“There Goes Marvell, The Cambridge Platonist!”: On Marvell and Religion

Abstract

My thesis seeks to offer a literary comparison of Andrew Marvell’s poems A Dialogue, between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure, A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body, and On a Drop of Dew and the works of the seventeenth century English theologians the Cambridge Platonists– namely Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683), Peter Sterry (1621-1678), Henry More (1614-1687), and John Sherman (?-1671). The question at its heart is not simply to assess the extent of their congeniality, but to determine how effectively the work of the Cambridge Platonists functions as a framework for the interpretation of Marvell’s poems. The thesis, therefore, hopes to validate two claims. The first, made by Pierre Legouis in 1928 but never fully substantiated, is that Marvell’s Platonist tendencies stem from his seven years at Cambridge, which are ascribed to the preaching of Whichcote and Sherman. The second, is Harold E. Toliver’s suggestion in 1965 that Marvell, like the Cambridge group, rejects lower links in the great chain for the autonomy of the soul. As proving that the Cambridge Platonists influenced Marvell is very difficult, this central contention is tested using both an ‘analogical’ and ‘genealogical’ method. Part I explores aspects of Marvell’s life where he may have been exposed to both Neoplatonist and Christian Neoplatonists writers, as well as direct interactions he shared with members of the Cambridge Platonists. Part I will predominantly focus on three aspects of Marvell’s life. First, the influence Marvell’s father, Reverend Marvell had on his son. Second, Marvell’s education at Hull Grammar. Third, Marvell’s sociable interactions at Cambridge and as Latin Secretary to Oliver Cromwell. Part I will use Foucault’s work What is an Author? and The Archaeology of Knowledge as a literary framework to ‘suspend typical’ questions, which are largely ignored in Marvell scholarship. Part II presents a sustained interpretation of two key theological themes in Marvell’s poetry– the function of the soul, and the structure of nature and the corporeal world– using Peter Sterry’s Sermons and Henry More’s Philosophical Poems. I will suggest that a close comparative reading of Marvell and these two members of the Cambridge Platonists reveals three similarities. First, Marvell like More, rejects nominalism, and instead seeks a doctrine of moral realism. Second, similarly to Sterry, Marvell represents the soul as functioning as a conduit of divine knowledge, which must distance itself from materiality. Third, much like Sherman, More, and Sterry, Marvell describes the soul as having to awaken from its bodily unconsciousness of the corporeal world via knowledge and reason to achieve its cycle back to God.