- Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Showing posts with label Anne Finch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anne Finch. Show all posts

Wednesday 9 January 2019

'A Nocturnal Reverie' - Anne Finch

‘In such a Night let Me abroad remain,
Till Morning breaks, and All's confus'd again;
Our Cares, our Toils, our Clamours are renew'd.
Or Pleasures, seldom reach'd, again pursu'd.

‘A Nocturnal Reverie’ (published 1713)

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (1661-1720)

 

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea.
Portrait by Peter Cross, c. 1690,
(National Portrait Gallery, London). 
A quick search online will soon tell you that Anne Finch’s ‘A Nocturnal Reverie’ is very far from being unknown. The most basic of surveys will rapidly uncover various readings of the text and historical material relating to Finch herself. I have chosen this poem to look at this week not because it hasn’t been written about much, but rather because of its essentially cathartic quality, and for its sense of finding peace in a chaotic, troubled world.

The poem is essentially one huge sentence, all describing an imaginary night spent savouring the beauties of the natural world:

‘In such a Night, when every louder Wind
Is to its distant Cavern safe confin’d;’
(lines 1-2)

The reference to every ‘Wind’ being held within a ‘Cavern’ is an allusion to the cave of the wind god Aeolus in classical Greek mythology; instead of violent winds ‘only gentle Zephyr fans his Wings’. Meanwhile, the nightingale (represented by ‘lonely Philomel’) either softly sings, or from the vantage of ‘some Tree’ she raises her melodic voice to guide ‘the Wand’rer right’ (lines 4-6). The night is mostly clear, since the ‘passing Clouds give place’, or else only ‘thinly vail the Heav’ns’ (lines 7 & 8). The viewer’s gaze returns to earth via a reflection ‘in some River, overhung with Green’ of the ‘waving Moon’ (lines 9 & 10). The riverside grass is now ‘freshen’d’ by the moist night air and the ‘cool Banks’ of the river now ‘invite’ the wanderer to rest (lines 11 & 12). Within this tranquil oasis, various country flowers bloom including the ‘Woodbind, and the Bramble-Rose’ alongside the ‘sleepy Cowslip’ and the ‘Foxglove’ (lines 13-16).

The personification begun with the idea of the Cowslip being ‘sleepy’ is now continued through the likening of the ‘scatter’d Glow-worms’ to ‘trivial Beauties’ in society who must ‘watch their Hour to shine’; the inference is that only the most ‘perfect Charms’ can withstand the unforgiving light of day, and the whole thing is turned into a clever compliment to Finch’s friend the Countess of Salisbury whom, she writes ‘stands the Test of every Light’. It’s an unusual detour in a poem that focuses primarily upon nighttime as beautiful, and thus offers the possibility that some of the appeal of the night is owing to the limitations it imposes upon visual perception.

Now, sweet ‘Odours’ can wander ‘uninterrupted’ through the air, and shadows are softened because they offer less contrast within the ‘darken’d Goves’. This is a world of shadows now, where the ‘lengthen’d Shade’ or shadow of an ambling horse becomes an object of ‘fear’ until the sound of ‘torn up Forage in his Teeth’ is heard (lines 29-32). From this momentary glimpse of the fearfulness of the dark, Finch returns us swiftly to the peacefulness of twilight as sheep and cows eat, and birds call in a ‘shortliv’d Jubilee’ of tranquillity enjoyed ‘whilst Tyrant-man does sleep’ (lines 33-38). Sharing in this idyllic, untroubled condition Finch identifies this nocturne as a space in which to experience ‘a sedate Content’ that nonetheless does not inhibit the ‘silent Musings’ that prompt ‘the Mind to seek / Something, too high for Syllables to speak’ (lines 39-42). By becoming immersed within the natural world, a sense of sublimity is achieved and the wanderer’s soul is finally, for a moment, ‘free’. ‘In such a Night,’ Finch writes, ‘let Me abroad remain, / Till Morning breaks, and All’s confus’d again’ (lines 47-48).

Happy Reading everyone!

Other poems by Anne Finch can be found here:


(A superb and totally free database of eighteenth-century poetry – there’s a beautifully presented copy of Finch’s poem here, as well as hundreds of other eighteenth-century poems throughout the site.)

(Poetry Foundation online: great free resource!!)

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Selected Poems, ed. by Denys Thompson (Carcanet Press Ltd, 2003)
(this is pretty much what it says on the tin: selected poems by Anne Finch)

Roger Lonsdale (ed.), Eighteenth-century women poets: an Oxford anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
 The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

(both are available from numerous book shops online and on the high street, and both are truly excellent volumes! There are plenty of economical priced second-hand copies of this available online too)

You can find out more about Anne Finch here:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Finch,_Countess_of_Winchilsea
(Wikipedia – usually a good starting point, and it’s free!)

Barbara McGovern, ‘Finch, Anne, countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9426 [accessed 16 July 2015]
(sadly, this resource is accessible by subscription only)

Resources used in the composition of this blogpost:

 
Claire Pickard, Literary Jacobitism: The Writings of Jane Barker, Mary Caesar and Anne Fich, DPhil Thesis (Oxford, 2006) https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:85514fc9-6f0c-4992-ae8c-2666dc1f7ede/download_file?safe_filename=602157226_Redacted.pdf&file_format=application%2Fpdf&type_of_work=Thesis

Katherine M. Quinsey, ‘Nature, Gender, and Genre in Anne Finch’s Poetry: “A Nocturnal Reverie”’, Lumen, 26 (2007), 63-77
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/lumen/2007-v26-lumen0255/1012061ar.pdf

Friday 17 July 2015

'The Eagle, the Sow, and the Cat' - Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea

‘The Queen of Birds, t'encrease the Regal Stock,
Had hatch'd her young Ones in a stately Oak,
Whose Middle-part was by a Cat possest,
And near the Root with Litter warmly drest,
A teeming Sow had made her peaceful Nest.
(Thus Palaces are cramm'd from Roof to Ground,
And Animals, as various, in them found.)’
(lines 1-7)

The Eagle, the Sow, and the Cat
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea
(published 1713)

It sounds like the start of a joke, but the only humour here is of the darkest kind.  Three animals are
all living in the same tree, but one of them sees a chance of monopolising the situation and takes it.  By playing upon the fears of his neighbours, the cat finds a cunning way of coming out on top; there is no hero in this story, only a stark warning about being careful when taking advice that the advisor doesn't have their own best interests at heart.

Illustration from 1668 edition of Jean de La Fontaine's
Fables, Book III.  Woodcut by François Chauveau.
This image courtesy of:
http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/aiglaichat.htm
The basic storyline comes from a French poem by Jean de La Fontaine, entitled ‘L’Aigle, la Laie, et la Chatte’, published in 1668 with the accompanying illustration by François Chauveau.  Yet Anne Finch’s poem is far more than a simple translation.  In analysing Finch’s work, both Charles H. Himnant and Paula R. Backsheider have noted how in Finch’s hands this little fable becomes a subtle political comment.  In 1688 William and Mary of Orange deposed Mary’s father, James II of England; differences of religion were the focus of the coup.  Yet while this incident is frequently referred to as the ‘Glorious Revolution’ because of the comparative peacefulness with which it took place, there were those who opposed the change.  Anne Finch and her husband, Heneage Finch, were amongst those who refused to support the new monarchs.  Fleeing London for the safety of the country, they remained active in support of James (with Heneage even ending up imprisoned for a time for having attempted to join James's exiled court in France).  For Anne, this activity was in the form of writing; through the cat’s smooth assumption of power in ‘The Eagle, the Sow, and the Cat’ it is easy to see, as Paula Backsheider points out, the character of ‘the wily courtier, a figure risen from the middle ranks, who rejoices in sowing dissent’ (p. 47).  Though this is not strictly allegorical, and the politics surrounding the ‘Glorious Revolution’ is much more complex and intricate than there is space to discuss here, this is certainly a poem that assumes a highly critical tone of those who use deceit and betrayal to usurp power.

I don’t want to get too heavy though: I originally chose this poem for inclusion here because, at least on first reading, it does seem rather funny.  A bit like an Aesop fable, it conveys a serious moral message through the means of entertainment.  It’s the kind of poem designed to make you first laugh at the gullibility of the eagle and the sow - then stop and realise that, actually, the author has quite a serious point.  Not least, it's aim is to provoke reflection upon gullibility more generally, and on the importance of not letting the selfish concern for personal safety create destructive panic.  The eagle and the sow both abandon their young because of the cat’s machinations, yet this is as much a result of their own preoccupation with self-preservation as of the cat’s deceit.    

One or two points to note before you read this: the first two lines look like a clumsy attempt at rhyme, but it’s useful to remember that pronunciation of words has changed a lot over time.  Linguistic historians would probably be able to explain it better, but basically don’t write her off as a poet just because her first couplet doesn’t seem to work; when she was writing, it probably did rhyme.  Also, when the poem refers to ‘Sow’s paps’ as a great delicacy, it is referring to mammary glands (I know, sounds disgusting: but then the cat is the villain of the piece, remember). The 'sycophant' referred to in the moral describes a person who is ingratiating towards another simply for their own gain (in this poem, the cat). 

Happy reading! And apologies to all the internet cat lovers out there!
As always, feel free to leave comments and ask questions!

You can find this poem:

(editions of Anne Finch’s poetry are not always easy to come by, so I would recommend readers use this free version of the poem available online, and from which I have taken the reading that follows.)



Other poems by Anne Finch can be found here:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anne-finch#about
(Poetry Foundation online: great free resource!!)

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Selected Poems, ed. by Denys Thompson (Carcanet Press Ltd,
2003)
(this is pretty much what it says on the tin: selected poems by Anne Finch.  Available from numerous places; I just put the link to Waterstones for variety.  And because they have a points card system…)

Roger Lonsdale (ed.), Eighteenth-century women poets: an Oxford anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
(available from numerous book shops online and on the high street: an excellent volume!  Last time this came up in a blog post I entered up ordering a copy, which arrived in the post the other day… Look out for future blogs referring to poems in this exciting little anthology! There are plenty of economical priced second-hand copies of this available online too!)

The information for this blogpost was taken from the following sources:

Paula R. Backscheider, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre (JHU Press, 2005), p. 47
(This looks to be a fascinating and clear book; like many works of literary criticism, this might be a little expensive for small budgets (like mine), so I’ve attached a link to the pages relating to this poem, available via a preview on googlebooks)  

Charles H. Himnant, The Poetry of Anne Finch: An Essay in Interpretation (University of Delaware, 1994) pp. 194-6
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NPJuMBADoYAC&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=anne+finch+the+eagle+the+sow+and+the+cat&source=bl&ots=mK9qsHosPB&sig=S2QdnbXZfpMgRFrqWTPUBnx3P8g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAWoVChMIo6ec793hxgIVQZ8UCh0zVgB5#v=onepage&q=anne%20finch%20the%20eagle%20the%20sow%20and%20the%20cat&f=false
(The link should lead to a googlebooks preview of the book that gives most of the relevant information about this poem)

Barbara McGovern, ‘Finch, Anne, countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9426 [accessed 16 July 2015]
(sadly, this resource is accessible by subscription only)

Leslie Clifford Sykes, “Jean de La Fontaine”, Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2015
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-de-La-Fontaine [accessed 17 July 2015]
(an excellent, and free, resource!)

(a website all about Jean de La Fontaine, written in French but accessible to to English-only speakers via google translate)

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com
(a useful free dictionary online!  Always worth looking up unfamiliar words!)

You can also find out more about Anne Finch on her Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Finch,_Countess_of_Winchilsea