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2017 Spearing Caroline 12603 This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Abraham Cowley’s Plantarum Libri Sex A Cavalier Poet and the Classical Canon Spearing, Caroline Jane Ibbetson Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). 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Sep. 2021 Abraham Cowley’s Plantarum Libri Sex A Cavalier Poet and the Classical Canon by Caroline Jane Ibbetson Spearing A Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics Approximately 105,749 words Including translations (7639 words) as per Suspension of Regulations (attached) King’s College London May 2017 Students and Education Support Directorate Quality & Academic Support James Clerk Maxwell Building 57 Waterloo Road London SE1 8WA Tel: 020-7848 3385 Fax: 020-7874 3366 [email protected] Dr Mark Betz Room 561 North Building Strand Campus 30th June 2016 Dear Dr Betz Suspension of regulations request – Spearing, Caroline (1260321) This is to inform you that Professor O’Brien, acting on behalf of Chair of the Academic Board, has approved your request for a suspension of regulation A4 11.5(f). This will permit an extension to the student’s thesis word limit by 10% (10,000 words). The Vice-Principal of Education has added the following comment: ‘Good reasons have been given’ If you need any further information please do not hesitate to get in contact by emailing [email protected]. Yours sincerely Simisola Bisiriyu Quality & Academic Support C.c. Nicola Sainsbury Nisha Riat, Examinations PGR [email protected] [email protected] Glenn Childs For the Spearing boys Acknowledgements By far my greatest debt of gratitude is owed to my supervisor, Victoria Moul, in whose MA class I was first introduced to Cowley’s talking plants and knew I had found my destiny. Victoria has been tirelessly supportive throughout the project, and has given very generously of her time and energy, guiding me through the unfamiliar waters of Early Modern literature. Enormous thanks are also due to Lizzie Scott-Baumann, whose commitment has far exceeded the remit of a second supervisor and whose comments have been unfailingly pertinent and thought-provoking. Very many scholars have generously contributed their knowledge and expertise. J. Daniel Kinney has been an entertaining and highly informative correspondent on matters Plantarum-related. Gesine Manuwald has been meticulous in her reading and scrupulous in her feedback. Sandy Paul, of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, enabled me to spend a fascinating day investigating Cowley’s bequest to his alma mater. I have also benefited from the wisdom of Helen King, Noah Moxham, Florian Schaffenrath, Laura Gowing and Sara Read; and from the moral support of Roland Mayer, Lucy Wooding, Lucy Nicholas and Will Barton. Special thanks are due to James Morwood and Stephen Anderson, who manhandled me onto the MA course at King’s at a time when I was convinced that my future lay with cupcakes. Stephen, above all, has always been on call in the event of a particularly intractable piece of Cowleian Latin, and has read my translations with his customary Lynceus eye. Any errors that persist, needless to say, are my own. I would also like to thank the recently-retired Angus Bowie, who first taught me how to read a classical text and whose constantly inspiring tutorials played an incalculable role in my choice of profession; and Ewen Bowie, for the Stoic fortitude with which he has waited for my doctoral thesis. I hope he will accept my apologies for the rather different turn that it has adopted in the intervening twenty-seven years. The brunt of this thesis has been borne by Nicholas and Freddie Spearing, who have uncomplainingly endured anti-social hours and limited conversational range, and are rewarded by knowing much more about Abraham Cowley than they ever wanted. Any lucidity in my prose is directly attributable to Nicholas’ ruthless editing and proof-reading; though our views as to the semi-colon are unlikely to be reconciled. I shall treasure for ever Freddie’s Year 1 project on seventeenth-century gardens. Stefanka Yordanova and Lea Brandao have kept the domestic show on the road, and heroically resisted tidying my piles of books. John Diggens, the Bobart of the Piddle Valley, has selflessly humoured my growing obsession with Early Modern gardening. 1 Abstract Abraham Cowley’s Plantarum Libri Sex (1662 and 1668), a polymetric Latin poem of some 7,000 lines by a major English poet of the Interregnum and early Restoration, exists in no modern edition or translation and has received very little critical attention. This thesis demonstrates that the Plantarum deserves wider study. Showing how the work’s complex and nuanced interaction with classical intertexts is brought to bear on contemporary literary and political concerns, it aims to establish the poem as an important work by a writer at the heart of seventeenth-century literary and political activity. In the Introduction, I briefly describe Cowley’s life and work before contextualising the Plantarum in terms of neo-Latin and English literature and surveying existing scholarship. Chapter 1 looks at the elegiac books 1-2 (1662) in terms of their Ovidian intertext, relating Cowley’s poetics of change both to the Fasti and Metamorphoses and to the political upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century. Chapter 2 considers books 3-4 in terms of their Horatianism and of the allusions to Caroline masque generated through use of the Chloris/Flora/Henrietta Maria identification. Rather than a Royalist retreat, Flora’s court represents a Stoic negotium animi where the nature of monarchy is energetically debated. In Chapter 3 I show how Cowley juxtaposes the natural resources of the New World against the cultural heritage of the Old. I look at the combination of classical intertextuality and British national identity in his account of the forest, showing how he depicts the Stuart monarchy as its guarantor and guardian. After demonstrating the sophistication of Cowley’s engagement with Virgil and Lucan in the narrative of the Civil War and Restoration, I argue for an identification between Britain and America, and that books 5 and 6 are unified by Cowley’s prophecy of a maritime empire for the Stuart dynasty. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ 1 Abstract ........................................................................................................... 2 Abbreviations.................................................................................................. 8 Note on Typography, Texts, and Translations .......................................... 10 England and Britain ...................................................................................... 10 Introduction ................................................................................................... 11 1 Abraham Cowley: Life and Works ................................................................. 12 2 The Plantarum Libri Sex – structure .............................................................. 15 3 The Plantarum and existing scholarship ........................................................ 17 4 Methodological and theoretical approaches .................................................. 18 5 Genre ............................................................................................................. 25 5.1 The Didactic Genre ........................................................................................ 25 5.2 The Plantarum and Didactic Purpose ............................................................ 28 6 The Plantarum Libri Duo and the Poemata Latina ........................................ 34 6.1 A. Couleii Plantarum: Libri Duo (1662) .......................................................... 34 6.2 Poemata Latina (1668) .................................................................................. 35 6.2.1 De Vita et Scriptis ........................................................................................................ 37 6.2.2 Ad Celeberrimum Collegium S. S. Trinitatis ............................................................... 38 6.3.3 Praefatio Authoris, Duobus primis Plantarum Libris olim editis, Praemissa. ............... 40 7 The Plantarum as a Latin poem ....................................................................
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