Andrew Marvel Allusions

The 17th century, also known as the Age of Discovery, was the time period in which many explorers were expanding the public’s view of the world with the discovery of new lands. New world imagery was used in metaphors and other poetic devices to be able to compare these New Worlds to different elements in Christianity. Many poets, including Andrew Marvell, took advantage of their expanding world view to use as a basis in which to frame their poems around to appeal to the public’s interests. One might ask, how does Marvell’s ‘Bermudas’ utilize elements of the New World and relate it to Christianity? Marvell’s poem uses the feeling of being the first ones in a new land to show God’s favor for the explorers. To prove how New World imagery is used to show God’s favor of the explorers, I will show how Marvell uses various themes such as the idea of a paradise on Earth and the gift of a new promise land to humanity, allusions to the Old Testament and
This is shown when the speaker says, “He lands us on a grassy stage, Safe from the storms, and prelate's rage” in lines 11-12. In relation to this quote, the words “grassy stage” (line 11) most likely refers to the Garden of Eden which is a fictional place, or non-fictional depending on your beliefs, where God supposedly planted trees that were both appealing and a good source of food. It was a safe place under the watchful protection of God, and the explorers thought that God had brought them to this paradise. In Colie’s “Marvell's 'Bermudas' and the Puritan Paradise” she makes the argument that the Bermudas that Marvell refers to in his poem does not exist on a physical plane, but rather on a metaphysical one. This can be evidenced by the fact that “the hogs, the summer-flies, the cockroaches have all vanished” (Colie 79) from the island, which in reality, they are present in the real-life Bermuda, but not present in the Garden of