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.
Edward Paleit
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199602988
- eISBN:
- 9780191744761
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602988.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, British and Irish History: BCE to 500CE
Chapter Six is devoted to Thomas May’s engagements with Lucan of the late 1620s, with particular reference to his translation (published 1626 to 1627) and The Tragedy of Cleopatra (published 1639, ...
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Chapter Six is devoted to Thomas May’s engagements with Lucan of the late 1620s, with particular reference to his translation (published 1626 to 1627) and The Tragedy of Cleopatra (published 1639, but first performed in 1626). It begins by situating May’s works in relation to Ben Jonson’s literary circle, detailing his friendship with figures such as John Selden, John Vaughan or Edward Hyde (later Earl of Clarendon). It argues that May chiefly assimilated the demise of the Roman republic to the fears among some members of the English political order that Charles’s increasingly absolutist style would put an end to laws, liberties and Parliaments, but that he was divided about how to react to these developments.Less
Chapter Six is devoted to Thomas May’s engagements with Lucan of the late 1620s, with particular reference to his translation (published 1626 to 1627) and The Tragedy of Cleopatra (published 1639, but first performed in 1626). It begins by situating May’s works in relation to Ben Jonson’s literary circle, detailing his friendship with figures such as John Selden, John Vaughan or Edward Hyde (later Earl of Clarendon). It argues that May chiefly assimilated the demise of the Roman republic to the fears among some members of the English political order that Charles’s increasingly absolutist style would put an end to laws, liberties and Parliaments, but that he was divided about how to react to these developments.
Edward Paleit
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199602988
- eISBN:
- 9780191744761
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602988.003.0008
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, British and Irish History: BCE to 500CE
Chapter Seven closes the study by examining the responses of three writers – Samuel Daniel, Thomas May and Abraham Cowley – to the question of Lucan’s ending. It shows that each were concerned as ...
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Chapter Seven closes the study by examining the responses of three writers – Samuel Daniel, Thomas May and Abraham Cowley – to the question of Lucan’s ending. It shows that each were concerned as much with the theme of endlessness raised within Lucan’s text, as with the notoriously unfinished state of his narrative. Moving from Daniel’s own unfinished Lucanian text, The Civil Wars, to May’s Continuation of 1630 and later Supplementum of 1640 and then Cowley’s The Civil War (early 1640s), another unfinished work, I argue that a shared concern about how to end their narratives reflected anxieties about the shape and indeed design of history, especially English history, and a recognition of the inadequacy or mendaciousness of the formal structures of literary narrative.Less
Chapter Seven closes the study by examining the responses of three writers – Samuel Daniel, Thomas May and Abraham Cowley – to the question of Lucan’s ending. It shows that each were concerned as much with the theme of endlessness raised within Lucan’s text, as with the notoriously unfinished state of his narrative. Moving from Daniel’s own unfinished Lucanian text, The Civil Wars, to May’s Continuation of 1630 and later Supplementum of 1640 and then Cowley’s The Civil War (early 1640s), another unfinished work, I argue that a shared concern about how to end their narratives reflected anxieties about the shape and indeed design of history, especially English history, and a recognition of the inadequacy or mendaciousness of the formal structures of literary narrative.
Edward Paleit
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199602988
- eISBN:
- 9780191744761
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602988.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, British and Irish History: BCE to 500CE
War, Liberty and Caesar is chiefly an attempt to address aspects of early modern English literary and political culture between ca. 1580 to 1650, through the sometimes illuminating prism ...
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War, Liberty and Caesar is chiefly an attempt to address aspects of early modern English literary and political culture between ca. 1580 to 1650, through the sometimes illuminating prism of the reception of a classical text. It is also a study of that text itself, through the medium of early modern engagements. It examines and interprets responses to Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile across many different forms of discourse, trying to balance an account of the cultural assumptions and practices which shaped Lucan for early modern readers with a sense of the historical specificity of individual engagements, and an evolving narrative of pre-Civil War English writing. It argues that there were many sides to reading Lucan in the period but that collectively many if not most readers used Lucan to express aspects of a troubled, changing political experience. It examines readings of Lucan by a number of important early modern English authors, including Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, Christopher Marlowe, Philip Massinger and John Fletcher, Abraham Cowley, and Thomas May. The number and variety of engagements with Lucan in the period suggest it could be called an ‘age of Lucan’.Less
War, Liberty and Caesar is chiefly an attempt to address aspects of early modern English literary and political culture between ca. 1580 to 1650, through the sometimes illuminating prism of the reception of a classical text. It is also a study of that text itself, through the medium of early modern engagements. It examines and interprets responses to Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile across many different forms of discourse, trying to balance an account of the cultural assumptions and practices which shaped Lucan for early modern readers with a sense of the historical specificity of individual engagements, and an evolving narrative of pre-Civil War English writing. It argues that there were many sides to reading Lucan in the period but that collectively many if not most readers used Lucan to express aspects of a troubled, changing political experience. It examines readings of Lucan by a number of important early modern English authors, including Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, Christopher Marlowe, Philip Massinger and John Fletcher, Abraham Cowley, and Thomas May. The number and variety of engagements with Lucan in the period suggest it could be called an ‘age of Lucan’.
Edward Paleit
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199602988
- eISBN:
- 9780191744761
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602988.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, British and Irish History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter discusses how the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, particularly in early sixteenth-century Italy, revived ancient concerns over Lucan’s generic status, and shows how the friction ...
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This chapter discusses how the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, particularly in early sixteenth-century Italy, revived ancient concerns over Lucan’s generic status, and shows how the friction between the categories of ‘poetry’ and ‘history’ - however confusingly defined and understood - continued to affect English responses to the Bellum Ciuile until well into mid-seventeenth century England. Among other engagements it examines in detail the role of the poetry-history debate over Lucan in relation to Samuel Daniel’s complex and unfinished verse history The Civil Wars (ca. 1595 – 1609), Thomas Farnaby’s commentary on Lucan of 1618, and Thomas May’s responses to Lucan of the late 1620s.Less
This chapter discusses how the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics, particularly in early sixteenth-century Italy, revived ancient concerns over Lucan’s generic status, and shows how the friction between the categories of ‘poetry’ and ‘history’ - however confusingly defined and understood - continued to affect English responses to the Bellum Ciuile until well into mid-seventeenth century England. Among other engagements it examines in detail the role of the poetry-history debate over Lucan in relation to Samuel Daniel’s complex and unfinished verse history The Civil Wars (ca. 1595 – 1609), Thomas Farnaby’s commentary on Lucan of 1618, and Thomas May’s responses to Lucan of the late 1620s.