SOURCE: "Representing Cromwell: Marvell's Wiser Art," in Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 23, 1992, pp. 64-79.

In the essay below, Lawson compares Marvell's "Horatian Ode" with other works of the period and argues that Marvell was presenting his own political views as well as a critique of political rhetoric in general.

The past decade has witnessed an effort on the part of Marvell critics to "rehistoricize" the Horatian Ode. In an essay published in 1981, Judith Richards rejected the "cavalier" readings of the New Criticism, and made an appeal for interdisciplinary readings of the poem that would restore historical contexts and recover "what meaning Marvell might have been seeking to convey to a contemporary audience."¹ Six years later, Marion Campbell argued a similar interpretive agenda, also attacking the New Critics for their ahistorical readings and, while acknowledging a "distinguished" line of historical criticism by the work of...