Do you think that Marvell was a great poet?

[astrum]

Do you like his work?


And, how does he compare to other notable poets, such as Milton or Donne?

[stlukesguild]

OK... we get the picture. You don't like Marvell. You can't understand why others do. Is it not just possible, however, that your personal likes and dislikes are not the penultimate test of literary merit? Seriously, How many threads are you going to start asking others for their opinions on Marvell which you will then set about to wholly ignore?

[Jackson Richardson]

Andrew Marvell is highly individual. We think of him as a metaphysical, but with a certain cheekiness that makes the elaborate conceits joky by comparison with Donne. But he was living and as far as I know publishing after the Restoration in the age of Dryden. His quotability and epigramatic style fit in with that mentality without using the heroic couplet.

He certainly comes up with lots of quotable phrases.

I read Nun Appleton House a year back and couldn't be doing with its hererosexist, anti-catholic attitude. (Why shouldn't a woman be happy with the love of fellow nuns without having to have some man?)

[astrum]

OK... we get the picture. You don't like Marvell. You can't understand why others do. Is it not just possible, however, that your personal likes and dislikes are not the penultimate test of literary merit? Seriously, How many threads are you going to start asking others for their opinions on Marvell which you will then set about to wholly ignore?



It's not that I don't like Marvell.

Rather, it's that--no matter how hard I try--I can't understand him nor put my finger on him. He's one of the few 16th/17th century poets that I can't understand. Unlike Milton, I just don't feel like I know him.