Product Code Database
Gondibert is an epic poem by William Davenant. In it he attempts to combine the five-act structure of English Renaissance drama with the Homeric and Virgilian epic literary tradition. Davenant also sought to incorporate modern philosophical theories about government and passion, based primarily in the work of Thomas Hobbes, to whom Davenant sent drafts of the poem for review.
A lengthy philosophical preface takes the form of a letter to Hobbes, and is printed in the first edition with Hobbes' own reply and comments. Though Davenant asserted that the completed work would be in five sections or "books", only the first two books and part of the third book were completed.
The poem is a loose adaptation of certain episodes of Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards. It depicts the love of the Lombards Duke Gondibert for Birtha, and the unrequited love of princess Rhodalind for Gondibert himself. The love triangle involves the political fate of the city of Verona, which Gondibert would control if he married the princess. The poem was never completed. The poem has been interpreted as an allegory of the power struggles of the English Civil War, during which Davenant was a prominent Royalist (Cavalier). Gondibert himself has been identified with Charles II and Rhodalind with Henrietta Maria. The hunting of a stag in the poem reflects the pursuit of Charles I by his foesKevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp.102-3, though the poem was written after the death of Charles I.
The poem adopts the view that the chivalric ideal of love represents the sublimation of desire into duty, and that this personal model of devoted love stands for the political ideal of aristocratic government by the finest and best educated of persons in society, whose sensibilities are refined by courtly life and culture. Victoria Kahn argues that the politics of love is central to Davenant's argument "that poetry could instill political obedience by inspiring the reader with love. Romance was not simply a powerful generic influence on Gondibert, it was also Davenant's model for the poet's relation to the reader."Victoria Kahn, Wayward Contracts: The Crisis of Political Obligation in England, 1640-1674, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2004, p.144.
Andrew Marvell's poem Upon Appleton House is often interpreted as a republican reply to the royalist message of Gondibert, which contrasts the fantasy world of Davenant's poem with the real domestic haven created by the retired Parliamentarian commander Thomas Fairfax.
William Thompson's play Gondibert And Birtha: A Tragedy (1751) was based on the poem. Alexander Chalmers wrote of the play that "although it is not without individual passages of poetical beauty, it has not dramatic form and consistency to entitle it to higher praise."Chalmers, Alexander, "Life of William Thompson", Works of the English Poets, London , 1819, p.4 Hannah Cowley's play Albina (1779) is much more loosely derived from it. The character of Sir Gondibert also made a brief reappearance in English literature in "Calidore: A Fragment," an early unfinished poem by John Keats heavily influenced by Edmund Spenser.
In the "Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors" chapter of Walden, American author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau tells a story of once being interrupted of reading Davenant's "Gondibert" by a fire that broke out in his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. He had been working his way through Alexander Chalmers' 21-volume set, The Works of the English Poets, From Chaucer to Cowper, which he checked out of the Harvard College library. The text of "Gondibert" appears in the sixth volume.
|
|
