ABSTRACT
Izaak Walton’s manual of fishing, The Compleat Angler, is one of the great success stories in the history of English publishing. The work has enjoyed an enduring popularity since its first appearance in 1653 and can still be found today on the shelves of the fishing section in mainstream bookstores. Readers since the seventeenth century have found something to enjoy in this strange conglomeration of instruction, wandering anecdotes, rural idyll and pastoral nostalgia peppered with illustrations, songs and recipes. Recent readings have recontextualised Walton’s work in the political and historical moment of the English Civil War,1 but many critics remain focused on the aura of congeniality and amiability it projects in its representation of moderate Royalism as a peaceful and virtuous “middle way.” Attending to the use of biblical allusion in The Compleat Angler can help us to appreciate better Walton’s distinctive elaboration of the political aspects of pastoral genre and Royalist figurings of the beatus ille tradition. Here, I explore how Walton’s allusion to Psalm 137, sung by the Rivers of Babylon, enhances the motifs of exile, estrangement, oppression and silence that are already sounded in the text by forms of classical pastoral, a recognisably Royalist mode in the 1650s.
