New Insights on English Authors from Marvell to Larkin: An English Variety

• Published in: Bunyan Studies no. 6; p. 101
• Main Author: Pooley, Roger
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.1995
• Subjects: Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Digby, Kenelm (1603-65); English language
• ISSN: 0954-0970

There's nothing directly on Bunyan, though the piece on 'Modes of Self-Representation: Herbert of Cherbury, Kenelm Digby, Pepys' (first published in The Seventeenth Century) makes some reference to Grace Abounding, and proposes a dual model of autobiography which readers of this journal will want to read and argue with. The arrangement of the pieces, chronologically by author discussed, is entirely appropriate, though it left me wanting to try out an alternative arrangement, by composition, to see if I could construct an intellectual journey for someone who was my research supervisor in the early 70s, as well as someone who represents a powerful but almost vanished approach to the subject of literature - moralist, Christian, widely read, resistant to fashion but not fogeyish or obscurantist. The opening essay, on Marvell, is more openly unhappy, when he laments the abandonment of a common culture consequent on the industrialization and over-specialization of the humanities, and expresses his doubt that breaking down the barriers between traditional disciplines would produce any light.