English 241 Final Exam
monism
- (theory of matter, "one first matter all") - the idea that all beings made of the same matter - 5.470ff following comments about Raphael's angelic body
epic
- A long narrative poem, written in heightened language, which recounts the deeds of a heroic character who embodies the values of a particular society - FQ = epic of national glory
Creation of Adam and Eve
- Adam tells the story in PL of how he was made - he is lonely and calls upon God (meant to mimic the Father/Son relationship) - Adam's "fancy" (which he genders as female when apologizing for it while talking to Raphael) - Eve says she was scared of Adam and didn't find him as attractive as her own reflection - Adam has different explanation: "Eve was modest" (8.500-506) - Adam uses reason to win Eve over
The Faerie Queene (Books 1-3 in 1590, Books 1-6 in 1596, Books 1-6 + Mutabilitie Cantos in 1609)
- Author: Edmund Spenser - Epic - Books 1-3 published in 1590 to gain love & attention from Q. Eliz. - In 1596 Books 1-6 (revised) WHAT WE READ(THIS IS THE DATE YOU WANT FOR EXAM) - 1609, Books 1-6, so-called "Mutabilite" Cantos - FQ = unfinished, all books = sort of unfinished, Spenser had plans for Book 7 for sure, in letter he lays out plans for full 12
The Shepheardes Calendar (1579)
- Author: Edmund Spenser (also wrote Amoretti) - Written to Sidney - 12 dialogues between 2 shepards, each dialogue = a month - lanugage = faux Chaucer-speak (on purpose to make the poem more rustic) - Form is called a Pastoral
FQ Conceits of the Books
- Book 1: Holiness (REDCROSSE) - Book 2: Temperence - Book 3: Chastity (BRITOMART) - Books 4-6: friendship, justice, courtesy - Each book = knight who lift FQ cont. to fulfill an adventure
Bounds and boundaries
- Books 7 & 8 of PL are about boundaries -- limitations on human ability and human knowledge - boundaries of understanding -- Raphael cannot completely explain divine events (the war in Heaven, creation) because human logic requires discourse. The story of creation cannot even be told with the language of an Angel (it is incomprehensible) - Raphael says there is a line he will not cross in his tale (book 7) -- knowledge in bounds, not to excess ("is as food") -- Raphael wants Adam to have knowledge in moderation - Excess knowledge could turn wisdom to folly - God not bound by time (huan language is time-bound) -- all of God's actions are immediate but human ears require time -- we are time-bound and need a time-bound form (narrative) in order to understand God's instantaneous narrative -- Milton is stuck like Raphael, he wants to explain God's greatness but is BOUND by narrative and words
Daniel Defoe
- Born in 1660 - Middle class, Protestant (Presbyterian) -- father is a candle maker - Merchant (c.1683-92) - 1692 - bankruptcy -- recovered from his debts and added the "de" to his name and claimed he descended from a wealthy French family - Post-1694: merchant, spy, political journalist (d.1731) - 1719 - ROBINSON CRUSOE & the sequel FARTHER ADVENTURES - 1722 - MOLL FLANDERS - Wrote about himself, but worse: clever people who get themselves in trouble who must dig themselves out with their wits rather than their family connections
John Milton
- Born into bourgeois (not wealthy) - supported by father through university and 6 years of studying philosophy, english latin, so he could write his epic - had a political career - shaped his career after the poet Virgil (Pastoral LYCIDAS, 1638 to epic, like Spencer) - Considered himself not only poet but prophet - Blind Homer -- self-fulfilling prophecy; as if he had to become blind to spread the vision of Paradise Lost -- Milton produced PL through dictation
Pandemonium
- Capital building in Hell - Molded and risen all in one piece - we are supposed to be amazed by this - supposed to be comparable to the Parthenon - Pandemonium means ALL DEMONS (inversion of Pantheon, meaning ALL GODS) - shows that demons are industrious
Friday
- Crusoe saves Friday from cannibalism (he saw this in a prophetic dream) - Friday kneels before him and devotes his life to Crusoe - we might be happy Crusoe got a friend, but troubled that he refers to him as "my savage" (147) -- The very critique that we want to lay on Crusoe for his racial prejudices is also the one that the author Daniel Defoe is laying on his main character ----Defoe is not blind to Crusoe's contradictions in his approach to the man who is called "Friday", never even asking for his name (149) ---- Crusoe and Defoe are not the same - Defoe does see the way that Crusoe interacts with Friday as being problematic - Crusoe sees Friday as "noble savage"; Defoe paints Friday as noble, good, and inherently convertable to Christianity - Crusoe acts as God to Friday (and Father?)
Cannibalism
- Crusoe takes a God-like stance against the person who made the footprint; cannibals - becomes obsessed w/ killing them - then.. cultural relativism -- he comes to realization that he has no right to be judge and executioner -- it would not be just for him to fall upon them, it would justify the Spaniard's conquests in the Americas - Eating of body parts for military reasons (Crusoe doesn't understand this)
Robinson Crusoe (1719)
- Daniel Defoe - First edition in 1667
Details and truth claims
- Defoe believed that the best fiction was something that convinces readers it had to be true - How? -- fill it with details -- the details in this book are what make it novel or new - truth claim -- the title page gives us an account of the whole story, also explains it was written by Robinson Crusoe -- Defoe's books were published anonymously to give readers the impression that what he was writing was absolute truth - If you're bored by the reading, Defoe has succeeded - years on a desert island can't be that interesting
Chaos
- Element in the Garden of Adonis - Great wheel of regeneration which Spencer builds off of to create an allegory of sending things out into the world and then time forcing them back to the garden when they die (regeneration) - Element in PL also -- Someone Satan talks to after Sin and Death -- Wasteland adjacent to Hell
Great Chain of Being
- European idea that every species was a link on a chain extending from lowest forms to humans and on to spiritual beings. All links and been designed at the same time during creation and would never change. Once all the links were discovered and described, the meaning of life would be revealed. - Implication that Adam and Eve could climb up the chain (by being obedient) and one day reach the status of angel - Reason & fancy -- human reason is DISCOURSIVE (requires discourse) -- angelic understanding is INTUITIVE (does not need language) -- raises question of whether or not humans language can capture/understand divine things
allegory
- FQ is a spiritual/political allegory - characters stand for different virtues & vices - Also stand for Q. Eliz = FQ, Britomart, & Belpheobe - How Spenser explains the poem in his letter to Raleigh - "darke conceit" (249) - dulce & utile; Spenser wants to "fashion a gentleman" (249) -- FQ is a set of moral lessons to shape the reader
autobiography* MORE?
- Idea of the autobiographical "I" - DeFoe claims that this is a real person - An account that claims, not only to be true, but to be utterly original and unique -- Thought it's not -- The claim to originality & truth is one that all our authors this semester have made - All authors write in the "I" - RC is also unoriginal in its claim to usefulness
Milton, Areopagitica (1644), on the freedom of the press
- Importance: Eve voices one of the arguments from here on why they should be separated while working - Adam is worried Eve will fall into temptation, but Eve argues that she was given the power to resist and what is the point of having choice if she can't exercise it - Connects back to the freedom of the press and freedom to say what you want to say of Areopiagitica - Book 9, domestic dispute -- AREOPAGITICA: "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue" -- As if Eve is paraphrasing Milton's ideas on this front when she asks Adam about freedom (saying how do we know these things if we're never tested, surely God would not have left us unable to withstand temptation)
Leviathan
- In Book 1 PL, Milton describes giant Satan (195ff) -- compares him to monsters of traditional myth -- bigger even than Leviathan (sea monster from the Hebrew bible) -- famous painting of small boat next to the beast, pulling up because he thinks the beast is land -- representation of looking and seeing (not always the truth)
Venus (goddess of love)
- In Book 3, raises Amoret - Combined with Diana, they make the perfect whole -- this perfect whole is what Britomart will become when she fulfills her quest (Chaste warrior goddess & lover)
Diana (goddess of the hunt)
- In Book 3, raises Belpheobe - Combined with Venus, they make up the perfect whole -- this perfect whole is what Britomart will become when she fulfills her quest (Chaste warrior goddess & lover)
Error
- In book one of FQ, Redcrosse and Una come across the serpent of Error -- snake of Eden & Beast of revelation -- Catholic propaganda ---- Categorized by books and papers that the snake vomits up (Stanza 20) - Cave of error = also cave of self (RCs self) -- 18 - "Error's endless traine) -- 19 - Una tells RC to "add faith" to win battle -- 24 - cuts off Error's head -- 29 - the "seeming" hermit - Stanza 10 - wandering/error -- lost their path, in error -- reference to crooked path and errare (Chaucer)
Arminianism
- Jacobus Arminus, Dutch theologian, who emphasized the importance of free will - Important to PL because Milton believed in this: "free to fall", Adam and Eve's fall was no one's fault but their own
Lucifer and/as Satan and/as serpent
- Lucifer menas "light-bearer" of Isaiah 14:12 (from the Hebrew bible) where he is called a "fallen angel" ("how art though fallen from heaven, o lucifer, son of the morning" - These three are not connected in the bible but are connected through medieval interpretations of the bible - Milton = connecting the serpent to lucifer to Satan
Abdiel
- Lucifer took council of angels to the North to create an imitation of God's court and talk about "new laws" -- he was jealous of the Son - Lucifer's argument is not convincing to the angel Abdiel - Abdiel explains that the honor given to the Son increases the honor given to all angels, it doesn't detract from them (5.837-45) -- Lucifer sends Abdiel back to the other angels - Milton describes Abdiel as "unshaken, unseduced, unterrified" (5.899); praising him
"What in me is dark, Illumine"
- Milton asking God to bless him with inner understanding to make up for what he has lost (he is blind) - wants to reach God another way now that he is unable through sight
foreknowledge vs. free will
- Milton wrestles with this theological paradox throughout the tale - if God has ultimate foreknowledge and things are fixed, does anyone really have free will/control over their lives? - also a problem of narrative -- we (as readers) know what is going to happen in this story, we have foreknowledge so Milton must convince us that there is a reason to follow the story - Book 3: "I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood though free to fall."
Urania
- Muse of poetry - sister of eternal wisdom (according to Milton) - Connects to the holy spirit - poetry = divine - Milton opens book 7 with an epic invocation to the Muse: this time, Urania
novel (prose, realism, psychology...)
- Novel = prose & realism -- RC is an early example of the form - Narrative form (esp. Detail & psychology) -- Novel = more about the form than the content -- Attention to detail, observed experience, and internal states of being
Vulcan (Mulciber)
- One of the figures at the beginning of Paradise Lost who is mentioned in the connection of the Greek Gods to the demons - One of the important figures who forges pandemonium - Speaks to Milton attempting to mold greek gods to Christian narrative to explain everything
hypocrisy* NEEDS CLARIFICATION
- P: 3.683 Hypocrisy -- If Satan's desire is unspeakable, so is his hypocrisy -- Milton planting the idea that Adam and Eve will not be able to see the evil b/c like Uriel they are purely good
reason and fancy
- PL book 5ff - 5.100ff - reason vs. fancy (imagination) - Reason is the chief of human faculty -- In sleep, when reason takes a break, fancy tries to imitate nature but mijoins things, making "ill-matching words and deeds" (5.113) - Later, reason is tied to Adam and Fancy is tied to Eve - in 5.470ff Raphael explains fancy and reason -- claims fancy is at a lower faculty than reason -- two types of reason: discourse & intuition -- human reason is DISCOURSIVE (requires discourse) -- Angelic understanding is INTUITIVE (does not need language) -- question here is can human language truly capture/understand divine things
Ptolemaic (earth-centered) vs. Copernican (sun-centered) map of the cosmos
- Ptolemaic = belief that Earth is at the center of the universe -- Adam asks Raphael why God would make the "spot" of Earth the center of the universe? - Copernican = Belief that Earth goes around the sun -- Raphael tells Adam to just leave it - his point is not that one theory of the cosmos is more correct than the other, but rather that Adam should just leave it -- Raphael says "be lowly wise" or be concerned with your own immediate life
acedia (Latin, "sloth"), especially spiritual despair
- Satan has fallen into ACEDIA (sloth) - spiritual despair [spiritual laziness that leads to despair] - B/c Satan believes he cannot be cured of his ambition and realizes he has no one else to blame for his folly than himself (initially in Book 4 soliloquy he laments that he was born a lower being [thinks he was born with too much ambition]) - B/c he believes he cannot be saved, then he won't be - why he is so envious and so sad
Milton's anti-Trinitarianism (the Son as "begotten")
- The idea that the Father, Son, and Holy spirit are not all one (Trinitarian) - The Son is second to the Father, not coeternal with him (seen in the way the Son praises God, how he sacrifices himself for the creation the Father made) - Milton's anti-trinitarian beliefs go against the main lines of thought during his day - The son is then able to be an independent/questioning/mediating voice in the story
Duessa
- The opposite of Una, she represents falsehood and nearly succeeds in getting Redcrosse to leave Una for good. She appears beautiful, but it is only skin-deep. - First appears in Book 1 as Fidessa - Fidessa = faith, Duessa = doubleness - Duessa = the ***** of Babylon and represents the Catholic church
Belphoebe and Amoret*
- Twins
tyrant's plea
- When Satan is looking @ Adam and Eve and first views them - He thinks they're great and could love them - But immediately transitions to "these are just collateral damage" we need to pounce on them to make sure we are getting revenge on God - Satan is justifying his actions in a way that should be transparent to us (we should think this is not a reasonable reason)
epic simile
- a detailed comparison in the form of a simile that is many lines in length - "like" / "as" - Milton uses this to show the reader to be careful about what we think we see and what we think we hear - Leviathan & Galileo's shield = examples
"noble savage"
- a person who has not been corrupted by society or civilization - description of Friday -- "And yet, he had all the sweetness and the softness of a European, too, especially when he smiled" - Europeans believed themselves to be superior to these people who were different from them, but on the other hand they paradoxically had this belief that the "noble savage" was superior - Idea of "noble savage" also connects to Roman ideas of the Golden Age before industry came and ruined things (1600s)
Three Genres of Faerie Queene
- allegory - epic - romance
charity
- as we wait for the revelation that Adam received, there is stuff we can do (says Archangel Michael) - We can add to our deeds (with faith, virtue, patience, temperance, love [charity]) -- Which in itself is "a paradise within" -- This will create an inner paradise which is much more enjoyable
pastoral poetry (cf. Virgil's Eclogues)
- didactic to epic - Shephard dialogue in verse - classic form used by Virgil (writer of the Illiad) - Virgil also wrote the pastoral Eclogues (which is the inspiration for Spenser) - Virgil, GEORGICS (re: farming = didactic); AENEID (re: empire = epic) - Virgil's trajectory from pastoral to epic is classic "career move" for poets (Spenser also followed this)
idolatry (image worship)
- during the Protestant Reformation, the way to belief is believed to be through text, not through excessive Catholic imagery - idolatry = image-worship and was practiced by Catholics; worship of the image vs. what it truly represents
Muse
- epic invocation of the Muse in both PL and FQ - In PL; = the Holy Spirit - Milton announcing himself as more than a poet but a prophet - someone who can "justify the ways of God to men"
Beelzebub
- fallen angel with Satan - has the idea for corruption of Mankind - during great consult he says: -- we are not beyond the potent power of God -- this isn't just a playground to create and run around in; God is still in charge
Hexaemeral (or hexameral)
- having to do with/about the six days of Creation - Milton tells an epic of war, now is moving to an epic of creation
Archimago
- hermit whose home Una and RC stay the night in - seems like a holy man, but then turns out to be a sorcerer - play on words: Archi-magi (arch-magician) & Arch-Imago (Arch-image-maker) -- relevant during this time as relevance in image-making to reach God - also used as a way to villainize Catholics
Britomart
- heroine of Book 3 of Faerie Queene - represents Chastity -- chastity to Spenser = correct sexuality in marriage, not complete lack thereof - Name = Britain + mars (speaks to epic being of nationality) - meant to represent Queen Elizabeth I - Britomare + Artegall -- this desire & marriage differentiates Elizabeth I from Britomart as she refused to marry -- perhaps Spenser = urging Elizabeth I to produce an heir (think Shakespearean Sonnets)
romance
- in FQ, story of chivalry, courtesy, individual adventure & love
Galileo
- in PL Satan's giant shield = compared to the moon as seen by Galileto - depiction of act of sight, trying to see by gazing through glass - Milton (like Donne) was very interested in the physical sciences - he uses this to build the world we see in Paradise Lost - Galileo is the only contemporary of Milton that he mentions
Intuitive vs. discursive knowledge
- knowledge of Man = discursive (needs discourse) - knowledge of angel = intuitive (doesn't need discourse) - represents bounds/boundaries of book 7
seeming
- much of the Faerie Queene is focused on things not being as they "seem" - At the beginning of the poem, Spenser emphasizes how difficult it is to differentiate truth from "seems" - Seeming (stanzas 2, 4, 6, 7, 8) -- things are not what they seem - Book 1: Stanza 12, "fire w/o smoke" -- might be danger where it might not seem -- "peril w/o show" **must have the experience of "seeming" and then the revelation of how you were wrong to really learn (Spenser teaching us as his characters learn about "seeming" as well)** - must have experience to learn - think WOB experience over authority
Myth of Er (cf. Plato's Republic, about reincarnation)
- myth of afterlife and reincarnation
Sans Foy
- name meaning "without faith" - next villain after Archimago - representing all who would split the Christian faith (remember the focus of Book 1 is Holiness & wholeness) - non-christian man traveling with Duessa/Fidessa - he is defeated
Political* and familial analogies
- page 61, political analogy of Crusoe's western world -- tells us that thinking about a grindstone is the same as being a politician -- the point: even while he is absorbed in the most practical of matters, Crusoe thinks of things in political analogies - p.75 "my Family" -- his pet companions -- parrot friend, Poll - speaks to his "power" on the island -- p. 108, sits down to dinner with "me and my little family" and thinks about owning land and having power over other beings ("Lives of all my subjects at my absolute command")
Inscriptions
- parrot, Poll, is like a living journal (cataloging Crusoe's experience on the island, will remain when Crusoe leaves as a remembrance of his existence there) - Footprint in the sand (p.112) -- an inscription that changes everything -- inscription of a "savage" and representation of danger being right around the corner (missing body) - Later Crusoe DOES take his parrot when he leaves the island (undeniable inconsistency) -- Inconsistency that points to (like the single footprint on the beach where there should have been many) whats at stake in moments like these is not realism but symbolic significance: something that relates to the theme of inscription (Crusoe inscribing himself in his jungle or inscribing himself on the island with the parrot's voice)
Sin and Death
- personified allegorically within PL - remember snake of Error - Milton returning to the classic mode of allegory to show us what is wrong with sympathizing with Satan - infernal trinity -- creating an inverted trinity of Satan, Sin, and Death -- Satan as father and then lover of Sin, who gives birth to Death -- Paradox of death being born (like the phrase darkness visible) -- -- Hell is deep paradox -- Birth of sin is also a parody of Athena born out of the head of Zeus in Greek mythology -- also parody of the way that Eve with be born of Adam's side later in the poem - painful birth: 864 Satan is the "author" of pain, NOT God -- Milton engaging in creative thought, making Satan the author of pain rather than God after the fall - Satan will unleash these two on Earth if he overtakes it
Garden of Adonis
- place Venus raises Amoret - tension in Adonis between Beauty and Darkness - regenerative cycle -- all beings there like a wheel, will run old to new - "eternal chaos" -- chaos produces an eternal substance from which all things come and ultimately return to - conflict between endless beauty & constant chaos = played out in microcosm @ the center of the garden: Stanza 43, mount of venus, where according to Spencer, Venus has sex with Adonis - Allegory that Spenser is using for the fairy queen in which he's talking about how all matter in the universe that's living is sent out into the world and comes back because time has mowed it down - Important b/c of what's happening in the sonnets (death and time is what cuts everything short) but we have regeneration and constant movement of matter and its a circle
iconoclasm (image destruction)
- practice of image-destruction tied to the Protestant belief that text is the way to God, not imagery
words and deeds* NEEDS CLARIFICATION (lecture 4.8)
- relationship between language and action in PL - "Ill-matching words and deeds" (5.113) - connects to Milton's Puritan belief of the individual believer and individual prayer as the center of true faith (prayer as word and deed as something humankind can do in response to God's greatness)
Una
- represents unity and truth in Book 1 - name means "oneness" - Redcrosse's traveling partner in Book 1
Calvinist doctrine of predestination
- salvation by God's grace of a select few - predestination, with a belief that there is a special election to grace for a select few -- Milton didn't fully agree to this; his beliefs are Arminian (free will) -- Milton wants to make very clear that Adam and Eve's fault is not God's fault but theirs - Rejecting Calvinism in book 3 with "free to fall"
capitalism*
- something that leaves Crusoe's mind while he's on the island but the second he leaves, money becomes important once again - wealth and nostalgia (greek nostos = return home, algos = pain) -- has so much wealth, he doesn't know what to do -- misses the simplicity of the island (but would not go back if he could)
Venus & Adonis
- this is Spencer's reimagining of the tale - in real one Adonis = killed by a boar & mourned by Venus - he is splitting the tale in two to reunite the lovers - Just as chaos is in the womb of the world, so too the wild boar that killed Adonis is still here, just imprisoned - 48 the chained boar
Busy Bee Simile
- used during description of the construction of Pandemonium - busy bee = a symbol of unceasing industry - been used in poetry since the poetry of Homer and Virgil - this simile also belittles the demons -- makes them into little more than a swarm of insects - they shrink until they are smaller than dwarves - so many demons, they must shrink to fit into Pandemonium -- makes them threatening but also like a crowd of annoying nasty bugs
Paradise Lost (1667 in 10 books, 1674 in 12 books)
Author: John Milton - Milton's goal was to follow Spencer as well as Virgil with this epic (write an Arthurian epic) - Milton was in the mold of Dante (1318-21) - First published 1667 w/ 10 books, then 1668 & 1669 w/ prose arguments, then in 1674 with 12 books (split books 9 & 10 into two each) - Protestant poem
Alexander Selkirk
Scottish sailor who was stranded off the coast of Chile for 4.5 years - DeFoe got the idea for Robinson Crusoe from this
Elizabeth I, Virgin Queen
She is the goddess Spenser refers to in the Faerie Queene, she is the inspiration, subject, and audience for the work (the muse)
