|
|
| |
|
| |
| Introduction to English Literature(2020-1) |
| |
|
|
Andrew Marvell 's life and work are chiefly marked by his extraordinary range and versatility. Initially a writer of lyric poetry, most of which was written between the 1640s and early 1650s, his work transmuted into biting satirical verse and prose reflecting his increasing political involvement.
He was born at Winestead-in-Holderness, Yorkshire on 31 March 1621, the son of an Anglican clergyman who in 1624 became Lecturer of Holy Trinity Church, Hull. Educated at Hull Grammar School Marvell, in his thirteenth year, went up to Trinity College, Cambridge where he was made a Scholar on 13 April 1638, the same year that his mother Anne (née Pease) died. In March 1639 he took his BA degree but in 1641 the death of his father interrupted his MA which remained incomplete. During his eight years at Cambridge Marvell had published his first verses and acquired a wide linguistic training, reading poets such as Horace and Juvenal whose work was to influence his later poems. His contemporary John Aubrey , in his Brief Lives , concluded that 'for Latin verses there was no man could come into competition with him'. One interesting rumour attached to Marvell at this time claims that he was briefly converted to Roman Catholicism by Jesuits in London but was returned to the University by his father.
In 1641 Marvell undertook a period of travel, visiting Holland, France, Italy and Spain. Various images and themes in his poetry can be readily traced to the European scenes and influences which he encountered during this absence from an England then engaged in the miseries of the Civil War.
In 1648 Marvell returned to England and wrote a number of poems which expressed moderately Royalist sympathies, for example 'To His Noble Friend Mr Richard Lovelace' and his elegy 'Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings'. However by the summer of 1650, when he composed 'An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland' he seemed to express a careful approval for Cromwell's leadership. In fact during the Civil War Marvell appears to have switched between Royalist and Parliamentary sides with a considerable ease. However it must be noted that such shifts in allegiance were not uncommon during such a period of national crisis and his poetry never eulogised when cautious admiration would serve instead.
Early in 1651 Marvell left London, and it is reasonable to ascribe to the period prior to this his more traditional and Cavalier lyrics (including 'Daphnis and Chloe', 'The Nymph complaining for the death of her Faun' and 'The Unfortunate Lover'). Returning to his native Yorkshire he became tutor in modern languages to Mary Fairfax, the twelve year old daughter of Sir Thomas Fairfax (1621-71) who had retired to Nun Appleton House following his resignation as Lord General of the Parliamentary forces. Here Marvell found the inspiration for some of his most exceptional poetry, including the remarkably sustained 'Upon Appleton House, to My Lord Fairfax', a poem which meditates upon the tensions between the retired and the active life.
In 1653 Marvell emerged into a more active public role having been championed by John Milton who put him forward for government service. It is generally felt that Marvell virtually gave up writing lyrical poetry at this time, becoming personal tutor to Cromwell's ward and prospective son-in-law William Dutton and residing at Eton, before accompanying Dutton abroad in 1656.
On 2nd September 1657 Marvell achieved his earlier ambition and was appointed to assist the Latin Secretary to the Council of State, John Milton , who had been blind since 1652. After the Restoration he seems to have been useful in saving Milton from a protracted jail sentence. The friendship lasted until Milton 's death in 1674, and the second edition of Paradise Lost published in this same year was prefaced by a set of commendatory verses by Marvell. In 1658 Marvell was elected as one of two members of Parliament for Hull, serving in this capacity for the next twenty years until his death. His view of Cromwell seems to have been less supportive following his election to Parliament and in April 1660 he was called to the Parliament that restored Charles II. In November that year he began the newsletters, of which nearly three hundred survive, that he wrote to his Hull constituents, chronicling the debates in Parliament and keeping them up to date with his representation of their interests. He appears to have been one of the few Parliamentary members to receive a regular salary from his constituency.
From 1662-3 he was absent from the House of Commons, travelling to Holland for eleven months and then serving as Secretary to the Earl of Carlisle in an embassy to Russia, Sweden and Denmark, finally returning to England in 1665, when he became involved in the campaign against Clarendon which led to the impeachment of the former Chancellor in October 1667. Marvell's writing was now largely satirical in nature. In 1667 he wrote his biting The Last Instructions to a Painter (published 1689), a series of verses attacking those influencing affairs of state and the corruption of the Court during the Second Dutch War. Although Marvell had written satiric poems prior to the Restoration they had not been the political satires that sealed his reputation for the next hundred years as a forthright antagonist to the abuse of power. There is no solid evidence that Marvell was ever a member of any dissenting religious group, yet during the last six years of his life he defended their right to toleration with personal zeal.
Firmly opposed to the Cabal government Marvell next wrote the pamphlet The Rehearsal Transpros'd (Part I, 1672, Part II, 1673) which took its title from the Duke of Buckingham 's popular farce. Its hero, Mr Bayes, signified Samuel Parker the future Bishop of Oxford who had attacked the Declaration of Indulgence, and it was for this denunciatory work that Marvell was most famous in his own time. Although Charles II was not directly attacked in these two major satiric works, increasingly during the 1670s Marvell aimed his discontent at the king, particularly concerning both his failure to carry through his policy concerning toleration and his military inefficiency. Three other pamphlets followed, Mr Smirke 1676, Remarks upon a Late Disingenuous Discourse 1678 and An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England 1677. This latter work was a powerful plea for religious toleration as well as a searing testament to his disillusionment with the Stuart regime. Marvell brought something entirely new to the pamphlet wars so common in the seventeenth century. His popular style looked forward to a more Augustan method of managing antagonism.
In 1677 he took a house in Great Russell Street, London, with the aid of his former landlady Mary Palmer, in order to conceal two bankrupt friends from their creditors. On 10 August 1678 Marvell died and was buried on the 18th inside the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields. He left no will. Mary Palmer, in league with his two friends who wished to recover money which Marvell had deposited for them in his name, convinced a court that she had secretly been Marvell's wife. In 1681 an edition of his poetry was published with a certificate signed by 'Mary Marvell' authenticating the contents. It is to this act of duplicity that we owe the survival of Marvell's best known lyrics.
Early editions of his poems (up to and including the Reverend A.B. Grosart's edition of 1872) all emphasise Marvell the patriot and politician. He was a major figure in the series of political satires first published in 1689, Poems on Affairs of State. However, there was some Romantic interest in Marvell's lyric poetry, and throughout the nineteenth century his reputation as a poet increased; he was celebrated as 'the green poet', a lyricist of pastoral simplicity. It was not until the twentieth century under the influence of critics such as T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis that Marvell was appreciated most fully as a poet rather than a Restoration satirist.
His reputation has steadily soared since T.S. Eliot 's seminal essay 'Andrew Marvell' in the Times Literary Supplement in 1921, and is reflected in the sheer volume of criticism on his life and work. The standard scholarly edition of the poetry is H.M. Margoliouth's Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell (1927), revised in 1971 by Pierre Legouis and E.E. Duncan Jones. Pierre Legouis's Andrew Marvell: Poet, Puritan, Patriot is the fullest biographical survey although a more recent study World Enough and Time: The Life of Andrew Marvell (2000) by the Welsh poet Nicholas Murray is a solid, popular work. Scholarly critical studies on the work include Rosalie Colie's 'My Ecchoing Song': Andrew Marvell's Poetry of Criticism (1970) which provides extensive analyses of key poems, and Robert Wilcher's Andrew Marvell (1985), which serves as a useful introduction to various critical approaches to the work.
An enigmatic poet, his work is notable for its range and eclecticism. Harold Bloom has named him the most 'unaffiliated major poet in the language'. Broad categorisation is misleading, for although his poetry is clearly influenced by Spenser and bears relations to that of Donne and Jonson it belongs to no one school. Often labelled a metaphysical poet for his wit and the complexity of his vision, Marvell's writing contrasts with the poetry of Donne and his successors in being more fully embroiled in the political issues of the period. For this reason his life and work can be said to be intimately related. Marvell utilised the literary traditions available to him and recreated them to suit his own purposes, combining a mastery of varying styles rather than relying solely on one. His lyric poetry, though clearly related to that of Jonson, Carew and Lovelace, is nevertheless highly individual and whereas Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan and Traherne tend towards a more overtly spiritual vision, his work reflects much more emphatically the pressures of his milieu.
One of Marvell's most notable features is his ability to present a plurality of views using ironic detachment and ambiguity, to reconcile opposites in an age that was marked by its shifting political situation. This is why Marvell is labelled both Royalist and Parliamentarian, non-conformist and Anglican. This complexity of vision is reflected in his ability to adopt and transform a variety of literary styles. His love lyrics, though reminiscent of the Spenserians, are also expressive of that contemplative mode more usually associated with Vaughan and Herbert. His most famous poem in this tradition is 'To His Coy Mistress', written in the carpe diem mode but reaching profounder depths with its reflection upon the paradoxical nature of time. In his pastoral 'Mower' poems of the 1650s, in a departure from Milton's Lycidas, Marvell substitutes a mower for the shepherd and dramatises the opposition between wild nature and the man-made garden.
Dryden disliked Marvell and introduced a tradition that was utterly different in spirit: in fact, Marvell was entirely neglected by the Augustans except for Swift who was influenced by his prose satire. For this reason it is possible to regard Marvell as marking the very end of a tradition.
AP, 2000 |
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
Andrew Marvell 's life and work are chiefly marked by his extraordinary range and versatility. Initially a writer of lyric poetry, most of which was written between the 1640s and early 1650s, his work transmuted into biting satirical verse and prose reflecting his increasing political involvement.
He was born at Winestead-in-Holderness, Yorkshire on 31 March 1621, the son of an Anglican clergyman who in 1624 became Lecturer of Holy Trinity Church, Hull. Educated at Hull Grammar School Marvell, in his thirteenth year, went up to Trinity College, Cambridge where he was made a Scholar on 13 April 1638, the same year that his mother Anne (née Pease) died. In March 1639 he took his BA degree but in 1641 the death of his father interrupted his MA which remained incomplete. During his eight years at Cambridge Marvell had published his first verses and acquired a wide linguistic training, reading poets such as Horace and Juvenal whose work was to influence his later poems. His contemporary John Aubrey , in his Brief Lives , concluded that 'for Latin verses there was no man could come into competition with him'. One interesting rumour attached to Marvell at this time claims that he was briefly converted to Roman Catholicism by Jesuits in London but was returned to the University by his father.
In 1641 Marvell undertook a period of travel, visiting Holland, France, Italy and Spain. Various images and themes in his poetry can be readily traced to the European scenes and influences which he encountered during this absence from an England then engaged in the miseries of the Civil War.
In 1648 Marvell returned to England and wrote a number of poems which expressed moderately Royalist sympathies, for example 'To His Noble Friend Mr Richard Lovelace' and his elegy 'Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings'. However by the summer of 1650, when he composed 'An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland' he seemed to express a careful approval for Cromwell's leadership. In fact during the Civil War Marvell appears to have switched between Royalist and Parliamentary sides with a considerable ease. However it must be noted that such shifts in allegiance were not uncommon during such a period of national crisis and his poetry never eulogised when cautious admiration would serve instead.
Early in 1651 Marvell left London, and it is reasonable to ascribe to the period prior to this his more traditional and Cavalier lyrics (including 'Daphnis and Chloe', 'The Nymph complaining for the death of her Faun' and 'The Unfortunate Lover'). Returning to his native Yorkshire he became tutor in modern languages to Mary Fairfax, the twelve year old daughter of Sir Thomas Fairfax (1621-71) who had retired to Nun Appleton House following his resignation as Lord General of the Parliamentary forces. Here Marvell found the inspiration for some of his most exceptional poetry, including the remarkably sustained 'Upon Appleton House, to My Lord Fairfax', a poem which meditates upon the tensions between the retired and the active life.
In 1653 Marvell emerged into a more active public role having been championed by John Milton who put him forward for government service. It is generally felt that Marvell virtually gave up writing lyrical poetry at this time, becoming personal tutor to Cromwell's ward and prospective son-in-law William Dutton and residing at Eton, before accompanying Dutton abroad in 1656.
On 2nd September 1657 Marvell achieved his earlier ambition and was appointed to assist the Latin Secretary to the Council of State, John Milton , who had been blind since 1652. After the Restoration he seems to have been useful in saving Milton from a protracted jail sentence. The friendship lasted until Milton 's death in 1674, and the second edition of Paradise Lost published in this same year was prefaced by a set of commendatory verses by Marvell. In 1658 Marvell was elected as one of two members of Parliament for Hull, serving in this capacity for the next twenty years until his death. His view of Cromwell seems to have been less supportive following his election to Parliament and in April 1660 he was called to the Parliament that restored Charles II. In November that year he began the newsletters, of which nearly three hundred survive, that he wrote to his Hull constituents, chronicling the debates in Parliament and keeping them up to date with his representation of their interests. He appears to have been one of the few Parliamentary members to receive a regular salary from his constituency.
From 1662-3 he was absent from the House of Commons, travelling to Holland for eleven months and then serving as Secretary to the Earl of Carlisle in an embassy to Russia, Sweden and Denmark, finally returning to England in 1665, when he became involved in the campaign against Clarendon which led to the impeachment of the former Chancellor in October 1667. Marvell's writing was now largely satirical in nature. In 1667 he wrote his biting The Last Instructions to a Painter (published 1689), a series of verses attacking those influencing affairs of state and the corruption of the Court during the Second Dutch War. Although Marvell had written satiric poems prior to the Restoration they had not been the political satires that sealed his reputation for the next hundred years as a forthright antagonist to the abuse of power. There is no solid evidence that Marvell was ever a member of any dissenting religious group, yet during the last six years of his life he defended their right to toleration with personal zeal.
Firmly opposed to the Cabal government Marvell next wrote the pamphlet The Rehearsal Transpros'd (Part I, 1672, Part II, 1673) which took its title from the Duke of Buckingham 's popular farce. Its hero, Mr Bayes, signified Samuel Parker the future Bishop of Oxford who had attacked the Declaration of Indulgence, and it was for this denunciatory work that Marvell was most famous in his own time. Although Charles II was not directly attacked in these two major satiric works, increasingly during the 1670s Marvell aimed his discontent at the king, particularly concerning both his failure to carry through his policy concerning toleration and his military inefficiency. Three other pamphlets followed, Mr Smirke 1676, Remarks upon a Late Disingenuous Discourse 1678 and An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England 1677. This latter work was a powerful plea for religious toleration as well as a searing testament to his disillusionment with the Stuart regime. Marvell brought something entirely new to the pamphlet wars so common in the seventeenth century. His popular style looked forward to a more Augustan method of managing antagonism.
In 1677 he took a house in Great Russell Street, London, with the aid of his former landlady Mary Palmer, in order to conceal two bankrupt friends from their creditors. On 10 August 1678 Marvell died and was buried on the 18th inside the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields. He left no will. Mary Palmer, in league with his two friends who wished to recover money which Marvell had deposited for them in his name, convinced a court that she had secretly been Marvell's wife. In 1681 an edition of his poetry was published with a certificate signed by 'Mary Marvell' authenticating the contents. It is to this act of duplicity that we owe the survival of Marvell's best known lyrics.
Early editions of his poems (up to and including the Reverend A.B. Grosart's edition of 1872) all emphasise Marvell the patriot and politician. He was a major figure in the series of political satires first published in 1689, Poems on Affairs of State. However, there was some Romantic interest in Marvell's lyric poetry, and throughout the nineteenth century his reputation as a poet increased; he was celebrated as 'the green poet', a lyricist of pastoral simplicity. It was not until the twentieth century under the influence of critics such as T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis that Marvell was appreciated most fully as a poet rather than a Restoration satirist.
His reputation has steadily soared since T.S. Eliot 's seminal essay 'Andrew Marvell' in the Times Literary Supplement in 1921, and is reflected in the sheer volume of criticism on his life and work. The standard scholarly edition of the poetry is H.M. Margoliouth's Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell (1927), revised in 1971 by Pierre Legouis and E.E. Duncan Jones. Pierre Legouis's Andrew Marvell: Poet, Puritan, Patriot is the fullest biographical survey although a more recent study World Enough and Time: The Life of Andrew Marvell (2000) by the Welsh poet Nicholas Murray is a solid, popular work. Scholarly critical studies on the work include Rosalie Colie's 'My Ecchoing Song': Andrew Marvell's Poetry of Criticism (1970) which provides extensive analyses of key poems, and Robert Wilcher's Andrew Marvell (1985), which serves as a useful introduction to various critical approaches to the work.
An enigmatic poet, his work is notable for its range and eclecticism. Harold Bloom has named him the most 'unaffiliated major poet in the language'. Broad categorisation is misleading, for although his poetry is clearly influenced by Spenser and bears relations to that of Donne and Jonson it belongs to no one school. Often labelled a metaphysical poet for his wit and the complexity of his vision, Marvell's writing contrasts with the poetry of Donne and his successors in being more fully embroiled in the political issues of the period. For this reason his life and work can be said to be intimately related. Marvell utilised the literary traditions available to him and recreated them to suit his own purposes, combining a mastery of varying styles rather than relying solely on one. His lyric poetry, though clearly related to that of Jonson, Carew and Lovelace, is nevertheless highly individual and whereas Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan and Traherne tend towards a more overtly spiritual vision, his work reflects much more emphatically the pressures of his milieu.
One of Marvell's most notable features is his ability to present a plurality of views using ironic detachment and ambiguity, to reconcile opposites in an age that was marked by its shifting political situation. This is why Marvell is labelled both Royalist and Parliamentarian, non-conformist and Anglican. This complexity of vision is reflected in his ability to adopt and transform a variety of literary styles. His love lyrics, though reminiscent of the Spenserians, are also expressive of that contemplative mode more usually associated with Vaughan and Herbert. His most famous poem in this tradition is 'To His Coy Mistress', written in the carpe diem mode but reaching profounder depths with its reflection upon the paradoxical nature of time. In his pastoral 'Mower' poems of the 1650s, in a departure from Milton's Lycidas, Marvell substitutes a mower for the shepherd and dramatises the opposition between wild nature and the man-made garden.
Dryden disliked Marvell and introduced a tradition that was utterly different in spirit: in fact, Marvell was entirely neglected by the Augustans except for Swift who was influenced by his prose satire. For this reason it is possible to regard Marvell as marking the very end of a tradition.
AP, 2000
|
|
| |
|
