Ebenezer Cooke (poet)

Ebenezer Cooke (c. 1665 – c. 1732), a London-born poet, wrote what some scholars consider the first American satire: "The Sotweed Factor, or A Voyage to Maryland, A Satyr" (1708). He was fictionalized by John Barth as the comically innocent protagonist of The Sot-Weed Factor, a novel in which a series of fantastic misadventures leads Cooke to write his poem.[1]

Life

Little is known about the life of Cook (sometimes spelled "Cooke", but spelled Cook in his published works). It is known that Cooke, like the persona of his poem, voyaged to Maryland as a young man. He entered the bar of Prince George's County, Maryland, and practiced law before returning to London by 1694. He later returned to Maryland after inheriting a half interest in his father's estate at Malden, Maryland.[2]

Almost all that is known about Cooke was discovered by Lawrence C. Wroth and published in the introduction to a facsimile edition of The Maryland Muse, (1934, originally published 1730). Building on the few historical references, Wroth theorized that Cooke's grandfather, Andrew Cooke, came to Maryland in 1661 and bought several pieces of property, including a place called "Malden", then later called "Cooke's Point". Cooke's father, also named Andrew, married a woman named Anne in England in 1664. Wroth guesses Ebenezer was born the next year. Based on the poem, Ebenezer attended Cambridge University and came to Maryland in 1694. He returned to England before The Sot–Weed Factor was published in 1708 in London. He probably remained in England until after his father's will was probated in 1711–12 and returned to Maryland before 1717 and died sometime after 1732, the date of publication of the last work signed "Ebenezer Cooke".[3]

"The Sot-Weed Factor"

Written in Hudibrastic couplets, the poem is, on its surface, a scathing Juvenalian satire of America and its colonists, and a parody of the pamphlets that advertised colonization as easy and lucrative (38, 40). The persona comes to Maryland as a tobacco merchant, or "sot-weed factor". He is shocked by the brutishness of Native Americans and English settlers alike, and he is swindled by an "ambodexter quack", or corrupt lawyer. He leaves the colony in disgust.

Some critics, notably including Arner, J. A. Lemay,[4] G. A. Carey and Sarah Ford, read the poem as a dual satire, targeting the closed-minded, embittered, failed colonist as much as it satirizes the colony. This dual satire, Ford argues, helped to promote a national identity, as "the colonists become insiders who perceive the humor in the factor's inability to adapt to life in America".[5] Micklus, too, sees the poem's humor as contributing to an aspect of American culture—namely, a tendency towards self-referential satire, later further developed by Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin.[6] What is significant about the poem, for Micklus, is not what Cooke says about either the colony or the English, but how Cooke goes about showing that his speaker "is a complete ass".[7]

In 1970, Edward H. Cohen stated that, "[i]n all of colonial American literature there is no problem so perplexing as that of the textual history of The Sot-weed Factor.... [I]n 1731 [Cooke] published in Annapolis a tempered revision of the same poem ... identified, on its title page, as "The Third Edition." But what, then, has become of the second edition?"[8] While Cohen points out that there are drafts of a preface for a second edition, this does not prove that such an edition was published. Joe Nickell has argued, based on similarities in the text and the published preface, that the second edition is actually the sequel, Sotweed Redivivus.[9]

Other works
  • "An ELOGY on the Death of Thomas Bordley Esquire", 1726[10]
  • "An Elegy on the Death of the Honorable Nicholas Lowe", Maryland Gazette, 1728. (Signed "E. Cooke. Laureat")
  • "Sotweed Redivivus or the Planters Looking Glass", Annapolis, 1730 (signed E. C. Gent)
  • The Maryland Muse, containing a revised version of The Sot–weed Factor and "The History of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia", 1731 (signed E, Cooke, Gent")
  • "An Elegy on the Death of the Honorable William Locke, Esquire" May, 1732 (Signed "Ebenezer Cook, Poet Laureat")[11]
  • "In Memory of the Honorable Benedict Leonard Calvert Esquire. Lieutenant Governor in the Province of Maryland" . . . U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland.[10]

References
  1. Diser 1968, p. 48.
  2. (archive)
  3. Diser 1968, p. 50.
  4. Arner 1971, pp. 81, 93.
  5. Arner 1971, p. 1.
  6. Arner 1971, p. 261.
  7. Arner 1971, p. 253.
  8. Cohen, Edward H. (1970). "The "Second Edition" of The Sot-weed Factor". American Literature. 42 (3): 289–303. doi:10.2307/2923906. JSTOR 2923906.
  9. Nickell, Joe (2018). "Outside the Box: Solving Diverse Mysteries". Skeptical Inquirer. 42 (5): 19.
  10. Barret 1998.
  11. Diser 1968, p. 49.

Works cited
  • Arner, Robert D. (1971). "Ebenezer Cooke's 'The Sot-Weed Factor': The Structure of Satire". Southern Literary Journal (Fall).CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Carey, GA. "The Poem as Con Game: Dual Satire and the Three Levels of Narrative in Ebenezer Cooke’s 'The Sot-Weed Factor'". Southern Literary Journal, 1990.
  • Diser, Philip E. (1968). "The Historical Ebenezer Cooke". Critique. X (3): 48–59.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) (see also Wroth, Lawrence C. "The Marland Muse by Ebenezer Cooke," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 44(2): 267–335. 1934
  • Barret, Tammy (1998). "Ebenezer Cook(e)". Archived from the original on 2001-05-10.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Ford, Sarah. "Humor's Role in Imagining America: Ebenezer Cook's 'The Sot-Weed Factor'". Southern Literary Journal, March, 2003.
  • Lemay, J. A. Leo.Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1972.
  • Micklus, Robert. "The Case Against Ebenezer Cooke's Sot-Weed Factor". American Literature Vol. 56, No. 2 (May, 1984), 251–261.
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