Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
KÜLTÜR ARAŞTIRMALARI DERGİSİ, sa.28, ss.1-29, 2026 (Hakemli Dergi)
This study scrutinizes Andrew Marvell’s preoccupation with the entanglement and interdependence of oppositions in “The Mower against Gardens” and “A Dialogue between the Soul and Body”. Exploring the motif of “forbidden mixtures” as a key point of intersection between early modern metaphysical poetry and new materialism, the article interrogates how Marvell negotiates tensions between nature and culture, body and soul, purity and artifice, demonstrating that oppositions are neither absolute nor mutually exclusive. In “The Mower against Gardens”, the mower’s resistance to human intervention in the God-given natural world underscores the ethical, aesthetic, and ontological consequences of conflating artifice with nature. In “A Dialogue between the Soul and Body”, the soul’s lamentation and its embodied articulation reveal a dialogic interdependence with the body, destabilizing rigid spiritual-material dichotomies. The article situates these poems within the intellectual, theological, and philosophical currents of the 17th century, and argues that Marvell’s metaphysical strategies articulate a relational ontology in which such notions as co-dependence, mediation, and flux govern the dynamics of existence. Hence, the study broadens the perspective of traditional interpretations of Marvell’s metaphysical poetry, positions Marvell as a poet whose metaphysical imagination envisions opposites not as fixed hierarchies but as interpenetrating forces, offering nuanced insight into the ethical and ontological stakes of early modern conceptions of nature, culture, and the self.