Upon Appleton House by Andrew Marvell

PRIMARY SOURCE: Upon Appleton House (comp. 1651)
Context

• Publication: Miscellaneous Poems, 1681, "by his former housekeeper as support for her unsuccessful claim to be his widow and heir" (Rumrich 531) EEBO entry.
• Scholarship: Compared to "Horation Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland" for political commentary on Fairfax, who refused to invade Scotland and was replaced by Cromwell.
• Why I'm reading it: Dubrow uses the country house poem to apply New Formalism to the Renaissance.

Content

• Form: Iambic tetrameter; couplets; eight-line stanzas; 97 stanzas. (Based around 8-8-8 organization.)
• Genre: Country house poem or topographical poem.
• Conceit: "The framework is a guided tour: a description of the house itself (lines 1-80), modulating into moralized history--the story of the nunnery and the attempted seduction of the Fairfax ancestor, the "blooming Virgin Thwaites"--and into false and corrupted religion (81-280). The grounds are described: the gardens (281-368), laid out in military style; the meadows (369-480), where the order of the seasons prevails; the woods (481-624), image of the retired life; the river (625-648). Finally, at evening, returning to the mode of elaborate compliment, the poet describes Mary Fairfax, the epitome of the natural scene, the microcosm of the place, and the hope for a new and better order (649-776)." (Rumrich 559)
• Other notes: 
• The play places a high value on embodied reason.
• Transcendental imagery.
• Unclear image: "I was but an invented tree" (ln. 565)
• Mneumonic from the apple trees on Rahn Rd., down Rahn, then over to John Hole on Whipp.

(NB: Written with anthology notes.)

Rumrich, John P, and Gregory Chaplin. Seventeenth-century British Poetry, 1603-1660: Authoritative Texts, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. Print.