Abstract
Abstract Andrew Marvell’s ‘Flecknoe, an English Priest at Rome’ (1646) is a striking document in early modern debates over toleration and an exemplar of their rhetoric and design. Considering ‘Flecknoe’ together with Upon Appleton House (1651), I argue that Marvell uses spatial terms and satiric forms to present confessional rivalry and complementarity. Satire itself might be thought of as a practice of toleration in these poems, at once mocking the languages and gestures of opposing religious confessions and allowing the poet to draw close to—to contrive a surprising intimacy with—the convictions and practices of others. The result is a brilliant interweaving of the ideas and experiences of religious and erotic toleration: Marvell sets liberty of the spirit alongside liberty of the body in these poems’ scenes of forbearance.
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