Andrew Marvell

Revising Complexity with a Writerly Scythe:
Andrew Marvell's Damon the Mower

Marvell's Damon the Mower reproduces the pastoral poet's trick of stooping to conquer--he refigures his complex poetic identity into a "humble thing" in order to effect a more comprehensive identity with "everything." While "complex poetic identity" conventionally connotes the writer rather than the pastoral subject, singer Damon's writerly scythe inscribes his identity as literal:

'I am the Mower Damon, known
Through all the meadows I have mown'(6).