Marvell and Nineteenth-Century Poetry

Influence always leaves a wraith-like path, invisible to one person, transparent to another. The danger of reading-in is evident. This chapter proposes that Marvell’s influence on nineteenth-century poetry is manifold but frequently fugitive, now like centrifugal ripples in a still pond, now a sudden shower of meteors across the night sky. Nigel Smith reminds us that ‘The important point to remember is that Marvell was not unrecognized as a poet until the later nineteenth century, as has often been claimed’. Poets from Wordsworth to Tennyson are studied in relation to the nuanced ambivalence of Marvellian poetry; so too are critics and anthologists; so too is the range of poetic genres affected by Marvell’s influence.