Dodona's Grove

Dendrologia: Dodona's Grove, or the Vocal Forest was a poem by James Howell published in 1640,[1] which launched Howell's literary career. It was published in English in multiple editions and was translated into French[2] and Latin.[3]

James Howell
from Dodona's Grove (1641)
by Abraham Bosse

Description

Dodona's Grove is an allegory of Europe, particularly England, depicting events between 1603-1640.[3] Dodona, in the title, refers to the ancient Hellenic oracle of Zeus in Epirus.[4]

Covered in the poem are the Spanish match, the Gunpowder Plot, the murder of Thomas Overbury, and the assassination of Buckingham.[5] The political criticisms in Dodona's Grove may have contributed to Howell's imprisonment in 1643.[3]

In the poem, plants represent prominent persons.[6] The British oak tree in Dodona's Grove represents the Stuarts.[7]

Impact

Historian Henry Hallam criticized the work harshly, calling it "clumsy", "unintelligible", "dull", and "an entire failure".[8] Despite its shortcomings, it is speculated to have been an influence on James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana.[2] Bibliographer Albrecht von Haller was tricked into including Dodona's Grove in his Bibliotheca Botanica.[1]

References
  1. Moulton, Charles Wells (1901). 1639-1729. The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors. Moulton publishing Company. pp. 186–187. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  2. Howell, James; Jacobs, Joseph (1892). Epistolae Ho-Elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell : Historiographer Royal to Charles II. David Nutt. p. 55. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  3. Hansche, Maude Bingham (1902). The Formative Period of English Familiar Letter-writers and Their Contribution to the English Essay. Haskell. pp. 37–38. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  4. Major, Philip (2010). "'To wound an oak': the Poetics of Tree-felling at Nun Appleton". The Seventeenth Century. 25 (1): 143–157. ISSN 0268-117X.
  5. Wright, Louis B. (1937). "The "Gentleman's Library" in Early Virginia". Huntington Library Quarterly. 1: 15. ISSN 0018-7895.
  6. McKenzie, Kenneth (1944). "Some Remarks on a Fable Collection". The Princeton University Library Chronicle. 5 (4): 142. ISSN 0032-8456.
  7. Hamrick, Wes (2013). "Trees in Anne Finch's Jacobite Poems of Retreat". Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 53 (3): 542.
  8. Hallam, Henry (1880). Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. A. C. Armstrong and son. p. 376. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
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