No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.

In Renaissance culture there was an iconographic and literary language of trees, related to the motif of the tree of life, an ancient symbol of immortality associated with paradise. The properties of trees were used to express a range of ideas, including the death and resurrection of Christ, the fall and regeneration of political regimes, and virtue and vice within the individual soul. The juxtaposition of the tree of knowledge with the tree of life, as motifs of sterility and fertility, expressed aspects of the human condition and constructions of spiritual history and destiny. This thesis explores the language of trees in visual art and a range of English Renaissance texts from the late-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century: two plays by Shakespeare, two country-house poems, and a prose treatise on growing fruit-trees. Each of the writers drew on arboreal metaphors and motifs in unique and innovative ways. However there are numerous parallels and connections between the texts, and with contemporary and antecedent visual art, to justify considering these works together. In Shakespeare’s tragedy Titus Andronicus (1594) Lavinia, when she has her hands cut off, is metaphorically described as a tree with lopped branches and linked with the stricken political entity of Rome. Shakespeare evokes the tree of virtue, the classical myth of Daphne, and the arboreal language of virtue and vice. In the late tragicomedy Cymbeline (1610), the king is symbolized in a dream vision as a tree, with its cut branches representing the princes who are initially stolen but then reunited with the king. The tree represents the family tree as well as the political state, two interlinked concepts in the play and in contemporary iconography and ideology. Since Cymbeline’s reign heralded the Nativity, the prophecy of the lopped and regenerated tree invokes the idea of Christ as the tree of life and the fruit of the tree of Jesse. In both plays, Shakespeare’s tree imagery comments on the exercise of political power and the resultant health of the state. Shakespeare’s contemporary Aemilia Lanyer wrote “The Description of Cooke-ham” (1611), part of a published volume of poetry entitled Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. In the poem she imagines a prominent tree on the estate as the tree of life. An abstract metaphor is envisaged as part of the physical landscape. The motif transforms the estate to sacred terrain, enabling her to claim access to a space she is otherwise excluded from by class and gender. Lanyer links the sap from the tree of life with her writing, seeking to legitimize her claim as a female poet. Such strategies are part of her bid for patronage from the Countess of Cumberland, her primary dedicatee. In another country-house poem, Andrew Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax” (1651), the poet creates a forest of the mind in which he explores different aspects of the language of trees. The speaker imagines himself encircled by vines and crucified by thorns, in imitation of Christ as the tree of life, while a fallen oak tree suggests the regicide. He takes on various roles including that of the enigmatic Green Man. I place Marvell’s imagery in the context of the Civil War and the relationship with his employer Lord Fairfax. Marvell’s exploration of arboreal motifs also subjects Christian tree of life imagery to the challenge of its pagan antecedents and reflects anxieties over the natural processes that threaten metaphors of regeneration. Lastly, in Ralph Austen’s A Treatise of Fruit-trees and Spiritual Use of an Orchard (1653), the author blends advice on horticultural practices in growing fruit-trees with religious metaphors. For Austen, gardening is both a physical and a metaphysical pursuit. His readers are expected to plant fruit-trees in orchards that evoke the idea of Christ as the tree of life and related ideas. His use of the motif is part of his advocacy of agricultural and social reform, motivations that were part of those in the circle surrounding Samuel Hartlib. Austen’s text is situated at the end of the English Renaissance and at the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution, when emblematic and symbolic frameworks for interpreting the natural world were subject to new pressures derived from empirical and rationalistic outlooks. What becomes apparent from these works is that tree metaphors were literalized, just as they had been in visual art, and given a new naturalism as they were projected onto landscapes. Symbolic trees merged with botanical trees in imagined landscapes, creating hybrid terrains that were both descriptive and mythical. Recognition of the language of trees in Renaissance culture opens up new readings of both canonical and lesser-known texts and highlights the porous disciplinary border between literature and art. Our historical readings are richer for understanding the potent language of trees. Overall the thesis highlights the importance and cultural preoccupation with trees in European visual and literary traditions.

Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

The phrase "the just Figure" - a quotation from Upon Appleton House - is the central theme of this thesis as it aptly describes Marvell's repeated use of shape, harmony and proportion to suggest morality and virtue. The poet's concern with geometrical imagery is conveyed by the word "figure", which also is another term for a metaphor or conceit. The word "just" suggests not only moral appropriateness, but also mathematical exactness or fit. The thesis consists of five chapters, each dealing with an aspect of the imagery of shape and form which pervades so many of Marvell's lyrics. The first chapter, "Moral Geometry", deals with the way in which Marvell uses the imagery of lines, angles and curves. In some poems the lines are curved, as in Upon the Hill and Grove at Bill-borrow, where the graceful downward curved line of the hill conveys Fairfacian humility. Symmetry and circularity are discussed in the second chapter. The poet uses the perfect shape of the circle to depict objects which convey a moral significance. Similarly, several of the lyrics are themselves quasi-circular with their closing lines echoing their openings. Chapter Three deals with liquid spheres. Marvell explores the nature, shape and texture of tears in poems such as Eyes and Tears and Mourning; and in On a Drop of Dew uses the shape of the dew drop to suggest the perfection of the heavenly realm from which it has been parted. In several of the lyrics, Marvell places a frame around his poems to create an enclosed world in which his poetic creations exist. These enclosed, or framed, worlds are discussed in Chapter Four. The final chapter, "Beyond The Frame", describes how some of the lyrics suggest a move from the world within to the world beyond the frame of the poem.This can either be a movement from confinement to release, or from the seen world to worlds unseen. Shape, harmony and proportion are the qualities which Marvell uses to convey morality and humility and a vision of the world based on what is, in the various senses of the word, "just".

This study argues for a more widely-conceived cultural sphere that allows the complex and multifarious interactions of both English and Dutch cultures in the early modern period to be explored more fully. My lenses are the works of John Milton and Andrew Marvell, and the relations that they and their work had with the United Provinces and its people. The thesis has a two-part structure. The first half introduces Dutch contexts, being a brief introduction to major areas of early modern Dutch culture, while the second shows how these contexts were influential on, and reflected by, Milton and Marvell. The first four chapters therefore consider areas that had an impact on England and its political and literary writers. These include, in Chapter I, stereotypes and first impressions of the Dutch Republic in English travelogues; representations of the Dutch in these works often surfaced in satirical work on the Dutch during the Anglo-Dutch Wars. Another concern is the literary milieu of the United Provinces, including print culture, literary circles, and ideas of educational reform. Other chapters in Part I discuss two highly influential aspects of Dutch religious life, Arminianism and toleration - both of which had repercussions for Protestantism in England - politics and trade, in particular works on Dutch republicanism and trade, in which England became the United Provinces’ greatest rival. Part II then explores Dutch culture, nation and stereotyping in Milton and Marvell. It demonstrates the far-reaching involvement of Dutch printing culture, especially visible in the publication history of Milton’s Defenses. It also interrogates literary similarities in the works of two Dutch authors, Constantijn Huygens and Joost van den Vondel, with Milton’s Paradise Lost and Marvell’s Upon Appleton House, respectively. The last two chapters identify traces of Dutch Arminianism and toleration in Milton’s Samson Agonistes, Marvell’s Remarks, and Rehearsal Transpros’d, part I and II; and compare versions of republicanism in Samson Agonistes and Vondel’s Samson, of Heilige Wraak, as well as discussing Anglo-Dutch rivalry in their works. This thesis demonstrates the deep and abiding importance of Anglo-Dutch relations to the works of two canonical English authors. Literary, intellectual and politico-religious exchange between England and the United Provinces was more entrenched than it has previously been portrayed.

Thesis (MA (English Literature))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Seventeenth-century England witnessed a time of radical sociopolitical conflict and transition. This thesis aims to examine how two writers closely associated with this period and its controversies, John Milton and Andrew Marvell, represent events as they unfold. This thesis focuses specifically on Milton’s Paradise Lost and Marvell’s Cromwellian poems in order to show how these poets reinterpret established literary conventions and invoke traditional Puritan practices in order to explain and legitimise the precarious new dispensation of post-Civil War England. At the same time, their work produces ambiguities and tensions that threaten to undermine the very discourse that they attempt to endorse. Both poets’ work indicates an active involvement in the political embroilments of their time while retaining its aesthetic value. Therefore, these texts do not only function on an aesthetic level but also within the historical framework of political ideologies. The focus of this thesis is a discussion of the relationship between politics and poetry, with the emphasis on poetry of conflict and transition in civil society. In other words, it is not only considered how different poetic genres reflect social and political change in different ways but also how these genres in turn contribute to political rhetoric. During the English Revolution Milton and Marvell try to provide solutions for the political disturbance, even while remaining aware of the new conflicts produced in the attempt.

The Restoration Era, 1660-1688, has long borne a reputation as an exceptionally debauched period of English history. That reputation is however a caricature, amplified from a handful of recognizable features. That rhetoric of debauchery originates in the Restoration’s own discourse, constructed as a language for opposing the rising French-style absolutism of the late Stuart kings, Charles II and James II. When Charles II was restored in 1660, enthusiastic panegyrists returned to the official aesthetics of his father Charles I, who had formulated power as abundance through pastoral, mythological, and utopian art. Oppositional satirists in the Restoration subverted that language of cornucopian abundance to represent Charles II and his court as instead excessive, diseased, and predatory. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9, Williamite satirists and secret historians continued to wield these themes against the exiled Jacobites. Gradually, the political facets of Stuart excess dulled, but the caricature of the debauched Restoration survived in eighteenth-century state poem collections and historiography. The authors most emphasized in this study are John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and Andrew Marvell. Works by John Milton, John Dryden, Edmund Waller, King Charles I, and Gilbert Burnet also receive sustained attention.

Although Andrew Marvell wrote and published relatively little, his poetry collects from the full range of “schools” and idiosyncratic styles present in the seventeenth century: echoes of Herbert, Donne, Milton, Traherne, Herrick, Lovelace, and Jonson, among others, permeate throughout his work. Although much of his imagery seems novel, if not strange, it is clear that Marvell has a deep engagement with several important long-running traditions. His work is conversation with Ovid, Horace, and Theocritus as much as it responds directly to the poets whose lives overlapped with his own. In his engagement with such varied sources, Marvell demonstrates an astounding degree of poetic flexibility. He is a master of imitating voice and style.

Although Andrew Marvell wrote and published relatively little, his poetry collects from the full range of “schools” and idiosyncratic styles present in the seventeenth century: echoes of Herbert, Donne, Milton, Traherne, Herrick, Lovelace, and Jonson, among others, permeate throughout his work. Although much of his imagery seems novel, if not strange, it is clear that Marvell has a deep engagement with several important long-running traditions. His work is conversation with Ovid, Horace, and Theocritus as much as it responds directly to the poets whose lives overlapped with his own. In his engagement with such varied sources, Marvell demonstrates an astounding degree of poetic flexibility. He is a master of imitating voice and style.

No description available.