Marvell's Critical Reception

The history of Marvell's critical reception is one of shifting focus and sharp reversal. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Marvell's reputation was that of a major statesman but a minor poet. He was lauded as an upright politician, and his name became synonymous with disinterested patriotism. His poetry, when it was considered at all, was judged to be admirable but of secondary importance to his public career. In the twentieth century, Marvell's lyric poetry has come to be seen in an entirely new light, largely due to a pivotal essay by T. S. Eliot in 1921. Eliot emphasized for the first time Marvell's metaphysical wit, the recognition of which has both enlarged and redefined subsequent critical thought. Poems once considered simple and straightforward have been reinterpreted in light of their evident ambiguities. Many critics believe that the ambiguities are far more than clever devices and that Marvell's recurring themes exemplify the nature of ambiguity itself. Indeed, such critics claim that underlying all of Marvell's poetry is a unifying and omnipresent concern with a central ambiguity, the tension and duality of opposites, and that this is most often and most successfully expressed through his treatment of the duality of the body and the soul, the temporal and the divine. The dualities of mind and emotion, action and contemplation, and conventionality and nonconformity are secondary, yet related, thematic oppositions that commentators have also observed in Marvell's poetry. All these tensions, critics have noted, place the poems in a fundamentally spiritual or moral context, as each involves opposing human attributes or choices. Likewise, such political poems as "An Horatian Ode" and "Upon Appleton House" have prompted much critical debate due to their ambiguity. As Raman Selden writes, "Marvell's 'Horatian Ode' has proved to be perhaps the most controversial of all seventeenth-century lyric poems." He goes on to say that "most critics … have treated the 'Ode' either as historical document or as autonomous artifact, and have been unable to discover a mode of interpretation which both restores its historical uniqueness and preserves its poetic integrity." The same statement could be mode of the critical response to the other Cromwell poems. However, of the political poems, "An Horatian Ode" has sparked the most controversy. Most critics interpret the poem as a gauge of Marvell's political stand and the degree of support he espoused for the Royalists and Puritans. Some scholars, however, have moved beyond this debate to question Marvell's contradictory tone and to explore how and why he creates contrasts in the poem. R. H. Syfret argues that the tone reflects the uncertainty of the age while Michael Wilding argues that Marvell wanted the reader to find the poem ambiguous and detached in order to sway the reader towards the side of the revolution. Critics agree that both the contradictory tension and thus the quality are abated in the subsequent Cromwell poems.

The Tempest on Screen (Part 13)

Part 13:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 12)

Part 12:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 11)

Part 11:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 10)

Part 10:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 9)

Part 9:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 8)

Part 8:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 7)

Part 7:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 6)

Part 6:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 5)

Part 5:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 4)

Part 4:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 3)

Part 3:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 2)

Part 2:

The Tempest on Screen (Part 1)

Part 1:

Shakespeare's The Tempest

Themes and Issues

• Discord, Harmony and Reconciliation
• Magic
• The struggle for Power
• Love and Marriage
• Nature, Nurture, Art and Civilisation
• Appearance and Reality
• Exploration and Colonialisation

Techniques

• Characters and charaterisations
• The language
• The image 0f the Sea
• Music and Dancing
• The Tempest in theatre

An Introduction to The Tempest

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

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Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare Mt

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William Shakespeare

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The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell

The Definition of Love

Analysis:

Love’s parentage
The opening ‘My Love’ refers to the state, not the person. Logically, we start at its beginning, its parentage. Here is the first surprise: they are abstractions! We are clearly going to be reading a highly abstract poem. ‘Despair’ and ‘Impossibility’ are definite negatives. Why? The only suggestion offered is that it is ‘for object strange and high’. Does this suggest the aristocratic origins of the beloved, as well as the quality of his love for her? Is his love elevated and outrageous, when he should be really thinking of someone of his own class and in his own league? Or is it the aristocracy of the mind? ‘Strange’ perhaps means ‘unique’ here.

Magnanimous despair
Stanza two has a wonderful oxymorons, ‘Magnanimous Despair’, leading to a wonderful paradox: how can despair ‘show him so divine a thing’, when hope could not? Here is the metaphysical wit, teasing us to get our heads round this conundrum. It could mean that because of the lady's nobility, he could never win her; but being a noble love, it is also great-hearted (the literal meaning of ‘magnanimous’), which was the highest virtue for the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. If the poet had merely ‘hoped’ for a suitable partner, he would never have allowed himself to fall in love with this lady. Despair is the price he has had to pay, but he was willing to pay it.

A philosophical interpretation
This is to imagine a definite context for the poem. A more general, more philosophical interpretation might be to suggest that only in despair lies the strength and integrity of emotion to break the lower sort of second-rate loving. Idealism both elevates and makes us aware of its unattainability.

Enter fate
Stanza three introduces a third term, Fate. If it were up to Love alone, he would soon reach his consummation. But Fate will not allow this. The next stanza expands on this: Fate, like a jealous lover, wants to guard her own power. Fulfilled love not only has great power, it is also self-determining – a theme Donne had taken up in his The Extasie. Donne believed such a state was possible; Marvell does not.

Parallel lines
The poem then sets up a series of extended images to explore this: in stanzas five and six, the image of the two lovers as two poles, turning absolutely together ‘Love's whole world’, but never able to touch because to do so would be to collapse that very world, to cause it to lose its dimensions. In stanza seven the image becomes geometrical: lesser loves may touch as oblique lines will. Perfect loves run as parallel lines and so never actually join.

Conjunction of the mind
The final stanza does not draw out these images, but returns to the threesome of Love, Fate and the lovers. Their Fate is paradoxically always to be separated, yet to be in true ‘conjunction of the Mind’.


Imagery and symbolism:

Separation

In addition to the parallel lines conceit, we need to look at the conceits in stanzas five and six. They are both images of separation, picking up from stanza three's ‘But Fate does iron wedges drive ... ’. Iron now becomes ‘Steel’, both reminiscent of his ‘the Iron gates of Life’ of To his Coy Mistress.

The macrocosm/microcosm image is again employed: ‘Loves whole World on us doth wheel’. But this time it is geographical or cosmological: the separateness is necessary to maintain the dimensionality of love. Physical union would merely flatten it out, or at least ‘cramp’ it ‘into a Planisphere’, a term taken from an astronomical measuring instrument called an Astrolabe.

Fate is personified as female, using Greek mythology to do this, though in that, the Fates are plural, three blindfolded spinners and weavers. But for Marvell, fate is certainly not some impersonal force – she is very much alive and hostile, a jealous lover herself.

Language and tone :

Abstract and concrete

The language of the Definition of Love is a strange mixture of abstract and concrete. The opening stanza suggests abstract language and a philosophical discussion, but we are suddenly confronted with very concrete diction: ‘Tinsel Wing’; ‘Iron wedges’; ‘Steel/ wheel’; ‘giddy Heaven fall’, and so on. There is clearly some more personal feeling behind this. There is not as much concrete diction as in To his Coy Mistress, but the tone of suppressed frustration is still unmistakable.

Ironic tension

The tone, on the whole, is more humorous than the other poem. There is more obvious play of the mind, more irony of tone. This tone is established in two ways. Firstly, through the very tight, economic verse form which Marvell learned from the Latin poets he studied. The effect is of tight control, an economy that belongs to the enigmatic and paradoxical. The metre can pass from simple monosyllables (look at how many there are in stanza one), to technical and abstract polysyllables (‘Magnanimous’, ‘Tyrannick’, ‘Convulsion’) with fluency and sharpness. The form is so ‘defined’, so ‘restricted’, that it helps us become aware of the ironic tension between formal control and the situational powerlessness of the poet – he can write a tight poem, but cannot resolve the contradictions. So the tone is delicately balanced – sometimes tongue-in-cheek; sometimes almost passionate.

We have only to compare this to a poem by another metaphysical poet, Abraham Cowley’s Impossibilities, to see how nuanced, how ironically controlled Marvell's tone is. Cowley has some similar ideas but his execution is clumsy and obvious.

Intelligent and poetic

The other way Marvell controls the tone is through the play of his mind, his wit. He can be intelligent and poetic at the same time. Marvell's wit, as is Donne's, is to achieve new insights through joining up unlikely concepts. But the spin off is a controlled and flexible, even ambiguous tone. ‘Is it this? Is it that?’ we keep asking of Marvell's tone? Is he deadly serious or is this a joke? Both and neither must be the answer. We might say that poetically, that is exactly what the ‘conjunction of the Mind’ is.

Structure and versification:

Simple yet unpredictable

The Definition of Love is remarkable in being highly abstract and yet having a remarkably pared-down verse form. It shows that it isn’t necessary to be long-winded to discuss complex ideas. The verse form is basically iambic tetrameter, though there are hardly any lines where there are four full stresses. Usually, at least one stress is only secondary, for example on minor words like ‘her’, ‘by’, ‘of’, or a second stress in a polysyllabic word, such as ‘Impossibility’, where the metre is really asking for ‘poss’, ‘bil’ and ‘ty’ all to be stressed. Clearly only ‘poss’, being the root syllable, can have a full stress. The others have secondary stresses. This shortens the lines even more. Each quatrain is a self-contained sentence, often neatly divided at the half-way point. The rhyme words are nearly always monosyllabic and stressed, so in a sense, obvious, and yet neat and sometimes surprising. We don't expect ‘Planisphere’ to come popping up as a rhyme for ‘tear’. That is Marvell's control: keeping it simple, yet unpredictable.

To His Coy Mistress

A Video of a reading of the Poem.....




Analysis:

The first two lines of Andrew Marvell's To his Coy Mistress lead readers into a poem of persuasion, in which the speaker attempts to convince a mistress to love him, or, more to the point, to enter into a sexual relationship with him. "Had we but World enough, and Time, / This coyness Lady were no crime." His point - though softened with grammar choice - is that these lovers do not have world enough or time enough to wait for sex. Therefore the lady's coyness is in fact a crime. From these two lines alone, the reader understands the speaker's goal. The question becomes: How will he obtain it?

Many critics of Marvell's poem agree that its three stanzas outline clear turns in logic that the speaker uses. The first two lines lead us into a stanza describing a world in which the lovers live forever, the man courting his mistress eternally. He appeals to the woman's desire for control and flattery. The second stanza begins with a "But" that leaps off the page. Here, the speaker reverses his logic and tries to make the real world with limited time seem problematic and even repulsive to the mistress. Her dream world may be more desirable, but it is unattainable. In the final stanza, he suggests that there is something the two of them can do to make use of their time on earth: to experience their love through sex. It is a pity that readers cannot know the mistress's answer, for the poem poses a persuasive argument, without using some of the typical poetic conceits of love poems in Marvell's time.

Marvell starts by appealing to the woman's sentiments, as every smart man who wants something from a woman should do. He claims he would think about her while they are apart: "Thou by the Indian Ganges side / Should'st Rubies find: I by the Tide of Humber / would complain..." In this dream world, distance does nothing to mar the speaker's love for his mistress. The speaker chooses to glorify the position of the woman, who finds rubies where she dwells. In comparison, the speaker's dwelling place by the Humber seems dull and lowly, where he only complains. He forces the mistress to pity his position by describing their state of separation.

Marvell mirrors the first two lines of the poem with the form of the first stanza, moving from space to time. In lines seven through ten, the speaker again argues that in an ideal world, his love for the mistress could not be weakened by time: "...I would / Love you ten years before the Flood: / And you should if you please refuse / Till the Conversion of the Jews." Most analyses of this poem agree that the Conversion of the Jews references Christ's return to Earth, or the end of the world. In this dream world, there is no sense of urgency for the woman to do anything. The speaker will show a stark contrast to this later on; in reality, there is an urgent need to act on love.

The next few lines have been heavily debated about: "My vegetable Love should grow / Vaster than Empires, and more slow." The most apparent interpretation, within the context of Marvell's time theme, is that a vegetable (undisturbed) takes plenty of time to grow large and ripe. A vegetable can be a simple metaphor for his love. Or, these lines could mean that time acts as nourishment for his love. There are plenty of ways that these curious lines can be interpreted. However, the most striking aspect of the phrase is its unconventional nature. In The Judgement of Marvell, Christene Rees notates this: "Instead of the rose, he resorts to the notorious 'vegetable' to define not beauty but love" (95). Marvell's contemporaries often used the rose, or a flower, to describe a woman's beauty. Marvell steers away from the stereotypical conceits. Not only does he use a vegetable as a symbol, but he focuses on "love" and the "heart". He does not describe physical beauty alone to flatter the mistress (he does bring body parts into the first stanza). Using unconventional conceits elevates the speaker's persuasive ability - his mistress has inspired him to be unique.

In the second stanza, the speaker sucks us back into the reality of time, space, and mortality. He brings time and space together as a terrible force: "But at my back I always hear / Times winged Charriot hurrying near: /And yonder all before us lye / Desarts of vast Eternity". He describes the mistress in her death, lying in a "marble Vault". Rees argues that, in these lines, Marvell conjures "...two opposite but related phobias: terror of wide open spaces, heightened by the fear of pursuit, and terror of confined spaces...In both environments, human action and pleasure cease" (97). So, the speaker amplifies the frightening aspects being alone within time and space in hopes of making taking action together seem favorable to the mistress. He becomes more intense as the stanza continues: "Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound / My echoing Song; then Worms shall try / That long preserv'd Virginity: / And your quaint Honour turn to dust; / And into ashes all my Lust." Based on this description, if coyness is not a crime, it is a characteristic to grow out of rapidly. If the choice is to experience sex for the first time with worms as a corpse or with a man who claims to love you, the decision is quite easy to make. She must seize the chance to give her body to him quickly, too, for time's Wingèd Charriot could arrive in 50 years or today to take the mistress's life. The speaker counts on this thought to enter her mind by the third and final stanza.
By the third stanza, the speaker has finished flattering his love with dreams, and has buried them, leaving her scared of dying without experiencing love as something physical. He obviously feels confident, as he begins the stanza with a strong "Now therefore..." The language changes drastically from a loving, grandiose tone and becomes animalistic and rugged: "Now let us sport us while we may; / And now, like am'rous birds of prey, / Rather at once our Time devour / Than languish in his slow-chapt pow'r." After hearing about human powerlessness in the face of time and the destruction it causes, it is rather invigorating to think that humans have the ability to "devour" it. In order to devour it, however, the mistress has to give in to sex, and not just passively. Marvell writes it as a very active "submission": "Let us roll all our Strength, and all / Our sweetness, up into one Ball: / And tear our Pleasures with rough strife, / Thorough the Iron gates of Life." By rolling into one Ball and molding together, the lovers destroy any fears that space might instill within them. The speaker's desire for sex involves strength, sweetness, and strife - all are things that one experiences in the span of a lifetime. The speaker paints it for the mistress as if she really would experience with a short act what might otherwise take her all her life to feel. Thus, space and time no longer have control of them.

If those lines are not enough to convince her to take control of the time she has, Marvell writes a powerful and eloquent couplet to finish off the poem: "Thus, though we cannot make our Sun / Stand still, yet we will make him run." Time cannot stop for the lovers. They can choose to live life passionately though, pushing through time without fear. Marvell smartly ends the poem with a phrase that does not describe sex. If he ended it with sex, the speaker might seem too desperate, undermining his previous eloquence and his persuasiveness.

Marvell also picks up the pace of the last stanza with choice of phrasing. In the first two stanzas, he uses a lot of enjambment, putting lots of stops between the speaker's thoughts. In the last stanza, he does not pause to think. The words fly out of him fluidly, coming to a breathtaking climax. The flow of the poem could represent the actual act of sex for the speaker. The first two stanzas work up to the orgasm in the third. So the speaker persuades not only with word choice, but with the form that in which he delivers the words. The tripartite structure works logically and stylistically.

poems were written persuading one to love through pleasure during Marvell's time. Critics and literature lovers continue analyze To His Coy Mistress because of its unconventional, but still persuasive use of language. Or perhaps, readers are so interested in it because they want to know the mistress's reply. This will never be known for sure, but I imagine the speaker would be content with her answer.

To His Coy Mistress - Andrew Marvell

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Metaphysical Poets II: Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime

We would sit down and think which way

To walk and pass our long love's day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow;

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, Lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear

Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found,

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song: then worms shall try

That long preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust:

The grave's a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapt power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

In response to a young man’s declarations of love for a young lady, the lady is playfully hesitant, artfully demure. But dallying will not do, he says, for youth passes swiftly. He and the lady must take advantage of the moment, he says, and “sport us while we may.” If they had “world enough, and time” they would spend their days in idle pursuits, leisurely passing time while the young man heaps praises on the young lady. But they do not have the luxury of time, he says, for “time's wingéd chariot” is ever racing along. Before they know it, their youth will be gone; there will be only the grave. And so, the poet pleads his case: Seize the day.

Metaphysical Poets I: John Donne (The Flea)

John Donne (1572 - 1631)

The Flea

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is ;

It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.

Thou know'st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;

And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.

Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,

And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?

Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou

Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.

'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;

Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,

Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

John Donne 1572 1631

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Metaphysical Poetry

This is a new topic for my AL Literature students. Baffled at the mere sound of it, they seem to have mentally rejected it. However, poetry is poetry.... only its style differs. It was rather interesting to notice my students' reaction as i mentioned Andrew Marvell as a Metaphysical Poetry. I'm sure this reaction was due to the fact that it is new and unfamiliar. This is the type of poetry that triggers hot discussions in class. I am waiting in excitement to reveal the beauty of his poems to them and to enjoy their responses to his metaphysical conceits. Lucky me that these are pretty smart students who more often than not question and challenge the poets' intentional techniques which fail to have an effect on their reading of the poems. After working on poets such as Wordsworth who drove them up the walls (they are free thikers) with his recurrent them of nature as God, Marvell and Donne will surely get their minds running on a marathon! Well for those who experience the same with Metaphysical Poetry, here's a brief introduction....


What is a metaphysical poem?

>lyric poems

>brief but intense meditations, characterized by striking use of wit, irony and wordplay

>beneath the formal structure (of rhyme, metre and stanza) is the underlying (and often hardly

less formal) structure of the poem's argument

>there may be two (or more) kinds of argument in a poem

>E.g.:

In To His Coy Mistress the explicit argument (Marvell's request that the coy lady yield to

his passion) is a stalking horse for the more serious argument about the transitoriness of

pleasure. The outward levity barely conceals a deep seriousness of intent. You would be able

to show how this theme of carpe diem (“seize the day”) is made clear in the third section of the

poem.

Literature Circles

Literature Circles

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O Mistress Mine

Truman High School Men's Choir performing Shakespeare's "O Mistress Mine".

LitLove?

Lit and Love have undeniably associated through time and again. Classics such as "Wuthering Heights", "Romeo and Jualiet" and "Jane Eyre" are but a few that have been read and reread over generations. Shakespeare's "O Mistress Mine" is a poetry that one should not miss to read when adrressing the topic of love:

O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,

That can sing both high and low:

Trip no further, pretty sweeting;

Journeys end in lovers meeting,

Every wise man's son doth know.

What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What's to come is still unsure:In delay there lies not plenty;

Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty,Youth's a stuff will not endure.