Imperfect Creatures: Vermin, Literature, and the Sciences of Life, 1600-1740 by Lucinda Cole

Author:Lucinda Cole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Poking fun at the frustrated ambitions of Sir Thomas Meres to ascend to the ranks of Parliamentarian forces eager to block the ascension of James II, the speaker makes Jowler an ironic standard for beings whose desires and accomplishments converge. Dogs, unlike human parasites, serve as models of “right reason” in action. Jowler’s ability to locate, chase down, and catch hares demonstrates the success of creatures who follow their senses and are naturally suited to their environment, in contrast to “man” who conjures up a “sixth” sense—abstract reason divorced from “certain instinct”—to “contradict the other five” (ll. 9–10).

Despite this avowed identification with “more perfect” creatures, Rochester is no Jowler. Given his own dependence on Charles II and his position at the court (from which he was temporarily banished), Rochester occupies the ironic position of the hyperparasite, the courtier who feeds off the host who, in turn, feeds off others. Although I borrow the term from contemporaryPage 124 → biology, one can find the concept of hyperparasites in Mosca’s division of the world into “Parasites and Sub-parasites” or, more wittily, in Jonathan Swift’s depiction in “On Poetry: A Rhapsody”:

So nat’ralists observe, a flea

Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;

And these have smaller fleas to bite ‘em.

And so proceeds Ad Infinitum.

(ll. 337–40)30

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