Marvell's ‘Holt-Felster’

Windmills over Oxford: Quixotic and Other Subversive Spanish Narratives in England, 1606–1654

“…34 Hexham's lexical work has been shown to have found its way into major English poetry in the period, notably that of Andrew Marvell: both men served Thomas, Lord Fairfax. 35 Hexham represents a strong, pro-Dutch, anti-Spanish, Calvinist, anti-Catholic front; for what it is worth here, Marvell was much more ideologically tempered, and like Mabbe resided in Madrid for some time, even though the traces of anti-Hapsburg, anti-Catholic presence in his work are evident.…”

“…O for an Oxford tyred hackney with a Freshman upon his back, to be thus drawn to the life. (35) It is the belly as well as the groin that demands our attention in a passage that fuses pictorial representation and sustenance. Gayton's travesty looks much like the grotesque engravings that were circulating in mid-seventeenthcentury England, here especially the cook wearing his utensils as armor:…”