:Dodona's Grove
{{short description|Book by James Howell}}
{{italic title}}
{{EngvarB|date=January 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2015}}
File:Dodona's Grove, or The Vocall Forest, by James Howell (1640).jpg)]]
Dendrologia: Dodona's Grove, or the Vocal Forest was a poem by James Howell published in 1640,{{cite book | last=Moulton | first=Charles Wells | title=1639-1729 | publisher=Moulton publishing Company | series=The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors | year=1901 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AdUcAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA186 | access-date=February 3, 2021 | pages=186–187}} which launched Howell's literary career. It was published in English in multiple editions and was translated into French{{cite book | last1=Howell | first1=James | last2=Jacobs | first2=Joseph | title=Epistolae Ho-Elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell : Historiographer Royal to Charles II | publisher=David Nutt | year=1892 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P7ovAQAAMAAJ&pg=PR55 | access-date=February 3, 2021 | page=55}} and Latin.{{r|hansche}}
Description
Dodona's Grove is an allegory of Europe, particularly England, depicting events between 1603 and 1640.{{cite book | last=Hansche | first=Maude Bingham | title=The Formative Period of English Familiar Letter-writers and Their Contribution to the English Essay | publisher=Haskell | year=1902 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JdzZIY6XRRsC&pg=PA37 | access-date=February 3, 2021 | pages=37–38}} Dodona, in the title, refers to the ancient Hellenic oracle of Zeus in Epirus.{{cite journal | journal=The Seventeenth Century | last=Major | first=Philip | date=2010 | title='To wound an oak': the Poetics of Tree-felling at Nun Appleton | url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/845502450 | volume=25 | issue=1 | issn=0268-117X | pages=143–157| id={{ProQuest|845502450}} }}
Covered in the poem are the Spanish match, the Gunpowder Plot, the murder of Thomas Overbury, and the assassination of Buckingham.{{cite journal | journal=Huntington Library Quarterly | issn=0018-7895 | date=1937 | title=The "Gentleman's Library" in Early Virginia | last=Wright | first=Louis B. | volume=1 | page=15 | jstor=3815892 | url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3815892}} The political criticisms in Dodona's Grove may have contributed to Howell's imprisonment in 1643.{{r|hansche}}
In the poem, plants represent prominent persons.{{cite journal | journal=The Princeton University Library Chronicle | last=McKenzie | first=Kenneth | title=Some Remarks on a Fable Collection | date=1944 | volume=5 | issue=4 | issn=0032-8456 | page=142 | doi=10.2307/26400862 | jstor=26400862 | url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/26400862| url-access=subscription }} The British oak tree in Dodona's Grove represents the Stuarts.{{cite journal | journal=SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 | last=Hamrick | first=Wes | title=Trees in Anne Finch's Jacobite Poems of Retreat | date=2013 | volume=53 | issue=3 | page=542}}
Impact
Historian Henry Hallam criticized the work harshly, calling it "clumsy", "unintelligible", "dull", and "an entire failure".{{cite book | last=Hallam | first=Henry | author-link=Henry Hallam | title=Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries | publisher=A. C. Armstrong and son | issue=v. 3 | year=1880 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VfMMkGAro2wC&pg=PA376 | access-date=February 3, 2021 | page=376}} Despite its shortcomings, it is speculated to have been an influence on James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana.{{r|howell}} Bibliographer Albrecht von Haller was tricked into including Dodona's Grove in his Bibliotheca Botanica.{{r|moulton}}
References
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External links
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20120331044116/http://etext.virginia.edu/kinney/small/dodona.htm Dodona's Grove] from The Abraham Cowley Text and Image Archive