Michael Drayton’s Topographies

Ideas Mirrour (1594) and Poly-Olbion (1612–1622)

Bibliographic Data

ID8863330
AuthorsMaría Vera Reyes (0000-0002-6158-6960, Universidad de Huelva, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume102
Issue8
Pages1002-1023
Publication date2021-09-29
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnglish Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-838X • E-ISSN: 1744-4217
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0013838x.2021.1982218
OpenAlexW3202063430
LanguageEN
References cited32

Michael Drayton’s interest in the history and geography of England and Wales marks the evolution of his poetic career before the publication of his major work, Poly-Olbion (1612–1622). This article analyses the relation between Drayton’s chorography and his first sonnet sequence, Ideas Mirrour (1594). In his 1590 poems, Drayton links the portrait of his beloved to that of his native landscape. The topographical sonnets that place Idea in the river Anker forestall the descriptions of counties and rivers found in Poly-Olbion. The connections between these two works must be seen in reciprocal terms: while Ideas Mirrour prefigures the chorographic mode in the lyric style, Poly-Olbion looks back into the sonnets’ lyric perspective by eroticizing its rivers-nymphs and by placing Idea near the shores of the Anker, as Drayton had done in his earliest texts

Art · Literature · Perspective (graphical · Poetry · Relation (database · Sonnet · Style (visual arts · Visual arts · Historical Studies of British Isles · Philippine History and Culture · Scottish History and National Identity

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