Marvell's Dialogized Nymph

Abstract

In "The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun," Andrew Marvell inserts multiple social languages into the traditional literary language of a complaining nymph and thereby tests that language in the face of outside linguistic pressures. The languages of contemporary militarism, British law, quasi-Christian theology, Canticles, and Marvell's own poetic practice enter the poem to reveal the instability and vulnerability of traditional literary languages in a period of rapid social change and extreme heteroglossia. By dialogizing the Nymph's language of complaint, then, Marvell refracts the social disorder of his time.