Hunting the Hunter: Fowling and Interpretive Entrapment in Upon Appleton House

Abstract

While 'Upon Appleton House' foregrounds the poet's actions and physical engagements with the estate, the poem itself us thoroughly woven from contemporary and classical intertexts.  As such, it presents as both immediate animation and as a work of intricate process.  This division enables much of the poem's play with semblance and deception, which repeatedly draws attention to the act of reading imaginatively.  To explore how the poem's textual duality bespeaks aesthetic process, this article closely examines two scenes of leisure that prove to enact the poet's hunting of the reader: as an angler and as a fowler using bird lime.  Aware of the poet's game and relentlessly pursuing his shifts, we uncover in form the unfolding of Marvell's body.