The Modest Ambition of Andrew Marvell deals with the specific historical presences and pressures that led Marvell to devise his defenses of Richard Lovelace, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Fairfax, and John Milton. It also focuses on the poetic or formal response that Marvell makes to historical fact, not only in the strategies of his language, but also in the perceptible adjustments such strategies signal for his self-appointed role as poet-apologist.
This monograph studies how, across the Folio of 1681, Marvell's poems engage not merely with different kinds of loss and aspiration, but with experiences of both that were, in mid-seventeenth-century England, disturbingly new and unfamiliar. It particularly examines Marvell's preoccupation with the search for home, and with redefining the homeland, in times of civil upheaval. In doing so it traces his progression from being a poet who plays sophisticatedly with received myth to being one who is a national mythmaker in rivalry with his poetic contemporaries such as Waller and Davenant. Although focusing primarily on poems in the Folio of 1681, this book considers those poems in relation to others from the Marvell canon, including the Latin poems and the satires from the reign of Charles II. It closely considers them as well in relation to verse by poets from the classical past and the European, especially English, present.
First published in 1998, this title provides for the reader of the renowned metaphysical poet and politician a valuable reference and resource volume. It is a compendium of useful information for any reader of Andrew Marvell, including crucial biographical material, historical contextualisation, and details about his life’s work. The intention throughout is to enhance understanding and appreciation, without being exhaustive. The major portion of the volume, in both importance and size, is ‘A Marvell Dictionary’. Its entries are arranged alphabetically: they identify, describe and explain the most influential persons in Marvell’s life and works, as well as places, characters, allusions, ideas, concepts, individual words, phrases and literary terms that are relevant to a rounded appreciation of his poetry and prose. An Andrew Marvell Companion will prove invaluable for all students of English poetry and seventeenth-century political history.
This work provides a comprehensive account of the life and writings of Andrew Marvell (1621-78), as well as the reception of his work in the century after his death. A much-loved poet, a compelling controversialist, and once famous as a member of Parliament, Marvell's intersecting careers are here explored in detail. His biography is transformed with wide reference to print and manuscript sources, many of which are described for the first time in this useful resource for any student, historian, literary scholar or general reader interested in the life and works of this great writer.
This text studies the poetry and polemics of early modern writer Andrew Marvell. It situates Marvell and his writings within the patronage networks and political upheavals of mid-17th century England.
Marvell: The Writer in Public Life is substantially revised from Professor Patterson's well received 1978 study, including a new introduction and new chapter on Marvell and secret history. This important study provides an up to date perspective on a writer still thought of merely as the author of lyric and pastoral poems. It looks at both Marvell's political poetry and his often neglected political prose, revealing Marvell's life long commitment to writing about the values and standards of public life and follows his often dangerous writerly activities on behalf of freedom of conscience and constitutional government.
This book provides an accessible account of the poet and politician Andrew Marvell’s life (1621-1678) and of the great events which found reflection in his work and in which he and his writings eventually played a part. At the same time, considerable space is afforded to reflecting deeply on the modes and meanings of Marvell’s art, redressing the balance of recent biography and criticism which has tended to dwell on the public and political aspects of this literary life at the expense of lyric invention and lyric possibility. Moving beyond the familiar terms of imitation and influence, the book aims at reconstructing an embodied history of reading and writing, acts undertaken within a series of complex physical and social environments, from the Hull Charterhouse to the coffee houses and print shops of Restoration London. Care has been taken to cover the whole of Marvell’s career, in verse and prose, even as the book places the lyric achievement at the centre of its vision.
A fresh reading of Marvell's most important works, exploring the variety and complexity of his approaches to contemporary religious and political events. Andrew Marvell's celebrated poetic ambivalence to the philosophical, political and religious controversies of mid-seventeenth century England is the subject of this book, which includes major new historical readings of his most important lyrics and political verse, incorporating material from hitherto unpublished contemporary manuscripts. It places the poetic imagination of Marvell and his contemporaries - such as John Milton, Henry Vaughan, Abraham Cowley, Margaret Cavendish, William Davenant, and Thomas Fairfax - into the context of the turbulent public events of the time; and demonstrates Marvell's hitherto unnoticed connection with the liberal, rational and sceptical thinkers associated with the Great Tew circle. It also argues that Marvell's "middle way" in theology is bound up with his ambivalence towards the Calvinist God. Takashi Yoshinaka took his D.Phil. at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of English in the Graduate School of Letters, Hiroshima University.
This book is about the things which could unite, rather than divide, poets during the English Civil Wars: friendship, patronage relations, literary admiration, and anti-clericalism. 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'.
