{"title":"Marvell and Lyrics of Undifference","authors":"D. Hirst, S. Zwicker","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198736400.013.23","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In recent times, Marvell’s lyric poems have been increasingly read with an eye to the social and the topical: the sociabilities of the author, the topicalities of his verse. This essay faces in another direction, suggesting that in poems like ‘The Nymph Complaining’ the topical was a means for Marvell to explore inward matter, an occasion to see the interior life projected into the world. In such lyrics, Marvell discovers two distinct sites of suspension or coming-to-be: tears, in which categories and differences are dissolved; childhood, where the conditions of differentiation that underlie the adult order are suspended or elided. The poet’s fascination with the figure of the child reveals a preoccupation with a pre-sexual state altogether congruent with the primal oneness imagined in the ‘Mower’ poems and ‘The Garden’ and adventured so achingly in ‘The Nymph Complaining’. Such a reading as we propose uncovers the strange and compelling fit of the ontological and the psychological in Marvell’s work.","PeriodicalId":226629,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198736400.013.23","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
In recent times, Marvell’s lyric poems have been increasingly read with an eye to the social and the topical: the sociabilities of the author, the topicalities of his verse. This essay faces in another direction, suggesting that in poems like ‘The Nymph Complaining’ the topical was a means for Marvell to explore inward matter, an occasion to see the interior life projected into the world. In such lyrics, Marvell discovers two distinct sites of suspension or coming-to-be: tears, in which categories and differences are dissolved; childhood, where the conditions of differentiation that underlie the adult order are suspended or elided. The poet’s fascination with the figure of the child reveals a preoccupation with a pre-sexual state altogether congruent with the primal oneness imagined in the ‘Mower’ poems and ‘The Garden’ and adventured so achingly in ‘The Nymph Complaining’. Such a reading as we propose uncovers the strange and compelling fit of the ontological and the psychological in Marvell’s work.