Andrew Marvell’s Liminal Lyrics: The Space Between

223 Pages·2012·9.54 MB·English

by  Joan Faust

Andrew Marvell’s Liminal Lyrics
Andrew Marvell’s Liminal Lyrics
The Space Between
Joan Faust
University of Delaware Press
Newark
Published by University of Delaware Press Co-published with The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing
Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham,
Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP,
United Kingdom
Copyright © 2012 by Joan Faust All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or
by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written
permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data Faust, Joan, 1955– Andrew Marvell’s liminal lyrics : the space between / Joan Faust.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61149-410-5 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-61149-411-2 (electronic) 1. Marvell, Andrew,
1621–1678—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Liminality in literature. I. Title.
PR3546.F38 2012
821'.4—dc23 2012025451
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard
for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America

Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: The Concept of Liminality and Marvell’s Liminal Life
Chapter 3: Marvell’s Portrait of a Liminal Realm: “Upon Appleton House”
Chapter 4: Blending the Arts in the Act of Creation: “The Garden”
Chapter 5: In Between Life and Art: Marvell’s Mower and Nymph
Chapter 6: Smoke and Mirrors: “On a Drop of Dew,” “Eyes and Tears,”
“Mourning,” and “The Gallery”
Chapter 7: In Between Concept and Understanding: “The Definition of Love”
Chapter 8: Marvell’s “Soul” and “Body”: The Dialogue Continues
Bibliography
About the Author

Acknowledgments
Parts of this work previously appeared in two articles: “Blurring the Boundaries:
Ut pictura poesis and Marvell’s Liminal Mower,” Studies in Philology 104, no. 4
(Fall 2007): 526–55; and “‘Upon Appleton House’: Marvell’s Creation of a
Liminal Realm,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 35, no. 1 (Summer 2009):
54–74. I am grateful to the editors of these journals for permission to use
material from these essays.
My thanks also to colleagues in the Andrew Marvell Society for feedback in
sessions of annual meetings of the South-Central Renaissance Conference, to
Mark and Joey Faust and the staff at Southeastern Louisiana University’s Center
for Faculty Excellence for technical advice throughout the production of this
work, to the Interlibrary Loan Department of Sims Memorial Library for many
dogged searches for materials, to David Hanson for his scholarly guidance, to
Joe Brown for valuable editing recommendations, and to the readers at the
University of Delaware Press for their insightful suggestions. I am indebted to
Southeastern Louisiana University for a one-semester sabbatical that allowed
valuable time for the research of this work. Finally, I humbly dedicate this book
to Brother Alfred Kolb, S.C. (1917–2007), whose decades of scholarship,
enthusiasm, holiness, and unselfish service have inspired generations of students
and epitomize the motto of one of his many classes: “We are but a grain of sand
in time, but our mark may last forever.”
Permissions
Cover: NPG 554, Andrew Marvell, by unknown artist. Oil on canvas, c. 1655–1660. Copyright © National
Portrait Gallery, London. Photo design by Joey Faust.
Chapter 3: Faust, Joan. “‘Upon Appleton House’: Marvell’s Creation of a Liminal Realm.” Explorations in
Renaissance Culture 35.1 (Summer 2009): 54–74.
Throughout: Faust, Joan. “Blurring the Boundaries: Ut Pictura poesis and Marvell’s Liminal Mower.”
Studies in Philology, vol. 104, no. 4. (Fall 2007): 526–55.
Chapter One
Introduction
“Unhoopable”—that is the conclusion reached by Elisabeth Story Donno about
Andrew Marvell, explaining that though many have tried to categorize the poet
and his poetry, the man and his works somehow fall “in between”: early
commentators link him to his contemporaries Donne, Jonson, Lovelace,
Suckling, Cowley, Waller, Herbert, Herrick, and Milton; some try to
“synthesize” him with different literary strains—“a blend of Donne and Milton,
of Donne and Butler, of Jonson and Herrick, of Crashaw and Vaughan.” Later
scholars attempt to connect him with later writers and with their own
contemporaries—Cowper, Crabbe, Claire, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats,
Shelley, Meredith, Hopkins, Tennyson, Hodgson, Archibald MacLeish, E. E.
Cummings, and W. H. Davies. To Harold Bloom, Marvell is “the most
enigmatic, unclassifiable, and unaffiliated major poet in the language,” while
Nigel Smith simply calls him “The Chameleon.”1
Admittedly, Marvell left us little to go on by way of his poetic canon. Of the
ten poems that were published during his lifetime (and one of those only
partially), only half carried either his name or initials.2 Even during his “poetic
reassessment” in the years 1892–1921, the question of Marvell’s niche remained
uncertain, as Donno queries: “Was he classic or romantic, metaphysical or
Augustan, Cavalier or Puritan, or—in witness now to the impact of the ‘Horation
Ode’ rather than to the controversial works—republican or royalist?” Rosalie
Colie judges Marvell a “mediator” in lyric style, noting that “from the
concettismo of Cleveland and Crashaw to the smoothness of Carew, from the
understatement of Herbert to the brilliant emblematism of Vaughan, from the wit
of Donne to the metaphysics of Traherne, examples may be found in Marvell’s
work.” J. B. Leishman believes that, although Marvell cannot equal any of the
poets to which he is compared in their poetic specialties, “he can rival each and
all in variety and breadth” partly because “he is, in comparison with them,
singularly uncommitted, or, as M. Sartre would say, disengagé.” Even Marvell’s
poetic language has been labeled as in-between. M. C. Bradbrook and M. G.