Giles Fletcher

For his father, see Giles Fletcher the elder.

Giles Fletcher (?1588-1623), Christ's Victory and Triumph (1610). Forgotten Books, 2019. Courtesy Amazon.com.

Rev. Giles Fletcher (also Giles Fletcher the younger) (?1588-1623) was an English poet chiefly known for his allegorical long poem, Christ's Victory and Triumph, 1610.

Life

Overview

Fletcher was the youngest son of Giles Fletcher the elder (himself a minor poet, and Envoy to Russia), and the brother of poet Phineas Fletcher. He was a cousin of John Fletcher, the dramatist. Giles, the younger, was educated at Cambridge, and, like his brother, became a country parson, being rector of Alderton. His poem, Christ's Victory and Triumph (1610), which is said to have influenced Milton, though it contains passages rising to sublimity, is now almost unknown except to students of English literature, .Both brothers, but especially Giles, had a genuine poetic gift, but alike in the allegorical treatment of their subjects and the metre they adopted, they followed a style which was passing away, and thus missed popularity.

Youth and education

Fletcher was the younger son of Giles Fletcher, LL.D., the elder, and younger brother of Phineas Fletcher. He was (according to the account given to Fuller by John Ramsey, who married the poet's widow) born in London, and educated at Westminster School. Neither statement has been corroborated.

Before 1603 Fletcher matriculated at Cambridge. He was elected a scholar of Trinity College on 12 April 1605; earned a B.A. in 1606; became a minor fellow of his college on 17 September 1608, a reader in Greek grammar in 1615, and a reader in Greek language in 1618. To Thomas Nevile, D.D., master of Trinity, Fletcher acknowledged special indebtedness.

In 1603 Fletcher contributed a somewhat frigid "Canto upon the death of Eliza" to a volume of academic verse issued at Cambridge to celebrate Elizabeth's death and James I's accession.

Career

About 1618 he left Cambridge to hold a college living, which he soon exchanged for the rectory of Alderton, Suffolk. It has been suggested that the great Francis Bacon presented him to the latter living. In Fletcher's latest work, The Reward of the Faithfull, which he dedicated to Sir Roger Townshend, he expresses his gratitude for favors rendered him to Sir Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, the father of Sir Roger's wife, and to Francis Bacon, Sir Nathaniel's half-brother. He refers to the latter as his "honorable benefactor," although he admits that he had no personal acquaintance with him.

Fuller writes that Fletcher's "clownish, low-parted parishioners, having nothing but their shoes high about them, valued not their pastor, according to his worth, which disposed him to melancholy and hastened his dissolution." He died in 1623; the registers of Alderton are not extant at that date. Letters of administration were granted to his widow Anne on 12 Nov. 1623. She afterwards married John Ramsey.

Writing

Christ's Victorie

His chief work was published in 1610, while he was still at Trinity. It is entitled Christ's Victorie and Triumph in Heaven and Earth over and after Death (Cambridge, by C. Legge, small 4to), in 2 parts, with separate title-pages ("Christ's Triumph over Death" and "Christ's Triumph after Death"), dedicated to Dr. Nevile, master of Trinity, with prefatory verses by Francis (afterwards Sir Francis) Nethersole, and by the author's brother Phineas.

The poet in a prose preface defends the application of verse to sacred subjects, and acknowledges his obligations to "thrice-honoured Bartas, and our (I know no name more glorious than) Edmund Spencer, 2 blessed soules."

The poem consists of 4 cantos. The 1st canto, Christ's Victory in Heaven, represents a dispute in heaven between justice and mercy, using the facts of Christ's life on earth; the 2nd, Christ's Victory on Earth, deals with an allegorical account of Christ's Temptation; the 3rd, Christ's Triumph over Death, covers the Passion; and the 4th, Christ's Triumph after Death, covering the Resurrection and Ascension. Milton borrowed liberally from Christ's Victory and Triumph in Paradise Regained.

Fletcher tells the story of Christ's life with many digressions, and concludes with an affectionate reference to the poetic work of his brother Phineas, whom he calls "Young Thyrsilis." His admiration of Spenser is very apparent. Allegorical descriptions of vices and virtues abound in his poem. There is a wealth of effective imagery, with which the occasional simplicity of some passages descriptive of natural scenery contrasts attractively. But exaggerated Spenserian characteristics mar the success of the work as a whole.

The versification, although based on Spenser's, is original. Each stanza has 8 lines, the last an Alexandrine, rhyming ababbccc. Milton borrowed something from Christ's Triumph for his Paradise Regained.

Fletcher's poem was reissued at Cambridge in 1632, and (in 4 parts) in 1640; it was again issued in 1783 (with Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island), in 1824, in 1834 (as vol. xx. of Cattermole and Stebbing's ‘Sacred Classics’), and in 1888 in the "Library of Theological Literature."

Miscellaneous

Fletcher also published a prose tract (dedicated to Sir Roger Townshend, bart.), The Reward of the Faithfull: The labour of the faithfull; the ground of our faith, London, 1623. A few verse translations from Boethius and Greek epigrams are scattered through the book. Among the Tanner MSS. (465 f. 2) at the Bodleian are some verses by Fletcher, "after Petronius," and in the library of King's College, Cambridge, is a manuscript entitled Ægidii Fletcheri Versio Poetica Lamentationum Ieremiæ, which was presented to the college on 2 February 1654-5 by ‘S[amuel] Th[oms] soc.’

Fletcher's poetical works appear in Chalmers's and Sandford's collections; in Dr. Grosart's Fuller's Worthies Library (1868), and his Early English Poets (1876); and in Giles and Phineas Fletcher: Poetical works (edtted by F.S. Boas), Cambridge University Press. 1908.

Critical introduction

by John W. Hales

Giles, the brother of Phineas, and cousin of John Fletcher, is one of the chief poets of what may be called the Spenserian School, which "flourished" in the first quarter of the seventeenth century.Spenser and Chaucer were the supreme names in non-dramatic poetry till Milton arose; and in the Jacobean period the Plantagenet poet was eclipsed by the Elizabethan; and thus it was to Spenser that the lesser poetic spirits of the age looked up to as their master, and upon their writings his influence is deeply impressed. Amongst these retainers of "Colin" must be counted Milton when young, before he had developed his own style and become himself an original power, himself a master; and not the least of the interests that distinguish Giles Fletcher and his fellow Spenserians is that Milton extended to them the study and attention which he gave with no ordinary sympathy to "our sage and serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus and Aquinas."

These words of Milton’s suggest some leading characteristics of the Spenserian school. It too proposed to be "sage and serious." It inclined indeed to be didactic. In that notorious production, The Purple Island, we have in fact a lecture on Anatomy. More commonly its purpose was directly ethical; and it must be allowed that the artist is at times lost in the moralist. Giles Fletcher is eminently a religious poet — in the technical sense of the word, as happily also in the more general sense. He deals with Christian themes: "Christ’s Victory in Heaven," "Christ’s Victory on Earth," "Christ’s Triumph over Death," "Christ’s Triumph after Death"; and it is his special distinction, that in handling such themes he does not sink into a mere rhyming dogmatist, but writes with a genuine enthusiasm and joy....

Giles Fletcher’s success as a "religious" poet, so far as he succeeds, is due first to the selection of themes which he makes, and secondly to the genuine religious ardour that inspired him. He delighted to contemplate the career of the central Hero of his Christian faith and love — His ineffable self-sacrifice, His leading captivity captive, His complete and irreversible triumph. That career he conceived and beheld vividly and intensely with a pure unalloyed acceptance; it thrilled and inspired him with a real passion of worship and delight. So blissfully enthralled and enraptured, what else could he sing of? His heart was hot within him; while he was musing, the fire burned; then spake he with his tongue. It was the tongue of one highly cultured and accomplished, of a rich and clear imagination, with a natural gift of eloquence, with a fine sense of melody, and metrical skill to express it.

Recognition

His poem "Wooing Song" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Publications

• Christs Victorie and Triumph, in Heauen, and Earth: Ouer, and after death. Cambridge, UK: C. Legge, 1610;
  • (edited by Will T. Brooke). London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh / New York: Dutton, 1888.
• The Reward of the faithfull / The labour of the faithfull / The grounds of our faith. London: B. Alsop for Beniamin Fisher, 1623.
• Christ's Victory and Triumph (with The Purple Island; or, The isle of man: An allegorical poem by Phineas Fletcher). London: Frys & Couchman, for J. Buckland / T. Wilkie / J. Matthews, 1783.
• Poems (edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart). Blackburn, UK: privately published, 1868;
  • revised as Complete Poems. London: Chatto & Windus, 1876.
• Giles Fletcher & Phineas Fletcher, Poetical Works (edited by Frederick S. Boas). (2 volumes [Giles Fletcher in Volume I only]), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge English Classics), 1908-1909.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Christ's Triumph After Death (Excerpts) - Giles Fletcher The Younger Poem)

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Lee, Sidney (1889) "Fletcher, Giles (1588?-1623)" in Stephen, Leslie Dictionary of National Biography 19 London: Smith, Elder, p. 302  . Wikisource, Web, Jan. 12, 2018.

External links

Poems

• "Wooing Song" in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900
• "Christ's Victory in Heaven" in The English Poets: An anthology
• Fletcher, Giles the Younger (1585?-1623) ("Christ's Triumph after Death") at Representative Poetry Online
• Giles Fletcher the Younger at PoemHunter (5 poems)
• Giles Fletcher (1588 ca.-1623) info & 6 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830

Books

• Works by Giles Fletcher at Project Gutenberg
• Giles Fletcher at Amazon.com

About

• Giles Fletcher the Younger in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Fletcher, Giles (poet)" in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Fletcher, Giles (1588?-1623)