“To Snare among the Briars”: Sensory Data and Two Early Literary Influences on In Parenthesis

David Jones’s epic poem In Parenthesis employs poetic strategies for measuring sub-rational experiences of war. Jones’s use of language ties viscerally-felt, bodily-aesthetic data to nature. But Jones complements that visceral relation by his use of two as yet unremarked literary influences. His mythmaking in In Parenthesis closely resembles that of John Bale in his 1538 play Kynge Johan. And his emphasis on confinement in In Parenthesis is inspired by Andrew Marvell’s deliberate self-imprisonment in nature in Upon Appleton House (1651).