‘Thou retir’est to endless Rest’. Abraham Cowley’s ‘Wise’ and ‘Epi- curæan’ Grassehopper

Abstract

The lyric The Grassehopper by Abraham Cowley is a paradigmatic example of the reverent and almost animistic approach to the natural dimension that marks the first half of the seventeenth century: along with the vast process of democratization and the growing interest in science, a renewed enthusiasm for classic thinkers contributes to a mounting sensitivity towards the ‘brute creation’. Close to Pythagoras, Plato, Theophrastus, Ovid, Plutarch, Porphyry and, among his illustrious contemporaries, Gassendi, Galileo and Montaigne, Cowley indirectly challenges anthropocentrism and believes that the earth equally exists for humanity, animals and plants. Cowley devotes numerous poems and essays to plants and animals that do not belong to literary tradition and even theorizes and formulates an educative system that includes agriculture, gardening and zoology. In the lyric under analysis, he obliquely associates the eponymous grasshopper, an insect traditionally identified with the cicada in English culture, with the Muses, Apollo, Tithonus, Epicurus and with the figure of the poet: Cowley endows the “happy Insect” with both human and divine features and connects himself with it in order to retire, as his grassehopper does, “to endless Rest”, a metaphor for the paradisal and immortal dimension to which many seventeenth-century English thinkers aspire.

DOI: 10.17456/SIMPLE-67

Bibliography

Adams, Carol J., & Josephine Donovan eds. 1996. Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals. New York: Continuum.

Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The Open: Man and Animal. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press (L’Aperto: l’uomo e l’animale, 2002).

Allen, Don Cameron. 1960. Image and Meaning. Metaphoric Traditions in Renaissance Poetry. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Anacreon. 1993 [1984]. Anacreontea. Martin L. West ed. Stuttgart Leipzig Teubner, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum.

Arbuckle, Benjamin S., & S. A. McCarty. 2015. Animals and Inequality in the Ancient World. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Bachofen, Johann Jakob. 1988. Il matriarcato. Ricerca sulla ginecocrazia nel mondo antico nei suoi aspetti religiosi e giuridici. Torino: Einaudi (Das Mutterrecht: Eine Untersuchung über die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur. 1861. Stuttgart: Krais & Hoffmann).

Boas, George. 1933. The Happy Beast. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

Boas, Margaret. 1962. The Scientific Renaissance 1450-1630. London: William Collins Sons.

Bradstock, Andrew. 2000. Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649-1999. London: Frank Cass.

Brantz, Dorothee ed. 2010. Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans, and the Study of History. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Browne, Thomas. 1963 [1928]. Religio Medici (1643). Geoffrey Keynesed. The Works of Thomas Browne, 4 vols. London: Faber & Faber. vol. I.

Bruno, Giordano. 1973. De la causa, principio et uno. Giovanni Aquilecchia (a cura di). Torino: Einaudi.

Burton, Robert. 1948 [1932]. The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621, 1651), 3 vols. Holbrook Jackson ed. London: Dent.

Bush, Douglas. 1950. Science and English Poetry. A Historical Sketch (1590-1950). New York: Oxford University Press.

Càssola, Filippo ed. 1999 [1975]. Inni omerici. Milano: Mondadori.

Cavendish, Margaret. 1992. The Blazing World and other Writings. Kate Lilley ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Cavendish, Margaret. 2001. Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1655). Eileen O’Neill ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Cowley, Abraham. 1906. Essays, Plays and Sundry Verses. A. R. Waller ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cowley, Abraham. 1905. Poems. A. R. Waller ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cowley, Abraham. 1967 [1881]. The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Abraham Cowley. Now for the first time collected and edited: with Memorial-Introduction and Notes and Illustrations, 2 vols. Alexander B. Grosart ed. Blackburn (Lancashire): St. Georges. New York: AMS Press.

De Levie, Dagobert. 1947. The Modern Idea of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Its Reflection in English Poetry. New York: Vanni.

Descartes, René. 1992. Œuvres et lettres. André Bridoux ed. Paris: Gallimard.

Descartes, René. 2009. Tutte le lettere 1619-1650. Giulia Belgioioso ed. Milano: Bompiani.

Eliade, Mircea. 1978. Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses, 3 vols. Paris: Payot.

Eliade, Mircea. 1969. The Quest. History and Meaning in Religion. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Evelyn, John. 2001. Elysium Britannicum, or the Royal Gardens in Three Books (1659-1702). John E. Ingram ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Evelyn, John. 1901 [1818]. The Diary, 2 vols. John Bray ed. New York-London: M. Walter Dunne.

Farrington, Benjamin. 1952. Francis Bacon Philosopher of Industrial Science. New York: Henry Shuman.

Foxe, John. 2009. The Book of Martyrs: Select Narratives. John N. King ed.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Franklin, Julian H. 2005. Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press.

Frazer, James George. 1922. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. London: Macmillan.

Fudge, Erica. 2006. Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality and Humanity in Early Modern England. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.

Fudge, Erica. 2000. Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Fudge, Erica ed. 2004. Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures. Urbana-Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Galilei, Galileo. 1993. Sidereus nuncius (1610). Andrea Battistini ed. Tr. M.Timpanaro. Venezia: Marsilio.

Grimal, Pierre. 2009 [1979]. Dictionnaire de la mythologie grecque etromaine. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Hattaway, Michael. 2007. Renaissance and Reformations: An Introduction to Early Modern English Literature. Malden (MA): Blackwell.

Hill, Christopher. 1982 [1965]. Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hill, Christopher. 1975 [1971]. The World Turned Upside Down: RadicalIdeas during the English Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Hinman, Robert B. 1960. Abraham Cowley’s World of Order. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.

Johnson, Samuel. 1961 [1925]. Lives of the English Poets, 2 vols. A. Archer Hind ed. London: Dent.

Jones, Richard Foster. 1961. Ancients and Moderns. A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth-Century England. Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Jung, Carl Gustav & Károly Kerényi. 1985 [1949]. Science of Mythology. Essays on the Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis. London-Melbourne-Henley: Ark.

Kerényi, Károly. 1967. Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.

Koyré, Alexandre. 1957. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lévi Strauss, Claude. 2001 [1955]. Tristes tropiques. Paris: Plon.

Lovejoy, Arthur Oncken. 1960 [1948]. Essays in the History of Ideas. New York: Capricorn. Lovelace, Richard. 1953 [1930]. The Poems. C. H. Wilkinson ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Maclean, Gerald, Donna Landry & Joseph P. Ward eds. 1999. The Country and the City Revisited: England and thePolitics of Culture, 1550-1850. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press.

Merchant, Carolyn. 1980. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Milton, John. 1988. Poetical Works. Douglas Bush ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  Miner, Earl. 1969. The Metaphysical Mode from Donne to Cowley. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.

Montaigne, Michel de. 1991. On Cruelty, An Apology for Raymond Sebond. M.A. Screech ed. The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Harmonsdworth: Penguin.

Morus (Richard Lewinsohn). 1954. Animals, Men and Myths. A History of the Influence of Animals on Civilisation and Culture. London: Victor Gollancz.

Nicolson, Marjorie Hope. 1960. The Breaking of the Circle: Studies in the Effect of the ‘New Science’ upon Seventeenth-Century Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press.

Parfitt, George A. E. 1985. English Poetry of the Seventeenth Century. London-New York: Longman.

Parry, Graham. 1989. The Seventeenth Century. The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1603-1700. London-New York: Longman.

Pascoli, Giovanni. 1974. Myricae. Giuseppe Nava ed. Firenze: Sansoni.

Pepys, Samuel. 1995 [1971]. The Diary, 11 vols. R. C. Latham & W. Matthews eds. London: Harper Collins.

Plato. 1928. Phaedrus. Benjamin Jowett ed. and tr. The Four Socratic Dialogues of Plato Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Plutarch. 1936a. De esu carnium, Bruta animalia ratione uti, De sollertiaanimalium. Frank Cole Babbitt ed. Plutarch. Moralia, 15 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, vol. XII.

Plutarch. 1936b. Isis and Osiris. Frank Cole Babbitt ed. Plutarch. Moralia,15 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, vol. V.

Porphyry. 1999. De abstinentia (On Abstinence from Animal Food). Thomas Taylor ed. and tr. Select Works of Porphyry. Somerset: The Prometeus Trust.

Potter, Louis. 1989. Secret Rites and Secret Writing. Royalist Literature, 1641-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pugh, Simon. 1988. Garden, Nature, Language. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. Pugh, Simon. 1990. Reading Landscape: Country-City-Capital. Manchester-New York: University of Manchester Press.

Raber, Karen. 2013. Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Regan, Tom. 1983. The Case of Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Romero Allué, Milena. 2014. ‘Let savage Beasts lodge in a Country Den’. Animals, plants and paradoxes in Abraham Cowley’s writings. English Literature, 1: 193-219.

Rossi, Paolo. 1971. Aspetti della rivoluzione scientifica. Napoli: Morano.

Rossi, Paolo. 1977. Immagini della scienza. Roma: Editori Riuniti.

Rossi, Paolo. 1997. La nascita della scienza moderna in Europa. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Schama, Simon. 1995 Landscape and Memory. New York: Alfred Knopf.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. 2012 [1839]. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. David E. Cartwright, Edward E. Erdmann & Christopher Janaway eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Seznec, Jean. 1980. La survivance des dieux antiques. Essai sur le rôle de la tradition mythologique dans l’humanisme et dans l’art de la Renaissance. Paris: Flammarion.

Sidney, Philip. 2002 [1989]. Astrophil and Stella. Katherine Duncan-Jonesed. Philip Sidney. The Major Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Singer, Peter. 1990. Animal Liberation. New York: Avon Books.

Sorabji, Richard. 2001 [1993]. Animal Minds & Human Morals. The Origins of the Western Debate. London: Duckworth.

Sprat, Thomas. 1958. History of the Royal Society. Frackson I. Cope & Harold Whitmore Jones eds. St. Louis: Washington University Press.

Steiner, Gary. 2010 [2005]. Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents: The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Summers, Claude J. & Ted-Larry Pebworth. 1995. The Wit of Seventeenth-Century Poetry. Columbia-London: University of Missouri Press.

The Bible. Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha. 1997. Robert Carroll ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thomas, Keith. 1984. Man and the Natural World. Changing Attitudes in England, 1500-1800. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Thomson, James. 1970. The Seasons. Menston: Scholar Press.

Tryon, Thomas (‘Philotheos Physiologus’). 1684. Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies. London: Andrew Sowle.

Vickers, Brian. 1970. Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry. London: Macmillan.

Westfall, Richard S. 1973 [1958]. Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

Westfall, Richard S. 1971. The Construction of Modern Science. Mechanisms and Mechanics. New York: John Wiley.

Willey, Basil. 1967 [1934]. The Seventeenth-Century Background. Studies in the Thought of the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion. London: Chatto & Windus.

Williams, Raymond. 1985 [1973]. The Country and the City. London: Hogarth Press.

Winstanley, Gerrard. 1941. The Works. George Sabine ed. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.