Essays on Andrew Marvell

‘Annihilating all that’s made/To a green thought in green shade.’ – Marvell ‘I am re-begot/of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not.’ – Donne ‘Nothing,’ as a concept has plasticity; it can be used in a number of different ways and refer to any number...

Andrew Marvell’s poetry exemplifies an ancient literary genre known as the pastoral. This genre, which dates back to the third century B.C.E., represents the values of the shepherd and rustic life. Marvell’s poems “The Garden” and “The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn”...

Andrew Marvell’s Mower Against the Garden is the first in a series of four ‘Garden’ poems. The poem can be read literally, as a pastoral, ecological poem concerned with the destruction of the natural landscape as a result of human consumerism; in particular the fashion...

H.C. Beeching proclaimed about ‘The Garden’ that ‘Marvell is the laureate of grass, and of greenery’. This is recognition of Marvell’s desire to explore, effectively, the relationship between man and creation through the analogy of a Garden. However, it is important to note that there...

Dialectical structure is probably one of the major characteristics of all Metaphysical poetry. Donne was the pioneer of this type of poetry, which was marked by erudite scholarship, and difficulty of thought. It is said that a whole book of knowledge can be compiled from...

Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” was written when Cromwell’s Calvinism constrained liberty and free-will, and the poem exemplifies an unconventional assertion of love and sexual propositioning, while validating the request to yield in sexual activity with three “arguments”, structured into stanzas. These segments of the...

Many poets draw on the theme of nature to symbolize the message they are trying to convey. In many cases, nature is juxtaposed with artistic design to emphasize the conflict or the relationship between the natural and the human worlds. Millar Maclure clarifies the distinction...

For both “The Mower Against Gardens” and “The Garden”, the primary terms in opposition are the same: the world of nature, the world of men. The former is a realm of leisure, the latter of ceaseless, pointless toil. And yet the status granted to the...

Though “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell and “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne are metaphysical poems emphasizing love, the narrators use very different approaches and have opposing perspectives on what love truly is. In “To His Coy Mistress” the author is speaking...

The Many Ways We Love Love is an idea that many are familiar with – a term used to characterize one’s deep affection for someone. Love is unique in the ways that it is manifested and presented. Sometimes love is portrayed as genuine devotion to...

In Andrew Marvell’s poem, To His Coy Mistress, he writes to show that is hurrying after him and will bring death, so because of this his beloved must live by carpe diem. Marvell uses “coy” to describe his lover as she is shy, but due...

Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell wrote “To His Coy Mistress” to persuade the speaker’s mistress to quicken their relationship, while Annie Finch wrote “Coy Mistress” as a rebuttal to his persuasions. These poems contained contrasting ideas due mostly to the tone and imagery Marvell and Finch...

To His Coy Virgins The concept of carpe diem or “seize the day” is a popular poetic credo. Seventeenth century poets Andrew Marvell and Robert Herrick address carpe diem by admonishing young virgins against coyness and procrastination. Despite differences in device, motive, and narrative voice,...

The Journal of English Literary History indicates that ‘‘The picture of little T.C. in a prospect of Flowers’ is characteristic of Marvell’s poetry both in its complexity and in its subtle use of superficially ‘romantic’ or decorative detail’. The degree in which Marvell uses detail...

Jordan Reid Berkow Personal Response Lambert December 14, 1998 The Love Poems of Rich, Marvell and Campion: Realism vs. Idealization Adrienne Rich’s “Twenty-One Love Poems,” which explore the nature of lesbian love, differ strikingly from classic love poems written by a man to a woman,...

Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Andrew Marvell’s “To his Coy Mistress” offer powerful examples of sensual, carpe diem Renaissance poetry. In both poems, the poet-speakers attempt to spur their beloveds into action through various compliments and rhythmic patterns that create a...