Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” stands as the exemplar of the small, but important, country house poem genre, particularly popular in England during the first half of the seventeenth century. Jonson’s poem was written specifically to praise the Kent estate of Sir Robert Sidney. In October of 1610 he completed The Alchemist, the archetypal and perhaps most compelling of his London comedies; before November 1612 he had completed "To Penshurst," probably the first and certainly the greatest country-house poem, his ideal archetype of English rural society. In the Jonsonian country-house poem, the country estate, exemplified by Penshurst, is a microcosm of the ideal English social organization characterized by interdependence, simplicity, service, hospitality, and balance between the active and contemplative life. The speaker contrasts Penshurst, a large and important late medieval house which was extended in a similar style under Elizabeth I, with more recent prodigy houses, which he calls "proud, ambitious heaps". Similarities and Differences of Jonson's "To Penshurst" and Marvell's "Upon Appleton House" Katie Walker College. J Jonson also wrote “To Sir Robert Wroth,” published in the same 1616 volume as “To Penshurst” and seen as a … To Penshurst: Equality Among Classes Ben Jonson’s poem, “To Penshurst”, reflects a genre of poetry known as country house poetry. With Cookham, Lanyer published the first poem in the country-house genre. A notable instance of Country house poem is Ben Jonson’s To Penshurst (1616). The country estate traditionally belongs to a friend or patron of the poet; in this case, Penshurst belongs to the Sidney family. " To Penshurst " is a country house poem, a genre that emerged in the seventeenth century to praise country estates. Other well-known instances of the genre include Andrew Marvell's Upon Appleton House, which describes Thomas, Lord Fairfax's country house, where Marvell was a tutor between November 1650 and the end of 1652. //]]>. However, “The Description of Cooke-ham,” by Aemilia Lanyer, published four years before Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” in 1616, and arguably the first country-house poem, appropriates masculine pastoral conventions by its manipulation of the standard tropes of classical allusions, its use of pathetic fallacy, and its justification for female property ownership. The model for the country house poem is Ben Jonson's To Penshurst, published in 1616, which compliments Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney on his Penshurst Place. In the Description of Cookham, Lanier pays tribute to her patroness Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, through a description of her residence as a paradise for literary women. Hugh Jenkins argues along similar lines in Feigned Commonwealths: The Country-House Poem and the Fashioning of the Ideal Community (Pittsburgh, 1998), pp. The model for the country house poem is Ben Jonson's To Penshurst, published in 1616, which compliments Robert Sydney, 1st Earl of Leicester, younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney on his Penshurst … Two seminal monographs are: William A. McClung, The Country House in English Renaissance Poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Don E. Wayne, Penshurst: The Semiotics of Place and the Poetics of History (London: Methuen, 1984). Such poems were popular in early 17th century England. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. To Penshurst (Works) Thomas Carew’s “To Saxham” (1640) contributes to a small but important country house poem genre, popular in England during the first half of the seventeenth century. While other grand estates are beautiful, they are cold and not as welcoming as Penshurst and thus not as beautiful. The estate at Cookham did not actually belong to Margaret Clifford, but was rented for her by her brother while Clifford was undergoing a dispute with her husband. Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, A Private Entertainment of the King and Queen on May-Day, The Entertainment of the Kings of Great Britain and Denmark, News from the New World Discovered in the Moon, Time Vindicated to Himself and to His Honours, Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Country_house_poem&oldid=974602974, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 23 August 2020, at 22:41. Ben Jonson strived to imitate the style of the classical Roman and Greek poets, finding himself a major figure in the Neoclassical Literature style. Essentially, this highlights the difference between a house and a home. The poem is written in iambic pentameter and contains many references to ancient Greek gods, both of which details lend an air of sophistication and prestige to the characterization of the country house. Poems of appreciation, as an example, suit Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst,’ and what is known as the retirement poem best describes ‘Upon Appleton House’. 1-62. Thomas Carew also wrote two country house poems in the mould of To Penshurst: To Saxham and To My Friend G. N., from Wrest. The country- house poem developed into a literary genre in the early decades of the seventeenth- century. "The Fig Tree of Epiphanius in Jonson's 'To Penshurst.'" This process is automatic. [CDATA[ Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” is generally thought to have started the genre, but it was not published until 1616. Even closer to the Jonsonian paradigm is a poem by the oldest of the so-called " Sons of Ben ", Robert Herrick, A Panegyric to Sir Lewis Pemberton. A country house poem is a poem in which the author compliments a wealthy patron or a friend through a description of his country house. R.V. Jonson's poems of "The Forest" also appeared in the first folio. Follow @genius on Twitter for updates Later examples include Thomas Carew's ‘To Saxham’ (1640), and Andrew Marvell's ‘Upon Appleton House’ (written c.1652). Ben Jonson's country house poem To Penshurst was written to celebrate the Kent estate of Sir Robert Sidney, Viscount Lisle, later earl of Leister (father of Mary Wroth). fifteen poems are addressed to Jonson’s aristocratic supporters, but the most famous are his country-house poem “To Penshurst” and the poem “To Celia” (“Come, my Celia, let us prove”) that appears also in ‘’Volpone.’’ ‘’Underwood,’’ published in the expanded folio of 1640, is … A country house poem is a poem in which the author compliments a wealthy patron or a friend through a description of his country house. The genre may be regarded as a sub-set of the topographical poem.. About “To Penshurst” Ben Jonson’s (1572-1637) To Penshurst is the model country house poem. The poem compliments Robert Sidney, younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney and first earl of Leicester, on the Elizabethan extensions to the late mediaeval house at Penshurst and contrasts these with more recent buildings which he calls ‘proud, ambitious heaps’. (However, To Penshurst was preceded by five years by Emilia Lanier's Description of Cookham, one of the first in this genre.) We're going to send you on your way in just a sec. With this poem, Ben Jonson was given credit for centuries as the inventor of the country house genre. "The Description of Cooke-ham" is the last poem in the volume. For a fuller account, consult Malcolm Kelsall, The Great Good Place: The Country House in English Literature (1993). Hutchins, Zach. Ben Jonson first published To Penshurst in 1611. Emilia Lanier's Description of Cookham, however, had in fact been published earlier, in 1611, as a dedicatory verse at the end of her long narrative poem Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Aemilia Lanyer's, `The description of Cooke- ham', and Ben Jonson's, `To Penshurst' namely represent the small genre which flourished so briefly. Ben Jonson's ‘To Penshurst’ (1616) is the model in English, based partly on Latin poems by Martial and Horace. [1] The poem has many allusions, to Epiphanius,[2] Martial, and Horace, amongst others, and begins with the following lines referencing Horace's Ode 2:18: Subsequent country house poems imitated To Penshurst. This is eminently true in the earlier seventeenth century, the period when the genre flourished.1 It will come as no surprise, of course, that these estate poems embody the patri- Waynes remains the most important study of the poem. !function(t,e,r){var n,s=t.getElementsByTagName(e)[0],i=/^http:/.test(t.location)? Several poems are dedicated to members of the Sidney family, but the most lasting verse turned out to be the one with the most interesting character and that character is the home itself. Young claims that Ben Jonson was performing a similar kind of practicality in his country-house poem ‘To Penshurst’, saying that he was ‘making a virtue of necessity in praising the Sidneys for living at home on their rural estate when they could hardly afford to do otherwise’. Please enable Cookies and reload the page. Country-House Poem În some ways my topic might be thought a bit perverse, since English country-house poems commonly focus upon the estate and its lord, not the lady. Andrew Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House” and Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” share similarities characteristic of the English “Country House” poem, but they also contain notable differences from each other. Both “To Penshurst” and “Upon Appleton House” describe the respective estates and family life of the poets’ patrons in idyllic terms. A few other so-called epigrams share this quality. Don E. Wayne, Penshurst: The Semiotics of Place and the Poetics of History (Madison, 1984), pp. The speaker contrasts Penshurst, a large and important late medieval house which was extended in a similar style under Elizabeth I, with more recent prodigy houses, which he calls … Even closer to the Jonsonian model is a poem by the oldest of the so-called "Sons of Ben", Robert Herrick, A Panegyric to Sir Lewis Pemberton. The genre may be regarded as a sub-set of the Topographical poem. (However, To Penshurst was preceded by five years by Emilia Lanier's Description of Cookham, one of the first in this genre.) 3. The poem centres on Lord Fairfax's daughter Maria. Most of the fifteen poems are addressed to Jonson's aristocratic supporters, but the most famous are his country-house poem “To Penshurst” and the poem “To Celia” ("Come, my Celia, let us prove") that appears also in Volpone. ANQ 23.1 (2010): 15-19. Ben Jonson is among the best-known writers and theorists of English Renaissance literature, second in reputation only to Shakespeare. "To Richard Cotton, Esq.," composed by Geoffrey Whitney in 1586, which describes Combermere Abbey using the metaphor of a beehive, may be the earliest example.[3]. In 1616 Jonson published a folio of Works of Benjamin Jonson, a compilation of his drama, masques, and a collection of poetry titled The Forest. Thomas Carew also wrote two country house poems in the mould of To Penshurst: To Saxham and To My Friend G.N., from Wrest. Poems like “To Penshurst” may represent the ideal of the country in the aforementioned dichotomy, but it is important to note that the actual ideals represented are not those of country folk, but rather those of powerful men who keep house in the country. Looks like the site is more popular than we thought! Such poems were popular in early 17th century England. A country house poem is a poem in which the author compliments a wealthy patron or a friend through a description of his country house. The connection between the Sidneys and the site of Penshurst reaches its highest pitch in “To Penshurst,” the country house poem written by Ben Jonson, who resided at Penshurst in 1611, and would later affectionately dedicate the alchemist to Lady Mary. 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