Miniver Cheevy

The Oxford Companion to American Literature | 1995 | 630 words | Copyright

Miniver Cheevy, poem in iambic tetrameter quatrains by E.A. Robinson, published in The Town Down the River (1910).

This satirical portrait of Miniver, a worldly failure in Tilbury Town, shows him to be unaware of his personal inadequacies, consoling himself with a romantic melancholy that he carries to absurd lengths. “Born too late,” he “sighed for what was not,” dreaming of “medieval grace” and “the days of old.” Thus his life consists of futile yearnings and frustration, to no end except that “Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking.”

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James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Miniver Cheevy." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Miniver Cheevy." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-MiniverCheevy.html

James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Miniver Cheevy." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-MiniverCheevy.html

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