An examination of the military metaphor in the poetry of Andrew Marvell.

Abstract

Out of the seventeenth century has come some of the finest, but most perplexing, poetry of all time. This fact should not be astonishing to the modern scholar if he pauses to examine, retrospectively, the literary traditions preceding the seventeenth century and the social, political, and religious conditions that characterized the period. It was, unquestionably, an age of conflict. Humanistic theory and medieval philosophy struggled for supremacy; Royalists and Parliamentarians vied for control of the government; and Puritans and Anglicans fought to resolve ideological differences. Conflict occurred in literature, as well as in all -the aspects of public life. The question of stylistic form and convention plagued writers of prose and of poetry. The traditions of Renaissance and Elizabethan style were not dead, and the new concepts and conventions of the rising metaphysical school were struggling for recognition. Because conflict was so prevalent in the period, it would have seemed strange, indeed, if conflict had not found expression in the poetry of the age. It is because conflict did find a voice in the poetry of the period, and particularly in the poetry of Andrew Marvell, that the present study has been undertaken. This investigation is concerned with an examination of the military metaphor, a mode of expression or convention co~~on for the exposition of conflict. The military metaphor is the traditional mode of conflict; it is, as well, a characteristic device in Marvell's canon of poetry of conflict. Scholars acknowledge the presence of martial metaphors and offer explications of the metaphors in classical, Renaissance, Elizabethan, and seventeenth-century literature; however, few, if any, define the metaphor in concrete terms. In so far as Marvell's poetry is concerned, individual poems have been examined and martial metaphors have been explicated; but, rarely have scholars catalogued these metaphors or indicated any pattern of development or succession in Marvell's employment of similar metaphors. The author's purpose, therefore, in the present study is to indicate the pervasive and successive qualities of Marvell's utilization of the military metaphor. Through a delineation of the types of metaphors employed and the conflict represented in the poems, one detects a preoccupation on the part or Marvell with the conflict in his environment and a repeated employment of the martial metaphor as the vehicle or his expression of attitudes and responses to the question of conflict. In the opening chapter the author attempts to define the military metaphor, to catalogue its background and development preceding and inclUding the seventeenth century up to Marvell, and, finally, to examine Marvell's first use of the metaphor in the "love-as-a-battlefield" poems. In Chapter II, the author makes an analysis of what may be termed a minor utilization of the metaphor in the poems concerning the furor hortensis as a part of the Art Nature controversy. Finally, in Chapter'III, the author carefully studies Marvell's most significant employment of martial imagery in the conflict of the active versus the contemplative life. The poems considered in each of these chapters have been selected on the basis of their representative qualities in regard to a specific type of conflict; therefore, no attempt has been made to make an inclusive study of Marvell's entire canon of verse.