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6 - Andrew Marvell and the Revolution

from Part 2 - Radical voices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

N. H. Keeble
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
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Summary

This chapter describes the reactions of Andrew Marvell to the English Revolution. From the famous 'Horatian Ode upon Cromwel's Return from Ireland', whose message continues to be debated by literary scholars and historians alike, and the almost contemporaneous 'Tom May's Death', where the matter in dispute is whether Marvell really wrote it, through to the Restoration satires which often hark back to the Commonwealth and Protectorate era, his writings (and their history of publication) suggest one simple, and to many, unpalatable truth: that Marvell, after initial reluctance, committed himself absolutely to the Revolution, in so far as it could be identified with the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. Another unpalatable truth will emerge in the course of the argument: that for Marvell, one of the chief values of the Revolution and its extraordinary leader was the re-emergence of England, after the pacific Caroline period, as a power in international relations, power being expressed primarily through military force and reputation. If we face the facts, as expressed by all of Marvell’s writings, before, during and after the Cromwellian period, the urbane treasures of his pastoral poems (a contradiction I intend) are eccentric rather than self-defining; though he could not have been so intelligent a celebrator of Cromwell without some internal conflicts and ironies.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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