertainties persuasions for readers to move beyond partisan entrenchments.
Edward Holberton
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199544585
- eISBN:
- 9780191719981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199544585.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter looks at two wedding entertainments written by Waller and Marvell for the weddings of Cromwell's daughters in the autumn of 1657. It re-examines the performance of masques under the ...
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This chapter looks at two wedding entertainments written by Waller and Marvell for the weddings of Cromwell's daughters in the autumn of 1657. It re-examines the performance of masques under the Protectorate, arguing that while the conditions of performance during the 1650s were certainly different from previous decades, the Protectorate elite's supposed antipathy to such entertainments is really little more than a construct of royalist discourse. The wedding masques reflect upon these changing circumstances, of both courtly entertainment and dynastic marriage, to invest the matches with a sense of future growth. In the case of Marvell's masque, deft ironies tease open the conditions of the marriage's present and future success, to suggest not only the auspiciousness, but the fragility, of the dynastic settlement being built.Less
This chapter looks at two wedding entertainments written by Waller and Marvell for the weddings of Cromwell's daughters in the autumn of 1657. It re-examines the performance of masques under the Protectorate, arguing that while the conditions of performance during the 1650s were certainly different from previous decades, the Protectorate elite's supposed antipathy to such entertainments is really little more than a construct of royalist discourse. The wedding masques reflect upon these changing circumstances, of both courtly entertainment and dynastic marriage, to invest the matches with a sense of future growth. In the case of Marvell's masque, deft ironies tease open the conditions of the marriage's present and future success, to suggest not only the auspiciousness, but the fragility, of the dynastic settlement being built.
Edward Holberton
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199544585
- eISBN:
- 9780191719981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199544585.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter reads elegies for Cromwell against the disintegration of the Protectorate and the staging of an elaborate, anachronistic, state funeral. It surveys the broadside elegies that appeared ...
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This chapter reads elegies for Cromwell against the disintegration of the Protectorate and the staging of an elaborate, anachronistic, state funeral. It surveys the broadside elegies that appeared soon after Cromwell's death, which prematurely interpreted the organization of a quasi-royal heraldic funeral as a return to traditional dynastic order and values. Only a broadside by Waller questions the stability of the first Protector's cultural legacy. As army unrest developed, later elegies by Marvell, Sprat, and Dryden find that the funeral pageantry fails to provide a coherent focus for their disappointment, fears, and hopes for renewal. In various ways these works distance themselves from the spectacle and its intimations of traditional orders re-established. They probe the hyperbole and scripted rites of mourning in search of Cromwell's real cultural legacy: the institutional foundations on which a new Protectorate can be built and the limitations that it must negotiate.Less
This chapter reads elegies for Cromwell against the disintegration of the Protectorate and the staging of an elaborate, anachronistic, state funeral. It surveys the broadside elegies that appeared soon after Cromwell's death, which prematurely interpreted the organization of a quasi-royal heraldic funeral as a return to traditional dynastic order and values. Only a broadside by Waller questions the stability of the first Protector's cultural legacy. As army unrest developed, later elegies by Marvell, Sprat, and Dryden find that the funeral pageantry fails to provide a coherent focus for their disappointment, fears, and hopes for renewal. In various ways these works distance themselves from the spectacle and its intimations of traditional orders re-established. They probe the hyperbole and scripted rites of mourning in search of Cromwell's real cultural legacy: the institutional foundations on which a new Protectorate can be built and the limitations that it must negotiate.
Nicholas Mcdowell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278008
- eISBN:
- 9780191707810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278008.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This introductory chapter emphasizes how Andrew Marvell the lyric poet has been divided in scholarship from Andrew Marvell the political poet. One of the goals of the book is to recover a social ...
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This introductory chapter emphasizes how Andrew Marvell the lyric poet has been divided in scholarship from Andrew Marvell the political poet. One of the goals of the book is to recover a social context for the early Marvell that can account for both the origins and audience of the lyric verse and the early political poems. This introduction surveys critical representations of Marvell as a solitary and private poet and juxtaposes these with evidence of his friendships with other poets after he had returned to England in 1646/7 from his travels on the continent. It also emphasizes the social function of poetry and its relationship with patronage for a man of Marvell's background and education in the 17th century.Less
This introductory chapter emphasizes how Andrew Marvell the lyric poet has been divided in scholarship from Andrew Marvell the political poet. One of the goals of the book is to recover a social context for the early Marvell that can account for both the origins and audience of the lyric verse and the early political poems. This introduction surveys critical representations of Marvell as a solitary and private poet and juxtaposes these with evidence of his friendships with other poets after he had returned to England in 1646/7 from his travels on the continent. It also emphasizes the social function of poetry and its relationship with patronage for a man of Marvell's background and education in the 17th century.
Nicholas Mcdowell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278008
- eISBN:
- 9780191707810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278008.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This chapter discusses the talented circle of poets who gathered under the patronage of the wealthy royalist gentleman Thomas Stanley in the aftermath of the first civil war. Returning from a ...
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This chapter discusses the talented circle of poets who gathered under the patronage of the wealthy royalist gentleman Thomas Stanley in the aftermath of the first civil war. Returning from a four-year grand tour Stanley based himself in the Inns of Court in London and turned his rooms in the Middle Temple into a meeting place for poets such as Richard Lovelace, John Hall, James Shirley and Edward Sherburne. The circle was particularly interested in translation of classical, neo-Latin and continental verse, and called itself the ‘Order of the Black Riband’ to commemorate the king's defeat. This chapter recovers Marvell's friendship with Hall and Lovelace and argues that some of Marvell's early lyrics should be placed in the context of the culture of friendly experimentation and literary patronage in Stanley's circle. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is discussed extensively as a test case for Marvell's association with the circle.Less
This chapter discusses the talented circle of poets who gathered under the patronage of the wealthy royalist gentleman Thomas Stanley in the aftermath of the first civil war. Returning from a four-year grand tour Stanley based himself in the Inns of Court in London and turned his rooms in the Middle Temple into a meeting place for poets such as Richard Lovelace, John Hall, James Shirley and Edward Sherburne. The circle was particularly interested in translation of classical, neo-Latin and continental verse, and called itself the ‘Order of the Black Riband’ to commemorate the king's defeat. This chapter recovers Marvell's friendship with Hall and Lovelace and argues that some of Marvell's early lyrics should be placed in the context of the culture of friendly experimentation and literary patronage in Stanley's circle. ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is discussed extensively as a test case for Marvell's association with the circle.
Nicholas Mcdowell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278008
- eISBN:
- 9780191707810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278008.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This chapter sets Marvell's two of published occasional poems of 1648–9 in the context of the literary community around Stanley in London. The first section examines John Hall's career as a ...
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This chapter sets Marvell's two of published occasional poems of 1648–9 in the context of the literary community around Stanley in London. The first section examines John Hall's career as a Parliamentarian propagandist and shows how he followed Milton in seeking to convince his literary friends to support a royalist–Independent alliance against the Presbyterians. The second section reads Marvell's An Elegy Upon the Death of My Lord Francis Villiers as concerned with similar themes of Lovelace's post-war verse––the destruction of court culture and the future for poetry and wit in a Puritan society. The third section is the most extensive interpretation to date of Marvell's verse epistle ‘To His Noble Friend Mr Richard Lovelace’, a poem which brings together central themes of the previous chapters and reveals Marvell's allegiance to the cause of wit above the defeated cause of the king.Less
This chapter sets Marvell's two of published occasional poems of 1648–9 in the context of the literary community around Stanley in London. The first section examines John Hall's career as a Parliamentarian propagandist and shows how he followed Milton in seeking to convince his literary friends to support a royalist–Independent alliance against the Presbyterians. The second section reads Marvell's An Elegy Upon the Death of My Lord Francis Villiers as concerned with similar themes of Lovelace's post-war verse––the destruction of court culture and the future for poetry and wit in a Puritan society. The third section is the most extensive interpretation to date of Marvell's verse epistle ‘To His Noble Friend Mr Richard Lovelace’, a poem which brings together central themes of the previous chapters and reveals Marvell's allegiance to the cause of wit above the defeated cause of the king.
Nicholas Mcdowell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278008
- eISBN:
- 9780191707810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278008.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This chapter begins with the fortunes of the Stanley circle in the aftermath of regicide by exploring their involvement in a volume of elegies for Henry, Lord Hastings, which is also an indirect ...
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This chapter begins with the fortunes of the Stanley circle in the aftermath of regicide by exploring their involvement in a volume of elegies for Henry, Lord Hastings, which is also an indirect lament for the death of the king. Hall and Marvell both contribute elegies, even though Hall was by now a paid propagandist for the Commonwealth government. The rest of the chapter addresses the ‘Horatian Ode’ and relates it to the new patronage environment of post-regicide England. Former royalists were persuaded by John Hall to continue their literary activities under the new government, and the ‘Ode’ is seen as a meditation by Marvell on the choices open to the poet in this brave new world. The echoes of the poem embedded in early Restoration writing by Dryden and Cowley show that the poem circulated and was read as a bid for Cromwellian patronage.Less
This chapter begins with the fortunes of the Stanley circle in the aftermath of regicide by exploring their involvement in a volume of elegies for Henry, Lord Hastings, which is also an indirect lament for the death of the king. Hall and Marvell both contribute elegies, even though Hall was by now a paid propagandist for the Commonwealth government. The rest of the chapter addresses the ‘Horatian Ode’ and relates it to the new patronage environment of post-regicide England. Former royalists were persuaded by John Hall to continue their literary activities under the new government, and the ‘Ode’ is seen as a meditation by Marvell on the choices open to the poet in this brave new world. The echoes of the poem embedded in early Restoration writing by Dryden and Cowley show that the poem circulated and was read as a bid for Cromwellian patronage.
Nicholas Mcdowell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278008
- eISBN:
- 9780191707810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278008.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
The concluding chapter focuses on Marvell's satire ‘Tom May's Death’, the allegiance which has long puzzled scholars given its apparently royalist sentiment but date of composition after the ...
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The concluding chapter focuses on Marvell's satire ‘Tom May's Death’, the allegiance which has long puzzled scholars given its apparently royalist sentiment but date of composition after the ‘Horatian Ode’. It is argued that the poem is written in the cause of wit, rather than royalism or republicanism, and so appropriate for an audience composed of former members of the Stanley circle. May's betrayal is of the muses; Marvell fears the same charge may be levelled at him. The echoes of the poem in the 1650s verse of Lovelace and Alexander Brome, another ‘Cavalier’ poet involved with the Stanley circle, offer suggestions as to how ‘Tom May's Death’ was read by royalist contemporaries, and how they reacted to Marvell's own pro-Cromwellian verse.Less
The concluding chapter focuses on Marvell's satire ‘Tom May's Death’, the allegiance which has long puzzled scholars given its apparently royalist sentiment but date of composition after the ‘Horatian Ode’. It is argued that the poem is written in the cause of wit, rather than royalism or republicanism, and so appropriate for an audience composed of former members of the Stanley circle. May's betrayal is of the muses; Marvell fears the same charge may be levelled at him. The echoes of the poem in the 1650s verse of Lovelace and Alexander Brome, another ‘Cavalier’ poet involved with the Stanley circle, offer suggestions as to how ‘Tom May's Death’ was read by royalist contemporaries, and how they reacted to Marvell's own pro-Cromwellian verse.
Richard Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195389579
- eISBN:
- 9780199866496
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389579.003.0019
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter is concerned with intertextual aspects of civil war literature and with the way such intertexts complicate and intensify the aesthetic response to the suffering and loss associated with ...
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This chapter is concerned with intertextual aspects of civil war literature and with the way such intertexts complicate and intensify the aesthetic response to the suffering and loss associated with civil discord, examining a disparate group of songs and poems that share a universalizing strategy for representing contemporary civil wars: works reflecting civil war in seventeenth‐century England, nineteenth‐century America, and twentieth‐century Spain. Authors considered include John Denham, Bob Dylan, Abraham Cowley, Andrew Marvell, Herman Melville, William Cullen Bryant, Richard Henry Stoddard, Robert Lowell, Federico García Lorca, Geoffrey Parsons, and Miklós Radnóti. This strategy is particularly salutary given the need for a literary response to reach readers on (or sympathetic to) both sides; otherwise it risks being propaganda.Less
This chapter is concerned with intertextual aspects of civil war literature and with the way such intertexts complicate and intensify the aesthetic response to the suffering and loss associated with civil discord, examining a disparate group of songs and poems that share a universalizing strategy for representing contemporary civil wars: works reflecting civil war in seventeenth‐century England, nineteenth‐century America, and twentieth‐century Spain. Authors considered include John Denham, Bob Dylan, Abraham Cowley, Andrew Marvell, Herman Melville, William Cullen Bryant, Richard Henry Stoddard, Robert Lowell, Federico García Lorca, Geoffrey Parsons, and Miklós Radnóti. This strategy is particularly salutary given the need for a literary response to reach readers on (or sympathetic to) both sides; otherwise it risks being propaganda.
Jason P. Rosenblatt
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199286133
- eISBN:
- 9780191713859
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199286133.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
In the midst of an age of prejudice, John Selden’s immense, neglected rabbinical works contain magnificent Hebrew scholarship that respects — to an extent remarkable for the times — the ...
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In the midst of an age of prejudice, John Selden’s immense, neglected rabbinical works contain magnificent Hebrew scholarship that respects — to an extent remarkable for the times — the self-understanding of Judaism. Scholars celebrated for their own broad and deep learning, including Grotius, Jonson, and Milton, gladly conceded Selden’s superiority. Although scholars have examined Selden (1584-1654) as a political theorist, legal and constitutional historian, and parliamentarian, this is the first book-length study of his rabbinic and especially talmudic publications, which take up most of the six folio volumes of his complete works and constitute his most mature scholarship. The book traces the cultural influence of these works on some early modern British poets and intellectuals, including Jonson, Milton, Andrew Marvell, James Harrington, Henry Stubbe, Nathanael Culverwel, Thomas Hobbes, and Isaac Newton. It explores some of the post-biblical Hebraic ideas that served as the foundation of Selden’s own thought, such as his identification of natural law with a set of universal divine laws of perpetual obligation pronounced by God to our first parents in paradise, and after the flood to the children of Noah. Selden’s discovery in the Talmud and in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah of shared moral rules in the natural, pre-civil state of humankind provides a basis for relationships among human beings anywhere in the world. The history of the religious toleration of Jews in England is incomplete without acknowledgment of the impact of Selden’s uncommonly generous Hebrew scholarship.Less
In the midst of an age of prejudice, John Selden’s immense, neglected rabbinical works contain magnificent Hebrew scholarship that respects — to an extent remarkable for the times — the self-understanding of Judaism. Scholars celebrated for their own broad and deep learning, including Grotius, Jonson, and Milton, gladly conceded Selden’s superiority. Although scholars have examined Selden (1584-1654) as a political theorist, legal and constitutional historian, and parliamentarian, this is the first book-length study of his rabbinic and especially talmudic publications, which take up most of the six folio volumes of his complete works and constitute his most mature scholarship. The book traces the cultural influence of these works on some early modern British poets and intellectuals, including Jonson, Milton, Andrew Marvell, James Harrington, Henry Stubbe, Nathanael Culverwel, Thomas Hobbes, and Isaac Newton. It explores some of the post-biblical Hebraic ideas that served as the foundation of Selden’s own thought, such as his identification of natural law with a set of universal divine laws of perpetual obligation pronounced by God to our first parents in paradise, and after the flood to the children of Noah. Selden’s discovery in the Talmud and in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah of shared moral rules in the natural, pre-civil state of humankind provides a basis for relationships among human beings anywhere in the world. The history of the religious toleration of Jews in England is incomplete without acknowledgment of the impact of Selden’s uncommonly generous Hebrew scholarship.
Derek Hirst and Steven N. Zwicker
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199655373
- eISBN:
- 9780191742118
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199655373.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This book studies the poetry and polemics of one of the greatest of early modern writers, a poet of immense lyric talent and political importance. The book situates these writings and this writer ...
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This book studies the poetry and polemics of one of the greatest of early modern writers, a poet of immense lyric talent and political importance. The book situates these writings and this writer within the patronage networks and political upheavals of mid-seventeenth-century England. It tracks his negotiations among personalities and events; it explores his idealizations, attachments, and subversions; and it speculates on the meaning of the narratives that he told of himself within his writings — what we call Andrew Marvell’s ‘imagined life’. The book draws the figure of this imagined life from the repeated traces that Marvell left of lyric yearning and satiric anger, and it suggests how these were rooted both in the body and in the imagination. The book sheds new light on some of Marvell’s most familiar poems — Upon Appleton House, The Garden, To His Coy Mistress, and An Horatian Ode; but at its centre is an extended reading of Marvell’s The unfortunate Lover, his least familiar and surely his most mysterious lyric, and his most sustained narrative of the self. By attending to the lyric, the polemical, and the parliamentary careers together, this book offers a reading of Marvell and his writings as an interpretable whole.Less
This book studies the poetry and polemics of one of the greatest of early modern writers, a poet of immense lyric talent and political importance. The book situates these writings and this writer within the patronage networks and political upheavals of mid-seventeenth-century England. It tracks his negotiations among personalities and events; it explores his idealizations, attachments, and subversions; and it speculates on the meaning of the narratives that he told of himself within his writings — what we call Andrew Marvell’s ‘imagined life’. The book draws the figure of this imagined life from the repeated traces that Marvell left of lyric yearning and satiric anger, and it suggests how these were rooted both in the body and in the imagination. The book sheds new light on some of Marvell’s most familiar poems — Upon Appleton House, The Garden, To His Coy Mistress, and An Horatian Ode; but at its centre is an extended reading of Marvell’s The unfortunate Lover, his least familiar and surely his most mysterious lyric, and his most sustained narrative of the self. By attending to the lyric, the polemical, and the parliamentary careers together, this book offers a reading of Marvell and his writings as an interpretable whole.
Blair Worden
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199230822
- eISBN:
- 9780191696480
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230822.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Milton Studies
This book takes a fresh approach to the literary biography of the two great poets of the Puritan Revolution, John Milton and Andrew Marvell. The book reconstructs the political contexts within which ...
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This book takes a fresh approach to the literary biography of the two great poets of the Puritan Revolution, John Milton and Andrew Marvell. The book reconstructs the political contexts within which Milton and Marvell wrote, and reassesses their writings against the background of volatile and dramatic changes of public mood and circumstance. Two figures are shown to have been prominent in their minds. First there is Oliver Cromwell, on whose character and decisions the future of the Puritan Revolution and of the nation rested, and whose ascent the two writers traced and assessed, in both cases with an acute ambivalence. The second is Marchamont Nedham, the pioneering journalist of the civil wars, a close friend of Milton and a man whose writings prove to be intimately linked to Marvell's. The high achievements of Milton and Marvell are shown to belong to a world of pressing political debate, which Nedham's ephemeral publications helped to shape. The book follows Marvell's transition from royalism to Cromwellianism. In Milton's case the profound effect on his outlook brought by the execution of King Charles I in 1649; his difficult and disillusioning relationship with the successive regimes of the Interregnum; and his attempt to come to terms, in his immortal poetry of the Restoration, with the failure of Puritan rule.Less
This book takes a fresh approach to the literary biography of the two great poets of the Puritan Revolution, John Milton and Andrew Marvell. The book reconstructs the political contexts within which Milton and Marvell wrote, and reassesses their writings against the background of volatile and dramatic changes of public mood and circumstance. Two figures are shown to have been prominent in their minds. First there is Oliver Cromwell, on whose character and decisions the future of the Puritan Revolution and of the nation rested, and whose ascent the two writers traced and assessed, in both cases with an acute ambivalence. The second is Marchamont Nedham, the pioneering journalist of the civil wars, a close friend of Milton and a man whose writings prove to be intimately linked to Marvell's. The high achievements of Milton and Marvell are shown to belong to a world of pressing political debate, which Nedham's ephemeral publications helped to shape. The book follows Marvell's transition from royalism to Cromwellianism. In Milton's case the profound effect on his outlook brought by the execution of King Charles I in 1649; his difficult and disillusioning relationship with the successive regimes of the Interregnum; and his attempt to come to terms, in his immortal poetry of the Restoration, with the failure of Puritan rule.
