Loving Gardens, Loving the Gardener? ‘Solitude’ in Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Garden

In 'The Garden', Andrew Marvell devotes a lot of time to extolling the virtues of the solitude he experiences in the garden of the title. Despite Marvell's insistence that he prefers solitude to 'society', at the end of the poem his attention comes to rest approvingly on a h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMarvell Studies Vol. 3; no. 2
Main Author Seymour, Laura
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Ubiquity Press Ltd 11.10.2018
Open Library of Humanities
Subjects
Andrew Marvell
Book publishing
Marvell, Andrew
pastoral
poetry
sexuality
solitude
United Kingdom
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Summary:In 'The Garden', Andrew Marvell devotes a lot of time to extolling the virtues of the solitude he experiences in the garden of the title. Despite Marvell's insistence that he prefers solitude to 'society', at the end of the poem his attention comes to rest approvingly on a human figure: the Gardener. Reading 'The Garden' alongside 'Damon the Mower', this article suggests that Marvell's sensually-charged engagement with the plants, trees, and fruits in 'The Garden' can be interpreted as a means of accessing and loving the Gardener himself. On one reading of 'Damon the Mower', the narrator caresses Damon through the landscape. Tracking similar themes in 'The Garden' suggests that something similar may be occurring in this poem, too. Keywords: Andrew Marvell, poetry, sexuality, pastoral, solitude
ISSN:2399-7435
2399-7435
DOI:10.16995/ms.26