Passages
"And which of you that bereth him best of all- That is to sayn, that telleth in this cas Tales of best sentence and most solas- Shal have a soper at oure aller cost"
Canterbury Tales GP; challenge of storytelling for both delight and doctrine (solas later doubles to mean sexual pleasure in MT)
"This Nicholas anoon leet flee a fart As greet as it hadde been a thonder-dent That with the strook he was almost yblent, And he was redy with his iren hoot, And Nicholas amidde the ers he smoot: Of gooth the skin an hande-brede aboute; The hote cultour brende so his toute That for the smert he wende for to die; As he were wood for wo he gan to crye, "Help! Water! Water! Help, for Goddes herte!"
Canterbury Tales MT; bodily; fleshly; low; puns and word play; sentence or solas?
"And swoor, 'By armes and by blood and bones, I can a noble tale for the nones, With which I wol now quite the Knightes tale."
Canterbury Tales MT; drunk miller claims his tale is as noble (sentence and solas) as that of a chaste nun; teller and tale
"Now have I told you soothly in a clause Th'estaat, th'array, the nombre, and eek the cause Why that assembled was this compaignye In Southwerk at this gentil hostelrye That highte the Tabard, faste by the Belle; But now is time to you for to telle How that we baren us that ilke night Whan we were in that hostelrye alight; And after wol I telle of oure viage, And al the remenant of oure pilgrimage. But first I praye you of youre curteisye That ye n'arette it nought my vilainye Though that I plainly speke inthis matere To telle you hir wordes and hir cheere, Ne though I speke hir wordes properly; For this ye knowen also wel as I: Who so shal telle a tale after a man He moot reherce, as neigh as evere he can, Everich a word, if it be in his charge, Al speke he nevere so rudeliche and large, Or elles he moot telle his tale untrewe, Or feine thing, or finde wordes newe; He may nought spare although he were high brother: He moot as wel saye oo word as another. Crist spak himself ful brode in Holy Write, And wel ye woot no vilainye is it; Eek Plato saith, whoso can him rede, The wordes mote be cosin to the deede. Also I praye you to fiyive it me Al have i nat set folk in hir degree Here in this tale as that they sholde stonde: My wit is short, ye may wel understonde."
Canterbury Tales, GP; storytelling; oration; valor (cites Plato and Bible but then undermines himself); assembly of those from three estates (pray, fight, work)
"This Absolon gan wipe his mouth ful drye: Derk was the night as pich or as the cole, And at the windowe out she putte hir hole, And Absolon, him fil no bet ne wers, But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers, Ful savourly, er he were war of this. Abak he sterte, and thoughte it was amis, For wel he wiste a womman hath no beerd. He felte a thing al rough and longe yherd, And saide, "Fy, allas, what have I do?"
Canterbury Tales; MT; Absolon kisses her erse; high and low; gendered male; high and low storytelling?
"Fil with this yonge wif to rage and playe Whil that hir housbonde was at Oseneye (As clerkes been ful subtil and ful quainte). And prively he caughte hire by the queinte"
Canterbury Tales; MT; Allisoun described as country woman/weasel; quainte/queinte (wit/genitals): both objects of pleasure; pleasure of word play
"This clerk was cleped hende Nicholas. Of derne love he coude, and of solas, And therto he was sly and fl privee, And like a maide meeke for to see."
Canterbury Tales; MT; Nicholas described in a gendered feminine way; doubled meaning of solas (delight in storytelling and sexual pleasure); pleasure of word play
"I shal saye sooth to you, God help me so.' 'Nay thanne,' quod he, ' I shrewe us bothe two: But first I shrewe myself, bothe blood and bones, If thou bigile me other than ones; Thou shalt namore thurgh thy flaterye Do me to singe and winken with myn ye. For he that winketh whan he sholde see, Al wilfully, God lat him nevere thee.'"
Canterbury Tales; Nun Priest's Tale; Fox trying to convince Chanticleer to come down from tree (eyes now opened to the trick, flattery)
"Lo, swich it is for to be reccheless And necligent and truste on flaterye. But ye that holden this tale a folye As of a fox, or of a cok and hen, Taketh the moralitee, goode men. For Saint Paul saith that al that writen is To oure doctrine, it is ywrit, ywis: Taketh the fruit, and lat the chaf be stille. Now goode God, if that it be they wille, As saith my lord, so make us alle goode men, And bringe us to his hye blisse. Amen.
Canterbury Tales; Nun's Priest's Tale; does the nobility of storytelling lie in the kernel of doctrine or the husk, the narrative that conducts meaning; capacity for pleasure? mechanisms of storytelling; biblical allusion?;
It rests now to make some application of this discourse, by the present design, which gave the occasion of writing of it. Herein are four things to be propounded; first the persons, secondly, the work, thirdly the end, fourthly the means." (186)
John Winthrop; A Model of Christian Charity; Announces occasional nature but accounts for its greater causes, clocklike metaphor, he wants to see all the causes working together, using Aristotle's four causes; various and sundry parts work together; contingencies make clock work; Moves from artificial working together to an organic one (body of Christ, faithful remnants who make up body)
We must delight in each other; make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.
John Winthrop; A Model of Christian Charity; Something moving: ; Members of the body of christ, body of Church; Admonishes them not to turn collective project into an enterprise of personal gain, money-making colonists; Bind community of people to work together; we are ONE
"GOD ALMIGHTY in His most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in submission."
John Winthrop; A Model of Christian Charity; Text on charity affirms the unequal distribution of wealth
"Hence it was that in the primitive Church they sold all, had all things in common, neither did any man say that which he possessed was his own."
John Winthrop; A Model of Christian Charity; give charity but not enough to actually bring full equality; Clock metaphor justifies a certain kind of protection of one's property; We don't have to go this far...god meant for there to be differences in wealth
Where the remote Bermudas ride In th' ocean's bosom unespy'd, From a small boat, that row'd along, The list'ning winds receiv'd this song. What should we do but sing his praise That led us through the wat'ry maze Unto an isle so long unknown, And yet far kinder than our own? Where he the huge sea-monsters wracks, That lift the deep upon their backs, He lands us on a grassy stage, Safe from the storm's and prelates' rage. He gave us this eternal spring Which here enamels everything, And sends the fowls to us in care, On daily visits through the air. He hangs in shades the orange bright, Like golden lamps in a green night; And does in the pomegranates close Jewels more rich than Ormus shows. He makes the figs our mouths to meet And throws the melons at our feet, But apples plants of such a price, No tree could ever bear them twice. With cedars, chosen by his hand, From Lebanon, he stores the land, And makes the hollow seas that roar Proclaim the ambergris on shore. He cast (of which we rather boast) The Gospel's pearl upon our coast, And in these rocks for us did frame A temple, where to sound his name. Oh let our voice his praise exalt, Till it arrive at heaven's vault; Which thence (perhaps) rebounding, may Echo beyond the Mexic Bay. Thus sung they in the English boat An holy and a cheerful note, And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept the time.
Marvell; Bermudas; a whole new world (unespied bosom through a wat'ry maze); grassy stages reminds me of City Upon a Hill (John Winthrop); eternal spring, fowls, pomegranates, figs, melons, pineapples (bountiful, well-endowed); hella sense of entitlement to the land; gift by God (God's providence); song makes a sort of distancing effect; falling oars kept the time: functions like a meter (suggests poetry in time with temporality → God's language), going back to Eden, but is ironic that the descriptor is "falling", the sailors think that they are exempt from viewing themselves as fallen; reality vs. fantasy; oars=ours=hours (what kind of community is this? Human or English think they're exemplary?)
"Brother: Continue to listen. You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind, and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given to us, and not only to us, but why did he not give to our forefathers, the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people? Brother: You say there i sbut one way tot worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?"
Reply to the Missionary, Jacob Cram, Sagoyewatha; Oratory vs. books How is it if the Bible is so trustworthy, authoritative, truthful if it causes such a social schism to cause Puritans to flee England, so much duplicitousness, manipulative?
....all her vapors..."; "Vapors have had great effects on the body, such as they used to have before, but the soul has been always out of their reach."; "The person had formerly in lower degrees of grace, been subject to unsteadiness, and many ups and downs, in the frame of mind; the mind being under great disadvantages, through a vapory habit of body, and often subject to melancholy, and at times almost overborne with it, it having been so even from early youth: but strength of grace, and divine light has of a long time, wholly conquered these disadvantages, and carried the mind in a constant manner, quite above all such effects of vapors."
Sarah Edward's Narrative; Jonathan Edwards; All the experiences that make living hard are not necessarily a mark from being fallen from God; VAPORS
A woman's face with nature's own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change as is false women's fashion; An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; A man in hue, all hues in his controlling, Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created, Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
Shakespeare sonnet 20; object is beautiful boy (gendered feminine); pricked; gender, sexuality, power
'Tis pitiful; but yet Iago knows That she with Cassio hath the act of shame A thousand times committed; Cassio confess'd it: And she did gratify his amorous works With that recognizance and pledge of love Which I first gave her; I saw it in his hand: It was a handkerchief, an antique token My father gave my mother.
Shakespeare; Othello; duplicity of objects (saw handkerchief in hand, misproof); antique token; attributed to patrilineage; Tries to reassert male authority, only way to be a man in his marriage is to kill Desdemona → expression of violence; Confused → conflates mother and father; Truth of handkerchief determined by exchange between people; object can not be empirical truth; Tells story in state of desperation, no male authority, makes claim to magical authority like the storytelling she fell in love with
That is a fault. That handkerchief Did an Egyptian to my mother give; She was a charmer, and could almost read The thoughts of people: she told her, while she kept it, 'Twould make her amiable and subdue my father Entirely to her love, but if she lost it Or made gift of it, my father's eye Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt After new fancies: she, dying, gave it me; And bid me, when my fate would have me wive, To give it her. I did so: and take heed on't; Make it a darling like your precious eye; To lose't or give't away were such perdition As nothing else could match. DESDEMONA Is't possible? OTHELLO 'Tis true: there's magic in the web of it: A sibyl, that had number'd in the world The sun to course two hundred compasses, In her prophetic fury sew'd the work; The worms were hallow'd that did breed the silk; And it was dyed in mummy which the skilful Conserved of maidens' hearts.
Shakespeare; Othello; handkerchief passing down consolidates familial bonds; matrilineal passage: witchcraft → female power; gift and curse; bewitched; duplicity
"...he exercised his speech in the praise of his faculty. He said soldiers were the noblest estate of mankind, and horsemen the noblest of soldiers...the beast of most beauty, faithfulness, courage, and such more, that if I had not been a piece of a logician before I came to him, I think he would have persuaded me to have wished myself a horse."
Sidney; The Defense of Poesy; John Pietro Pugliano, the horseman who touts his craft as the best; beast> rational; Philip = horse lover; funny; three estates (pray, work, fight); horsemanship; exordium
"And I shall wear it with good will, but not for its gold, Nor its silks and streamers, and not for the sake of its wonderful workmanship or even its worth, But as a sign of my sin —I'll see it as such When I swagger in the saddle —a sad reminder That the frailty of his flesh is man's biggest fault, How the touch of filth taints his tender frame."
Sir Gawain wears girdle as a sign of his sin; allegorical form; f alliteration: frailty, flesh, fault, filth, frame
"A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine, Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde, Wherein old ints of deepe wounds did remaine, The cruell markes of many a bloudy fielde; Yet armes till that time did he never wield: His angry steede did chide his forming bitt, As much disdayning to the curbe to yield: Full jolly knight he semmd, and faire did sitt, As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt."
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; Canto I; chivalrous knight; gentle; will be commissioned by Gloriana (Queen Elizabeth) to kill the dragon; Redcrosse (St. George) ; chivalric romance
"Strange thing it is an errant knight to see Here in this place or any other wight, That hither turnes his steps. So few there bee, That chose the narrow path, or seeke the right: All keepe the broad high way, and take delight With many rather for to go astray, And be partakers of their evill plight, Then with a few to walke the Tightest way; O foolish men, why haste ye to your owne decay?
Spenser; the Fairie Queene; House of Holiness; straight and narrow path vs. broad and wide to destruction; pathways and Christian morality; Dame Caelia (heavenly); fashioning a gentleman; Protestant epic
"...Meanwhile, a thane of the king's household, a carrier of tales, a traditional singer deeply schooled in the lore of the past, linked a new theme to a strict meter. The man started to recite with skill, rehearsing Beowulf's triumphs and feats in well-fashioned lines, entwining his words."
scop tells a story in Beowulf at celebratory dinner @ Heorot; "lore of the past," "recite" "rehearse;" "entwining
"Two sorts of man shall stand naked/ Before the burning ire/ Of him that shortly shall appear,/ In dreadful flaming fire./ First, millions know not God, nor for/ His knowledge care to seek:/ Millions have knowledge store, but in/ Obedience are not meek./ If woe to Indians, where shall Turk,/ Where shall appear the Jew?/ O, where shall stand the Christian false?// O blessed then the true." (214)
A Key into the Language of America; Roger Williams; Makes language the cultural mechanism for contact
"Of salutation..The courteous pagan shall condemn uncourteous Englishmen..." (209) "Family Business..how busy are the sons of men?/ How full their heads and hands?/ What noise and tumults in our own/ And eke in Pagan lands?/ Yet I have found less nise, more peace/ In wild America,/ Where women quickly build the house,/ And quickly move away./ English and Indians busy are,/ In parts of their abode:/ Yet both stand idle, till god's call/ Set them to work for God." (210)
A Key into the Language of America; Roger Williams; Rather than a dictionary, a dialogue but intends to give this impression, sections end with little poems (understand language, meaning through conversation); Suggests that the english and Indians stand in relation together before God, in relation rather than superimposition; COMMON HUMANITY; Contrasts "nature's sons" and "Sons of God" (humane, courteous); English seen as gluttonous, possessive whereas the natives are simple, unembellished, content, and generous; Natives as "ravens:" The raven has been regarded as a symbol of providence, in allusion to the ravens which fed Elijah (1 Kings 17:6)
"Now because this is the great inquiry of all men: what Indians have been converted? What have the English done in those parts? What hopes of the Indians receiving the knowledge of Christ."
A Key into the Language of America; Roger Williams; Unusual sense of what it means to come to Christianity; Leaves these open as questions, cannot claim to know this based on performance of Christian rituals → suggests that conversion is known only in hearts and minds, unmeasurable; Many ways to accommodate Christianity, notion of Christian living cannot be observed; Possible to be a greater sinner than from without (claim to be a Christian but engage in contradictory practices was a graver sin than to be a so-called pagan/heathen living an upright life); Still though, believes Christianity is the only way to salvation-- writes with some narrowness there but with unexpected openness toward what it means to be Christian (presumption of Christianity, effort to superimpose Christianity); Emphasizes language, effort to understand, Williams learned Native languages; Sees language as the primary means of understanding between populations (and conversion too) ; Throughout the text, he is looking for moments of cultural comparison rather than cultural superimposition; what is comparative about the different religious systems, see a cultural comparison/linkage, and make a cultural compact through language; Whereas language is being used by colonists as a cudgel not a mechanism of connection; Establish awareness of separate language/culture with own authority
The sacred story of the soul's delight. Farewell (sweet place) where virtue then did rest And all delights did harbor in her breast; Never shall my sad eyes again behold Those pleasures which my thoughts did then unfold. Yet you (great Lady) Mistress of that place, From whose desires did spring this work of grace Vouchsafe to think upon those pleasures past, As fleeting worldly joys that could not last, Or, as dim shadows of celestial pleasures, Which are desired above all earthly treasures. Oh how (methought) against you thither came, Each part did seem some new delight to frame! The house received all ornaments to grace it, And would endure no foulness to deface it. And walks put on their summer liveries, And all things else did hold like similes. The trees with leaves, with fruits, with flowers clad, Embraced each other, seeming to be glad,
Amelia Lanyer; The Description of Cookham; estate poem; edenic paradise for women, especially female poets (consolidation of word/writing and image it seeks to represent, harmony → poet's paradise); temporariness of eden; mourning; natural world of the estate > servants/household; natural world imbued with authority (like tree passage)
But specially the love of that fair tree, That first and last you did vouchsafe to see, In which it pleased you oft to take the air With noble Dorset, then a virgin fair, Where many a learned book was read and scanned, To this fair tree, taking me by the hand, You did repeat the pleasures which had passed, Seeming to grieve they could no longer last. And with a chaste, yet loving kiss took leave, Of which sweet kiss I did it soon bereave, Scorning a senseless creature should possess So rare a favor, so great happiness. No other kiss it could receive from me, For fear to give back what it took of thee, So I ungrateful creature did deceive it Of that which you in love vouchsafed to leave it. And though it oft had given me much content, Yet this great wrong I never could repent; But of the happiest made it most forlorn, To show that nothing's free from Fortune's scorne, While all the rest with this most beauteous tree Made their sad consort sorrow's harmony.
Amelia Lanyer; The Description of Cookham; estate poem; pastoral; sublime; picturesque; the TREE!; prelapsarian eternal eden → temporary, fallen, sinful, mournful; see/hand/kiss; melancholy; tree is mourning too; rhyme: tree and harmony; property that women share; communion under the tree but privileged women with ownership; iconography of trees: family trees, patrilineal line, inheritance symbolize by tree, leaves like a book, reconstitutes tree from patrilineage to that of a female property (poet)
All things within this fading world hath end, Adversity doth still our joyes attend; No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet, But with death's parting blow is sure to meet. The sentence past is most irrevocable, A common thing, yet oh inevitable. How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend, How soon't may be thy Lot to lose thy friend, We are both ignorant, yet love bids me These farewell lines to recommend to thee, That when that knot's untied that made us one, I may seem thine, who in effect am none. And if I see not half my dayes that's due, What nature would, God grant to yours and you; The many faults that well you know I have Let be interr'd in my oblivious grave; If any worth or virtue were in me, Let that live freshly in thy memory And when thou feel'st no grief, as I no harms, Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms. And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains Look to my little babes, my dear remains. And if thou love thyself, or loved'st me, These o protect from step Dames injury. And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse, With some sad sighs honour my absent Herse; And kiss this paper for thy loves dear sake, Who with salt tears this last Farewel did take.
Anne Bradstreet; Before the Birth of One of Her Children; "knots untied:" joins husband and child- similar love relations/consolidation; mingling of birth and eath (might die during childbirth);
Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain, Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, Who thee abroad, exposed to public view, Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge, Where errors were not lessened (all may judge). At thy return my blushing was not small, My rambling brat (in print) should mother call, I cast thee by as one unfit for light, The visage was so irksome in my sight; Yet being mine own, at length affection would Thy blemishes amend, if so I could. I washed thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw. I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet, Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet; In better dress to trim thee was my mind, But nought save homespun cloth i' th' house I find. In this array 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam. In critic's hands beware thou dost not come, And take thy way where yet thou art not known; If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none; And for thy mother, she alas is poor, Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.
Anne Bradstreet; The Author to Her Book; new take on maternity; one that is without unconditional love; emphasis on hard work of cleaning, feeding, caring for child (labor of child rearing); rather than male conception of perfect creation; reality of parenting; separation; preservation of self/legacy through poem undercut/opposed here; reflection of the self (she sees her child as a product of her lawed, fallible self); conceive (used here by Anne Bradstreet, but also by Amelia Lanyer, and even Edmund Spenser)
To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings, Of Cities founded, Commonwealths begun, For my mean Pen are too superior things; Or how they all, or each their dates have run, Let Poets and Historians set these forth. My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth. But when my wond'ring eyes and envious heart Great Bartas' sugar'd lines do but read o'er, Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part 'Twixt him and me that over-fluent store. A Bartas can do what a Bartas will But simple I according to my skill. From School-boy's tongue no Rhet'ric we expect, Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings, Nor perfect beauty where's a main defect. My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings, And this to mend, alas, no Art is able, 'Cause Nature made it so irreparable. Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek Who lisp'd at first, in future times speak plain. By Art he gladly found what he did seek, A full requital of his striving pain. Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure: A weak or wounded brain admits no cure. I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits. A Poet's Pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on female wits. If what I do prove well, it won't advance, They'll say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance. But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild, Else of our Sex, why feigned they those nine And poesy made Calliope's own child? So 'mongst the rest they placed the Arts divine, But this weak knot they will full soon untie. The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie. Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are. Men have precedency and still excel; It is but vain unjustly to wage war. Men can do best, and Women know it well. Preeminence in all and each is yours; Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours. And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies, And ever with your prey still catch your praise, If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes, Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays. This mean and unrefined ore of mine Will make your glist'ring gold but more to shine.
Anne Bradstreet; The Prologue; mean pen= humble; undercuts male topics (war, kings, cities) as being too "superior;" wants her own space; "My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth;" Bartas has the great share of Muses not her; "simple;" "broken strings;" "defect;" "My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings";" "irreparable;" doesn't write about nor have an interest in waging war against established, male poets; "And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies,/ And ever with your prey still catch your praise..." thyme/parsley not bays; ore/gold/refined= alchemic?; doesn't want to take on subjects typically addressed by male poets and if she did, she'd be criticized/prejudiced; manifest content of poem: self-deprecating but the poem is very intricate/well-done in its style/language/craft (teller or tale?); high and low in high flown quills//prey; only because men squash others can they get praise; hierarchies; continues posture of submissiveness while using language of poetry to undercut male hierarchy, to critique; her language becomes like bird song; finds power and authority within its structure; end lines with yours/ours → collectivity with women and opposite to men; acknowledges/summons different access of women;
Add to thy free provisions, far above The need of such? whose liberal board doth flow With all that hospitality doth know;
Ben Jonson; To Penshurst; What can i do? How can i contribute? I don't have any plums, what else...what else can elucidate this poem?
Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show, Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold; Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told, Or stair, or courts; but stand'st an ancient pile, And, these grudged at, art reverenced the while.
Ben Jonson; To Penshurst; an estate poem; describing the manor to praise his patron (Philip Sidney's brother); moved past the architectural/edificial realm to describe its sublime qualities
Where the same beer and bread, and selfsame wine, This is his lordship's shall be also mine, And I not fain to sit (as some this day At great men's tables), and yet dine away. Here no man tells my cups; nor, standing by, A waiter doth my gluttony envy, But gives me what I call, and lets me eat; He knows below he shall find plenty of meat. The tables hoard not up for the next day; Nor, when I take my lodging, need I pray For fire, or lights, or livery; all is there, As if thou then wert mine, or I reigned here: There's nothing I can wish, for which I stay. That found King James when, hunting late this way With his brave son, the prince, they saw thy fires Shine bright on every hearth, as the desires Of thy Penates had been set on flame To entertain them; or the country came With all their zeal to warm their welcome here. What (great I will not say, but) sudden cheer Didst thou then make 'em! and what praise was heaped On thy good lady then, who therein reaped The just reward of her high housewifery; To have her linen, plate, and all things nigh, When she was far; and not a room but dressed As if it had expected such a guest! These, Penshurst, are thy praise, and yet not all. Thy lady's noble, fruitful, chaste withal. His children thy great lord may call his own, A fortune in this age but rarely known. They are, and have been, taught religion; thence Their gentler spirits have sucked innocence. Each morn and even they are taught to pray, With the whole household, and may, every day, Read in their virtuous parents' noble parts The mysteries of manners, arms, and arts. Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee With other edifices, when they see Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else, May say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.
Ben Jonson; To Penshurst; reach pinnacle of the lord and then trickle down; eminent virtue of hospitality trickles down to everyone else; at the top of the hierarchy with the lord is the poet; upholds appearance of estate (poetic authority rivals estate authority); sublime
Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made, Beneath the broad beech and the chestnut shade; That taller tree, which of a nut was set At his great birth where all the Muses met. There in the writhèd bark are cut the names Of many a sylvan, taken with his flames; And thence the ruddy satyrs oft provoke The lighter fauns to reach thy Lady's Oak. Thy copse too, named of Gamage, thou hast there, That never fails to serve thee seasoned deer When thou wouldst feast or exercise thy friends. The lower land, that to the river bends, Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed; The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed. Each bank doth yield thee conies; and the tops, Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sidney's copse, To crown thy open table, doth provide The purpled pheasant with the speckled side; The painted partridge lies in every field, And for thy mess is willing to be killed. And if the high-swollen Medway fail thy dish, Thou hast thy ponds, that pay thee tribute fish, Fat aged carps that run into thy net, And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat, As loath the second draught or cast to stay, Officiously at first themselves betray; Bright eels that emulate them, and leap on land Before the fisher, or into his hand. Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours. The early cherry, with the later plum, Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come; The blushing apricot and woolly peach Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach. And though thy walls be of the country stone, They're reared with no man's ruin, no man's groan; There's none that dwell about them wish them down; But all come in, the farmer and the clown, And no one empty-handed, to salute Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit. Some bring a capon, some a rural cake, Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make The better cheeses bring them, or else send By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend This way to husbands, and whose baskets bear An emblem of themselves in plum or pear.
Ben Jonson; To Penshurst; talking about the lord of the manner; tree/natural world + poetry; birth; Jonson both acknowledges power of aristocratic authority and suggests that there is a collapse in the feudal economic order, impending changes, mercantile and market authority; these landed estates are no longer the organization of the economic order
"Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs. Perhaps, if we could examine the manners of different nations with impartiality, we should find no people so rude, as to be without any rules of politeness; nor any so polite so as not to have some remains of rudeness."
Benjamin Franklin; Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America; Cultural relativism; what we think is savage is true of every culture; the idea that gentility should match behavior but doesn't always (Wife of Bath Tale); what we think of as polite we should really put into context
"After the principal business was settled, the commissioners from Virginia acquainted the Indians by a speech, that there was at Williamsburg a college, with a fund for educating Indian youth; and that, if the Six Nations would send down half a dozen of their young lads to that college, the government would take care that they should be well provided for, and instructed in all the learning of the white people. It is one of the Indian rules of politeness not to answer a public proposition he same day that it is made; they think it would be treating it as a light matter, and that they show it respect by taking time to consider it, as of a matter important. They therefore deferred their answer till the day following; when their speaker began, by expressing their deep sense of the kindness of the Virginia government in making them that offer; "for we know," says he, "that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those Colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, therefore, that wyou mean to do us good by your proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different conceptions of things; and you will therefore not take it amiss, if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counselors; they were totally good for nothing. We are however not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them."
Benjamin Franklin; Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America; In the presumption of authority, gift-giving, what the white men offer is undesirable to natives; politeness/civility that the natives receive and reject this offer; orality
"'What you have told us,' he says, 'is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far, to tell us these things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours. In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful, they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to broil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds, and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains. They said to each other, it is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison, and wishes to eat of it: let us offer some to her. They presented her with the tongue: she was pleased with the taste of it, and said, Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you shall find something that will be of great benefit in nourishing you and your children to the latest generations. They did so, and, to their surprise, found plants they had never seen before, but which, from that ancient time, have been constantly cultivated among us, to our great advantage. Where her right hand had touched the ground, they found maize; where her left hand had touched it, they found kidney-beans; and where she had sat on it, they found tobacco." The good missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said, "What I delivered to you were sacred truths, but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction, and falsehood." The Indian, offended, replied, "My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practise those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?"
Benjamin Franklin; Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America; Missionary goes and tells someone about the original sin, fall of Adam and Eve; Gives indigenous sacred tale about exchange and cooperation between mystical world and mortal world (response to the story about punishment, damnation, sin); orality; reciprocity; Inversion of savagery and civility
"To interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly indecent. How different this from the conduct of a polite British House of Commons, where scarce a day passes without some confusion, that makes the speaker hoarse in calling to order; and how different from the mode of conversation in many polite companies in Europe, where, if you do not deliver your sentence with great rapidity, you are cut off in the middle of it by the impatient loquacity of those you converse with , and never suffered to finish it!"
Benjamin Franklin; Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America; civility vs. savagery; civic culture → print culture; orality; virtue
"An ancient sage boasted, that, tho' he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great city of a little one. The science that I, a modern simpleton, am about to communicate, is the very reverse. I address myself to all ministers who have the management of extensive dominions, which from their very greatness are become troublesome to govern, because the multiplicity of their affairs leaves no time for fiddling."
Benjamin Franklin; Rules by Which a Great Empire may be Reduced to a Small One; Lists all the things you can do if you are an empire and things you should do wrong to make sure your colony rebels against you, how to ensure downsizing; One of the anxieties of the Constitution was that you can not have Republican government in too big of a country (only works in small polities)--- should one confederate or does this kill republicanism?? ; Mocking British about their aggrandizement, making the argument for the colony's to come together under federal government; Uses image of great cake, gingerbread: gastronomic, culinary, everyday examples → Franklin's common sense, satirical, high brow rhetoric; "In this first place...the next may follow in order." (451); "By carefully making and preserving...have it broken to pieces..." (451); Listing all the things the British are doing wrong, things that ensure that the colony will break off from them under the guise of satire; fiddle= instrument + TO CHEAT; implies that British aggrandizement is "fiddling" = cheating
Abstracted from the Law, I cannot conceive (may it please your Honours) what the Nature of my Offence is. I have brought Five fine Children into the World, at the Risque of my Life; I have maintained them well by my own Industry, without burthening the Township, and would have done it better, if it had not been for the heavy Charges and Fines I have paid. Can it be a Crime (in the Nature of Things I mean) to add to the Number of the King's Subjects, in a new Country that really wants People? I own it, I should think it a Praise-worthy, rather than a punishable Action.
Benjamin Franklin; The Speech of Miss Polly Baker; don't blame women for having children out of wedlock; still creating babies for the colony; Franklin speaking as a women; don't punish women and reward the men; wit; print culture
Judge, then, how much I must have been gratified by an incident I am going to relate to you. I stopped my horse lately where a great number of people were collected at an auction of merchants' goods. The hour of the sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times; and one of the company called to a plain, clean old man, with white locks, "Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times? Will not these heavy taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we ever be able to pay them? What would you advise us to?" Father Abraham stood up and replied, "If you would have my advice, I will give it you in short; for A word to the wise is enough, as Poor Richard says." They joined in desiring him to speak his mind; and, gathering round him, he proceeded as follows:"Friends," said he, "the taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more[Pg 6] easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us, by allowing an abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us: God helps them that help themselves, as Poor Richard says. "I. It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service; but idleness taxes many of us much more; sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labour wears; while the used key is always bright, as Poor Richard says. But dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of, as Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep? forgetting that The sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that There will be sleeping enough in the grave, as Poor Richard says.
Benjamin Franklin;The Way to Wealth; Poor Richard's Almanac for self-education, argument against imperial but not colonial taxation; aphorisms; common man; print culture; civic culture
"There were many other Heirlooms heaped inside the earth-house, Because long ago, with deliberate care, Somebody now forgotten Had buried the riches of a high-born race In this ancient cache."
Beowulf treasure guarded by dragon; theme of burial & rediscovery --> textual history; "earth-house"= kenning, "high-born race"
"Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him to hear the din of the loud banquet every day in the hall, the harp being struck and the clear song of a skilled poet telling with mastery of man's beginning, how the Almighty had made the earth a gleaming plain girdled with waters; in His splendor He set the sun and the moon to be earth's lamplight, lanterns for men, and filled the broad lap of the world with branches and leaves; and quickened life in every other thing that moved."
Beowulf: introduction to Grendel; allegorizes Satan; dark vs. light; quiet vs. loud (orality); poesis (to make); scop; world is a book of god's creation; material objects a script of the divine idea; part Pagan part Christian= COMPOSITE COMPOSITION
"But the Lord was weaving A victory on his war-loom for the Weather-Geats. Through the strength of one they all prevailed; They would crush their enemy and come through In triumph and gladness. The truth is clear: Almighty God rules over mankind And always has."
Beowulf; "weaving...war-loom;" Christian superimposition; "truth"
"The building was magnificent, the king majestic, Ensconced in his hall; and although Hygd, his queen, Was young, a few short years at court, Her mind was thoughtful and her manners sure. Haereth's daughter behaved generously And stinted nothing when she distributed 1930 Bounty to the Geats. Great Queen Modthryth Perpetrated terrible wrongs. If any retainer ever made bold To look her in the face, if an eye not her lord's Stared at her directly during daylight, The outcome was sealed: he was bound In hand-tightened shackles, racked, tortured Until doom was announced--death by the sword, Slash of blade, blood gush and death qualms In an evil display. Even a queen 1940 Outstanding in beauty must not overstep like that. A queen should weave peace, not punish the innocent With loss of life for imagined insults."
Beowulf; narrative interlacing: digression into comparison of two queens juxtaposition; gender
"Now of my fifthe housbonde wol I telle- God lete his soule nevere come in helle- And yit he was to me the moste shrewe: That feele I on my ribbes al by rewe, And evere shal unto myn ending day. But in oure bed he was so fressh and gay. And therwithal so wel coulde he me glose Whan that he wolde han my bele chose, That though he hadde me bete on ever boon, He coude winne again my love anoon. I trowe I loveed him best for that he Was of his love daungerous to me. We wommen han, if that i shal nat lie, In this matere a quainte fantasye: Waite what thing we may nat lightly have, Thereafter wol we crye al day and crave; Forbede us thing, and that desiren we; Preesse on us fste, and thanne wol we flee. With duanger oute we al oure chaffare: Greet prees at market maketh dere ware, And too greet chepe is holden at litel pris. This knoweth every womman that is wis,"
Canterbury Tales; Wife of Bath; 5th husband beat her but was good in bed; power over men; foreshadows challenge in fable to find what women want; pun of quainte
"Who painted the leon, tel me who? By God, if wommen hadden writen stories, As clerkes han within hir oratories, They wolde han writen of men more wikkednesse Than al the merk of Adam may redresse. The children of Mercurye and Venus Been in hir werking ful contrarious: Mercurye loveth wisdom and science, And Venus loveth riot and dispence; And for hir diverse disposicioun Each falleth in otheres exaltacioun, And thus, God woot, Mercurye is desolat In Pisces wher Venus is exaltat, And Venus falleth ther Mercurye is raised: Therefore no womman of no clerk is praised. The clerk, whan he is old and may nought do Of Venus werkes wroth his olde sho, Thanne sit he down and writ in his dotage That wommen can nat keep hir mariage."
Canterbury Tales; Wife of Bath; lion (if painted by lion, lion would've overpowed man); Mercury (desolat) & Venus (exaltat)
"Experience, though noon auctoritee Were int his world, is right ynough for me To speke of wo that is in mariage: For lordinges, swith I twelf yeer was of age- Thanked be God that is eterne on live- Housbondes at chriche dore I have had five (If I so ofte mighte han wedded be), And alle were worthy men in hir degree."
Canterbury Tales; Wife of Bath; speaks about what is in marriage, 5 husbands; teller of the tale; power/authority
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Donne sonnet 14; God batter/rams his heart; hierarchical bond; marriage/adultery (sinning); slave rhetoric= captived, betrothed/knot/imprison/enthrall/ravish; b alliteration (batter, breathe, break, blow burn, betrothd); Troth?
Let me pour forth My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here, For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear, And by this mintage they are something worth, For thus they be Pregnant of thee; Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more, When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore, So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore. On a round ball A workman that hath copies by, can lay An Europe, Afric, and an Asia, And quickly make that, which was nothing, all; So doth each tear Which thee doth wear, A globe, yea world, by that impression grow, Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so. O more than moon, Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere, Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear To teach the sea what it may do too soon; Let not the wind Example find, To do me more harm than it purposeth; Since thou and I sigh one another's breath, Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.
Donne; A Valediction to Weeping; conceit= tear; roundness (coin, face, mintage, pregant, fruits, etc); when a tear falls it becomes nothing as its dissipates/dissolves; observation of a tear falling; metaphysical poetry; attention to visuality; whoever breathes more might suffocate the other (consolidation)// Donne; metaphysical poetry; Valection to Weeping; tear; roundness= tear, face, coin, pregnant, fruit, round ball, globe, moon, sphere, mintage; Donne pays attention to visuality; Donne wants to clear the mystical cobwebs of the mind and use observation; metaphor of tear as globe, worldliness of tear, parting of lovers; conceit on a small scale: we sign together, say each other's words, whoever breathes more might suffocate the other one, a bizarre turn on the idea of consolidation; our tears fall off our face and mean nothing once they drop and dissolve; turn into nothing when we are apart; roundness and movement; his metaphors turn as well which further gets at roundness; observation of watching a tear fall where he sees the world reflected in it; draws rational understanding about an emotional thing not just the object physically; makes us think about how language gets us from one place to the next; tear because of you but also "pregnant" with your image; globe-making; tide & moon
As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say The breath goes now, and some say, No: So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined, That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do. And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.
Donne; A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning; grows erect; gender consolidation; observation and rethinking rational categorization; don't mourn someone's passing because there is an afterlife; compass= drawing the world; eroticism; roundness// Donne; A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning; metaphysical poetry; starts by lamenting about death: don't mourn when someone is passing because there is an afterlife; then contracts back down to here and now through image of compass (drew the world, lovers coming together to draw the world); eroticism: between genders, grow erect, word gender is remade through the conceit of this poem (woman and man inverted: firmness, wilt) → restructure our expectations of the world,; looks at creation and how compass works; refashioning observations of categories/rejection of presupposition; roundness; heliocentrism; alchemy; laity vs elite catholics; sense (sublunary) vs spiritual
Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; Thou know'st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead, Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered swells with one blood made of two, And this, alas, is more than we would do. Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, nay more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is; Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met, And cloistered in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that, self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it sucked from thee? Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou Find'st not thy self, nor me the weaker now; 'Tis true; then learn how false, fears be: Just so much honor, when thou yield'st to me, Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.
Donne; The Flea; metaphysical poetry; conceit; carpe diem; arguing through oppositions; justification of copulation; euphemism: to die= orgasm;// Donne; The Flea; metaphysical poetry; observation of flea biting each of them; carpe diem; justification of copulation; euphemistic puns on to die; flea as conceit: mercy, indulgence, generation, bloodlines, nothing, speck (hangs so much on such a small thing); exaggerated forms of Petrarchan tradition; baroque sensibility; dialectical logic: one point and its opposite, arguing through opposition, incoherence yet poetics are coherent, synthesis rather than sequencing
I struck the board, and cried, "No more; I will abroad! What? shall I ever sigh and pine? My lines and life are free, free as the road, Loose as the wind, as large as store. Shall I be still in suit? Have I no harvest but a thorn To let me blood, and not restore What I have lost with cordial fruit? Sure there was wine Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn Before my tears did drown it. Is the year only lost to me? Have I no bays to crown it, No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted? All wasted? Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, And thou hast hands. Recover all thy sigh-blown age On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage, Thy rope of sands, Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee Good cable, to enforce and draw, And be thy law, While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. Away! take heed; I will abroad. Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears; He that forbears To suit and serve his need Deserves his load." But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild At every word, Methought I heard one calling, Child! And I replied My Lord.
Herbert; The Collar; clerical collar (slave's collar, as with what Donne suggested in his Holy Sonnet) + speaker's choler (anger) + caller that he at last hears (his vocation, voice at the end); board (communion table) + pine + thorn (wood); lines=road, rope of sands, draw, tie up, god's path); architectural elements of church/temple; reaction against constraints of clerical obligations: collar as form of bondage; crucifixion: board, pine, thorn, garland (no pleasure just suffering and duty); no crown of laurels (praise for poets); violent eruption of complaint/raving → self-soothing; antagonistic, filial; irregular rhymes/shifts; good cable supports you and holds you up while you onder the restraints
"Forthwith from every Squadron and each Band The Heads and Leaders thither hast where stood Their great Commander; Godlike shapes and forms Excelling human, Princely Dignities, And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones; 360 Though of their Names in heav'nly Records now Be no memorial, blotted out and ras'd By thir Rebellion, from the Books of Life. Nor had they yet among the Sons of EVE Got them new Names, till wandring ore the Earth, 365 Through Gods high sufferance for the tryal of man, By falsities and lyes the greatest part Of Mankind they corrupted to forsake God their Creator,..."
John Milton; Paradise Lost Book 1: The mere fact that Milton calls the fallen angels according to their heavenly names suggests that there are two kinds of Seraphin whereas there should have ever only been one; duplicity in language; fallenness; language functions in a new and rebellious way; language has duplicitous meaning (image, personification, sign) → language fallen, no longer divinely unified; we are reading in a fallen language and can only think in a fallen way
"Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th' AONIAN Mount, while it pursues 15 Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime. And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread 20 Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great Argument I may assert th' Eternal Providence, 25 And justifie the wayes of God to men."
John Milton; Paradise Lost Book 1; Muse help me because i plan to do something no one else has done, not even the greatest epic poets (Homer, Virgil); Puts himself as creator, acknowledges the role of the poet in crafting the poem in a powerful way; invocation
"Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of EDEN, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, 5 Sing Heav'nly Muse,"
John Milton; Paradise Lost Book 1; first line has an extra syllable from disobedience (consolidation of language and the fall); imperfection of our language to fit divine poetic metrics; emphasis on FRUIT: enjambment, dissonance between line and sentence, literal apple and metaphorical meaning of consequence/outcome; multiple meanings of words but this is not Spenserian allegory polysemy (Redcrosse); language no longer holds unity; fallen language
Hail holy light, ofspring of Heav'n first-born, Or of th' Eternal Coeternal beam May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from Eternitie, dwelt then in thee, [ 5 ] Bright effluence of bright essence increate. Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream, Whose Fountain who shall tell? before the Sun, Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a Mantle didst invest [ 10 ] The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite. Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing, Escap't the Stygian Pool, though long detain'd In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight [ 15 ] Through utter and through middle darkness borne With other notes then to th' Orphean Lyre I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night, Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to reascend, [ 20 ] Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovran vital Lamp; but thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that rowle in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; So thick a drop serene hath quencht thir Orbs, [ 25 ] Or dim suffusion veild. Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Cleer Spring, or shadie Grove, or Sunnie Hill, Smit with the love of sacred Song; but chief Thee Sion and the flowrie Brooks beneath [ 30 ] That wash thy hallowd feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit: nor somtimes forget Those other two equal'd with me in Fate, So were I equal'd with them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, [ 35 ] And Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old.
John Milton; Paradise Lost Book III; Invocation; both Christian and epic; evokes light and principal of divinity; blinded state; innovation into the power; he is the creator not just inspired; writing epic about scripture is NEW; remaking a fallen language into a language of truth
For man will heark'n to his glozing lyes, And easily transgress the sole Command, Sole pledge of his obedience: So will fall 95 Hee and his faithless Progenie: whose fault? Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee All he could have; I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. Such I created all th' Ethereal Powers 100 And Spirits, both them who stood & them who faild; Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love, Where onely what they needs must do, appeard, 105 Not what they would? what praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid, When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice) Useless and vain, of freedom both despoild, Made passive both, had servd necessitie, 110 Not mee. They therefore as to right belongd, So were created, nor can justly accuse Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate; As if Predestination over-rul'd Thir will, dispos'd by absolute Decree 115 Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed Thir own revolt, not I: if I foreknew, Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no less prov'd certain unforeknown.
John Milton; Paradise Lost; FREE WILL VS. PREDESTINATION; free to have idea of rebellion and to fall; We misunderstand free will if we think it is a choice away from obedience, think like Satan that one should have the freedom to act toward one's own attention, to freedom from obedience but freedom to obey, while God looks like a boring, hierarchical figure, what would i get from obedience if no choice, what hierarchy if not to praise, relationship between characters in hierarchy, importance of low as in high, conversation happens between God the Father and the Son (who is not yet Jesus just a person of God); to understand this hierarchy we cannot use human reason, break down traditional ideas of hierarchy but understand that the low is integral to the high; sacrifice and praise is as important as any divine or sovereign will; the simple hierarchy and the desire to rebel is a simple minded understand of God and the hierarchy
Of my performance: What remaines, ye Gods, But up and enter now into full bliss. So having said, a while he stood, expecting Thir universal shout and high applause 505 To fill his eare, when contrary he hears On all sides, from innumerable tongues A dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn; he wonderd, but not long Had leasure, wondring at himself now more; 510 His Visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare, His Armes clung to his Ribs, his Leggs entwining Each other, till supplanted down he fell A monstrous Serpent on his Belly prone, Reluctant, but in vaine, a greater power 515 Now rul'd him, punisht in the shape he sin'd, According to his doom: he would have spoke, But hiss for hiss returnd with forked tongue To forked tongue, for now were all transform'd Alike, to Serpents all as accessories 520 To his bold Riot:
John Milton; Paradise Lost; God asks if they ate the apple, but then Adam circuments, avoids responsibility, whereas Eve direct admits what she did; Order of punishment; Eve punished then Adam then Satan
"If any shall object that it is not possible that love shall be bred or upheld without hope of requital, it is granted; but that is not our cause; for this love is always under reward. It never gives, but it always receives with advantage: First in regard that among the members of the same body, love and affection are reciprocal in a most equal and sweet kind of commerce."
John Winthrop; A Model of Christian Charity It always gives but that it always receive with advantage: arguing that people who think economically about love (never gonna give unless requited), a kind of love that gives anyway without reciprocity; giving has the reception built into it; Trying in a strange way to write the basic tenets of community of people as they go into this uncharted system of governance; If you get the love thing right, the worldly giving with come with it, work in concert; commerce=mercy
And to repaire his numbers thus impair'd, Whether such vertue spent of old now faild 145 More Angels to Create, if they at least Are his Created or to spite us more, Determin'd to advance into our room A Creature form'd of Earth, and him endow, Exalted from so base original, With Heav'nly spoils, our spoils: What he decreed He effected; Man he made, and for him built Magnificent this World, and Earth his seat, Him Lord pronounc'd, and, O indignitie! Subjected to his service Angel wings, 155 And flaming Ministers to watch and tend Thir earthlie Charge: Of these the vigilance I dread, and to elude, thus wrapt in mist Of midnight vapor glide obscure, and prie In every Bush and Brake, where hap may finde 160 The Serpent sleeping, in whose mazie foulds To hide me, and the dark intent I bring. O foul descent! that I who erst contended With Gods to sit the highest, am now constraind Into a Beast, and mixt with bestial slime, 165 This essence to incarnate and imbrute, That to the hight of Deitie aspir'd; But what will not Ambition and Revenge Descend to?
John Milton; Paradise Lost; Satan described in book 1 as having injured merit, Satan cares about hierarchy in the most traditional sense, jealous of God the son; Satan is offended that Adam and Eve are made out clay/rib/fleshliness and that they're exalted; Even a single poetic image can have truth, a divine truth, despite overall fallenness
"for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain 55 Torments him;"
John Milton; Paradise Lost; Talks about how Satan will corrupt the world; shift from past to present → will happen for eternity, this is an epic in historical time, but Satan's torment is eternal ; instantaneous= eternal, temporality doesn't fit into the divine idea
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe, That all was lost
John Milton; Paradise Lost; moment of the fall after a lengthy argument; Eve feelings rumblings of hunger; series of questions and doubt; question stacking; snake (I can talk so you should eat); eat: an event that happened and there was purity beforehand, it was an event that passed but we fall continuously when we sin; wound is instantaneous, presence, temporality, the fall happens in time; see paradox rather than contradiction (have hope not despair from this fall)
"The one seem'd Woman to the waste, and fair, 650 But ended foul in many a scaly fould Voluminous and vast, a Serpent arm'd With mortal sting: about her middle round A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd With wide CERBEREAN mouths full loud, and rung 655 A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep, If aught disturb'd thir noyse, into her woomb, - 34 - Milton: Paradise Lost BOOK II. And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd Within unseen. Farr less abhorrd then these Vex'd SCYLLA bathing in the Sea that parts 660 CALABRIA from the hoarce TRINACRIAN shore: Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call'd In secret, riding through the Air she comes Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance With LAPLAND Witches"
John Milton; Paradise Lost; sin
Him the Almighty Power Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie 45 With hideous ruine and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire, Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms... Who first seduc'd them to that fowl revolt? Th' infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv'd
John Milton; Paradise Lost; syntactical inversion; object and subject; Satan is the object not subject; real subject is GOD; satan is object; Milton is creator but also servant of divinity, makes assertions he makes we have a sharp contrast to Satan who is a possessive individual who thinks he can act and act alone without being part of this community of divinity; notice how Paradise Lost pairs and unpairs (unfixed pairings): Satan paired/contrasted to God, to Eve, etc through which we might come to understand our first assumptions: this is a different kind of epic, a new kind of heroism, new kind of story than conventional epics/classic
What though the field be lost? 105 All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is else not to be overcome? That Glory never shall his wrath or might 110 Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace With suppliant knee, and deifie his power Who from the terrour of this Arm so late Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed, That were an ignominy and shame beneath 115 This downfall;"
John Milton; Paradise Lost; we should not identify with Satan; Satan is arrogant, comes from the circumscribed mind; he doesn't recognize God's authority and knowledge
"In equal ruin: into what Pit thou seest From what highth fal'n, so much the stronger provd He with his Thunder: and till then who knew The force of those dire Arms?"
John Milton; Paradise Lost; we should not identify with Satan; Satan is arrogant, comes from the circumscribed mind; he doesn't recognize God's authority and knowledge; refuses to recognizes that he is not all-powerful, that his will alone is not the answer but that god is all-powerful
The other shape, If shape it might be call'd that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb, Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd, For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night, 670 Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd his head The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on.
John Milton; Paradise Lost;Death; Crown upends Satan's authority, no set of natural relations, authority
"All this plenty"
John Smith; General History of Virginia; advertises the new world, plenty, possibility: Christianity + commerce...or Christianity the cover for subtext of commerce; describe bounty without describing the depletion of their resources
"having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death:"
John Smith; General History of Virginia; misinterpretation of Native's actions; diplomatic ritual; authority; ritualizing subservience; chivalry + affection + romance= lore; capacity of violence; narrative of savages
Having already set forth the practice of mercy according to the rule of God's law, it will be useful to lay open the grounds of it also, being the other part of the Commandment and that is the affection from which this exercise of mercy must arise, the Apostle tells us that this love is the fulfilling of the law, not that it is enough to love our brother and so no further; but in regard of the excellency of his parts giving any motion to the other as the soul to the body and the power it hath to set all the faculties at work in the outward exercise of this duty; as when we bid one make the clock strike, he doth not lay hand on the hammer, which is the immediate instrument of the sound, but sets on work the first mover or main wheel; knowing that will certainly produce the sound which he intends. So the way to draw men to the works of mercy, is not by force of Argument from the goodness or necessity of the work; for though this cause may enforce, a rational mind to some present act of mercy, as is frequent in experience, yet it cannot work such a habit in a soul, as shall make it prompt upon all occasions to produce the same effect, but by framing these affections of love in the heart which will as naturally bring forth the other, as any cause doth produce the effect."
John Winthrop; A Model of Christian Charity; metaphor of clock; Don't need to toll the bell, but need to get gears moving and the rest will work: loving and its charity (love is foundational to community; abstraction of loving will make all the parts work in this way); Society moves like a clock governed by love; builds habit by setting clock into motion; frame affections of love in the heart → will perform charity out of love
At first, indeed, I did not feel that natural awe, which the Yahoos and all other animals bear toward them; but it grew upon me by degrees, much sooner than I imagined, and was mingled with a respectful love and gratitude, that they would condescend to distinguish me from the rest of my species....When I happened to behold the reflection of my own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my face in horror and detestation of myself, and could better endure the sight of a common Yahoo than of my own person."
Jonathan Swift; Gulliver's Travels; Doubledness of how he sees himself vs. the horses, double conscience; While the horses seem rational, kind, noble, in idealized society, but rather this is based on denigration of the other species, cannot tolerate another member of that species from looking any more elevated; Swift suggests through his language the way that the horse becomes a master; Swift affects a transition into master of house to master of slave; Gulliver reduces himself to the subject of enslavement, identity derived from horse ; "The master horse" while in his household → "the master" → "my master"
In this desolate condition I advanced forward, and soon got upon firm ground, where I sat down on a bank to rest myself, and consider what I had best do. When I was a little refreshed, I went up into the country, resolving to deliver myself to the first savages I should meet, and purchase my life from them by some bracelets, glass rings, and other toys, which sailors usually provide themselves with in those voyages, and whereof I had some about me.
Jonathan Swift; Gulliver's Travels; assumes they are "savages;" buy his life with bracelets/glass rings/toys as if to say they are so primitive that those are of value to them but also that he is of so little value to them that that's all he is worth; Before he even sees anyone he imagines what he will see (brings travel narrative with him to make assumptions)
"but I was infinitely delighted with the station of an humble auditor in such conversations, where nothing passed but what was useful, expressed in the fewest and most significant words; where, as I have already said, the greatest decency was observed, without the least degree of ceremony; where no person spoke without being pleased himself, and pleasing his companions; where there was no interruption, tediousness, heat, or difference of sentiments. They have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened the discourse. Their subjects are, generally on friendship and benevolence, on order and economy; sometimes upon the visible operations of nature, or ancient traditions; upon the bounds and limits of virtue; upon the unerring rules of reason, or upon some determinations to be taken at the next great assembly: and often upon the various excellences of poetry. I may add, without vanity, that my presence often gave them sufficient matter for discourse, because it afforded my master an occasion of letting his friends into the history of me and my country, upon which they were all pleased to descant, in a manner not very advantageous to humankind: and for that reason I shall not repeat what they said; only I may be allowed to observe, that his honour, to my great admiration, appeared to understand the nature of Yahoos much better than myself. He went through all our vices and follies, and discovered many, which I had never mentioned to him, by only supposing what qualities a Yahoo of their country, with a small proportion of reason, might be capable of exerting; and concluded, with too much probability, "how vile, as well as miserable, such a creature must be."
Jonathan Swift; Gulliver's Travels; hyperbolic language; "without the least degree of ceremony;" philosophical and rationalist; "appeared to understand the nature of the Yahoos much better than myself;" they discuss the limits of virtue for Houyhnhnms and the vice/folly of Yahoos; Shifting satirical persona (thinks he is a rational creature above all, but then shifts--feel that's the horses understand him better than he does)
I confess, it was whispered to me, "that I was bound in duty, as a subject of England, to have given in a memorial to a secretary of state at my first coming over; because, whatever lands are discovered by a subject belong to the crown." But I doubt whether our conquests in the countries I treat of would be as easy as those of Ferdinando Cortez over the naked Americans. The Lilliputians, I think, are hardly worth the charge of a fleet and army to reduce them; and I question whether it might be prudent or safe to attempt the Brobdingnagians; or whether an English army would be much at their ease with the Flying Island over their heads. The Houyhnhnms indeed appear not to be so well prepared for war, a science to which they are perfect strangers, and especially against missive weapons. However, supposing myself to be a minister of state, I could never give my advice for invading them. Their prudence, unanimity, unacquaintedness with fear, and their love of their country, would amply supply all defects in the military art. Imagine twenty thousand of them breaking into the midst of an European army, confounding the ranks, overturning the carriages, battering the warriors' faces into mummy by terrible yerks from their hinder hoofs; for they would well deserve the character given to Augustus, Recalcitrat undique tutus. But, instead of proposals for conquering that magnanimous nation, I rather wish they were in a capacity, or disposition, to send a sufficient number of their inhabitants for civilizing Europe, by teaching us the first principles of honour, justice, truth, temperance, public spirit, fortitude, chastity, friendship, benevolence, and fidelity. The names of all which virtues are still retained among us in most languages, and are to be met with in modern, as well as ancient authors; which I am able to assert from my own small reading.
Jonathan Swift; Gulliver's Travels; imperial enterprise of England; idealization of virtue; critique of English imperialism; Wishing the Houyhnhnms would colonize Europe rather than vice versa; Satire is not necessarily normative in giving its virtue (indictment of folly), but imagines something better than the status quo, idealizes
But I had another reason, which made me less forward to enlarge his majesty's dominions by my discoveries. To say the truth, I had conceived a few scruples with relation to the distributive justice of princes upon those occasions. For instance, a crew of pirates are driven by a storm they know not whither; at length a boy discovers land from the topmast; they go on shore to rob and plunder, they see a harmless people, are entertained with kindness; they give the country a new name; they take formal possession of it for their king; they set up a rotten plank, or a stone, for a memorial; they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more, by force, for a sample; return home, and get their pardon. Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free license given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers, employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony, sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people! But this description, I confess, does by no means affect the British nation, who may be an example to the whole world for their wisdom, care, and justice in planting colonies; their liberal endowments for the advancement of religion and learning; their choice of devout and able pastors to propagate Christianity; their caution in stocking their provinces with people of sober lives and conversations from this the mother kingdom; their strict regard to the distribution of justice, in supplying the civil administration through all their colonies with officers of the greatest abilities, utter strangers to corruption; and, to crown all, by sending the most vigilant and virtuous governors, who have no other views than the happiness of the people over whom they preside, and the honour of the king their master.
Jonathan Swift; Gulliver's Travels; less forward= understatement; rob/plunder vs. harmless, kind people; divine right to take possession for king; "execrable crew of butchers= pious an expedition;" mismatch between his criticism of what they are doing vs. the description of them; "planting colonies;" "stocking their provinces;" "to crown all"- witty play on words about the English crown; sarcasm: "no other views than the happiness of the people over whom they preside and the honour of the king their master;" Describes colonization and then another type of colonization: modern colonization (pirates) vs. English colonization; Moves through a satire of horse-human relations to human-human (colonization) without our noticing of this happening
While he and I were thus employed, another horse came up; who applying himself to the first in a very formal manner, they gently struck each other's right hoof before, neighing several times by turns, and varying the sound, which seemed to be almost articulate. They went some paces off, as if it were to confer together, walking side by side, backward and forward, like persons deliberating upon some affair of weight, but often turning their eyes towards me, as it were to watch that I might not escape. I was amazed to see such actions and behaviour in brute beasts; and concluded with myself, that if the inhabitants of this country were endued with a proportionable degree of reason, they must needs be the wisest people upon earth.
Jonathan Swift; Gulliver's Travels; more much kind and positive discourse; "employed, formal manner, gently, ritual greeting, articulate, confer, deliberating on affair of weight); brute beasts; "wisest people upon earth;" Looks like a colonial context but moves into human-horse context; Human animal hierarchy named; if these horses can behave well and I know that humans are superior, than these humans will be much wiser and well-virtured; Description of yahoos described as looking like humans, but behaving like animals (we don't want to recognize them as humans)
I could heartily wish a law was enacted, that every traveller, before he were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make oath before the Lord High Chancellor, that all he intended to print was absolutely true to the best of his knowledge; for then the world would no longer be deceived, as it usually is, while some writers, to make their works pass the better upon the public, impose the grossest falsities on the unwary reader.
Jonathan Swift; Gulliver's Travels; plays with the idea of fiction vs. truth; folkloric form of satire Critiques the falsification of travel narratives, wants to only tell the truth (but then there would be no Gulliver's Travels, fictive texts that allow us to think that only fiction can)
Upon the whole, I never beheld, in all my travels, so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy. So that, thinking I had seen enough, full of contempt and aversion, I got up, and pursued the beaten road, hoping it might direct me to the cabin of some Indian. I had not got far, when I met one of these creatures full in my way, and coming up directly to me. The ugly monster, when he saw me, distorted several ways, every feature of his visage, and stared, as at an object he had never seen before; then approaching nearer, lifted up his fore-paw, whether out of curiosity or mischief I could not tell; but I drew my hanger, and gave him a good blow with the flat side of it, for I durst not strike with the edge, fearing the inhabitants might be provoked against me, if they should come to know that I had killed or maimed any of their cattle. When the beast felt the smart, he drew back, and roared so loud, that a herd of at least forty came flocking about me from the next field, howling and making odious faces; but I ran to the body of a tree, and leaning my back against it, kept them off by waving my hanger. Several of this cursed brood, getting hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree, whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head; however, I escaped pretty well by sticking close to the stem of the tree, but was almost stifled with the filth, which fell about me on every side.
Jonathan Swift; Gulliver's Travels; prefers a Native American to a Yahoo; description poses the yahoo as an animal (paw, cattle, beast, herd, flocking, howling, cursed brood); Lemuel Gulliver hits the Yahoo first to assert dominance; exaggerated image of excrement discharge (filth falling from every side);
"My reconcilement to the Yahoo kind in general might not be so difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only which nature has entitled them to. I am not in the least provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gamester, a politician, a whoremonger, a physician, an evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is all according to the due course of things: but when I behold a lump of deformity and diseases, both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience; neither shall I be ever able to comprehend how such an animal, and such a vice, could tally together. The wise and virtuous Houyhnhnms, who abound in all excellences that can adorn a rational creature, have no name for this vice in their language, which has no terms to express any thing that is evil, except those whereby they describe the detestable qualities of their Yahoos, among which they were not able to distinguish this of pride, for want of thoroughly understanding human nature, as it shows itself in other countries where that animal presides. But I, who had more experience, could plainly observe some rudiments of it among the wild Yahoos."
Jonathan Swift; Gulliver's Travels; seems to be contradictory to say that Houyhnhnms do not have a word (language capacity) but that they identity evil/pride with Yahoos: mismatch/gap (issue of recognition) between language and comprehension; disgusted with the pride of the deformed and diseased figures of society; thinks his own family is disgusting/smelly; wants to be with the horses (but he is contradictory as he himself is prideful, he thinks he is better than other Hoouyhnhnm); unreliable narrator is characteristic of satire
"Death had come And taken them all in times gone by And the only one left to tell their tale, The last of their line, could look forward to nothing But the same fate for himself: he foresaw that his joy In the treasure would be brief. A newly constructed Barrow stood waiting, on a wide headland Close to the waves, its entryway secured. Into it the keeper of the hoard had carried All the goods and golden ware Worth preserving. His words were few: "Now, earth, hold what earls once held And heroes can no more; it was mined from you first By honorable men. My own people Have been ruined in war; one by one They went down to death, looked their last On sweet life in the hall. I am left with nobody To bear a sword or burnish plated goblets, Put a sheen on the cup. The companies have departed. The hard helmet, hasped with gold, Will be stripped of its hoops; and the helmet-shiner Who should polish the metal of the war-mask sleeps; The coat of mail that came through all fights, Through shield-collapse and cut of sword, Decays with the warrior. Now may webbed mail 2260 Range far and wide on a warlord's back Beside his mustered troops. No trembling harp, No tuned timber, no tumbling hawk Swerving through the hall, no swift horse Pawing the courtyard. pillage and slaughter Have emptied the earth of entire peoples." And so he mourned as he moved about the world, Deserted and alone, lamenting his unhappiness Day and night, until death's flood Brimmed up in his heart."
Lay of the Last Survivor; elegy in Beowulf; interlacing
When for the thorns with which I long, too long, With many a piercing wound, My Saviour's head have crowned, I seek with garlands to redress that wrong: Through every garden, every mead, I gather flowers (my fruits are only flowers), Dismantling all the fragrant towers That once adorned my shepherdess's head. And now when I have summed up all my store, Thinking (so I myself deceive) So rich a chaplet thence to weave As never yet the King of Glory wore: Alas, I find the serpent old That, twining in his speckled breast, About the flowers disguised does fold, With wreaths of fame and interest. Ah, foolish man, that wouldst debase with them, And mortal glory, Heaven's diadem! But Thou who only couldst the serpent tame, Either his slippery knots at once untie; And disentangle all his winding snare; Or shatter too with him my curious frame, And let these wither, so that he may die, Though set with skill and chosen out with care: That they, while Thou on both their spoils dost tread, May crown thy feet, that could not crown thy head.
Marvell; The Coronet; roundness; Longing to emulate the life of Christ, want to redress the wrong of jesus suffering for human sins, want to make garlands to pay tribute; Half way through, he realizes that to replace crown of thorns with crown of flowers is just a crown of laurels, just showing off what a good poet he is → actually satan, snake; shifts from observation to abstract (satan's attempt at self-glorification); let language speak through you rather than that you can conquer everything with machismo and conceit (commentary that metaphysical poets get carried away); wittiness of poet as he comments on natural and intellectual/emotional world; observations about poetry himself
How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their uncessant labours see Crown'd from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all flow'rs and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose. Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men; Your sacred plants, if here below, Only among the plants will grow. Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So am'rous as this lovely green. Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress' name; Little, alas, they know or heed How far these beauties hers exceed! Fair trees! wheres'e'er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own be found. When we have run our passion's heat, Love hither makes his best retreat. The gods, that mortal beauty chase, Still in a tree did end their race: Apollo hunted Daphne so, Only that she might laurel grow; And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a nymph, but for a reed. What wond'rous life in this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Ensnar'd with flow'rs, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find, Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There like a bird it sits and sings, Then whets, and combs its silver wings; And, till prepar'd for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. Such was that happy garden-state, While man there walk'd without a mate; After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet! But 'twas beyond a mortal's share To wander solitary there: Two paradises 'twere in one To live in paradise alone. How well the skillful gard'ner drew Of flow'rs and herbs this dial new, Where from above the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run; And as it works, th' industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckon'd but with herbs and flow'rs!
Marvell; The Garden; metaphysical poetry of the 17th century; emphasis on observation; palm, oak, bays = honors in military, civic, poetic achievement; tranquil garden: all flowers and all tree → weave the garlands of repose, delicious solitude, Fair Quiet, Innocence; no red/white (beauty) just green (amorous, nature); rather than carve Sylvia or Laura in trees, carve Beech/Oak (put language at harmony with nature= troth); claims that gods chase nature's beauty (in turning Daphne into a laurel and Syrinx into a reed) but it was rather sexually motivated; description of garden is rather full/overwhelming/bountiful + "fall" not tranquil beauty (ensnared, fecundity) ; he touts the beauty of the garden but then just daydreams/fantasizes about other worlds/seas; "Waves in its plumes the various light"= multicolored light of earthy vs. white radiance of eternity + plumes=quill (wants to be purely abstracted from material world as a bird above it); "Two paradises 'twere in one/ To live in paradise lone" = consolidation/conceit (without the fall and without women); time; industrious bee (should naturalize industry; labor can be one with nature/temporality); time/thyme; industrial humans labor to superimpose greatness/order/control upon nature whereas the garden can create its own beautiful hedges of repose (human artifice); he is retreating from industry/vanity;
But before I go any further, I would take leave to mention a few remarkable passages of providence, which I took special notice of in my afflicted time....3. Which also I have hinted before, when the English army with new supplies were sent forth to pursue after the enemy, and they understanding it, fled before them till they came to Banquang river, where they forthwith went over safely; that that river should be impassable to the English. I can but admire to see the wonderful providence of God in preserving the heathen for further affliction to our poor country. They could go in great numbers over, but the English must stop. God had an overruling hand in all those things."
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; God has preserved the heathens but for the purpose of providence toward the colonists; Defining of difference becomes part of God's providence, necessity to keep populations separate, keep this trial ongoing is part of god's Providence; god's anointed have suffered
And here I cannot but take notice of the strange providence of God in preserving the heathen. They were many hundreds, old and young, some sick, and some lame; many had papooses at their backs. The greatest number at this time with us were squaws, and they traveled with all they had, bag and baggage, and yet they got over this river aforesaid; and on Monday they set their wigwams on fire, and away they went. On that very day came the English army after them to this river, and saw the smoke of their wigwams, and yet this river put a stop to them. God did not give them courage or activity to go over after us. We were not ready for so great a mercy as victory and deliverance. If we had been God would have found out a way for the English to have passed this river, as well as for the Indians with their squaws and children, and all their luggage. "Oh that my people had hearkened to me, and Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries" (Psalm 81.13-14)."
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; How does the text deal with the paradox of the Wampanoag natives triumphing over the Christian colonists? If God's Providence is looking out for the colonists, why is he letting them be killed, foiled, failed, taken captive? Chosen population signals God's anointed; Protestant identification with the Old Testament, identify with the Hebrews as God's chosen people who suffer hardship; taken advantage of failure as a way of rewriting having your virtue tried, suffering imposed; trial and tribulation (reminds me of Spenser's Redcrosse)
"And now I must part with that little company I had. Here I parted from my daughter Mary (whom I never saw again till I saw her in Dorchester, returned from captivity), and from four little cousins and neighbors, some of which I never saw afterward: the Lord only knows the end of them. Amongst them also was that poor woman before mentioned, who came to a sad end, as some of the company told me in my travel: she having much grief upon her spirit about her miserable condition, being so near her time, she would be often asking the Indians to let her go home; they not being willing to that, and yet vexed with her importunity, gathered a great company together about her and stripped her naked, and set her in the midst of them, and when they had sung and danced about her (in their hellish manner) as long as they pleased they knocked her on head, and the child in her arms with her. When they had done that they made a fire and put them both into it, and told the other children that were with them that if they attempted to go home, they would serve them in like manner. The children said she did not shed one tear, but prayed all the while."
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; Mary Rowlandson; outrageous description of natives; different depiction of femininity; attacking motherhood (with child, pregnant); like a martyr (doesn't cry, passively prays, accepts fate, true martyr, looks like the massacre of the innocents: compounded slaughter of children and mother, nakedness is vulnerability); on the verge of birth; imperiled femininity attune to virginity (apex of vulnerability); making a martyr of married women (does not hold monasticism as more pious, Rowlandson makes motherhood into a form of piety---interesting compared to the comitatus, unmasking of Duessa, Allisoun's body, etc) ; loss of this life but also of the whole collective/population; not just protect virginity to ensure racial purity but also population; captivity of woman = population at stake; piety and urgency for women to reproduce to create more Christians for the glory of God
O the wonderful power of God that I have seen, and the experience that I have had. I have been in the midst of those roaring lions, and savage bears, that feared neither God, nor man, nor the devil, by night and day, alone and in company, sleeping all sorts together, and yet not one of them ever offered me the least abuse of unchastity to me, in word or action."
Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; Mary Rowlandson; sexual abuse (a given with captivity); we wonder whether or not she was raped; historically a constant (enslavement, rape); does not mention anything of it until the end when it says she was not; why this disclosure at this point in the text?; generous to her captors; makes point that God preserved her chastity; implication that if she was raped, even if not consented, she would be ruined as a victim and void of any authority; she has authority because she is not fully victimized; her authority depends on her preserving this honor; withholds this to the end of the text as if salaciously using it to generate wonder; holding the fact back to generate narrative through curiosity; this anticipation becomes part of the narrative structure; worry of miscegenation: had she been raped it would be a miscegenated child
A fourth thing there is carefully to be provided for, to wit, that with your common employments you join common affections truly bent upon the general good, avoiding as a deadly plague of your both common & special comfort all retiredness of mind for proper advantage, and all singularly affected any manner of way; let every man repress in him self & the whole body in each person, as so many rebels against the common good, all private respects of mens selves, not sorting with the general convenience. And as men are careful not to have a new house shaken with any violence before it be well settled & the parts firmly knite, so be you, I beseech you, brethren, much more careful, at the house of God which you are, and are to be, be not shaken with unnecessary novelties or other oppositions at ye first setting thereof.
Of Plymouth Plantation; William Bradford; Necessity for sameness, commonality of belief, conformity; Bradford constitution; Temporality: recaptures a different kind of past (God's Providence); Go back to an original source in order to imagine a more perfect future, a more perfect union; Describes people and imagines its perfection in time
"The new king (saith he) found their established the reformed religion, according to the reformed religion of King Edward VI. Retaining, or keeping still the spiritual state of the bishops, etc. After the old manner, much varying and differing from the reformed churches in Scotland, France, & the Netherlands, Embden, Geneva, etc. whose reformation is cut, or shaped much nearer the first Christian churches, as it was used in the Apostles times. So many therefore of these professors as saw the evil of these things, in these parts, and whose hearts the Lord had touched with heavenly zeal for his truth, they shook of this yoke of anti christian bondage, and as the Lord's free people, joined themselves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a church estate, in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all his ways, made known, or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them. And that it cost them something this ensewing history will declare."
Of Plymouth Plantation; William Bradford; Puritans preferred the Calvinist system in which the hierarchy of archbishops/bishops/priests was replaced with a national assembly and a parish presbytery consisting of the ministers and elders; "shook the yoke of anti Christian bondage;" covenant theology: presence/personhood faithful → new variant of troth; Political rhetoric is shot through with the language of bondage, slavery, freedom (not necessarily metaphorical but literal); Sense of a covenant, pact between people and God that is embodied by enterprise
I SHALL a little returned back and begin with a combination made by them before they came ashore, being the first foundation of their government in this place; occasioned partly by the discontented & mutinous speeches that some of the strangers amongst them had let fall from them in the ship --That when they came ashore they would use their own liberty; for none had power to command them, the patent they had being for Virginia, and not for New-england, which belonged to another Government, with which the Virginia Company had nothing to do. And partly that such an act by them done (this their condition considered) might be as firm as any patent, and in some respects more sure. The form was as followeth. In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, & Ireland king, defender of the faith, &c., having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king & country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly & mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant & combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hear of to enact, constitute, and frame such just & equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet & convenient for the general good of the Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11. of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, & Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty fourth. Ano : Dom. 1620. After this they chose, or rather confirmed, Mr . John Carver (a man godly & well approved amongst them) their Governour for that year. And after they had provided a place for their goods, or common store, (which were long in unlading for want of boats, foulness of winter weather, and sickness of diverce,) and begun some small cottages for their habitation,
Of Plymouth Plantation; William Bradford; covenant drawn up on shipboard; Feels like the covenant is the first thing that has to be done, not making provisions but enact contract; Writing your government, imaging various forms of Constitution before there were constitutions; Scripting peoples more than nations
"Accordingly, he signed the manumission that day; so that, before night, I , who had been a slave in the morning, trembling at the will of another, was become my own master, and completely free. I thought this was the happiest day I had ever experienced; and my joy was still heightened by the blessings and prayers of many of the sable race, particularly the aged, to whom my heart had ever been attached with reverence. & manumission document by Robert King"
Olaudah Equiano, Narrative of the Life; Includes text of document of manumission; Identifies himself as part of collective at same time as marking himself as an individual; Codes black in a way that gives value, dignity; need the text to prove his own self-ownership
"Find myself master over 46 pounds"
Olaudah Equiano, Narrative of the Life; Locke: personhood as right to ownership over self
He had learn'd to take tobacco; and when he was assur'd he should die, he desir'd they would give him a pipe in his mouth, ready lighted; which they did: And the executioner came, and first cut off his members, and threw them into the fire; after that, with an ill-favour'd knife, they cut off his ears and his nose, and burn'd them; he still smoak'd on, as if nothing had touch'd him; then they hack'd off one of his arms, and still he bore up, and held his pipe; but at the cutting off the other arm, his head sunk, and his pipe dropt and he gave up the ghost, without a groan, or a reproach.
Oroonoko; Aphra Behn; New world product, commodity from new world, consumption? Commodification; Last agency; I think it likens him to the tobacco; Stoicism, not going to reveal suffering, endure suffering; Indulge in smoking as long as he can, take pleasure at his expense ; Is he doing it for himself or to flip the burden to the executioner?; Pleasure for pain; Performative; Physically hacked apart, smoke rising up
'Tis a continent whose vast extent was never yet known, and may contain more noble earth than all the universe beside; for, they say, it reaches from east to west one way as far as China, and another to Peru: It affords all things both for beauty and use; 'tis there eternal spring always the very months of April, May and June; the shades are perpetual, the trees bearing at once all degrees of leaves and fruit, from blooming buds to ripe autumn: groves of oranges, lemons, citrons, figs, nutmegs, and noble aromaticks, continually bearing their fragrancies. The trees appearing all like nosegays adorn'd with flowers of different kinds, some are all white, some purple, some scarlet, some blue, some yellow; bearing at the same time ripe fruit, and blooming young, or producing every day new. The very wood of all these trees has an intrinsic value above common timber; for they are, when cut, of different colours, glorious to behold, and bear a price considerable, to inlay withal. Besides this, they yield rich balm, and gums; so that we make our candles of such an aromatic substance, as does not only give a sufficient light, but, as they burn, they cast their perfumes all about. Cedar is the common firing, and all the houses are built with it. The very meat we eat, when set on the table, if it be native, I mean of the country, perfumes the whole room; especially a little beast call'd an armadilly, a thing which I can liken to nothing so well as a rhinoceros; 'tis all in white armour, so jointed, that it moves as well in it, as if it had nothing on: this beast is about the bigness of a pig of six weeks old. But it were endless to give an account of all the divers wonderful and strange things that country affords, and which we took a very great delight to go in search of;
Oroonoko; Aphra Behn; Purpose: further the project of empire, leisure; Edenic flavor: eternal spring; Textual equivalent of de Heem's table of parrots; Commercialist taxonomy of goods, accounting of potential resources; Enslavement: commercial circulation of goods, commodities, people thought as goods, traded with or as inanimate goods; Unborn child: cannot bear to have child belong to someone other than himself → violent revolt, execution, quartering (referring to Four Continents trope) → Oroonoko faces his death with stoicism, nonchalance; At the end Imoinda gets the last word, recalls the memory of the love plot that has been destroyed by the transformation of the novel, Imoinda is renamed Clemene → suggests clemency, forgiveness, erasing prior identity
This great and just character of Oroonoko gave me an extreme curiosity to see him, especially when I knew he spoke French and English, and that I could talk with him. But though I had heard so much of him, I was as greatly surprized when I saw him, as if I had heard nothing of him; so beyond all report I found him. He came into the room, and addressed himself to me, and some other women, with the best grace in the world. He was pretty tall, but of a shape the most exact that can be fancy'd: The most famous statuary cou'd not form the figure of a man more admirably turn'd from head to foot. His face was not of that brown rusty black which most of that nation are, but of perfect ebony, or polished jett. His eyes were the most awful that cou'd be seen, and very piercing; the white of 'em being like snow, as were his teeth. His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth the finest shaped that could be seen; far from those great turn'd lips, which are so natural to the rest of the negroes.
Oroonoko; Aphra Behn;Characterization of Oroonoko; Recalls the pseudoscience of physiognomy (linking facial features to inherent character); Trope of noble savage; Oroonoko later named Caesar, the real practice of renaming slaves to have some sort of classical names (noble and heathen, rather than Christian)
Naked in bed, Iago, and not mean harm! It is hypocrisy against the devil: They that mean virtuously, and yet do so, The devil their virtue tempts, and they tempt heaven. IAGO: So they do nothing, 'tis a venial slip: But if I give my wife a handkerchief,-- OTHELLO: What then? IAGO: Why, then, 'tis hers, my lord; and, being hers, She may, I think, bestow't on any man. OTHELLO: She is protectress of her honour too: May she give that? IAGO: Her honour is an essence that's not seen; They have it very oft that have it not: But, for the handkerchief,-- OTHELLO: By heaven, I would most gladly have forgot it. Thou said'st, it comes o'er my memory, As doth the raven o'er the infected house, Boding to all--he had my handkerchief. IAGO: Ay, what of that? OTHELLO: That's not so good now. IAGO: What, If I had said I had seen him do you wrong? Or heard him say,--as knaves be such abroad, Who having, by their own importunate suit, Or voluntary dotage of some mistress, Convinced or supplied them, cannot choose But they must blab-- OTHELLO: Hath he said any thing? IAGO: He hath, my lord; but be you well assured, No more than he'll unswear. OTHELLO: What hath he said? IAGO: 'Faith, that he did--I know not what he did. OTHELLO: What? what? IAGO: Lie-- OTHELLO: With her? IAGO: With her, on her; what you will. OTHELLO: Lie with her! lie on her! We say lie on her, when they belie her. Lie with her! that's fulsome. --Handkerchief--confessions--handkerchief!--To confess, and be hanged for his labour;--first, to be hanged, and then to confess.--I tremble at it. Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion without some instruction. It is not words that shake me thus. Pish! Noses, ears, and lips. --Is't possible?--Confess--handkerchief!--O devil!--
Othello; Shakespeare; Iago plants seeds of doubt in Othello's mind; suggests her infidelity; handkerchief; antanaclasis of lie; duplicitous nature of Iago; duplicit representations: handkerchief, Iago, double consciousness; handkerchief= strawberries (red on white) --> bedsheets
O, fie upon thee, slanderer! IAGO Nay, it is true, or else I am a Turk: You rise to play and go to bed to work.
Othello; Shakespeare; Islam not a "real" religion; same islamophobic rhetoric as in Fairie Queene by Spenser; islam seem as faithless/renegade; Turn Turk
Tush! never tell me; I take it much unkindly That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this. IAGO: 'Sblood, but you will not hear me: If ever I did dream of such a matter, Abhor me. RODERIGO: Thou told'st me thou didst hold him in thy hate. IAGO: Despise me, if I do not.
Othello; Shakespeare; abhor/hate/despise; emphasis on hate; Iago=hate, Othello=love
Her father loved me; oft invited me; Still question'd me the story of my life, From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes, That I have passed. I ran it through, even from my boyish days, To the very moment that he bade me tell it; Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach, Of being taken by the insolent foe And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence And portance in my travels' history: Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven It was my hint to speak,--such was the process; And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline: But still the house-affairs would draw her thence: Which ever as she could with haste dispatch, She'ld come again, and with a greedy ear Devour up my discourse: which I observing, Took once a pliant hour, and found good means To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, Whereof by parcels she had something heard, But not intentively: I did consent, And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did speak of some distressful stroke That my youth suffer'd. My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: She swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful: She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me, And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story. And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake: She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd, And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used: Here comes the lady; let her witness it.
Othello; Shakespeare; he won Desdomona's love with his storytelling and what's he's been through (sentence and solas; fruit and chaf; energia and enargia); Othello loves her for her pity/recognition; not Venetian born; foreigner vs. citizen; able to use rational and sophisticated language; accused of witchcraft but coolly resists by saying witchcraft is storytelling; later Iago shifts relation from sophisticated orator --> chaotic/confused questioner; orator to spectacle --> loss of control, reduction to a confused mess; reduced to chaos subsequently; double consciousness;
Wept at completing of the mortal Sin Original; while ADAM took no thought, Eating his fill, nor EVE to iterate 1005 Her former trespass fear'd, the more to soothe Him with her lov'd societie, that now As with new Wine intoxicated both They swim in mirth, and fansie that they feel Divinity within them breeding wings 1010 Wherewith to scorn the Earth: but that false Fruit Farr other operation first displayed, Carnal desire inflaming, hee on EVE Began to cast lascivious Eyes, she him As wantonly repaid; in Lust they burne: 1015 Till ADAM thus 'gan EVE to dalliance move.
Paradise Lost; John Milton; "that false fruit;" feelings of divinity is false fruit; fruit intoxicates them; after the fall, sex has character of hell (burning); not sex itself: but fall; before fall: sex consensual, slip into it, lean in/lean back; after fall, sex: leading, seizing; comparison of Adam & Eve to Samson (common humanity rather than sexual difference); this poem acknowledges disobedience of eating apple with sex (fallen sex; sex after the fall); seduction a part of fallenness
So counsels he, and both together went Into the thickest Wood, there soon they chose 1100 The Figtree, not that kind for Fruit renowned, But such as at this day to INDIANS known In MALABAR or DECAN spreads her arms Braunching so broad and long, that in the ground The bended Twigs take root, and Daughters grow 1105 About the Mother Tree, a Pillard shade High overarch, and echoing Walks between; There oft the INDIAN Herdsman shunning heat Shelters in coole, and tends his pasturing Herds At Loopholes cut through thickest shade: Those Leaves 1110 They gathered, broad as AMAZONIAN Targe, And with what skill they had, together sowd, To gird their waste, vain Covering if to hide Thir guilt and dreaded shame; O how unlike To that first naked Glorie. Such of late 1115 COLUMBUS found th' AMERICAN to girt With feathered Cincture, naked else and wilde Among the Trees on Iles and woody Shores. Thus fenced, and as they thought, thir shame in part Covered, but not at rest or ease of Mind, 1120 They sate them down to weep, nor only Tears
Paradise Lost; John Milton; conglomeration of Europe's others: India, the Amazon, the Americas; question of temporality/geography; places Paradise Lost in context of others (farther from Adam and Eve); ambiguity: more pure/innocent than corrupted Europeans but at the same time perceived as more barbaric, more fallen; question of associations that we bring? Thinking that others are more fallen? Or is he saying this?; adam and eve prelapsarian European; common humanity in its purest form is European male (race, gender); merchant in spire trade-- ambiguous if Satan is colinst or Asian merchants
To whom then first incenst ADam replied. Is this the Love, is the recompense Of mine to thee, ingrateful EVE, exprest Immutable when thou wert lost, not I, Who might have liv'd and joyd immortal bliss, Yet willingly chose rather Death with thee: And am I now upbraided, as the cause Of thy transgressing? not enough severe, It seems, in thy restraint: what could I more? I warn'd thee, I admonished thee, foretold The danger, and the lurking Enemie That lay in wait; beyond this had bin force, And force upon free Will hath here no place.
Paradise Lost; John Milton; could have chosen not to fall, so she should be grateful, Adam stronger, talks down to her, submit; ungrateful; male and female hierarchy as effect of the fall, fall into a worldy hierarchy rather than prelapsarian heavenly hierarchy
Soon found thir Eyes how opened, and their minds How darkened; innocence, that as a veile
Paradise Lost; John Milton; sex has character of hell (burning); not sex itself: but fall; before fall: sex consensual, slip into it, lean in/lean back; after fall, sex: leading, seizing; comparison of Adam & Eve to Samson (common humanity rather than sexual difference); this poem acknowledges disobedience of eating apple with sex (fallen sex; sex after the fall); seduction a part of fallenness
"'Regard,' said Gawain, as he held up the girdle, 'The symbol of sin, for which my neck bears the scar; A sign of my fault and offence and failure, Of the cowardice and covetousness I came to commit. I was tainted by untruth. This, its token, I will drape across my chest till the day I die.'"
Sir Gawain upon returning to Arthur's court; allegorical form; issue of recognition of sin (some see it as sin vs. honor); "tainted by untruth;"
To whom thus ADAM sore beset replied. O Heav'n! in evil strait this day I stand 125 Before my Judge, either to undergo My self the total Crime, or to accuse My other self, the partner of my life; Whose failing, while her Faith to me remains, I should conceal, and not expose to blame 130 By my complaint; but strict necessity Subdues me, and calamitous constraint, Least on my head both sin and punishment, However insupportable, be all Devolved; though should I hold my peace, yet thou 135 Wouldst easily detect what I conceale. This Woman whom thou mad'st to be my help, And gav'st me as thy perfect gift, so good, So fit, so acceptable, so Divine, That from her hand I could suspect no ill, 140 And what she did, whatever in it self, Her doing seem'd to justify the deed; She gave me of the Tree, and I did eat. To whom the sovran Presence thus replied. Was shee thy God, that her thou didst obey 145 Before his voice, or was she made th To Judgement he proceeded on the' accused Serpent though brute, unable to transferre 165 The Guilt on him who made him instrument Of mischief, and polluted from the end Of his Creation; justly then accurst, As vitiated in Nature: more to know Concerned not Man (since he no further knew) 170 Nor alter'd his offence; yet God at last To Satan first in sin his doom applied, Though in mysterious terms, judged as then best: And on the Serpent thus his curse let fall. Because thou hast done this, thou art accurst 175 Above all Cattle, each Beast of the Field; Upon thy Belly groveling thou shalt goe, And dust shalt eat all the days of thy Life. Between Thee and the Woman I will put Enmity, and between thine and her Seed; 180 Her Seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his heel. So spake this Oracle, then verified When JESUS son of MARY second EVE, Saw Satan fall like Lightning down from Heav'n, Prince of the Aire; then rising from his Grave 185 Spoiled Principalities and Powers, triumph In open shew, and with ascention bright Captivity led captive through the Aire, The Realm itself of Satan long usurped, Whom he shall tread at last under our feet; 190 Even he who now foretold his fatal bruise, And to the Woman thus his Sentence turn'd. Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply By thy Conception; Children thou shalt bring In sorrow forth, and to thy Husband's will 195 Thine shall submit, hee over thee shall rule. On ADAM last thus judgement he pronounced. Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy Wife, And eaten of the Tree concerning which I charg'd thee, saying: Thou shalt not eat thereof, 200 Curs'd is the ground for thy sake, thou in sorrow Shalt eat thereof all the days of thy Life; Thornes also and Thistles it shall bring thee forth Unbid, and thou shalt eat the Herb of the Field, In the sweat of thy Face shalt thou eat Bread, 205 Till thou return unto the ground, for thou Out of the ground wast taken, know thy Birth, For dust thou art, and shalt to dust return.
Paradise Lost; John Milton; the punishment; order of who is most coupable?; snake has to crawl on belly and eat dust; serpent and satan tied to snake but also separate; not differentiated; can't differentiate as harm was done by Satan in the snake; snake is innocent but cannot separate; both asks who is most coupable + saying we can never know: nature of responsibility; assumptions about cause and effect falter: told their punishment but don't experience it (Adam and Eve don't see the snake's punishment); Adam & Eve take on sentence of snake; struggle over language which is fallen: vague, mysterious, unclear → understand allegorically what can't be said directly; it's not about the snake just as they aren't literally supposed to use violence against Satan; cannot parse individual culpability; could be collective; we are told we are all sinners even if we didn't eat apple personally: collectivity, all rendered coupable for the sin; difference from tradition of all women being responsible for evil, fallenness; punishments as example of paradox: paradox of death and creation; what is creative has some death but part of larger story of God into satan's narrative; people brought into God's design but nonetheless makes creatures participants in God's design "bear fruit of womb and land;" punishment meets crime: fruit and fruit; Adam's punishment so anchored to dirt/ground (made of clay) whereas her isn't; male and female hierarchy as effect of the fall, fall into a worldy hierarchy rather than prelapsarian heavenly hierarchy; COLLECTIVE CULPABILITY
"The things already mentioned...Honor and glory of God's name."
Sarah Edward's Narrative; Jonathan Edwards; Demonstrates the excesses of the experience of salvation if one allows oneself to experience faith (though there is nothing you can do to affect your election, you are entirely without any control, but Edwards suggests that you can experience that sense of being held by God or experience precarity of damnation-- there does seem to be held forward the possibility that you could access the feeling of salvation, even if you cannot change it---which sarah edward's narrative gives us a glimmer of; holding forth the promise that you might experience that incredible sense of being held by God; not an individual experience, but rather about falling away from one's body); From the misery of total depravity to the sweetness of God's unchanging nature, certainty (contain all the greatness of God's salvation)
"...the rest will be blinded"
Sarah Edward's Narrative; Jonathan Edwards; Trying to indoctrinate a sense of corporate election, calling forth collectivity; Not everyone will be saved, unconditional election, but this body right now is among the elect, whether or not you belong to the polity of the elect; The way this theology inflects that sense of polity that defines the American constitution
O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour; Who hast by waning grown, and therein showest Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self growest. If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill. Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure! She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure: Her audit (though delayed) answered must be, And her quietus is to render thee.
Shakespeare sonnet 126; fickle glass= mirror; withering/growest; your youth/beauty has so far been preserved but can't be preserved forever; destructive power of time only countered by love; changing image with time; must procreate soon; gender/sexuality/power
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will, And Will to boot, and Will in overplus; More than enough am I that vex thee still, To thy sweet will making addition thus. Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine? Shall will in others seem right gracious, And in my will no fair acceptance shine? The sea, all water, yet receives rain still, And in abundance addeth to his store; So thou being rich in Will add to thy Will One will of mine, to make thy large Will more. Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill; Think all but one, and me in that one Will.
Shakespeare sonnet 135; antanaclasis of WILL (wishes, carnal desire, genitals; William); sexual puns; consolidation of love and desire just like consolidation of WILL; subject-object
When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor'd youth, Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love's best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told: Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.
Shakespeare sonnet 138; dark lady who is alluring + degrading; both lie about being unfaithful + old but her lie preserves his youth; truth is that you get older; love's capability to conceal simple truth
"Let learned Greece in any of her manifold sciences be able to show me one book before Musæus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets. Nay, let any history be brought that can say any writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some other are named, who, having been the first of that country that made pens deliver of their knowledge to their posterity, may justly challenge to be called their fathers in learning. For not only in time they had this priority—although in itself antiquity be venerable—but went before them as causes, to draw with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits to an admiration of knowledge. So as Amphion was said to move stones with his poetry to build Thebes, and Orpheus to be listened to by beasts,—indeed stony and beastly people. So among the Romans were Livius Andronicus and Ennius; so in the Italian language the first that made it aspire to be a treasure-house of science were the poets Dante, Boccace, and Petrarch; so in our English were Gower and Chaucer, after whom, encouraged and delighted with their excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify our mother-tongue, as well in the same kind as in other arts."
Sidney; The Defense of Poesy; Renaissance Humanism: looking back to classical works; Orpheus- tamed lions with poetics/lyre; Amphion moved stones with poetry; capability to tame/educate and move people; collective utility of education in poetry; energie and enargia= poetry moves us
"But truly, many of such writings as come under the banner of unresistible love, if I were a mistress would never persuade me they were in love; so coldly they apply fiery speeches, as men that had rather read lovers' writings, and so caught up certain swelling phrases—which hang together like a man which once told me the wind was at north-west and by south, because he would be sure to name winds enough—than that in truth they feel those passions, which easily, as I think, may be bewrayed by that same forcibleness, or energia (as the Greeks call it) of the writer. But let this be a sufficient, though short note, that we miss the right use of the material point of poesy."
Sidney; The Defense of Poesy; energia (work) and enargia (shimmering/quick) stir the mind and the senses respectively; like sentence/solas, fruit and chaff; poetry educates you better than historians/philosophers because they put lively examples in your mind and causes you to conjure up images in your mind
Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word [Greek], that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth; to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture, with this end,—to teach and delight."
Sidney; The Defense of Poesy; imitation=mimesis to bring forth a golden world, beyond the brazen one; complexity of mimesis; cannot speak of imitation w/o metaphor of "speaking picture" that is imitation does not exist outside of metaphor/figures; mimesis teaches and delights
"So that since the ever praiseworthy poesy is full of virtue-breeding delightfulness, and void of no gift that ought to be in the noble name of learning; since the blames laid against it are either false or feeble; since the cause why it is not esteemed in England is the fault of poet-apes, not poets; since, lastly, our tongue is most fit to honor poesy, and to be honored by poesy; I conjure you all that have had the evil luck to read this ink-wasting toy of mine, even in the name of the Nine Muses, no more to scorn the sacred mysteries of poesy; no more to laugh at the name of poets, as though they were next inheritors to fools; no more to jest at the reverend title of "a rimer"; but to believe, with Aristotle, that they were the ancient treasurers of the Grecians' divinity; to believe, with Bembus, that they were first bringers—in of all civility; to believe, with Scaliger, that no philosopher's precepts can sooner make you an honest man than the reading of Virgil; to believe, with Clauserus, the translator of Cornutus, that it pleased the Heavenly Deity by Hesiod and Homer, under the veil of fables, to give us all knowledge, logic, rhetoric, philosophy natural and moral, and quid non? to believe, with me, that there are many mysteries contained in poetry which of purpose were written darkly, lest by profane wits it should be abused; to believe, with Landino, that they are so beloved of the gods, that whatsoever they write proceeds of a divine fury; lastly, to believe themselves, when they tell you they will make you immortal by their verses. 93 Thus doing, your name shall flourish in the printers' shops. Thus doing, you shall be of kin to many a poetical preface. Thus doing, you shall be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all; you shall dwell upon superlatives. Thus doing, though you be libertino patre natus, 55 you shall suddenly grow Herculea proles, 56 Si quid mea carmina possunt. 57 Thus doing, your soul shall be placed with Dante's Beatrice or Virgil's Anchises. 94 But if—fie of such a but!—you be born so near the dull-making cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry; if you have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or rather, by a certain rustical disdain, will become such a mome, 58 as to be a Momus of poetry; then, though I will not wish unto you the ass' ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a poet's verses, as Bubonax was, to hang himself; nor to be rimed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland; yet thus much curse I must send you in the behalf of all poets:—that while you live in love, and never get favor for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph."
Sidney; The Defense of Poesy; para ratio; "virtue-breeding delightfulness;" conjure; poetry is the only way to make civilization happen and without it, we all die; conjure you all= malevolent cursing= if you don't love poetry, may you die loveless; capacity to move to do good and to curse, certain magic to it
"There is no art delivered unto mankind that hath not the works of nature for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature will have set forth. So doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and, by that he seeth, set down what order nature hath taken therein. So do the geometrician and arithmetician in their divers sorts of quantities. So doth the musician in times tell you which by nature agree, which not. The natural philosopher thereon hath his name, and the moral philosopher standeth upon the natural virtues, vices, and passions of man; and "follow nature," saith he, "therein, and thou shalt not err." The lawyer saith what men have determined, the historian what men have done. The grammarian speaketh only of the rules of speech, and the rhetorician and logician, considering what in nature will soonest prove and persuade, thereon give artificial rules, which still are compassed within the circle of a question, according to the proposed matter. The physician weigheth the nature of man's body, and the nature of things helpful or hurtful unto it. And the metaphysic, though it be in the second and abstract notions, and therefore be counted supernatural, yet doth he, indeed, build upon the depth of nature. Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden."
Sidney; The Defense of Poesy; poets draw off of nature, God's divine creation just as astronomers/mathematicians/philosophers but also imitate what is not yet in nature (complexity of mimesis); "freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit;" "rich tapestry" created by poets; to create a golden world where God's is only brazen; moral value of fiction/imagination; freedom of imagination
"Among the Romans a poet was called vates, which is as much as a diviner, foreseer, or prophet, as by his conjoined words vaticinium and vaticinari is manifest: so heavenly a title did that excellent people bestow upon his heart-ravishing knowledge...that high flying liberty of conceit proper to the poet, did seem to have some divine force in it. And may not I presume a little further to show the reasonableness of this word vates, and say that the holy David's Psalms are a divine poem? If I do, I shall not do it without the testimony of great learned men, both ancient and modern. But even the name of Psalms will speak for me, which, being interpreted, is nothing but Songs; then, that it is fully written in metre, as all learned Hebricians agree, although the rules be not yet fully found; lastly and principally, his handling his prophecy, which is merely poetical. For what else is the awaking his musical instruments, the often and free changing of persons, his notable prosopopoeias, when he maketh you, as it were, see God coming in His majesty, his telling of the beasts' joyfulness and hills' leaping, but a heavenly poesy, wherein almost he showeth himself a passionate lover of that unspeakable and everlasting beauty to be seen by the eyes of the mind, only cleared by faith? But truly now having named him, I fear I seem to profane that holy name, applying it to poetry, which is among us thrown down to so ridiculous an estimation. But they that with quiet judgments will look a little deeper into it, shall find the end and working of it such as, being rightly applied, deserveth not to be scourged out of the church of God. But now let us see how the Greeks named it and how they deemed of it. The Greeks called him [Greek], which name hath, as the most excellent, gone through other languages. It cometh of this word [Greek], which is "to make"; wherein I know not whether by luck or wisdom we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in calling him a maker. Which name how high and incomparable a title it is, I had rather were known by marking the scope of other sciences than by any partial allegation."
Sidney; The Defense of Poesy; vates= diviner/foreseer/prophet; "heart-ravishing knowledge;" "high flying liberty of conceit" of the poet has a "divine force;" Bible's psalms are also poetic (consolidation of temperance between Christian morality and poetics of Spenser); renewed interest in Greeks and Romans who called poets vates, poesis
"These be they that, as the first and most noble sort may justly be termed vates, so these are waited on in the excellentest languages and best understandings with the fore-described name of poets. For these, indeed, do merely make to imitate, and imitate both to delight and teach, and delight to move men to take that goodness in hand, which without delight they would fly as from a stranger; and teach to make them know that goodness whereunto they are moved:—which being the noblest scope to which ever any learning was directed, yet want there not idle tongues to bark at them."
Sidney; The Defense of Poesy; vates= diviner/foreseer/prophet; imitation --> delight and teaches --> moves men to take that goodness in hand; collective utility of education in poetry; energie and enargia= poetry moves us
"Out of water of wondrous depth, the walls Then loomed overhead to a huge height, Course after course of crafted stone, Then battlements embellished in the boldest style And turrets arranged around the ramparts With lockable loopholes set into the lookouts. The knight had not seen a more stunning structure. Further in, his eye was drawn to a hall, Attended, architecturally, by many tall towers With a series of spires spiking the air All crowned by carvings exquisitely cut. Uncountable chimneys the color of chalk Sprouted from the roof and sparkled in the sun. So perfect was that vision of painted pinnacles Clustered within the castle's enclosure It appeared that the place was cut from paper."
Sir Gawain arrives at Bertilak's castle; aritficiality (paper castles); ornamental
"It's the way of the world. Adam fell because of a woman ...if only we could love our ladies without believing their lies.
Sir Gawain upon realising Bertilak's identity as the Green Knight
"The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons to a conviction of their danger, this that you have heard is the case of every one out if Christ. That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up. You are probably not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell, but do not see the hand of God in it, but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw His hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to hold up a person who is suspended in it."
Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God; Jonathan Edwards; Can see this condition, this precarity as being held by God, God is saving you/holding you from dropping into the hellfire; Edwards wants you to feel both totally depraved/in sin, but feeling saved, experience the exemption from burning hellfire; lake of burning brimstone; hell's MOUTH (like in Fairie Queene); suspension
"The wrath of God is like great waters that are damned for the present; but they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped the more rapid and mighty is its course when once it is let loose. It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God's vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the meantime is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly rising and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw His hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it. The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string; and justice directs the bow to your heart, and strains at the bow: and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.
Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God; Jonathan Edwards; sensation; f alliteration; urgency; fallibility of man; only God's gracing saving them from horrid fall into Hell; total depravity; experience of grace
"Consider this, you that yet remain in an unregenerate state."
Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God; Jonathan Edwards; talking directly to audience; sermon effect
"What would not those poor damned, hopeless souls give for one day's opportunity such as you now enjoy?"
Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God; Jonathan Edwards;Better to live with the possibility of election than with the horrible certainty of eternal damnation; hold on to experience of being saved; hold on the feeling of being saved to make possibility feel less precarious
'O sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in! It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire if the wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment."
Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God; Jonathan Edwards;God of wrath not of covenant grace; vengeful God that has kept us in this precarious position; application and usefulness of unconverted persons in this congregation; So if there is nothing you can do to be saved, what is the use of the sermon? Unconverted will be born again; slender thread; prepare the pit
How dreadful is the state of those who are daily and hourly in danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. O that you would consider it, whether you be young or old! There is reason for fear that there are many who will hear this glorious Gospel, who will actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they are, or what thoughts they now have. It may be they are now at ease, and hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now flattering themselves that they are not the persons, promising themselves that they shall escape. If we knew that there was one person, and but one, of those that we know, that was to be the subject of this misery, what an awful thing would it be to think of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to see such a person! How might every Christian lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him! But alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember these solemn reflections in hell! And some may be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some hearers, who are now in health, and quiet and secure, may be there before tomorrow morning. Those of you who finally continue in a natural condition who may keep out of hell longest, will be there in a little time! Your damnation does not slumber; it will come swiftly, and, in all probability, very suddenly, upon many of you. You have reason to wonder that you are not already in hell. It is doubtless the case of some whom you have seen and known, that never deserved hell more than you, and that heretofore appeared as likely to have been now alive as you.
Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God; Jonathan Edwards;Looking forward and looking backward; mixing the temporality of the sermon with individuation; horror of being left behind is emphasized and singled out
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much in the same way as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours."
Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God; Jonathan Edwards;Make the judgement at stake have presence in the moment (eternal time)--judgement wont be later at some far off distance time; abhors you; dreadfully provoked; fiery wrath; abominable; precarity; hateful venomous serpent;
"This happening was a gift—just as Arthur had asked for And had yearned to hear of while the year was young. And if guests had no subject as they strolled to their seats, Now this serious concern sustained their chatter. And Gawain had been glad to begin the game, But don't be so shocked should the plot turn pear-shaped: For men might be merry when addled with mead But each year, short lived, is unlike the last And rarely resolves in the style it arrived. So the festival finishes and a new year follows In eternal sequence, season by season."
Sir Gawain accepts Beheading Game challenge from the Green Knight; game; pear-shaped; recursive time (eternal sequence of seasons)
"It is a symbol that Solomon once set in place And is taken to this day as a token of fidelity For the form of the figure is a five-pointed star And each line overlaps and links with the last So is ever eternal, and when spoken of in England Is known by the name of the endless knot. So it suits this soldier in his spotless armor, Fully faithful in five ways five times over. For Gawain was as good as the purest gold— Devoid of vices but virtuous, loyal And kind So bore that badge on both His shawl and shield alike. A prince who talked the truth: Known as the noblest knight. First he was deemed flawless in his five senses; And secondly his five fingers were never at fault; And thirdly his faith was founded in the five wounds Christ received on the cross, as the creed recalls. And fourthly, if htat soldier struggled in skirmish One thought pulled him through above all other things: The fortitude he found in the five joys Which Mary had conceived in her son, our Savior. For precisely that reason the princely rider Had the shape of her image inside his shield, So by catching her eye his courage would not crack. The fifth set of five which I heard the knight followed Included friendship and fraternity with fellow men, Purity and politeness that impressed at all times, And pity, which surpassed all pointedness. Five things Which meant more to Gawain than to most other men."
Sir Gawain; pentangle (five points; f alliteration; bob and wheel; recursiveness; emblem
Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flows; And every flower, not sweet perhaps, which grows Near thereabouts into your poesy wring; You that do dictionary's method bring Into your rhymes, running in rattling rows; You that poor Petrarch's long-deceased woes With new-born sighs and denizened wit do sing: You take wrong ways, those far-fet helps be such As do bewray a want of inward touch, And sure at length stol'n goods do come to light. But if (both for your love and skill) your name You seek to nurse at fullest breasts of fame, Stella behold, and then begin to endite.
Sir Phillip Sidney sonnet from Astrophil and Stella; ribs of Parnassus (inspiration); half-baked rhetorical imagery + dictionary-like rattling off of lines + copying classics like Petrarch --> not good poetry --> but look at Stella and you will be inspired; must write; explain and reason feelings of love
Queen Virtue's court, which some call Stella's face, Prepared by Nature's choicest furniture, Hath his front built of alabaster pure; Gold is the covering of that stately place. The door, by which, sometimes, comes forth her grace, Red porphyr is, which lock of pearl makes sure; Whose porches rich (which name of 'cheeks' endure) Marble, mixed red and white, do interlace. The windows now, through which this heavenly guest Looks o'er the world, and can find nothing such Which dare claim from those lights the name of 'best,' Of touch they are, that without touch doth touch, Which Cupid's self, from Beauty's mind did draw: Of touch they are, and poor I am their straw.
Sir Phillip Sidney; Astrophil and Stella sonnet 9; face= monumental edifice; alabaster pure + red porphyr, marble mixed red and white= colors courtly love/chivalric tradition; antanaclasis of touch; touch=glossy black stone that attracts straw; volta (shift at end?); sonnet from Renaissance humanism; chivalric love vs. physical attraction/desire
"...lying more remote, and having had little commerce with them, understanding that they were coarsely clothed, and all in the same manner, took it for granted that they had none of those fine things among them of which they made no use; and they, being a vainglorious rather than a wise people, resolved to set themselves out with so much pomp that they should look like gods, and strike the eyes of the poor Utopians with their splendour. Thus three ambassadors made their entry with a hundred attendants, all clad in garments of different colours, and the greater part in silk; the ambassadors themselves, who were of the nobility of their country, were in cloth-of-gold, and adorned with massy chains, earrings and rings of gold; their caps were covered with bracelets set full of pearls and other gems—in a word, they were set out with all those things that among the Utopians were either the badges of slavery, the marks of infamy, or the playthings of children. It was not unpleasant to see, on the one side, how they looked big, when they compared their rich habits with the plain clothes of the Utopians, who were come out in great numbers to see them make their entry; and, on the other, to observe how much they were mistaken in the impression which they hoped this pomp would have made on them. It appeared so ridiculous a show to all that had never stirred out of their country, and had not seen the customs of other nations, that though they paid some reverence to those that were the most meanly clad, as if they had been the ambassadors, yet when they saw the ambassadors themselves so full of gold and chains, they looked upon them as slaves, and forbore to treat them with reverence. You might have seen the children who were grown big enough to despise their playthings, and who had thrown away their jewels, call to their mothers, push them gently, and cry out, 'See that great fool, that wears pearls and gems as if he were yet a child!' while their mothers very innocently replied, 'Hold your peace! this, I believe, is one of the ambassadors' fools.' Others censured the fashion of their chains, and observed, 'That they were of no use, for they were too slight to bind their slaves, who could easily break them; and, besides, hung so loose about them that they thought it easy to throw their away, and so get from them.'"
Sir Thomas More's Utopia; satire --> exaggeration of lowest infamy and highest value; exaggerated image; exaggerated misinterpretation; not fit for slaves/children's toys; but even if they see gold as meaningless, the rest of the world doesn't; critical of Catholic society; 1516 published in Latin (gate-keeping)
"By them they passe, all gazing on them round, And to the Presence mount; whose glorious view Their frayle amazed senses did confound: In living Princes court none ever knew Such endlesse richesse, and so sumptuous shew; Ne Persia selfe, the nourse of pompous pride Like ever saw. And there a noble crew Of Lordes and Ladies stood on every side, Which with their presence faire, the place much beautifide." "High above all a cloth of State was spred, And a rich throne, as bright as sunny day, On which there sate most brave embellished With royall robes and grogeous array, A mayden Queene, that shoen as Titans ray, In glistring gold, and peereless pretious stone: Yet her bright blazing beautie did assay To dim the brigthnesse of her glorious throne,
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; Eurocentric anti-muslim; eastern extravagance (luxury/magical); Lucifera's House of Pride; lavish but no foundation; senses= material/earthly distractions; vanity; bright throne + even brighter Lucerifera; vanity; envy; 7 Deadly Sins; contrasted to tidy House of Holiness
"Whereof Georgos he thee gave to name; Till prickt with courage, and thy forces pryde, To faery court thou cam'st to seeke for fame, And prove thy puissaunt armes, as seemes thee best became.
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; Georgos= St. George; House of Holiness
"That done, he leads him to the highest Mount; Such one, as that same mighty man of God, That bloud-red billowes liek a walled front On either side disparted with his rod, Till that his army dry-foot through them yod, Dwelt fortie dayes upon; where writ in stone With bloudy letters by the and of God, The bitter doome of death and balefull mone He did receive, whiles flashing fire about him shone.
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; House of Holiness; mount with Contemplation; healing of body and SOUL after imprisonment in House of Pride; moses @ Mt. Sinai, Mount of Olives (christianity) + Mt. Parnassus (Christianity + poetics= temperance; this consolidation is troth)
Right well I wote most mighty Soueraine, That all this famous antique history, Of some th'aboundance of an idle braine Will iudged be, and painted forgery, Rather then matter of iust memory, Sith none, that breatheth liuing aire, does know, Where is that happy land of Faery, Which I so much do vaunt, yet no where show, But vouch antiquities, which no body can know. But let that man with better sence aduize, That of the world least part to vs is red: And dayly how through hardy enterprize, Many great Regions are discouered, Which to late age were neuer mentioned. Who euer heard of th'Indian Peru? Or who in venturous vessell measured The Amazon huge riuer now found trew? Or fruitfullest Virginia who did euer vew? Yet all these were, when no man did them know; Yet haue from wisest ages hidden beene: And later times things more vnknowne shall show. Why then should witlesse man so much misweene That nothing is, but that which he hath seene? What if within the Moones faire shining spheare? What if in euery other starre vnseene Of other worldes he happily should heare? He wo[n]der would much more: yet such to some appeare. Of Faerie lond yet if he more inquire, By certaine signes here set in sundry place He may it find; ne let him then admire, But yield his sence to be too blunt and bace, That no'te without an hound fine footing trace. And thou, O fairest Princesse vnder sky, In this faire mirrhour maist behold thy face, And thine owne realmes in lond of Faery, And in this antique Image thy great auncestry. The which O pardon me thus to enfold In couert vele, and wrap in shadowes light, That feeble eyes your glory may behold, Which else could not endure those beames bright, But would be dazled with exceeding light. O pardon, and vouchsafe with patient eare The braue aduentures of this Faery knight The good Sir Guyon gratiously to heare, In whom great rule of Temp'raunce goodly doth appeare.
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; Proem to Book II; idle brain; painted forgery (afraid that his work will be perceived as deceiving intention); Fairie land may exist just not discovered yet; new world discovered; Plato's Republic + New World; imperialism; poem is a "fayre mirrhour;" veil light so one can see; Queen Elizabeth= sweet sister Temperance; realizes a fantastical place like paper castles
"But stings and sharpest steele did far exceed The sharpnesse of his cruell rending clawes; Dead was it sure, as sure as death in deed, What ever thing does touch his ravenous pawes, Or what within his reach he ever drawes. But his most hideous head my toung to tell Does tremble:for his deepe devouring jawes Wide gaped, like the griesly mouth of hell, Through which into his darke abisse all ravin fell.
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; Redcrosse killing dragon; 3 day tribulation; must be baptized, annointed in Well of Life, Sacred Tree, almost swallowed; mouth of hell is the vulnerability; mouth=genitals=sin; killing the dragon is the harrowing of hell; mouth evokes lechery and gluttony; rendering chivalric romance Christian; hell and fell rhyme; allegory
"And after all, upon the wagon beame Rode Sathan, with a smarting whip in hand, With which he forward lasht the laesie teme, So oft as Slowth still in the mire did stand. Huge routs of people did about them band, Showting for joy, and still before their way A foggy mist had covered all the land; And underneath their feet, all scaterred lay Dead sculs and bones of men, whose life had gone astray."
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; Satan @ House of Pride; Slowth= idleness; skulls/bones = hell; Christianization; allegoreses; foggy mist; diverging pathways
"So as she bad, that witch they disaraid, And robd of royall robes, and purple pall, And ornaments that richly were displaid; Ne spared they to strip her naked all. Then when they had despoild her tire and call, Such as she was, their eyes might her behold, That her misshaped parts did them appall, A loathly, wrinckled hag, ill favoured, old, Whose secret filth good manners biddeth not be told. Her craftie head was altogether bald, And as in hate of honorable eld, Was overgrowne with scurfe and filthy scald, Her teeth out of her rotten gummes were feld, And her sowre breath abhominably smeld; Her dried dugs, like bladders lacking wind, Hong downe, and filthy matter from them weld; Her wrizled skin as rough, as maple rind, So scabby was, that would have loathd all womankind. Her neather parts, the shame of all her kind, My chaster Muse for shame doth blush to write; But at her rompe she growing had behind a foxes taile, with dong all fowly dight; And eke her feete most monstrous were in sight; For one of them was like an Eagles claw, With gripping talaunts armd to greedy fight, The other like a Beares uneven paw: More ugly shape yet never living creature saw.
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; after freeing Redcrosse from House of Pride, killing of Orgoglio; unmasking of Duessa; likened to the ***** of Babylon; shame in female body (coming from flesh); stripped/exposed; bestial; scattological
"And next to him rode lustfull Lechery, Upon a bearded Goat, whose rugged haire And whally eyes (the signe of gelosy,) Was like the person self, whom he did beare: Who rough, and blacke, and filthy did appeare, Unseemly man to please faire Ladies eye; Yet he of Ladies oft was loved deare, When fairer faces were bid standen by: O who does know the bent of womens fantasy?"
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; allegoreses; Lechery; goat= rough, coarse; unfit for ladies but still loved by them?; unruly; House of Pride
"The generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline: Which for that I conceived shoude be most plausible and pleasing, being coloured with an historicall fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, rather for variety of matter, then for profite of the ensample."
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; how to "fashion a gentleman;" delight + profit by example; temperance (interlaying; duality of pagan + Christian worlds); suggests when these coincide= troth; sentence and solas
"But he the knight, whose semblaunt he did beare, The true Saint George was wandred far away, Still flying from his thoughts and gealous feare; Will was his guide, and griefe led him astray. At last his chaunst to meete upon the way A faithless Sarazin all armed to point, In whose great shield was writ with letters gay Sans foy: full large of limbe and every joint He was, and cared not for God or man a point."
Spenser; The Fairie Queene; while Archimago is imitating Redcrosse; Redcrosse who fled because of jealousy/fear is fighting Sarazin and Sansfoy; eurocentric anti-Muslim rhetoric; astray vs. way; allegoreses
"Unconstant Fortune, thou art most to blame, Who casts us down into so low a frame Where our great friends we cannot daily see, So great a difference is there in degree. Many are placed in those orbs of state, Partners in honor, so ordained by Fate, Nearer in show, yet farther off in love, In which, the lowest always are above. But whither am I carried in conceit, My wit too weak to conster of the great. Why not? although we are but born of earth, We may behold the heavens, despising death; And loving heaven that is so far above, May in the end vouchsafe us entire love."
The Description of Cookham, Amelia Lanyer; Estate poem (not country house poem); loses the estate and female companionship; lack of entitlement for females; "My wit is too weak to conster of the great; Her conceits describe universal human feelings + social differences; unable to escape social hierarchy an sources of power → Cookham becomes a space in which she can speak, that's why the loss of it is so melancholic
"And you sweet Cooke-ham, whom these ladies leave, I now must tell the grief you did conceive"
The Description of Cookham; Amelia Lanyer; estate poetry; conceive= pregnancy, female power to create life; Imagines that she is going to give voice to the estate/male property itself ; feminizes estate who conceives of grief; Estate conceives of a grief (idea, children); Not just appropriating the act of making something new but making a statement about variations of estate and degree that keep women off of property and unable to hold property; types of property that alienate women from writing itself; women alienated from position of authority
But how may I this honour now attain, That cannot dye the colour black a liar? My Poynz, I cannot from me tune to feign, To cloak the truth for praise without desert Of them that list all vice for to retain. I cannot honour them that sets their part With Venus and Bacchus all their life long; Nor hold my peace of them although I smart. I cannot crouch nor kneel to do so great a wrong, To worship them, like God on earth alone, That are as wolves these sely lambs among. I cannot with my word complain and moan, And suffer nought, nor smart without complaint, Nor turn the word that from my mouth is gone. I cannot speak and look like a saint, Use willes for wit, and make deceit a pleasure, And call craft counsel, for profit still to paint. I cannot wrest the law to fill the coffer With innocent blood to feed myself fat, And do most hurt where most help I offer. I am not he that can allow the state Of him Caesar, and damn Cato to die, That with his death did scape out of the gate From Caesar's hands (if Livy do not lie) And would not live where liberty was lost; So did his heart the common weal apply.
Thomas Wyatt; Mine own John Poynz; cannot use rhetorical language to advance falsehoods; have to call what is black black; not indulge in artificial things like wine/love; wolves/lambs; "use willes for wit, and make deceit a pleasure;" Caesar & Cato (king & him); Renaissance humanism emphasis on reason; rediscovery of classics
"Then a stern rebuke was bound to come From the young warrior to the ones who had been cowards."
Wiglaf @ Beowulf's funeral; consolidation of chivalrous code and Christianity (God weakened dragon but no one gathered to help)
Mine own John Poynz, since ye delight to know The cause why that homeward I me draw, And flee the press of courts, whereso they go, Rather than to live thrall under the awe Of lordly looks, wrappèd within my cloak, To will and lust learning to set a law: It is not for because I scorn or mock The power of them, to whom fortune hath lent Charge over us, of right, to strike the stroke. But true it is that I have always meant Less to esteem them than the common sort, Of outward things that judge in their intent Without regard what doth inward resort. I grant sometime that of glory the fire Doth twyche my heart. Me list not to report Blame by honour, and honour to desire.
Wyatt; Mine own John Poynz; banished from court 1536; "flee the press of courts; "THRALL;" esteem the powerful less than commoners who are only fixated upon external things; i do not attack honor or honor desire (honorable); Renaissance humanism
Say he is rude that cannot lie and feign; The lecher a lover; and tyranny To be the right of a prince's reign. I cannot, I; no, no, it will not be! This is the cause that I could never yet Hang on their sleeves that way, as thou mayst see, A chip of chance more than a pound of wit. This maketh me at home to hunt and to hawk, And in foul weather at my book to sit; In frost and snow then with my bow to stalk; No man doth mark whereso I ride or go: In lusty leas at liberty I walk. And of these news I feel nor weal nor woe, Save that a clog doth hang yet at my heel. No force for that, for it is ordered so, That I may leap both hedge and dyke full well. I am not now in France to judge the wine, With saffry sauce the delicates to feel; Nor yet in Spain, where one must him incline Rather than to be, outwardly to seem: I meddle not with wits that be so fine. Nor Flanders' cheer letteth not my sight to deem Of black and white; nor taketh my wit away With beastliness; they beasts do so esteem. Nor I am not where Christ is given in prey For money, poison, and treason at Rome— A common practice used night and day: But here I am in Kent and Christendom Among the Muses where I read and rhyme; Where if thou list, my Poinz, for to come, Thou shalt be judge how I do spend my time.
Wyatt; Mine own John Poynz; cannot advance illogical falsehoods through rhetoric (rhetoric can make a thesis and its antithesis true); must use reason; Renaissance Humanism; "clog" that keeps him in country; Spain/France/Flanders/Italy (worlds of indulgence and falsehoods); Kent and Christendom; invites John Poynz to see how he spends his time making verse
I am not he such eloquence to boast To make the crow singing as the swan; Nor call the lion of cowardes beasts the most That cannot take a mouse as the cat can; And he that dieth for hunger of the gold Call him Alexander; and say that Pan Passeth Apollo in music many fold; Praise Sir Thopias for a noble tale, And scorn the story that the Knight told; Praise him for counsel that is drunk of ale; Grin when he laugheth that beareth all the sway, Frown when he frowneth and groan when is pale; On others' lust to hang both night and day: None of these points would ever frame in me. My wit is nought—I cannot learn the way. And much the less of things that greater be, That asken help of colours of device To join the mean with each extremity, With the nearest virtue to cloak alway the vice; And as to purpose, likewise it shall fall To press the virtue that it may not rise; As drunkenness good fellowship to call; The friendly foe with his double face Say he is gentle and courteous therewithal; And say that favel hath a goodly grace In eloquence; and cruelty to name Zeal of justice and change in time and place; And he that suffer'th offence without blame Call him pitiful; and him true and plain That raileth reckless to every man's shame.
Wyatt; Mine own John Poynz; cannot say that Pan (inferior) passeth Appollo in music many fold"; "friendly foe with his double face;" use rhetoric to advance reason not falsehoods (illogical falsehoods that only exist in rhetorical worlds); Renaissance humanism
"The leader of the troop unlocked his word-hoard the distinguished one delivered this answer:"
arrival of Beowulf to land of Danes to help Hrothgar with Grendel; "word-hoard"
"Undaunted, sitting astride his horse, the coast-guard answered: 'Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done."
arrival of Beowulf to land of the Danes; chivalrous code of word and deed; significance of the spoken word
"In all his vestments he revealed himself veritably verdant! From his belt hooks and buckle to the baubles and gems Arrayed so richly around his costume And adorning the saddle, stitched onto silk. All the details of his dress are difficult to describe, Embroidered as it was with butterflies and birds, Green beads emblazoned on a background of gold. All the horse's tack —harness strap, hind strap, The eye of the bit, each alloy and enamel And the stirrups he stood in were similarly tinted, And the same with the cantle and the skirts of the saddle, All glimmering and glinting with the greenest jewels. And the horse: every hair was green, from hoof To mane. A steed of pure green stock. Each snort and shudder strained The hand-stitched bridle, but Hid rider had him reined."
arrival of the Green Knight; artificial vs. natural elements; ornamental detail
"For murder of kinsmqen. Go now quickly, Dearest Wiglaf, under the gray stone Where the dragon is laid out, lost to his treasure; Hurry to feast your eyes on the hoard. Away you go: I want to examine That ancient gold, gaze my fill On those garnered jewels; my going will be easier For having seen the treasure, a less troubled letting-go Of the life and lordship I have long maintained."
death of Beowulf
"Shield was still thriving when his time came and he crossed over into the Lord's keeping. His warrior band did what he bade them when he laid down the law among the Danes: they shouldered him out to the sea's flood, the chief they revered who had log ruled them. A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbor, ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince. They stretched their beloved lord in his boat, laid out by the mast, amidships, the great ring-giver. Far-fetched treasures were piled upon him, and precious gear. I never heard before of a ship so well furbished with battle-tackle, bladed weapons and coats of mail. Themassed treasure was loaded on top of him: it would travel far on out into the ocean's sway. They decked his body no less bountifully with offerings than those first ones did who cast him away when he was a child and launched him alone out over the waves. And they set a gold standard up high above his head and let him drift to wind and tide, bewailing him and mourning their loss. No man can tell, no wise man in hall or weathered veteran knows for certain who salvaged that load."
death of Shield Sheafson; funeral & burial; "great ring-giver;" lament; orality
"The Geat people built a pyre for Beowulf, Stacked and decked it until it stood four-square, Hung with helmets, heavy war-shields And shining armor, just as he had ordered. Then his warriors laid him in the middle of it, Mourning a lord far-famed and beloved. On a height they kindled the hugest of all Funeral fires; fumes of wood smoke Billowed darkly up, the blaze roared And drowned out their weeping, wind died down And flames wrought havoc in the hot bone-house, Burning it to the core. They were disconsolate And wailed aloud for their lord's decease. A Geat woman too sang out in grief: With hair bound up, she unburdened herself Of her worst fears, a wild litany Of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded, Enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles, Slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke. Then the Geat people began to construct A mound on a headland, high and imposing, A marker that sailors could see from far away, And in ten days they had done the work. It was their hero's memorial; what remained from fire They housed inside it, behind a wall As worthy of him as their workmanship could make it. And they buried torques in the barrow, and jewels And a trove of such things as trespassing men Had once dared to drag from the hoard. They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure, Gold under gravel, gone to earth, As useless to men now as it ever was. Then twelve warriors rode around the tomb, Chieftain's sons, champions in battle, All of them distraught, chanting in dirges, Mourning his loss as a man and a king.
funeral of Beowulf; collective mourning/lament; elegy; theme of burial
"So listen a little while to my tale if you will And I'll tell it as it's told in the town where it trips from The tongue And as it has been inked In stories bold and strong, Through letters which, once linked, Have lasted loud and long."
intro to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; after talking about Troy --> Britain (civilization); orality of listening to a tale (but written in an ornamental manuscript); "lasted loud and long;" alliteration