Andrew Marvell's Liminal Lyrics: The Space Between is an
interdisciplinary study of the major lyric poems of seventeenth-century
British metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell. The poet and his work have
generally proven enigmatic to scholars because both refuse to fit into
normal categories and expectations. This study invites Marvell readers
to view the poet and some of his representative lyrics in the context of
the anthropological concept of liminality as developed by Victor Turner
and enriched by Arnold Van Gennep, Jacques Lacan, and other observers of
the in-between aspects of experience. The approach differs from previous
attempts to "explain" Marvell in that it allows multidisciplinary and
multi-media contexts in a broad matrix of the areas of experience and
representation that defy boundaries, that blur the line at which
entrance becomes exit. This study acknowledges that the poems discussed,
and, by implication, the entire corpus of Marvell's work and the life
that produced it, derive from a refusal to draw a definite divide. In
analyzing a small selection of Marvell's life and lyrics as explorations
of various realms of liminality in word and image, readers can see a
passageway to the poet's works that never really reaches a destination;
instead, the unlimited possibilities of the journey remain. Thus, the
in-between aspects of the poet and his poetry actually define his
technique as well as his brilliance.
