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Cowley in 1643 Cowley in 1643
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The Civil War as Polemic Epic The Civil War as Polemic Epic
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The Civil War and Classical Epic The Civil War and Classical Epic
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The Civil War’s Heroes The Civil War’s Heroes
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Vilifying the Opposition Vilifying the Opposition
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Falkland, Orpheus, and the Unwritability of Civil War Falkland, Orpheus, and the Unwritability of Civil War
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Six “More Famous by His Pen than by His Sword”: Weaponizing the Classics in Abraham Cowley’s The Civil War
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Published:January 2024
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Abstract
Cowley himself claimed in the preface to his Poems (1656) that it was his sense of the inevitability of defeat that caused him to abandon his English verse epic The Civil War, remarking on the futility of fashioning “laurels for the conquer’d.” I argue here that the poem represents the attempt of a highly ambitious young man to produce panegyric in an appropriately epic mode, an attempt ultimately frustrated by the brutality and futility of civil war. I consider how the discourse of heroic epic was put under pressure by the English Civil War’s use of firearms and the localized and domestic character of its theater of war, both of which challenged an easy reading of the conflict through the lens of ancient poetry. Through the figure of Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland and his identification with Orpheus as representative of civilization against barbarism, Cowley’s projected epic instead adopts an elegiac tone with the realization that chaos can be the only victor in civil war.
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