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Politics and Poetry in Andrew Marvell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Lawrence W. Hyman
Lawrence W. Hyman*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College, Brooklyn 10, N.Y.
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Extract

When An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland was written in 1650, its readers were puzzled by the praise given to King Charles I. And readers ever since have been puzzled by Marvell's ability to deal with the burning issues of the Civil War without making his political position clear. The best-known explanation is that offered by H. M. Margoliouth:

The ode is the utterance of a constitutional monarchist, whose sympathies have been with the king, but who yet believes more in men than in parties or principles, and whose hopes are fixed now on Cromwell, seeing in him both the civic ideal of a ruler without personal ambition, and the man of destiny moved by and yet himself driving (1. 12) a power which is above justice, (see 1. 37).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 73 , Issue 5-part1 , December 1958 , pp. 475 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1958

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References

* The ode is the utterance of a constitutional monarchist, whose sympathies have been with the king, but who yet believes more in men than in parties or principles, and whose hopes are fixed now on Cromwell, seeing in him both the civic ideal of a ruler without personal ambition, and the man of destiny moved by and yet himself driving (1. 12) a power which is above justice, (see 1. 37).1

* A shorter version of this paper, entitled “Marvell's Horatian Ode,” was read at the MLA annual meeting, Univ. of Wisconsin, 1957.

Note 1 in page 475 Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell (Oxford, 1927), p. 236. All references are to Margoliouth's edition of the Ode.

Note 2 in page 475 “A Note on the Limits of ‘History’ and the Limits of ‘Criticism’,” Sewanee Rev., LXI (Winter 1953), 142. For Brooks's complete analysis of the “Horatian Ode” see English Institute Essays (New York, 1946).

Note 3 in page 475 Sewanee Rev., LX (Summer 1952), 366.

Note 4 in page 475 Tom May's Death, To His Noble Friend Mr. Richard Lovelace, and Elegy on Lord Francis Villiers.