＂My Fruits Are Only Flowers＂: A Reading of Andrew Marvell's ＂The Coronet＂

Abstract

As a Protestant, and especially a Puritan, Andrew Marvell finds the problem of glorifying God with human arts a very difficult task to practice. On the one hand, he has to do his best to achieve something beautiful and great to reveal God’s supremacy or Grace; on the other hand, however, he must be cautious not to make his own works too admirable, so that the work itself may not intercept the praises which is to be directed to God and God only. “The Coronet” is unique in the sense that it manifests Marvell’s dilemma as a Protestant humanist. The poem is self-reflective and confessional. It becomes in itself the poet's coronet to glorify his Saviour, but the poet realizes that his work is contaminated by his own worldly desire. Compared to that of Donne or Herbert, Marvell’s awareness that his own artistic endeavor is ultimately insufficient to praise God seems more intense and pervasive. What is “crooked winding ways” to Herbert becomes “the Serpent old” to Marvell. It is ironic that the poet should recognize the serpent when his confidence in his work reaches its highest point. And to make the dramatic moment more catastrophic, this serpent appears to be closer to the poet himself than to Satan, and this makes the poet’s dilemma more difficult to resolve. Andrew Marvell’s “The Coronet,” although it inherits metaphysical conventions of Donne and Herbert in its style and metaphors, must be read within the tradition of Spenser and Milton. Marvell’s political stance and his pastoral sensitivity, together with his mild scepticism―as we can see in “To His Coy Mistress”―may have located him in the line of Cavaliers or metaphysical poets. But his keen awareness of the dilemma between Christianity and human aesthetics and the way he proposes to resolve it clearly position him within the Protestant humanism of the early modern period.