‘To wound an oak’: the Poetics of Tree-felling at Nun Appleton
But I, retiring from the flood,Take sanctuary in the wood;And, while it lasts, my self embarkIn this yet green, yet growing ark1Andrew Marvell's poem, 'Upon Appleton House, To My Lord Fairfax', which searchingly explores the civilised retirement from public life of the Commander-in-Chief of Parliamentarian forces from 1645 to 1650, Sir Thomas, 'Lord General' Fairfax (1612-71), has, like Marvell (1621-78) himself, received a considerable measure of critical attention in recent years. Unsurprisingly, considering the poem features no fewer than eighteen stanzas on Nun Appleton's wood, a good deal of this attention, by scholars such as Chris Fitter, Diane McColley, Nigel Smith and James Turner, has focused on its environmental concerns,2 which include the felling of oak trees on Fairfax's idyllic Yorkshire estate, memorably effected by woodpeckers figuring the New Model Army: 'Who could have thought the tallest oak / Should fall by such a feeble stroke!'. Marvell, though, was not the only man to pen verses on Nun Appleton in the seventeenth century. As well as a modest offering from Lord Fairfax himself, 'Upon the New-built House att Apleton',3 there is another poem from this period concerned not only with this identical Yorkshire retreat but also, intriguingly, with the same theme of oak-felling. This poem is 'The Vocal Oak', subtitled 'Upon Cutting Down the Woods at Nun-Appleton',4 by Brian Fairfax (1633-1711), Thomas's cousin. Published in 1849,5 the poem has not been entirely ignored by literary critics. Turner quotes eight lines from it, arguing that Fairfax conveys the countryside as 'an object of capital investment and conspicuous consumption', and both Fitter and Smith make brief reference to it, if solely in relation to Marvell.6 Nonetheless, 'The Vocal Oak' has hitherto failed to receive the sustained critical examination which its literary, ecological and political moment merits. Written in 1679, the year following Marvell's death, Fairfax's poem provides a vivid illustration of seventeenth-century poetically framed attitudes to the exploitation of the countryside in general, and to deforestation in particular.7 In addition to its treatment of tree-felling as an intrinsically significant and wholly deleterious environmental event, the poem also demonstrates the richly symbolic uses to which responses to such activity could be put, in a Restoration era when the posthumous reputation of Lord Fairfax, for whom Brian had acted as private secretary from 1661, was being placed under growing strain. Though in many ways a strikingly individual piece, rooted in both the personal and political preoccupations of its day, 'The Vocal Oak' also betrays revealing parallels with Marvell's earlier poem, shedding new light on the manuscript circulation and contemporary popularity of a work which, like most of Marvell's poetry, was published posthumously in 1681.8 The poem does not rival Marvell's in ecological, any more than in literary, importance; rather, it operates as a satellite, orbiting around and in some ways dependent on it, yet at the same time exhibiting its own singular characteristics. This article, then, provides the first detailed analysis of 'The Vocal Oak', a close reading in which contemporary configurations of politics, environment and intertextuality are triangulated.Given the plethora of modern studies on seventeenth-century protoenvironmentalism, the wider context of a poem concerned, at least on one level, with deforestation needs little explanation. More than most other ecological anxieties, deforestation had been, and was still, a hotly-debated issue at the time of the poem's composition. Michael Williams gives the early modern British timber crisis an instructively European and Far Eastern context, suggesting that only Rome at its peak and northern China in the twelfth century match the scale of the problem experienced in Britain from the late sixteenth century onwards. Ken Hiltner has shown that early modern England experienced a host of environmental crises, including air pollution, acid rain, endangered species, wetland loss and, not least, deforestation. …
The locus amoenus: ethically justified space in seventeenth-century poetry
The subject of this thesis is the locus amoenus, the classically derived ideal place appropriated by seventeenth-century rural poets. The poetic representation of a place of both safety and comfort took both topographical and ideological form in the upheaval of the seventeenth century. To date, no extended studies of the locus amoenus in seventeenth-century rural poetry have been published. Moreover, examinations of this subject conventionally focus on classical expressions of an ideal place. This thesis provides a critical consideration of the locus amoenus regarding the poetry of Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, Mildmay Fane, Robert Herrick, John Denham, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton. The classical roots of the term locus amoenus reveal many of the elements that went in to the poetic fashioning of the ideal place. More than classical symbolism, the ideal place of the seventeenth century was set against a backdrop of agrarian capitalism, anxieties over social hierarchy, and civil war. By studying a variety of poets and their contexts, it is possible to account for and clarify the manifestations of the ideal place the century produced. Aemilia Lanyer and Cookham are considered first in this thesis. The poet envisages the female family at the centre of the ideal place in command of the estate. Next, Ben Jonson creates the estate of Penshurst as a place of temporary respite, away from the flattery demanded of him at court. Mildmay Fane, with his combination of staggering wealth and moderation in all things, seeks a quiet, natural locus amoenus, and is remarkably consistent in his commitment to the via media throughout his body of work. Fane’s ideal place holds friendship as the anodyne to civil strife and the increasing difficulties between Parliament and the Stuart monarchy. His great friend, Robert Herrick, shared the same Royalist sympathies, but perceives that social harmony can be found on the ideal estate. The way to this estate lies in the traditions and sports of old, where peasants dutifully bring in and celebrate the estate’s harvest with a benevolent lord. John Denham found the ideal place was firmly rooted in both historic and present-day England, perceived from his vantage point atop Cooper’s Hill. Andrew Marvell’s approach to the ideal place is one based on community, spirituality, and moderation. Marvell’s ideal landscapes are surrounded by the aftermath of civil war, whether in vegetative military symbolism or a mowing down of grass like so much human flesh. Lastly, Milton subverts the Jonsonian practice of the masque of praise to transpose a physical space into a locus amoenus of the mind. Ultimately, it is in the redeemed soul that Milton perceives the strongest hope for an enduring locus amoenus. This thesis reflects on the individual idealism and identity that each poet wished to create. By focusing on an assembly of poets, I demonstrate the importance of understanding the complex and diverse potential of the locus amoenus in the seventeenth century. Even though the nature of each ideal place is not always congruous between poets, much can be learned about the social, political, and cultural nature of the seventeenth-century ideal place when considered together. This study of the locus amoenus not only illuminates strife-ridden England, but considers the characteristics of landscape for defintion in a new, more peaceful world.
The Provincial Centre at Camulodunum: Towards an Historical Context
Present assessment of the provincial enclosure at Camulodunum, more particularly how far it can be compared to the standard picture of similar centres elsewhere, is inevitably constrained by the limited evidence at our disposal. With no numismatic sources to draw on and in the absence of a single record of the provincial priesthood — a striking void that calls for comment — documentary testimony is restricted to what can be made of two passages in the literary authorities. The first, a notorious sneer in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis (VIII.3), tells only that a temple of some sort was associated somehow with the emperor Claudius. The second text, an obscure allusion in Tacitus, is at first sight no more enlightening but, on closer analysis, the phrase templum Divo Claudio constitutum (Ann. xiv.31) yields the invaluable inference that the temple was to the deified, not the living Claudius; in which case construction must have been begun in a.d. 54 or later. Archaeological data throw no light on the origins of the temple or of the precinct in which it stood but exploration has steadily enlarged our knowledge of the site itself, and understanding of the remains has now reached the stage at which, for all its puzzling lacunae, the centre is as well known in some ways as the triple-tiered complex at Tarraco, the provincial enclave of Hispania Citerior. We have arrived at the point where the British sanctuary and its counterparts on the Continent can be mutually illuminating.