CONRAD BRUNSTRÖM
NOTES
1. Such a reading has long been contested. In 1972, Otis Fellows, in an article entitled “Prior’s ‘Pritty Spanish Conceit,’” argued that Don Quixote (or rather Sancho Panza) was a significant influence on “Alma,” noting Panza’s insistence that the belly governs the heart rather than vice versa. Fellows uses this hint to undermine the entire system of “Alma”:
The present writer is still as convinced as he was a few years ago when he wrote that in the debate between Mat and Richard, it is the latter who says that the mind’s seat of empire is the belly, and that it is significant that Richard should have the last thirty lines, which are in praise of happiness, or at least contentment. It remains his considered judgement that, in the end, “the pragmatic Richard is closer to Prior’s position than Mat, and Prior’s poem succeeds only as Mat’s system fails, as all systems must fail that employ only the modest agent of human reason for metaphysical speculation. Thus, Mat’s system – the reconciling product of intellectual pyrotechnics that are not only magnificent but absurd – collapses before the awesome prospect of Richard’s discontented belly. (11)
Return to main text.
2. The sexualization of William of Orange’s relationship with his favorites is discountenanced by David Onnekink in his article “Mynheer Benting Now Rules over Us”: The 1st Earl of Portland and the Re-Emergence of the English Favourite, 1689−99.” Of course, from the point of view of compensatory propaganda, it is the prevalence rather than the accuracy of homophobic identifications which is significant.
Return to main text.
3. In “The Pre-Requisites for Decisiveness in Early Modern Warfare,” Jamel Ostwald writes, “even Marlborough’s most ardent supporters acknowledge it was a Pyrrhic victory. The heavily entrenched French army suffered nine thousand casualties and the Allies twenty-four thousand, losses so high that the well-organized French withdrawal from the field was not even contested” (665).
Return to main text.
WORKS CITEDAuden, W.H. Collected Shorter Poems 1927−1957. New York: Random House, 1966. Print.
Austin, J. L. How to do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1962. Print.
Boileau’s Lutrin: A Mock Heroic Poem. In Six Cantos. Render’d into English Verse. London: Printed for R. Burrough, J, Baker, E. Sanger and E. Curll, 1708. Print.
Eves, Charles Kenneth. Matthew Prior: Poet and Diplomatist. New York: Octagon, 1939. Print.
Fellows, Otis. “Prior’s ‘Pritty Spanish Conceit.’” Modern Language Notes 87 (Nov. 1972): 3−11. Print.
Gildenhuys, Faith. “Convention and Consciousness in Prior’s Love Lyrics.” Studies in English Literature, 1500−1900 35.3 (Summer 1995): 437−55. Print.
Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, with Critical Observations on their Words. Ed. Roger Lonsdale. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 2006. Print.
Legg, L.G. Wickham. “Torcy’s Account of Matthew Prior’s Negotiations at Fontainebleau in July 1711.” The English Historical Review 29.115 (Jul. 1914): 525−32. Print.
Longinus. The Works of Dionysius Longinus, On the Sublime: Or, A Treatise Concerning the Sovereign Perfection of Writing. Translated by from the Greek by Mr Welsted. London: Printed for Sam. Briscoe, 1712. Print.
Onnekink, David. “Mynheer Benting now rules over us”: The 1st Earl of Portland and the Re-Emergence of the English Favourite, 1689−99.” The English Historical Review 121.492 (Jun. 2006): 693−713. Print.
Ostwald, Jamel. “The ‘Decisive’ Battle of Ramillies, 1706: Pre-Requisites for Decisiveness in Early Modern Warfare.” Journal of Military History 64.3 (July 2000): 649−77. Print.
Prior, Matthew. The Literary Works of Matthew Prior. Ed. J. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears, 2nd ed. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971. Print.
Rawson, Claude. “War and the Epic Mania in England and France: Milton, Boileau, Prior and English Mock Heroic.” The Review of English Studies 64.265 (2013): 433−53. Print.
Richardson, Jonathan. “Modern Warfare in Early-Eighteenth-Century Poetry.” SEL 45.3 (Summer 2005): 557−77. Print.
Rippy, Frances Mayhew. Matthew Prior. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Print.
Swift, Jonathan. Works. Ed. Herbert Davis. 14 vols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1973. Print.
Williams, Arthur S. “Panegyric Decorum in the Reigns of William III and Anne.” Journal of British Studies 21.1 (Autumn 1981): 56-−7. Print.