Andrew Marvell « Writing Privacy

Posts Tagged 'Andrew Marvell'

Privacy and Parliamentary Privilege

Published June 14, 2011 Literature , Politics Leave a Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Censorship, Early Modern, English Civil War, English Revolution, Literature, Politics, Privacy, Public Sphere, Richard Lovelace, Secrecy, Seventeenth Century, Speech-Acts

Parliament in 1647

This recent period has been plagued with privacy issues, the biggest of which, no doubt, has been the issue of super-injunctions.

While it has been good from a ‘subject branding’ perspective to have been asked about this, to be blunt, I simply couldn’t have cared less. About the surface matter, at least. Footballers and their deviance is nothing new. Nor does it matter to the outside world other than as hot gossip. So little of the intrusiveness of private lives gleefully splayed across front pages can be claimed to have significant public interest.

More interesting is the legal implications when thousands of people have denounced privacy laws by flouting collectively. Continue reading ‘Privacy and Parliamentary Privilege’

Brands of Solitude: Poets and their Nature

Published May 19, 2011 Leicester , Literature , research 5 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Christina Rossetti, Conscience, Literature, Poetry, Privacy, Psychology, Radio, Santa Cruz, Self-Confidence, Solitude

The highlight of this year has been participating in recordings for The Poetry Show on KUSP Radio, Santa Cruz. This post is indebted to a discussion of Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Garden’ and Christina Rossetti’s ‘In the Willow Shade’ for our fourth installment which aired on 8th May, the best to date.

We all enjoy solitude at points in our lives. Privacy is not just a right, one might argue, but a human requirement. We all enjoy that little realm when the door is shut firmly behind us and we can lapse into self-sufficiency.

The fundamental problem is how to draw the right balance. Managing solitude can be vital to our psychological wellbeing. It is difficult to maintain relationships that have little contact, and even harder to develop new ones. We live in times where it is easy to get lost and forgotten if we do not project ourselves publicly. It is rare that people will come looking for us.

Continue reading ‘Brands of Solitude: Poets and their Nature’

The Broken Image

Published May 15, 2011 Literature , Politics , research , Television 3 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Art, Doctor Who, Early Modern, Ekphrasis, Elegy, English Revolution, Icons, Interregnum, Literature, Mirrors, Oliver Cromwell, Privacy, research, Seventeenth Century, Visual Culture

How Doctor Who brings to light one of Andrew Marvell’s most touching moments...

Doctor Who: The Curse of Black Spot #1

There is little more pleasing than the perfect image. There is also real gratification in constructing an image. Over recent months, however, I have come to understand the terrible beauty and power that comes with an image that is broken.

Continue reading ‘The Broken Image’

A Long Winter’s Tale

Published April 17, 2011 Leicester , Literature , Politics , research 2 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Cultural Revolution, Early Modern, English Civil War, English Revolution, Geneva, humour, John Milton, Leicester, Literature, Nigel Smith, Politics, Print Culture, Public Sphere, Reformation, Religion, Seventeenth Century, Teaching

A summary of research activity from January-March 2011. This features a lecture by Nigel Smith at the Andrew Marvell Centre in Hull; a teaching event at the University of York; and the biannual British Milton Seminar at Birmingham Central Library.

Continue reading ‘A Long Winter’s Tale’

“Life is a Jigsaw”: Literary Shapes and Private Thoughts

Published April 11, 2011 Edinburgh , Literature , research 2 Comments
Tags: Andrew Balfour, Andrew Marvell, Art, Circles, Early Modern, Ekphrasis, Elegy, Facebook, George Puttenham, Jigsaw, John Donne, Literature, Mosaic, Oliver Cromwell, Print Culture, Psychology, Robert Browning, Seventeenth Century, Thomas Salusbury

Several years ago, a phrase came into my head on a dark day: “life is a jigsaw”. It was used for a trail of dark introspective thoughts concerning self-image, but it was clearly an analogy that had plenty more to offer.

The phrase is hardly unique to me; Google will attest to that. But my introspective thought has long revolved around shapes. George Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie (1569), which describes the properties of shapes, reminds us that the study of literature can transgress disciplines and fuse modes of thought creatively.

Original thought is fun to contemplate. Are our lives the equivalent of average undergraduate essays: recasting what has come before in our own way and offering a mere fraction of originality along the way? What constitutes new ideas? What is a ‘philosopher’, for their own chutzpah? Much which challenges subjective realms of thought must owe itself to literature.

Continue reading ‘“Life is a Jigsaw”: Literary Shapes and Private Thoughts’

The Second Anniversary: A Song For No-One

Published March 6, 2011 Music , Writing 4 Comments
Tags: Alphaville, Andrew Marvell, Catching Rays on Giant, Marian Gold, Music, Pet Shop Boys, Privacy, Public Sphere, SynthPop, Writing

A happy second anniversary to RoyalArbor, or Writing Privacy as it became. There is plenty that could commemorate this, but there was only one winner. First, it’s time to take stock for a moment.

A Space for No-One?

I think a lot about what goes here. Writing privacy demands it. It’s an oxymoron of sorts: to write privacy is to publicize it. Andrew Marvell not only withheld his works from publication, but he also privately considered the role of the writer in the new public sphere of the seventeenth century. That someone capable of such lyric majesty was so determined not to share it gives a permanent awareness to what should be allowed to escape into public space.

As such, this place never needed to be about me. It has needed to be about pieces of research that tell a good story; about events or developments that have some form of interest extending beyond me; and about privacy as a wider interest. The reason I left my old space behind was because it had become for no-one but myself.

We all live intricate and complicated lives. Continue reading ‘The Second Anniversary: A Song For No-One’

Solitariness: A Sweet Side-Note

Published February 27, 2011 Literature , Politics , Television Leave a Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Censorship, Cultural Revolution, Doctor Who, English Civil War, English Revolution, Literature, MPs' Expenses, Print Culture, Privacy, Public Sphere

Rory guards the Pandorica

I’ll be thy Champion to defend
Thy person from all these dangers and harms;
No Army’s so sure as a real friend,
Nor castle defends like a lover’s arms.
But if I can’t daunt ‘em,
By valour and might
Your face shall enchant ‘em,
For beauty can fight.
There’s no armour can men free
From the naked pow’r of such beauties as thee.

Alexander Brome, from To his Mistres affrighted in the wars (1661)

I recently thought a little about what modern interpretations of Shakespeare can offer. What, then, of accidental crossovers – when something from early-modern literature leaps out as being particularly well-suited to a new moment?

People ask (and I often ask myself) why I am fascinated by literature of the English Civil War but so little other war literature. I’ve found three main reasons, for which the above completes the triad.

Continue reading ‘Solitariness: A Sweet Side-Note’

Primary School: In Happiness and Sorrow

Published February 15, 2011 Uncategorized 7 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Elegy, Privacy, Tragedy

"Art indeed is long, but life is short"

I would deal with items in chronological order, were it not that sometimes special circumstances deserve special attention.

Last summer, I enjoyed the rare fortune of a primary school reunion, fifteen years after leaving. Of the ten who returned to share the evening, most I had not seen since the age of eleven. It was a remarkable quantum leap – an act of re- self-fashioning – and an evening that has left a profound effect on me ever since. And yet it is with sorrow and tragedy that this memory is graced here.

Continue reading ‘Primary School: In Happiness and Sorrow’

“Retirement”

Published February 4, 2011 Writing 2 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Conscience, Public Sphere, Retirement, Sport, Tennis

It is often joked about when I return home, “Are you going to get a proper job before you retire, kid?” Strangely enough, this does not come from my parents, but their ‘witty’ friends. “Yep. I’m making sure that I don’t end up doing what you do”. <Chortles all round>. The question is funny, even if it does sting a little. Perhaps the subject has its moments too.

This notion of ‘retirement’ is curious. Of course, it features heavily in my research capacity. Marvell, by his own admission, favoured ‘modest retirement’. There are entire realms of conscience and casuistry to be explored when examining someone’s choice of the passive, private life over the active, public life.

It has somehow grown to mean more than that, though. Continue reading ‘“Retirement”’

An MP Turning Down a Secret Bribe? Bipolar Privacy

Published January 22, 2011 Literature , Politics , research 1 Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Early Modern, Literature, MPs' Expenses, Nigel Smith, Politics, Privacy, Restoration, Secrecy, Seventeenth Century

There are two sides to privacy: the bright side and the dark side. It is often politics which brings these to the fore. In 2009, the scandal surrounding MPs expenses showed the ugly art of secrecy breeding secrecy, and the ramifications are only now beginning to take effect.

Yet key public figures constantly find themselves involved with, or victim of, private and secretive practices. The prime minister’s communications chief, Andy Coulson, still suspected by many of complicity in secret phone-tapping, has just resigned. As has shadow chancellor Alan Johnson, citing private issues, after a member of his security team was alleged to have had an affair with his wife.

Mr Brightside

Andrew Marvell was MP elect for Hull for almost two decades from 1659. Interestingly, his inclination towards secrecy and privacy has rarely complicated the view of him as an honest, dedicated, and incorruptible public servant. And I was pleased to recently stumble across an anecdote about Marvell from the mid-eighteenth century that celebrates (as well we might today) the value of an honest politician. It relates to expenses, no less!

Continue reading ‘An MP Turning Down a Secret Bribe? Bipolar Privacy’

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Writing Privacy

Posts Tagged 'Andrew Marvell'

Privacy and Parliamentary Privilege

Brands of Solitude: Poets and their Nature

The Broken Image

A Long Winter’s Tale

“Life is a Jigsaw”: Literary Shapes and Private Thoughts

The Second Anniversary: A Song For No-One

A Space for No-One?

Solitariness: A Sweet Side-Note

Primary School: In Happiness and Sorrow

“Retirement”

An MP Turning Down a Secret Bribe? Bipolar Privacy

Mr Brightside

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