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Marvell's Games with Teleology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Lucy Gent
Lucy Gent*
Affiliation:
Polytechnic of North London
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Extract

Marvell has long been recognized as a poet who enjoys play. One of the games he likes is to highlight the human habit of thinking in terms of purpose—what today would be called a teleological habit of thought. The most notable Renaissance form of this was to regard the world as made for a purpose, which as far as the human point of view was concerned, was man himself. ‘This worldly stage was purposely prepared, that God the father might secretly behold us.’ The teleological approach argued that the sun existed to shine on man, that the silkworm labored in order to provide man with silk, and so forth—an outlook shared by the ‘Suttle Nunns’ of ‘Upon Appleton House,’ who take their solipsism so far that they claim ‘These Walls restrain the World without, / … These Bars inclose that wider Den / Of those wild Creatures, called Men.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , Winter 1979 , pp. 514 - 528
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1979

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References

1 Cardanus Comfort, tr. T. Bcdingficld (London, 1571), sig.N6v.

2 All quotations from the poems and letters of Marvell are from the edition of H. M. Margoliouth, revised by P. Legouis and E. Duncan-Jones, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1971).

3 Margoliouth, II, p. 344.

4 The Rehearsal Transpros'd, ed. D. I. B. Smith (Oxford, 1971), pp. 46, 20, 89.

5 Remarks Upon a late Disingenuous Discourse (London, 1678), pp. 104—05; quoted by E. Duncan-Jones, ‘A Great Master of Words,’ Warton Lecture on English Poetry, British Academy (London, 1975), p. 24.

6 Hunt, John Dixon, The Figure in the Landscape (Baltimore and London, 1976), p. 17 Google Scholar.

7 Destiny His Choice: The Loyalism of Andrew Marvell (Cambridge, 1968), p. 72. Wallace's apt quotation is from Ascham, Anthony, Of the Confusions and Revolutions of Governments (London, 1649), pp. 109-10Google Scholar.

8 Margoliouth, 11, p. 313.

9 Ibid., p. 337.

10 The De Augmentis Scientiarum, in Works, ed. J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath, 7 vols. (London, 1857, etc.), IV, 365; quoted by Woodfield, A., Teleology (Cambridge, 1976), P. 3.Google Scholar

11 The Advancement of Learning, Book II, Works, III, 355ff.; Novum Organum, Book I, Aphorism 48; Book II. Aphorisms 2, 3, for example (Works, IV, 57, 119-120).

12 A Disquisition About the Final Causes of Natural Things … (London, 1688), sig. A3V; according to his preface, written by 1677.

13 A Disquisition … , sig. A3—A3V. To rebut the Epicurean threat involved the display of much teleological argument. For a discussion of the seventeenth-century opponents of Epicurus, see Harrison, Charles, ‘Ancient Atomists and English Literature of the Seventeenth Century,’ Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 45 (1934), 1–80 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 It was entered 5 February 1648/9 (A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers from 1640-1708, vol. 1, 1640-55 [London, 1913], p. 310).

15 Cf. Romans viii, 28, quoted by St. Augustine, The City of God, 1.10.

16 Implicit in the Disquisition About … Final Causes; explicit in much of The Christian Virtuoso: shewing, That by being addicted to Experimental Philosophy, a man is rather assisted, than indisposed to be a good Christian (London, 1690).

17 British Academy Lecture, p. 11.

18 Wilkins, , A Discourse Concerning the Beauty of Providence … (London, 1649), pp. 62—63 Google Scholar; cf. Cowley, , Works (London, 1668)Google Scholar, sig. B4V: ‘a warlike, various, and a tragical age is best to write of, but worst to write in.'

19 Discoveries, in Works, ed. C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson, vol. viii (Oxford, 1947). P. 598.

20 Hinted at by Miner, Earl, Dryden's Poetry (Bloomington and London, 1967), pp. 23ff.Google Scholar

21 My Ecchoing Song: Andrew Marvell's Poetry of Criticism (Princeton, 11/70), pp. 151, 153.

22 Tr. John Florio, book II, ch. 11; Everyman's Library, reprint of 1965, vol. III, p. 278.

23 Book 1, ch. 31; ed. cit., vol. 1, p. 231.

24 Aquinas, Thomas, Expositio super Boethium, “De Hebdomadibus”, quoted by Hugo Rahner, Man at Play (London, 1965), p. 1 Google Scholar.

25 Paradoxia Epidemica (Princeton, 1966), ch. 13.

26 Nosce Teipsum, 1. 167, The Poems of Sir John Davies, ed. Robert Krueger and Ruby Nemser (Oxford, 1975), p. 11.

27 Other formulations include: Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, I, ii, 51-53; Troilus and Cressida, III, iii, 95—111; Sir John Davies, Nosce Teipsum, lines 105—08, ed. cit., p. 9; Charron, Pierre, De la Sagesse livres trois, tr. Samson Lennard, Of Wisdome three bookes (London, 1608), p. 52 Google Scholar. For a discussion of possible sources, see the New Variorum edition of Troilusand Cressida, ed. Harold H. Hillebrand (Philadelphia and London, 1953), pp. 411-15.

28 Two Bookes of Constancie, tr. J. Stradling (London, 1595), cd. R. Kirk and C. M. Hall (New Brunswick, N.J., 1939), pp. 65, 66.

29 The Advancement of Learning, Book II, Works, in, 359.

30 On the Creation, tr. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whittakcr, Loeb ed. (London, 1962), vol. 1, P. 55.

31 This deliberately echoes Edwards, Thomas R.’ criticism of ‘An Horatian Ode’ in Imagination and Power (London, 1971), p. 72 Google Scholar.

32 Friedman, Donald M., Marvell's Pastoral Art (London, 1970), p. 1.Google Scholar

33 Colie, , My Ecchoing Song, p. 4.Google Scholar

34 Paradise Lost, VIII, 75.