The Political Identity Of Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell is one of the most significant figures in seventeenth-century English literature - and he was also one of the most elusive. The two characteristics of intensity and elusiveness can be discover in both his poetry and his prose, both of which reveal Marvell's continued involvement with contemporary politics and the related issues of the day. Much of Marvell's writings were related to politics in some way; his preoccupations included public praise, the ambivalent status of the writer in society, the conflicts among codes of conduct, corruption and courtly life, all of which are coloured by his concern for the religious state of the nation. These seven essays constitute a major re-appraisal of Marvell as writer and politician.

A set of specially commissioned essays forming a fresh understanding of the poet within his time and place.

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.

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.

Andrew Marvell brings together ten recent and critically informed essays by leading scholars on one of the most challenging and important seventeenth-century poets. The essays examine Marvell's poems, from lyrics, such as 'To His Coy Mistress' and 'The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn', to celebrations of Cromwell and Republican Civil War culture and his biting Restoration satires. Representing the most significant critical trends in Marvell criticism over the last twenty years, the essays and the authoritative editorial work provide an excellent introduction to Marvell's work. Students of Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature, English Civil War writing, and seventeenth-century social and cultural history will find this collection a useful guide to helping them appreciate and understand Marvell's poetry.

The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell is the most comprehensive and informative collection of essays ever assembled dealing with the life and writings of the poet and politician Andrew Marvell (1621-78). Like his friend and colleague John Milton, Marvell is now seen as a dominant figure in the literary landscape of the mid-seventeenth century, producing a stunning oeuvre of poetry and prose either side of the Restoration. In the 1640s and 1650s he was the author of hypercanonical lyrics like 'To His Coy Mistress' and 'The Garden' as well as three epoch-defining poems about Oliver Cromwell. After 1660 he virtually invented the verse genre of state satire as well as becoming the most influential prose satirist of the day—in the process forging a long-lived reputation as an incorruptible patriot. Although Marvell himself was an intensely private and self-contained character, whose literary, religious, and political commitments are notoriously difficult to discern, the interdisciplinary contributions by an array of experts in the fields of seventeenth-century literature, history, and politics gathered together in the Handbook constitute a decisive step forward in our understanding of him. They offer a fully-rounded account of his life and writings, individual readings of his key works, considerations of his relations with his major contemporaries, and surveys of his rich and varied afterlives. Informed by the wealth of editorial and biographical work on Marvell that has been produced in the last twenty years, the volume is both a conspectus of the state of the art in Marvell studies and the springboard for future research.

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.

Augustine, Pertile and Zwicker celebrate the work of Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) in the quatercentenary year of his birth, combining the best historical scholarship with a varied and ambitious programme of cognitive, affective, and aesthetic inquiry. The essays have been specially commissioned for the quatercentenary and include the work of a range of scholars from Britain and North America. Acknowledged masterpieces such as the 'Horatian Ode', 'The Garden', and 'Upon Appleton House' are here read in light of historical and material evidence that has emerged in recent decades. At the same time, the volume offers many fresh points of entry into Marvell's work, with particular attention to the poet's lyric economies, Marvell's engagement with popular print, and, not least, the polyglot and transnational dimensions of his writing. The quatercentenary also represents an important anniversary for Marvell studies, marking one hundred years since T. S. Eliot's appreciation of the poet inaugurated modern Marvell criticism. As Imagining Andrew Marvell at 400 reassesses Marvell's writings it also reflects on the profession of English literature, taking stock of the discipline itself, where it has been and where it might be going as scholars continue to map the pleasures and challenges of reading and re-reading Andrew Marvell.