Cummings
Guides Home..|..Contact
This Site
.
.
Compiled
by Michael J. Cummings...©
2008
...
..
Type of
Work
Edwin Arlington Robinson's
“Miniver Cheevy” is a dramatic lyric poem centering on a twentieth-century
misfit who dreams of living in the heroic age of sword and horse. Charles
Scribner’s Sons published it in 1910 as part of a collection entitled Town
Down the River.
Setting
Although the poem mentions
no specific locale, readers of Robinson’s poetry know that Miniver Cheevy
lives in fictional Tilbury Town, a community modeled on Robinson’s hometown
of Gardiner, Maine. Gardiner is on the Kennebec River in southwestern Maine
a few miles south of the state capital, Augusta. Robinson used Tilbury
Town as the setting of many of his poems, including the highly popular
Richard
Cory, although his poems seldom mention the town by name.
Title
Meaning
“Miniver Cheevy” is an unusual
but apt name for the poem and its misfit dreamer. Consider that Miniver
is the name of a white or gray fur  used
in earlier times to trim the ceremonial robes of royals and nobles. In
his dreams about the past, Mr. Cheevy perhaps sees himself in such fine
robes as an important person at the court of a king—or as the king himself.
Consider, too, that Cheevy resembles words derived from the French
noun cheval (horse) to identify gallant knights (chevaliers)
and their code of honor (chivalry). The name of game lands near the border
of Scotland and England was Chevy Chase (or Chace) to refer to hunts there
by nobles on horseback. A famous poem, "The Ballad of Chevy Chase," centers
on a storied 1388 battle at the site between Englishmen and Scots after
the latter mistook an English hunting party for an invasion force. Of course,
Miniver Cheevy can also be a coinage derived from the term minimum
achiever, a label that sums up Mr. Cheevy’s meager abilities
in the modern workaday world.
.
.
| Text of the Poem
Miniver Cheevy, child of
scorn,1
Grew lean while he
assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever
born,
And he had reasons.
Miniver loved the days of
old 5
When swords were
bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior
bold
Would set him dancing.
Miniver sighed for what was
not,
And dreamed, and
rested from his labors;
10
He dreamed of Thebes2
and Camelot,3
And Priam’s4
neighbors.
Miniver mourned the ripe
renown
That made so many
a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now
on the town5,
15
And Art, a vagrant.
Miniver loved the Medici,6
Albeit he had never
seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been
one. 20
Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki7
suit with loathing;
He missed the mediaeval
grace
Of iron clothing.8
Miniver scorned the gold9
he sought, 25
But sore annoyed
was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought,
and thought,
And thought about
it.
Miniver Cheevy, born too
late,
Scratched his head
and kept on thinking; 30
Miniver coughed, and called
it fate,
And kept on drinking.
.
Notes
.
1...child
of scorn: See Miniver's Fixation, paragraph 3.
2...Thebes:
Allusion to the ancient Greek city made famous in.myth,
legend, and history for its heroes and villains—including Cadmus, Oedipus,
Antigone, and its Macedonian conquerors, King .....Philip
II and Alexander the Great.
3...Camelot:
Allusion to the legendary English city of King Arthur and his Knights of
the Roundtable.
4...Priam:
Allusion to the king of Troy during the Trojan War against an army of Greeks
led by the redoubtable warrior, Achilles. Achilles and the war were the
subjects of Homer's.Iliad.
5...on
the town: Begging from the town's residents.
6...Medici:
Powerful family that ruled Florence, Italy, through much of the Renaissance
and well into the eighteenth century. The Medicis extended their rule into
Tuscany. Some members of the family became popes; others married into European
royalty. Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589) became queen of France and three
of her sons became kings of France. The Medici family was often at the
center of political intrigue and machination.
7...khaki:
Twilled beige cloth used to make military uniforms.
8...iron
clothing: Suit of armor.
9...gold:
money; a paycheck. |
Structure
.......The
structure of "Miniver Cheevy" is neatly symmetrical, containing eight four-line
stanzas (quatrains). The first and third lines of each stanza have masculine
end rhyme, and the second and fourth lines have feminine end rhyme. Masculine
rhyme occurs when the final syllable of a line rhymes with the final syllable
of another line. Feminine rhyme occurs when the final two syllables of
a line rhyme with the final two syllables of another line.
.......Robinson
begins the first line of each stanza with Miniver and the third
line of each stanza with either he or Miniver. He also lengthens
the second line of each stanza and shortens the last line of each stanza,
enabling him to present the long and the short of Miniver's misery.
.......In
addition, he rhetorically parallels the openings of the second, third,
and fourth stanzas with the openings of the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas.
The opening line of the eighth stanza then rhetorically parallels the opening
line of the first stanza.
.......Following
is an illustration of this pattern:
Stanza 1, Line
1: Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Stanza 8, Line 1:
Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Comment:
Notice that lines 1 and 8 resemble each other grammatically: In each case,
a proper noun is followed by a parenthetical expression. Notice also that
these are the only two lines in the poem that begin with the first and
last names of Cheevy.
Stanza 2, Line 1:
Miniver loved the days of old
Stanza 3, Line 1:
Miniver sighed for what was not
Stanza 4, Line 1:
Miniver mourned the ripe renown
Stanza 5, Line 1:
Miniver loved the Medici
Stanza 6, Line 1:
Miniver cursed the commonplace
Stanza 7, Line 1:
Miniver scorned the gold he sought
Comment: Notice the
pattern: (1) Miniver loved, Miniver sighed, Miniver mourned; (2) Miniver
loved, Miniver cursed, Miniver scorned.
Miniver's
Fixation
.......What
accounts for Miniver Cheevy’s fixation on the past?
.......Mr.
Cheevy would tell you that he cannot abide the workaday world around him,
for it is humdrum and bourgeois, lacking the heroic spirit and aesthetic
taste of ages past. Miniver himself has the required gallantry and refinement,
he would assure you, but cannot use these qualities because he was born
in the wrong century in the wrong place. If he could go back in time—to
Arthur’s Camelot, for example—what wonders he would work. Riding a horse
and wielding a sword, he would lead knights in a charge, lay siege to castles,
and carry home vast treasures. Minstrels would sing of his valor; fair
maidens would swoon at his smile.
.......What
Miniver would not tell you, however, is the truth about his own past. Early
in life, he was a “child of scorn” (line 1) because his parents and the
community in which he lived did not accept him for what he was. Was he
disfigured, awkward, peevish, incorrigible–or perhaps illegitimate? It
does not matter. What matters is that he protected himself by escaping
into books and living vicariously in their stories. He became Achilles
at Troy, Alexander at Thebes, Gawain at Camelot. Over the years, he became
so fixated on his dream world that he neglected to develop the social and
vocational skills needed to cope with the real world. Consequently, he
became a misfit and ne’er-do-well. But rather than blame himself and his
shortcomings for his failures, he blamed the world around him. He was too
good for it. Fate had fixed him in the wrong century.
.......And
so he dreamed on—and fed his dreams with drink.
E.
A. Robinson as Miniver
.......When
Robinson created Miniver, he looked inward, for—in a way—he was
Miniver. From the very beginning of his life in December 1869, Robinson's
mother frowned on him: she wanted a girl. When a boy was born, she had
no ready name for him. Not until six months later—in the summer of 1870—did
he receive an identity. The big moment came when the Robinsons were vacationing
at a resort in Harpswell, Maine.
[T]he ladies on
the verandah challenged her [Mrs. Robinson] to name the baby. The ladies
placed names in a lottery, and the name drawn was “Edwin.” Because the
lady who proposed “Edwin” as a name was from Arlington, Massachusetts,
baby Robinson became Edwin Arlington Robinson, a name that was anathema
to him throughout his life. He hated the family’s habit of calling him
“Win,” and as an adult he always signed himself as “E. A.” (Smith, Danny
D. "Biography of Edwin Arlington Robinson." Edwin Arlington Robinson:
A Virtual Tour of Robinson's Gardiner, Maine. 17 July 2008 <http://-
www.earobinson.com/pages/HisLife.html>.
.......In
an age of industrial growth and emerging technologies, as well as entrepreneurial
derring-do and materialism, Robinson preferred writing poetry. In the 1890s,
when he was in his twenties, his brother Herman married the woman Edwin
loved. Then his father died, his family went bankrupt, his mother died,
his brother Herman began drinking heavily, and in 1899 his brother Dean
died after becoming addicted to Morphine. Edwin worked at various jobs
to sustain himself while writing his verses. He knew poverty. He knew failure.
And, like Miniver and his brother Herman, he turned to alcohol. However,
after his poetry gained recognition in the first decade of the twentieth
century—President Theodore Roosevelt was one of his admirers—he began succeeding
as a poet but continued to struggle financially. After Roosevelt intervened
on his behalf to get him a government job in a customs house, Robinson's
financial problems eased, and he received favorable reviews for Town
Down the Driver, the collection in which "Miniver Cheevy" appeared.
Eventually, he went on to win three Pulitzer Prizes.
.......Over
the years, "Miniver Cheevy" came to be recognized as one of his finest
poems.
"Miniver
Cheevy" as Satire
In depicting Miniver Cheevy
as a misfit dreamer, Robinson satirizes the Minivers of the world who spend
too much time dwelling on the "the good old days" instead of living in
the present. But, paradoxically, he also satirizes Miniver's financially
successful contemporaries for debasing the past. He says, for example,
that Romance, a mainstay genre of many classic literary works, is "now
on the the town" (line 15). In other words, the Romance genre that once
regaled readers with wonderful tales in exquisite prose is now a down-and-outer
living on the public dole, perhaps in the form of tawdry novels in pedestrian
prose that boorish parvenus buy instead of the classics. Art—real literary
art—is "a vagrant"; the powers that be in the present world are too caught
up in their enterprises and too aesthetically deficient to pay attention
to it.
Themes
Escaping Reality
Miniver Cheevy escapes the
burdens of everyday life by dreaming of bygone days and soothing himself
with a bottle of liquor. It is normal, of course, to think about the past;
but it is abnormal to dwell on it constantly.
Rationalization
Miniver rationalizes that
fate is at fault for his failure, as line 31 points out. How could he be
blamed for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Study
Questions and Essay Topics
1. Read a short biography
of Edwin Arlington Robinson. Then explain whether he, like Miniver, was
a "child of scorn" (line 1).
2. Alliteration occurs frequently
in the poem. Examples are Cheevy and
child
(line 1), Miniver
mourned
and ripe
renown
(line 13), and ....cursed
the commonplace (line 21). Locate five
other examples of alliteration in the poem.
3. In an essay, compare
and contrast Miniver with Richard Cory, the subject of another Robinson
poem. Click here to access the "Richard ....Cory"
study guide.
4. Write an essay based
on a theme in the poem.
.
|
Now
Available...........................Shakespeare:
a Guide to the Complete Works...........................................
By the Author
of This Web Site
.
Plot Summaries
of All the Plays and Narrative Poems | Themes | Imagery | Historical Background
| Glossaries
Shakespeare's
Theatre | Drama Terms | Essays | Analysis of the Sonnets | and Much More
|
.
|