The Erotic Pleasure of Genre's Restraints in Andrew Marvell's Upon Appleton House.
This article explores how Andrew Marvell figures the relationship between genre and creativity in his poetry, countering a critical tendency to read Upon Appleton House as subverting the country house poem. I position the poem alongside other examples of its genre from Aemelia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, Ro...
| Published in: | Studies in Philology Vol. 123; no. 1; pp. 58 - 87 |
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| Format: | Poetry Review |
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University of North Carolina Press
Winter2026
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=191613006&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 191613006 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00393738 SPL jtl: Studies in Philology issn: 00393738 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Winter2026 vid: 123 iid: 1 pid: 2027 pub: University of North Carolina Press artinfo: ui: 191613006 10.1353/sip.2026.a984076 ppf: 58 ppct: 29 formats: tig: atl: The Erotic Pleasure of Genre's Restraints in Andrew Marvell's Upon Appleton House. aug: au: Carges, Henry affil: Rutgers University su: Upon Appleton House (Poem) Marvell, Andrew, 1621-1678 17th century English poetry Early modern English poetry Poetry (Literary form) Creative ability Themes in poetry 17th century (Literary period) sug: subj: Upon Appleton House (Poem) Marvell, Andrew, 1621-1678 17th century English poetry Early modern English poetry Poetry (Literary form) Creative ability Themes in poetry 17th century (Literary period) ab: This article explores how Andrew Marvell figures the relationship between genre and creativity in his poetry, countering a critical tendency to read Upon Appleton House as subverting the country house poem. I position the poem alongside other examples of its genre from Aemelia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, and Thomas Carew to illuminate how Marvell figures the aesthetic and ideological restraints of the country house poem as imaginative sources of productive pleasure, eroticizing the relationship between poem and genre and finding new forms of creation in the process. Attending to this relationship reveals how Marvell imagines literary production outside of procreation, the dominant figure of production in his period and genre. He does this by transforming the procreative demand and the submission of the author's imagination to the patron's world order into an experience of autoerotic masochism that briefly enables new productive forms. He thus upholds his genre's mandate for fertility while also imagining a kind of literary creation through erotic desire that is not entirely beholden to the dominant sexual politics. Although these new productive forms fade by the end of Upon Appleton House, this article concludes by turning to two of Marvell's Restoration satires, The Last Instructions to the Painter and "The Loyal Scot," to show how the poet held on to the potential of this new way of thinking about literary creativity. pubtype: Review doctype: Poetry Review src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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