Andrew Marvell, a poet celebrated for the remarkable density of his allusive style, presents a fascinating challenge to readers and scholars alike. Understanding what is the allusion that compares to echo mean becomes crucial when navigating his richly intertextual verse. The very notion of unintentional allusions attributed to Marvell, seemingly paradoxical, alongside the common practice of conflating allusion and echo into a single category of powerful intertextuality, highlights a persistent need for a clearer distinction between these literary devices. While insightful work, such as James Loxley’s “Echoes as Evidence in the Poetry of Andrew Marvell,” has addressed this area, further exploration is warranted to fully appreciate the nuances of Marvell’s technique. This article aims to contribute to this discussion by offering a refined approach that differentiates itself from Loxley’s in both analytical perspective and methodological emphasis. Rather than seeking to avoid “unwarranted scholarly fastidiousness,” as Loxley proposes, this analysis argues that meticulous attention to detail is precisely what Marvell’s intertextuality demands. This rigor is essential to appreciate the “refinement, reduction, and minute exactness” that characterize his poetic style. Therefore, this essay will not primarily rely on external contexts, the “various textual and social matrices” often consulted by Loxley, to evaluate intertextual connections. Instead, it will derive its definitions of allusion and echo, and the criteria for distinguishing between them, from the intrinsic formal mechanisms at play within Marvell’s own uses of echoes and allusions.
To effectively highlight the precision of Marvell’s allusions, it is instructive to first examine the nature of echo, a concept often perceived as more diffuse. A valuable starting point for understanding echo is John Hollander’s seminal work, The Figure of Echo. Hollander clarifies that “in contrast with literary allusion, echo is a metaphor of, and for, alluding, and does not depend on conscious intention.” This distinction, however, is frequently blurred in Marvell scholarship. The notion that Marvell’s poetry “echoes” the works of others is a familiar observation, yet the subtle resemblances between his poems and potential sources are often loosely described as both echoes and allusions, used almost interchangeably. Clarifying the difference between echoes and allusions is important for two key reasons. Firstly, it addresses the practical challenge of dating poems within Marvell’s oeuvre, where the lines between unconscious echo and deliberate allusion become critical. If these categories are entirely permeable, the intertextual dating of poems becomes an impossible task: where does the unintentional echo cease and the intentional allusion begin? While some might dismiss authorial intent as a crucial element in understanding allusion, this approach has not generally been adopted in Marvell scholarship, and the significance of intentionality will become evident when we further examine the nature of allusion.
Secondly, the distinction between allusion and echo is crucial for understanding their respective modes of operation. Allusions often function through a dynamic interplay of revelation and concealment. This relationship can be directly proportional, where greater obscurity enhances meaningfulness, or inversely proportional, where apparent simplicity belies profound significance. The subtlety of an allusion can mask a deeply meaningful engagement with the alluded text. Conversely, seemingly straightforward verbal similarities can fail to convey the complexity and depth of the intertextual encounter. The apparent ease of recognition might not adequately represent the effort involved in forging connections, both for the author and the reader, and the importance of the bonds established. In contrast, echoes typically exhibit a directly proportional relationship between revelation and concealment: they are often more readily apparent, yet their engagement with the source is less profound and lacks the richness of “allusive implication.” The significance of an echo is often fully grasped upon its initial recognition, whereas allusions demand more interpretive effort and reward this effort with deeper insights. In essence, while an echo might require the work of identification, it does not reciprocate with a challenging, significant, and multifaceted relationship between texts. Loxley, for example, characterizes the echo as “involuntary” and as constituting “blank, alienated repetitions.” Expanding on this, he suggests that the “causal forces” behind echoes are primarily “grammatical or linguistic,” arising from the inherent demands of poetic language and form, and the pervasive influence of genre in the writing process. While these influences are not “inert or non-negotiable,” as Loxley emphasizes, they can indeed be involuntary, operating as verbal reflexes to specific formal and narrative triggers. In this sense, echoes possess a level of consciousness and intentionality akin to an instinctual response.
This is not to diminish the echo as inherently uninteresting or merely automatic. While the concept of a conscious echo is acknowledged, demonstrating its existence through formal textual analysis is challenging. The consciousness of an echo, as Loxley suggests, may reside outside the formal text itself, within “social matrices” and historical contexts related to reading practices and literary circles. Furthermore, echoes can transcend mere repetition and introduce variations between the echoing text and its source. The manipulation of such variations, as will be shown later, is a defining characteristic of allusion. However, while allusions modify the language of the source to establish difference, echoes rely more on context to create distinction, as significant verbal alteration would undermine the echo’s low obscurity. For instance, a verbal echo might exist between a polemical text and a text praising virginity. While these contexts are distinct and potentially incongruous, ingenuity could reveal irony derived from their juxtaposition. Echoes, therefore, possess a limited capacity to register differences between the echoing and source texts, but this capability primarily stems from contextual, rather than verbal, divergence.
Two potential echoes of Lycidas in Marvell’s prose works, The Rehearsal Transpros’d: The Second Part (1673) and A Short Historical Essay, Touching General Councils, Creeds, and Impositions in Matters of Religion (1676), align with this description of echoing. In these instances, the dynamic between revelation and concealment is directly proportional. The echoes lack substantial depth of meaning, which can be assessed by the limited need for repeated textual comparison after initial recognition. Further investigation is often unfruitful because echoes, by their nature, are unresolved, fading away without providing definitive answers. The questions they raise about the source text, the attitudes they suggest, or the connections they hint at remain unanswered, undeveloped, or unconfirmed. In the examples that follow, stylistic and narrative disparities underlie every verbal parallel, yet no overarching purpose, such as irony, effectively integrates and rationalizes these differences. Moreover, these echoes employ language and imagery reminiscent of Ezekiel 34 and John 10, texts that also inform Lycidas. This entanglement of sources makes it difficult to definitively assert allusion, as disentangling these sources and pinpointing specific borrowings becomes problematic.
It is not surprising that Marvell would echo Lycidas, a poem to which he frequently alludes. Nicholas von Maltzahn has demonstrated Marvell’s deep familiarity with Milton’s elegy. Indeed, this intimate knowledge might be the very source of these echoes; Marvell’s profound internalization of Lycidas could lead to its unintentional appearance in his writing. The following examples aim to illustrate the value of interpreting echoes in relation to each other. While Loxley rightly argues that numerous echoes do not necessarily constitute an allusion, this should not discourage the use of comparative analysis to resolve intertextual questions. A single reference cannot transform from an echo to an allusion simply through accumulation. However, the appropriateness of categorizing an intertextual instance as either an allusion or an echo can be substantiated through comparative examination.
The first echo of Lycidas appears in The Rehearsal Transpros’d: The Second Part. In this tract, Marvell laments those who “by evil arts may have crept into the Church, thorow the Belfry or at the Windows.” He specifically criticizes the lack of effective measures to remove such unworthy clergy:
Yet then if our great Pastors should but exercise the Wisdom of common Shepheards, by parting with one to stop the infection of the whole Flock, when his rottenness grew notorious; or if our Clergy would but use the instinct of other Creatures, and chase the blown Deer out of their Heard; such mischiefs might quickly be remedied.
Milton’s Lycidas denounces false shepherds who “for their bellies sake,/Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold” (114–15):
Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A Sheep-hook, or have learn’d ought els the least
That to the faithfull Herdmans art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw,
The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.The initial connection between Marvell’s prose and Milton’s poem is the shared use of “creep” (“creep” in Milton, “crept” in Marvell). Marvell employs the verb with a slightly less serious tone than Milton, emphasizing the desperate attempts of these intruders to enter the church by any means, even through the belfry (a challenging climb) or windows (possibly by breaking them). Marvell’s intruders force their way in where no proper entrance exists, rendering their efforts somewhat comical. Milton’s intruders, in contrast, insinuate themselves into the fold stealthily (they are guilty of trespassing, while Marvell’s are guilty of breaking and entering). The humorous desperation of Marvell’s clerics differs significantly from the covert operations of Milton’s.
Further distinctions emerge in Marvell’s punning critique of the episcopal inability to remove incompetent priests: “But since that circumspection has been devolved into the single oversight of the later Bishops, it cannot be otherwise, but some one or other may escape into the Church, who were much fitter to be shut out of Doors.” In “oversight” and “circumspection,” Marvell puns on the Greek term for bishop, “ἐπίσκοπος” (“overseer”). This is reminiscent of Milton’s famous pun in “Blind mouthes.” However, unlike Milton, Marvell does not pun on the Latin “pastor.” Given that puns on “ἐπίσκοπος” were not uncommon, Marvell’s usage might not necessarily be a direct allusion to Milton. The styles of punning also differ. Milton directly accuses the clerics of blindness, while Marvell mocks their pretensions to sight. Marvell’s style is subtle, ironic, and refined, whereas Milton’s is forceful, strident, and apocalyptic: Marvell employs a scalpel where Milton wields a sledgehammer.
Marvell also applies the verbal parallels in a different manner. Comparing the wind-swollen sheep in Milton with the “blown Deer” in Marvell’s herd reveals a tenuous parallel between swelling and blowing. While the bad shepherds in Lycidas are ignorant of the “Herdmans art,” Marvell’s prelates practice “evil arts.” The “rottenness” of Marvell’s shepherds corresponds to the sheep in Lycidas who “Rot inwardly.” Both poems express concern about spreading infection (“contagion” and “infection of the whole Flock”), but in Milton, the sheep become sick due to negligent shepherds, while in Marvell, the shepherds themselves are diseased. The language of Milton’s poem drifts, somewhat simplistically and imprecisely, towards the condemnation of Marvell’s clerics. This imprecision raises questions about Marvell’s level of control at this point, a characteristic often associated with his allusions. Lacking this control, Marvellian intertextuality departs from its typical mode of subtle irony and sharp wit.
Finally, both Marvell and Milton depict the consequences of negligent shepherds as destructive to the church, resulting in schism, albeit of different kinds. The “grim Woolf with privy paw” symbolizes Roman Catholics preying on Protestant sheep under the care of negligent shepherds. In Marvell, the schism is internal: “and for want of separating from one obnoxious, do contribute to the causes of separation, justifying so far that Schism which they condemn.” Milton evokes the threat of Roman Catholicism, while Marvell highlights the danger of dissent and independency. This shared tactic of using religious controversy (“reform or else”) seems more like a common rhetorical strategy than a unique point of convergence.
My inclination to interpret these textual parallels as echoes rather than allusions is reinforced by another echo of Lycidas in A Short Historical Essay. This later echo raises the question of whether the parallels in The Rehearsal Transpros’d: The Second Part are unconscious reflexes triggered by a deep memory of, and long engagement with, Lycidas. In his historical overview of episcopacy, Marvell discusses the reign of Theodosius the Great (379–395 C.E.). He notes the internal conflict among bishops resulting from the Emperor’s leniency:
I shall not further vex the History, or the Reader, in recounting the particulars; taking no delight neither my self in so uncomfortable relations, or to reflect beyond what is necessary upon the Wolfishness of those which then seemed, and ought to have been, the Christian Pastors, but went on scattering their Flocks, if not devouring; and the Shepherds smiting one another.
In these sentences, Marvell blends elements from Ezekiel 34, John 10, and the St. Peter verse paragraph. The detail of “scattering their Flocks” is drawn from Ezekiel 34:5 passim and John 10:12: “But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep” (KJV). Lycidas does not contain a comparable image of scattering. Pastors as devourers are famously labeled “Blind mouthes!” in Lycidas, but Ezekiel 34:10 presents a similar irony: “for I will deliver my flock from their [shepherds’] mouth, that they may not be meat for them.” Therefore, Lycidas is not the sole source for Marvell’s scattered flocks and devouring pastors. However, “Shepherds smiting one another” presents a different case:
Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more. (128–31)The enigmatic “two-handed engine” that smites is not identical to “Shepherds smiting one another.” Neither Ezekiel 34 nor John 10 contains similar phrasing. The shift in the subject of “smite” and “smiting” suggests that Marvell’s conscious engagement with Lycidas is tenuous, yet the poem may still subconsciously influence his portrayal of bad shepherds. This type of echo has such a weak connection to intentionality that it necessitates considering an individual’s unconscious. The echo might well be accidental, but the presence of Lycidas cannot be disregarded. This aligns with Stephen Hinds’s view that no echo is ever “inert or non-negotiable.” Accident becomes another form of intertextuality, not its endpoint.
For instance, at the end of the paragraph containing echoes of Lycidas, Marvell includes a fragment from a letter by Gregory Nazianzen on the character of bishops: “For their obstinate Contentions and Ambition are unexpressible” (“nec ullis quidem verbis explicari queunt”). Marvell’s “unexpressible” accurately captures Nazianzen’s Latin, though slightly compressing it by implying “ullis verbis.” Perhaps Marvell deemed “nec explicari queunt” sufficient. Or, there might be another reason, leading us back—through the pathways of Marvell’s mind—to Lycidas. At the conclusion of Milton’s elegy, Edward King hears the “unexpressive nuptiall Song” (176). Connecting Edward King’s listening to Revelation 14:4 with Nazianzen’s negative comments about bishops seems arbitrary. No evident principle links these texts. Pressing the echo for deeper meaning beyond its mere occurrence is unproductive. The incidence of “unexpressible” appears random, or a product of unconscious association. Later in A Short Historical Essay, Marvell envisions a world without episcopacy: “but the good that must have thence risen to the Christian Magistrate, and the Church, then and ever after, would have been inexpressible.” “Inexpressible” and “unexpressible” are synonyms, yet “unexpressible” becomes “inexpressible” when detached from the immediate context of Lycidas echoes. A sense of contingency and randomness characterizes this echo; it contrasts sharply with allusive premeditation. Allusions require active reader participation in constructing meaning, often encoding interpretive directions through alterations of the source text. Each modification serves as an argument for how to interpret and assemble the allusion. Echoes, with their minimal engagement with the source text, lack this capacity. This echo appears particularly fragile and dependent on specific contextual alignment, hence its contingency.
Finally, in a poet renowned for compression, the dispersed nature of echoes in both The Rehearsal Transpros’d: The Second Part and A Short Historical Essay is significant. In The Rehearsal Transpros’d: The Second Part, five sentences separate “crept” from the rest of the echo; in A Short Historical Essay, again, five sentences intervene between “smiting” and “unexpressible.” This dispersal over multiple sentences contrasts sharply with Marvell’s remarkably dense, compact, and yet swift allusion in “A Dialogue, Between the Resolved Soul, and Created Pleasure”: “Thou shalt know each hidden cause;/And see the future time:/Try what depth the centre draws;/And then to heaven climb” (69–72). This nimble “quatrain ranges from Aristotelian metaphysics to contemporary physics, from clairvoyance to universal knowledge,” highlighting the sluggishness of the diffuse echoes.
The echoes of Lycidas in The Rehearsal Transpros’d: The Second Part and A Short Historical Essay illustrate several key characteristics of Marvellian echoes: their superficial and sometimes incoherent relationship to the source text (the connection between “unexpressive Nuptiall song” and Nazianzen’s “unexpressible”); the lack of clear rationale for the differences they introduce; the potential formal reflection of incoherence in their scattered arrangement; and the contingent nature of their occurrence, often lacking apparent forethought. Furthermore, interpreting echoes in relation to other echoes has proven useful in confirming their echoic status.
In contrast to the somewhat disorganized nature of Marvell’s echoes, defining his allusions presents a more straightforward task, owing to the relative consistency of the category and the rigorous criteria his allusions embody. The intricacy and coherence of Marvell’s allusions are evident in scholarly emphasis on their transformative power over the source text. Nigel Smith, in The Poems of Andrew Marvell, uses terms like “transpositions,” “reworkings,” “invert,” “mutate,” and “adapt” to describe Marvell’s allusions, highlighting their dynamic and transformative nature. This idea of allusive alchemy is a recurring theme in Marvell scholarship. Allan Pritchard notes Marvell’s unique “capacity not only to assimilate but also to transform.” Paul Davis also uses “transform” to characterize Marvellian allusions as a “transformative mode of rewriting.” Ian C. Parker sees Marvell’s transmuting allusions as a distinctive feature of his poetic composition process, where he appropriates and transmutes elements from other writers into poems that are distinctively “Marvellian.” Joad Raymond employs the metaphor of valves controlling blood circulation to describe how Marvell’s “Horatian Ode” “remakes what it receives and separates itself from the system in which it operates,” illustrating a “more capacious account of intertextuality.” Marvell’s allusions are not merely imitative; they actively transform and remake their sources, indicating a meticulous and comprehensive intertextual process. This remaking is only possible because the allusion is realized with painstaking detail. Andrew Shifflett’s analysis of the “verbal, formal, and philosophical similarities” between Marvell’s “On Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost” and Jonson’s “To my chosen Friend, The learned Translator of Lucan, Thomas May, Esquire” underscores the purposeful and precise labor involved in Marvell’s allusive transformations.
Marvellian allusions are characterized by some or all of the following attributes: indirectness, distinguishing them from direct quotation and other forms of explicit reference; similitude (not identity) with another work, motivating the recognition of allusivity through verbal, thematic, aural, or formal parallels; denaturalization and/or adaptation of the source text to the alluding text, without rendering it unrecognizable; ironic contrast between the alluding text and the source of allusion; criticism of the source text, ranging from censoriousness to explication and interpretation; and meaningfulness, ensuring that the allusion’s significance extends beyond mere recognition. This list is not prescriptive; these attributes are not necessarily sequential. Marvell might begin with similitude and then discover ironic contrast, or start with criticism and then denature the source to obscure the allusion. The interaction between these attributes is more crucial than their order: how they activate each other (e.g., criticism and ironic contrast), how they exist in tension (e.g., indirectness and similitude), and how Marvell navigates or exploits these tensions.
The principle of meaningfulness requires further explanation. It is an effect resulting from the other attributes, not an independent feature. Carmela Perri effectively summarizes meaningfulness: “Contemplation of the linked texts may activate further meaning patterns between them, or the marked text may evoke properties of texts other than itself (‘intra-textual patterns’), any of which affect the significance (‘modify’) of the alluding text.” Marvell’s allusions possess a capacity for ramification, which is what meaningfulness describes.
In all these attributes of allusion, Marvell demonstrates, in the words of Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey T. Schnapp on Dante, “control of the implications of his allusions.” This control is consistent with a poet described as “so mistrustful of detection that he would not share a drink with a man in whose hands he would not trust his life.” The tendency towards intertextual circumscription, as seen in paired poems like “Hortus” and “The Garden,” reflects a desire for allusive control. Self-allusion emphasizes Marvell’s concern for authorial control and its safeguarding within his allusions. Consequently, intertextual theories that dismiss authorial intention, propose reader-constructed allusions, argue for texts as alluding entities independent of authors, or treat allusion merely as a heuristic tool, have limited relevance to Marvell’s work.
Gian Biagio Conte, in The Rhetoric of Imitation, reflects on intentionality:
If one concentrates on the text rather than on the author, on the relation between texts (intertextuality) rather than on imitation, then one will be less likely to fall into the common philological trap of seeing all textual resemblances as produced by the intentionality of a literary subject whose only desire is to emulate. The philologist who seeks at all costs to read intention into imitation will inevitably fall into a psychological reconstruction of motive, whether it is homage, admiring compliment, parody, or the attempt to improve upon the original.
Why must focusing on authorial intent reduce the author to a mere imitator, motivated solely by homage, compliment, parody, or improvement? Marvell engages in all these, and more. His allusions often critically engage with the source, surpassing the sentimentality Conte associates with aemulatio. Marvell can objectify and transcend the “psychological reconstruction of motive.”
Other intertextual theories grant excessive power to the reader. Lowell Edmunds, for example, positions the “reader” as “the locus of intertextuality.” The concept of the “reader” is problematic for Marvell. The circulation of verse during his lifetime suggests Marvell was not broadly concerned with readers, composing much of his verse with a specific reader in mind. Expectations of readerly interpretation minimally influenced Marvell’s allusions, especially in many of his poems. The gap between authorial intention and readerly perception, which intertextuality theoretically opens and negotiates through reader-authored allusions, is narrowed by Marvell’s implied author-reader relationship. This partially explains the authorial control evident in Marvell’s allusions.
However, intertextuality remains relevant to Marvell scholarship. Edmunds’s theory illuminates the temporal dynamics of Marvell’s allusions. Edmunds notes that Roman poetry scholarship often views intertextuality unidirectionally (later text T1 quotes earlier text T2), but this relationship can be reversible. Marvell does not so much reverse this relationship as discover allusions in earlier texts, unintended by their authors. In “Upon Appleton House” (1651), the speaker in the Nun Appleton woods observes, “The oak leaves me embroider all …/And ivy, with familiar trails,/Me licks, and clasps, and curls, and hales./Under this antic cope I move/Like some great prelate of the grove” (74.587–92). The phrase “antic cope” alludes to John Milton’s fifth anti-prelatical tract, An Apology against a Pamphlet (1642). Milton criticizes a prayer not in the service book, which his opponent “dislikes … and I therefore like it the better. It was theatricall, he sayes. And yet it consisted most of Scripture language: it had no Rubrick to be sung in an antick Coape upon the Stage of a High Altar. It was big-mouth’d he says; no marvell.” Marvell’s use of Milton’s “antick Coape” functions as a direct allusion. Milton critiques Laudianism, as may Upon Appleton House, and “antick Coape” allows Marvell to channel anti-Laudian sentiment. “No marvell” may have initially drawn Marvell to this passage. However, Marvell’s context for “antick Coape” is rich with temporal involution, clairvoyance, and mystic insight: “Out of these scattered sibyl’s leaves/Strange prophecies my fancy weaves” (73.577–8); and “Thrice happy he who, not mistook,/Hath read in Nature’s mystic book” (73.583–4). By alluding to Milton, Marvell places An Apology (1642) in a prophetic relationship with “Upon Appleton House” (1651). Marvell exerts such authorial control that he makes the text allude regardless of authorial intent, confirming the intertextual principle of texts alluding while challenging the dismissal of authorial intent.
Having discussed Marvell’s allusions in abstract terms, let us examine a detailed example of their function. The following example illustrates the intensity of Marvell’s engagement with his source, the recoverability of the logic behind his alterations, what he uncovers and highlights in his source, and how his source criticism transcends mere emulation.
In “A Dialogue, Between the Resolved Soul, and Created Pleasure,” Pleasure’s initial speech after the Chorus’s intervention states,
All this fair, and soft, and sweet,
Which scatt’ringly doth shine,
Shall within one beauty meet,
And she be only thine. (51–4)As Nicholas von Maltzahn notes, these lines allude to Abraham Cowley’s poem “The Soule,” published in The Mistresse (1647). The specific lines Marvell alludes to are:
If all things that in Nature are
Either soft, or sweet, or faire,
Bee not in Thee so’Epitomiz’d,
That naught material’s not compriz’d;
May I as worthlesse seeme to Thee
As all, but Thou, appeares to Mee.In “All this fair, and soft, and sweet,” Marvell alludes to Cowley’s “soft, or sweet, or faire.” This verbal similarity forms the basis of the allusion. However, Marvell introduces indirectness by changing the order of Cowley’s adjectives and using “and” instead of “or.” These alterations are governed by allusion as criticism (“or” to “and”) and allusion as denaturalization/adaptation (adjective sequence). “And” is more seamlessly additive than “or,” which presents discrete alternatives. Marvell refines the conjunctive logic of his source, not in petty competition, but in clarification, exemplifying critical poetry in allusive form. “Critical” here means astutely improving, not enviously surpassing. The poet in Marvell naturally refines poetry, and allusion is one method of achieving this betterment.
Marvell’s reordering of Cowley’s adjectives adapts “The Soule” to “A Dialogue.” In Marvell’s poem, Pleasure’s initial temptations appeal to taste, then touch. The second temptation uses “soft”: “On these downy pillows lie,/Whose soft plumes will thither fly” (19–20). The fourth temptation, focused on sight, urges self-admiration: “But since none deserves that grace,/In this crystal view thy face” (33–34). “Fair” in “All this fair, and soft, and sweet” is less repetitive of prior temptations. Self-fairness was already addressed, but not external fairness. “Soft” recalls touch, “sweet” taste, though “sweet” in line 51 means pleasing. “Fair,” acknowledging the failure of external visual appeals, avoids direct repetition. Yet, some repetition in lines 51–54 is appropriate. The temptation of amorous delight consolidates prior temptations, hence the use of “fair,” “soft,” and “sweet,” echoing earlier appeals. This intensified temptation follows the Chorus’s warning of “new charges” (49).
We have examined two alterations Marvell makes to “The Soule” (“or” to “and,” adjective sequence) and their allusive attributes. The following attributes arise not from alterations but from the allusive connection between “A Dialogue” and “The Soule.” Ironic contrast results from comparing the values of Soul and Cowley’s speaker and their valuation of softness, fairness, and sweetness. This contrast also constitutes allusion as criticism, highlighting the materialistic stance of Cowley’s speaker.
Cowley’s speaker embraces what Marvell’s Soul rejects. In “The Soule,” the speaker asserts knowledge of the beloved is sufficient: “If my Understanding doe/Seeke any Knowledge but of You.” This contrasts with Soul’s statements (lines 17–18, 23–24, 35–36) on the sufficiency of heaven and divine rest. Marvell’s poem transforms Cowley’s “You” into the Christian God. Furthermore, “The Soule” rejects a core principle of Marvell’s Soul. The speaker in “The Soule” vows, “And if (for I a curse will give,/Such as shall force thee to beleive)/My Soule bee not entirely Thine,/May thy deare Body ner’e bee Mine.” Marvell’s Soul would be appalled by this logic. “The Soule” speaker barters spiritual and material realms, considering them equal exchange. This materiality is what Soul in “A Dialogue” consistently resists. Marvell’s allusions to “The Soule” are deeply ironic because that poem undervalues the soul.
Given these philosophical differences, it is unsurprising that “The Soule” speaker embraces the fair, soft, and sweet beauty that Soul finds repellent. A subtle divergence in how each poem measures softness, sweetness, and fairness regarding the beloved (“The Soule”) and “one beauty” (“A Dialogue”) further underscores their divergent perspectives. Pleasure claims all fairness, softness, and sweetness will converge into one beauty. In contrast, “The Soule” speaker argues no fairness, softness, or sweetness exists apart from the beloved: “If all things that in Nature are/Either soft, or sweet, or faire,/Bee not in Thee so’Epitomiz’d,/That naught material’s not compriz’d.” The beloved epitomizes all things soft, sweet, and fair, implying all material softness, sweetness, and fairness derive from the beloved. Later, the speaker claims “that all faire Species bee/Hyeroglyphick markes of Thee.” No fairness exists outside the beloved; subsequent examples are antitypes of an original type. Cowley’s typology extravagantly praises the beloved, exceeding the combination into “one beauty” in “A Dialogue.” Pleasure might adopt this view, yet its extreme infatuation makes it unpersuasive to Soul. Marvell, by choosing a less extreme stance on softness, sweetness, and fairness than Cowley, both illustrates and condemns. He reveals the extreme material focus of “The Soule” speaker. Pleasure, recognizing this extreme valorization would fail to tempt Soul, avoids it, implicitly censuring its excess. The claims of “The Soule” speaker about the derivation of softness, sweetness, and fairness are so extreme Marvell must refine them, an act that reinforces the excess it corrects. Marvell likely found Cowley’s lines provocative, perhaps infuriating, a strong starting point for any allusion.
From this point, Marvell builds an allusion beyond mere verbal parallels. As argued, verbal parallels alone are a weak basis for allusion; allusions are not always verbally explicit. While the allusion to “The Soule” uses verbal parallels, it transcends them, avoiding categorization as a mere echo. Indirectness, denaturalization/adaptation, and allusive criticism are evident in Marvell’s adjective reordering and “or” to “and” change. Ironic contrast informs the derivation and treatment of softness, fairness, and sweetness in both poems. Allusion as criticism is seen in how “A Dialogue” highlights aspects of “The Soule,” particularly its extreme materialism. This critical function is a notable feature of Marvell’s allusions, exemplified in “no marvell.” His allusions respond to and illuminate the source text. This allusivity is creatively generous; Marvell not only takes from the source but also gives back. The echo takes (offering only adulation or irony). The allusion both takes and gives.
Finally, meaningfulness is evident in how each alteration or difference from “The Soule” broadens interpretive possibilities. Similitude becomes indirectness (“or” to “and”) and then allusive criticism (improving Cowley). Indirectness (adjective resequencing) becomes adaptation, showing Marvell’s preparation of Cowley’s line for “A Dialogue” and his close attention to his own poem (orchestrating Pleasure’s temptations to avoid repetition). The differences between the poems—speaker’s values and measurement of softness, fairness, and sweetness—form the basis for ironic contrast and allusive criticism. Marvell’s allusion moves between allusive attributes, activating one after another, prompting readers to identify textual differences. This allusion possesses a vibrant energy, with ramifications that expand and evolve. This is not a passive echo. The dynamism of Marvell’s allusions provides further reason to distinguish the meticulously controlled, intricately crafted Marvellian allusion from the less developed echo.
Notes
Competing Interests
The author has no competing interests to declare.
References
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