Renaissance Country House Poetry
Country house poetry is a sub-genre of Renaissance poetry and was first written during the seventeenth century. It was closely linked to patronage poetry, in which poets (sometimes outrageously) flattered patrons in order to gain sponsorship and status. At this time, many houses were built in the countryside as a display of wealth, and as a retreat for the courtier when overwhelmed by the court and city life. Country houses were not, originally, just large houses in the country in which rich people lived. Essentially they were power houses - the houses of a ruling class. As such they could work at the local level of a manor house, the house of a squire who was a little king in his village and ran the county. They could work at a local and national level as the seat of a landowner who was also a member of parliament. Basically, people did not live in country houses unless they either possessed power, or, by setting up in a country house, were making a bid to possess it. Country house poems generally consisted of complimentary descriptions of the said country house and its surrounding area which often contained pastoral detail, and praised cultivated nature. The purpose of the central part of this essay is to assess the effectiveness of Renaissance 'country house' poetry as social criticism.
Country house poems were written to flatter and please the owner of the country house. Why did poets do this? Until the nineteenth century the wealth and population of England lay in the country rather than the towns; landowners rather than merchants were the dominating class. Even when the economic balance began to change, they were so thoroughly in control of patronage and legislation, so strong throu...
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...ely that people read country house poetry to be provided with political or social insights, so it is likely that many of the allusions were lost on the majority of readers.
Endnotes
1 The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659, p.420
2 Ibid. p.420
3 Life in the English Country House, Mark Girouard, p.7.
4 The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659, p.420
5 Ibid.p.421
6 Ibid.p.421
7 Ibid.p.421
8 Ibid.p.421
9 Ibid.p.422
10 Ibid.p.422
11 Ibid.p.422
12 Ibid.p.422
13 The Description of Cooke-ham, Renaissance Verse, p.414.
14 The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659, p.417
15 Ibid.p.418
16 Marvell's "Upon Appleton House", Robert Markley, p.91.
Bibliography
Mark Girouard. Life in the English Country House, Yale University Press, 1978.
Maclean, Landry and Ward. The Country and the City Revisited, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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