La Montagne dans la poésie lyrique d’Andrew Marvell : variations sur une vision apocalyptique et le locus amoenus

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Andrew Marvell, known as the metaphysical poet of 17th century landscape gardens, likes strolling about his microcosm, taking delight in transforming by the thought the surrounding landcape into a "locus amoenus" where he can enjoy nature and solitude, farfrom these "wild creatures called men" (Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax, XIII, 102) he learnt to distrust. The theme of mountains plays a minor part in his poems. This is why it has never been tackled by literary criticism. If Marvell mentions mountains in some of his poems it is always with a sense of fright and impending danger. With him, mountains are seen with the mind’s eye and described with literary recollections and not from nature. They are awe-inspiring and it is better not to climb them. In order to get accustomed to them, the only means he finds is to reduce them to human proportions so that they can merge into the harmonious setting of his "hortus conclusus", the place where he withdraws into himself or more exactly into his own thought, as he admits it (cf. The Mower’s Song, stanza I, and Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax, stanza LXXVI). Within these idealized limits, miniaturized mountains enclose and protect the "hortus conclusus" or "locus amoenus" in which, after a life in Cromwell’s service, finally general Fairfax, Marvell’s protector, finds the enjoyable solitude he was looking for, in order to give himself up to leisure activities, amid his family, and the surrounding plants and animals, while his daughter, the young Maria, thanks to her beauty and virtues, presides over it