The World of English Literature

Essay: Symbolism and Meaning in Donne's "The Canonization"

2006-03-18T06:08:00.000-08:00

Symbolism and Meaning in John Donne's “The Canonization”

Starting in the late 16th Century and lasting throughout the 17th Century, was a form of poetry that has come to be known as Metaphysical. Though not a poetic movement in the sense of having a manifesto (as did the Romantics), these poets explored similar themes such as love and religion, approaching them in a practical yet transcendent manner. One of the greatest of these Metaphysical Poets was John Donne (1572-1631). Writing in a time of political, social and religious upheaval, his poetry is largely concerned with the enigmatic relationship between a person’s sexuality and spirituality. This question is raised in his poem “The Canonization”, in which the social stigma surrounding an overt love affair is compared to the martyrdom of saints. Many poetic techniques, characteristic of Metaphysical poetry, are used to develop this theme, as love is established as an alternative religion to Orthodox Christianity and the societal conventions it propagates.

The structure of “The Canonization” is an example of a love Lyric, and operating within considerable structural constraints. The poem consists of 5 stanzas, each of 9 lines, with a Rhyme scheme of ABBACCCAA. This could be described as an alternative Quatrain followed by a tercet and a rhyming couplet, thereby highlighting the epigrammatical origins of Metaphysical poetry, however none of these sections are separated by voltars to make this analysis explicit. This strict format can be understood as showing social constraints within which the persona must operate, and to whom the persona’s love is held accountable. The metre of the lines varies within individual stanzas, alternating between iambic Pentameter, tetrameter, and trimeter, often changing Foot as well. These various meters are, however, to some extent consistent between stanzas. This is a reflection of the Metaphysical attempts at a more conversational Rhythm, so as to be more accessible in meaning. This strict structure also allows for distinct stages in the development in the persona’s argument, however jumbled these stages may be in comparison to convention. The first Stanza describes the viewpoint of society (however briefly) and passes judgement on that viewpoint. The second stanza presents the case of the persona’s argument. A decision is therefore already made before the reader has heard all cases, forcing them to accept the message of the text, and allowing the following stanzas to operate on that assumption of agreement. The structure has thereby played a major role in the persuasion of readers, and manipulation of their reader position.

The first impressions of the meaning of any poem are given by the poem’s title. The title “The Canonization” has direct religious connotations; however, Donne manipulates reader preconceptions in order to generate meaning. Readers may think of canonization in terms of idyllic saints, given devotion by the Roman Catholic Church in particular. Donne, though originally a Roman Catholic himself, wrote much polemic poetry against Catholicism (following his switch to Protestantism), and is therefore critical of this romanticised view of saints. Instead, he contrasts these reader preconceptions with the actual struggle and torture of martyrdom that created these saints. The poem deals with this later view of canonization. In this title, Donne gives readers a potentially false sense of prior understanding of the poem’s message, a sense which is used to create a Paradox between readers’ understanding and the text’s message, a paradox used throughout the poem to persuade readers into Donne’s point of view.
The first stanza deals with the reaction of society to the persona’s love. No explanation is given of the details of the love affair, nor if there are any particular moral questions of which society could be critical. Instead, the persona lists society’s General complaints against the obsession of love. The poem begins in true Metaphysical form with:
For Godsake hold your tongue, and let me love,

This has a sense of immediacy and converstionalism, with the reference to a listener’s “…tongue…” creating an awareness of prior words in the conversation. Metaphysical poets strove for this more realistic representation of language (realistic in comparison to their contemporary poet’s, though perhaps not compared to modern standards) in order to affect the poem’s accessibility and high level of reader engagement. Immediately the reader is addressed and given the proposition to “…let me (the speaker) love…”. The opening line also establishes the dialectic of God (the conventions of religion and social decorousness) in contrast to love (more specifically a love affair, with some sexual aspect). The tension between these two powers is discussed throughout the poem. This line is followed by a listing of reasons against the overt love of the persona. These are almost given in the manner of an inverted blazon, with the listing of physical defects of the persona (“…palsie…gout…gray haires…”). Though no link is explicitly made, such catalogues of the problems of age were common in carpe diem poems, extolling the need to ‘make love while we may’. Reader’s at the time of the poem’s composition would have recognised this and possibly anticipated that genre of poetry to follow. However, again Donne challenges the preconceptions of readers by refusing to conform. Reference is next made to the Elizabethan belief in fate/fortune, emphasised by the alliteration “…ruined fortune flout…”. The reasons for not loving are that the persona is too old and that it will ruin his fortunes for the future. It should be noted that no mention is made of the persona’s love interest. The love remains a singular activity until the end of the second stanza. In the second half of the first stanza, the persona dismisses the criticisms of society, addressing the critics and prescribing for them a course of action. The treasures of wealth, education, destiny and rank are given to society, if the persona is allowed to love in return. The search for these commodities was expanding dramatically at the time of Donne, especially with the exploration of the New World and the precarious position of the British monarchy; however, here they are regarded as worthless in comparison to love. The tone in discussing them verges on mockery, it certainly demeans the value given to them by the era. In return for love, society is also given leave to honour an ambiguous ‘him’, either the monarchy, the King, or perhaps Christ. This section may possibly have biblical connotations to the questioning of Christ over taxes paid to Caesar (Christ pointing to the face of Caesar on the coins as warranting that they are given as tax). However, again the story is inverted, as God and the social conventions supported by religion take the role of Caesar, in contrast to love playing the role of God. In this extended judgement of a society critical of love, Donne confronts any readership in sympathy with that opinion, either antagonising such readers or persuading them into a less resistant reading of the poem.

In contrast to conventions of Rhetoric, judgement is passed on those in disagreement with the persona in stanza one, before the persona defends his case in stanza two. This is carried out through successive rhetorical questions:
Alas, alas, who’s injur’d by my love?

What merchants ships have my sighs drown’d?
Implicit descriptions of the tortures intrinsic to love (as opposed to being imposed by society) are made with reference to “…sighs…teares…colds…heats…”. These are linked with successive natural disasters, which may also be seen as acts of God, such as floods and diseases. With this interpretation, Donne can be viewed as verging on apostasy, as he discretely criticises God by pointing out that love has no hand in causing the disasters for which God can be viewed as responsible. Whereas God causes ten plagues of Egypt in the Bible, and strikes many people dead:

When did the heats which my veines fill
Adde one man to the plaguie Bill?

Love is thereby established as an alternative religion to Orthodox understandings of Christianity. The reference to soldiers and lawyers, towards the stanza’s conclusion, is again symptomatic of Metaphysical poetry. The Metaphysical poets often compared metaphysical themes such as love to more practical aspects of life, such as law and war. Though here the legal and military aspects do not play an active role in the poem’s imagery, their inclusion challenges readers. Readers are encouraged to acknowledge the practical applications of the poem’s message, as well as provided with an illustration of the harmless nature of love (whereas conventional religion often attacks the offices of war and law as sinful). The stanza is really concerned with proving that love in no way hurts the operations of society, and that there is therefore no need for society to hurt the operations of love. In the final lines of the stanza, a second lover enters the poem, a voiceless female figure. Gender studies of “The Canonization” and Metaphysical poetry in general, would argue that this is representative of a depersonalised and objectified view of women, that they are merely objects of love, rather than being active participants in the love affair. This is supported by the fact that in leading up to the introduction of the female, the love is owned by the male. This is not only in the fact that he provides the discourse about love, but that it is often referred to as “…my love…” and he as the only lover that needs release from the taunts of society. When the lady does enter, it is not as an equal to the male persona, but either separated from him (“…she and I do love…”) or spoken for by him. Love is a male dominated issue, which is revealed through the gaps and silences of the poem.
The third stanza focuses on the essence of the love itself. Though the male voice retains command of the discourse, the female is joined to him as an “…us…”. Little regard is given in this stanza, to the criticisms of society. The real issue is now the saintly nature of love, with criticisms of love becoming a side-point. The persona declares:
Call us what you will, wee’are made such by love;

confirming that it is their censure within society that makes them martyrs, effecting their canonisation. The two figures become meaningless as themselves (“…mee another flye…”) as the poem’s focus shifts to an intense view of their love as an entity. The condensed conceit:
We’are Tapers too, and at our own cost die,
again reflects the lovers’ martyrdom to the religion of love. Conventional symbols of the “…Eagle and the Dove…” are used to describe the relationship within the love affair. The eagle, as a conventional image of male strength, and the dove, representing female gentleness, juxta posed together, reveal the inequality between the partners (evidence of the Patriarchal system contemporary to the poet). These two binary opposites brought together can also be viewed as part of the Neoplatonic understanding, that the entire world is present within the two lovers, all the opposing forces (represented by the eagle and dove) brought together within them. The mythological Phoenix is next alluded to, bringing with it the religious connotations of resurrection awaiting the lovers. However, these spiritual understandings are called into question by sexual images that follow:
By us, we two being one, are it,
So, to one neutrall thing both sexes fit.
Wee dye and rise the same,…

It is again almost blasphemous the combination of such copulative images with the religious connotations of resurrection (“…dye and rise…). The final line of the stanza refers to the love as “…Mysterious…”. This has further religious overtones, with the understanding that the term ‘sacrament’ is derived from the Latin for ‘mystery’. The sexual act is transformed into a Sacrament, celebrated by two saints, in worship of the religion of love. By now the poem is not concerned with whether society should censure the persona’s love, but is instead occupied with evangelising in the name of the religion of love. Readers are moved through this change in issue of the poem, and are thereby prevented from forming any resistance to the original premise of the poem.
The fourth stanza begins with the proposition that love is intrinsic to life:
Wee can dye by it, if not live by love,
followed by a reflection on the fate of the lovers once their martyrdom is effected, that is, after their deaths. It is not debated whether the lovers will be remembered (the fact that both persona and reader agree over the lovers’ status as “…legend(s)…” is assumed by the text), instead the issue is in what form that memory will be recorded. The Historical form of “…Chronicle…” is juxta posed with the beautiful “…sonnets…”, transformed by Metaphor into religious “…hymnes…”. In this way, the lovers’ sexual understanding is enshrined in both secular and religious memory, a union of the spiritual and sexual which has been the aim of the poem. This remembrance is alluded to as a creation of Heaven, as “…pretty roomes…” may refer to Christ’s ‘many rooms in my father’s house’. The second half of the stanza employs conceits to further expound on the fate of the lovers’ “…legend…”. The lovers are compared to “…The greatest ashes…” and the poem which immortalises them “…a well wrought urn…”. The form of “…Chronicle…” is compared to “…half-acre tombes…” which wouldn’t suit the encasement of ashes. The specific compact conceit of “…ashes…” for the lovers is particularly appropriate, considering that burning at the stake was a common form of martyrdom. The image thereby provides a link with the stanza’s concluding line and the title of the poem, “…Canoniz’d for Love…”. At this stage, the argument is proven that the lovers are saints, and readings of the text have been limited so that no other empathy can be felt for any other viewpoint besides that of the persona. This has been achieved by the systematic expulsion of other voices from the text, first the female and by now the opinion of society. Readers are not provided any opportunity to see the issues from another light; therefore, their position on the issues of the text has been manipulated in compliance with the views of the persona and subsequently Donne.

With an argument already resolved and a readership in total sympathy for the persona, the final stanza opens instructing readers to “…thus invoke us…” (an instruction emphasised by assonance or in-rhyme). It is confirmed that the lovers are canonized martyrs, worthy of devotion. Ironically, this devotion would come from conventional religious, the very society that martyred the lovers in the poem’s beginning. The fifth stanza relies heavily on the Neoplatonic understanding that quintessence of the world can be found wholly within the two lovers. They are “…one anothers hermitage…” a message ironic within the poem’s historical context of world exploration and deeper understanding of the heavens (with Galileo giving credibility to Copernican theories of the solar system). This philosophical understanding is then applied to the intermingling of sexual and spiritual love:
You, to whom love was peace (religious, conventional), that now is rage (passionate, sexual);
This quintessential love is further explored with the scientific conceit, comparing lovemaking to the experiment in alchemy, extracting essences in “…glasses…”. Again, the practical scientific analogy combined with the metaphysical theme of love, acts as a persuasive tool in the ensuring of reader sympathy. The final statement in the poem:
…Beg from above
A patterne of your love!
though an unsatisfying rhyming couplet (as in its use in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, it fails to summarise the thematic journey of the poem), does reveal the ultimate transformation of love. Love is not to be ridiculed, as in the poem’s opening; it is now a religion, martyrdom, a canonisation, and a grace to be evoked from above.

“The Canonization” by John Donne is a complex piece of rhetoric, which uses persuasive and poetic techniques to manipulate readers through different understandings of the place of love within society. Beginning with the condemnation of over love by society, the persona establishes an argument by which means love challenges conventional religion, before taking its place as religion, martyrdom, canonisation and grace. Different techniques are used to effect this transformation, including the metaphysical conceit, Irony, paradox, structure and sound devices. These are all performed within the metaphysical style, recognisable in its attempts at conversationalism, accessibility, refusal of convention, and witticisms. By creating this intricate forum of expression, John Donne has, to considerable extent, been able to link the enigmatic opposites of human sexuality and spirituality within the religion of love.

Source: Purwarno Hadinata

Essay: Volpone as Dark Comedy

2006-03-08T03:18:00.000-08:00

Volpone as Dark Comedy
By: Odevsitesi.com

As Sorell explains Volpone Jonsons greatest and most intense comedy.It was first performed in 1605 or 1606 at the Globe Theatre and remains one of the most biting satires on the more dishonoruable aspect of human nature.(79)
Sorell also explains that Jonsons play is a masterpiece of types and cynical commentary on the greed and vanity that formed the large part of society it criticises.(83)

In Volpone all of the characters are equally greedy.So the audience does not get angry for volpones victimising them.They deserve their end.This play ends with punishment not just ridicule and this ending makes it dark comedy.

In fact comedy should have a happy endihg but in this play we see that people are punished at the end of the play, thus it doesnt have a satisfactory ending for a comedy so we can say that it is a dark comedy because Ben Jonson was the great comic and satiric writer of the English Renaissance.He also protested in Volpone the inhumanity of greedy people such as greedy lawyers.In Volpone Ben Jonson celebrates the joy of a good trick.He emphasizes the fun and the humour of deceit but he does not overlook its nastiess, and in the end he punishes the deceivers.

According to Wittenburg there are 4 types of love in the play :

• Sexual love (between volpone and Lady Would Be)
• Self Love (mosca and the others loving themselves)
• Love of money
• True Love (Between Bonoria and Celia)
People are weak about money and they can do everything for it.The love of money is shown as the root of all evil.The reputation of venice as awordly, commercial and cosmopolitan place darken the comedy.(123)

According to Watson with Volpone or the fox Johson turned to his satirical talent and developed his own species of satiric comedy.Volpone is the first and the greatest of a series of comedies which show Jonsons characteristic mixture ;

• of savagery and humour
• of moral feeling of the monstrous absurdities of human nature (128)Volpone cunningly mixes a number of genres and ideas well known to Renaissance audience : Volpone can be read as :
• a moral example
• a best fable: It is a shorttale in which the principle actors are of animals, as their names reveal.
• a satiric play (there is satire on English life is general)
• a humour play However, unlike in the conventional comedy, good does not necessarity triumph at the end, for even the state itself is shown to be easily carrupted. Volpones avarice seems to be epidemic and good characters like Celia and Bonaria stand at the mercy of evil. As Watson explains the play is optimistic.A principal theme is the way that greed can make people gullible.In playing their trick, which focuses on exposing the greed of others, volpone and mosca also expose their own selfishness and greed (which is greater than that of victims) The setting is Renaissance Italy, accepted by the English imagination of the time as the proper home of vice.

Poem: Kubla Khan by S. T. Coleridge

2006-02-26T04:10:00.000-08:00

Kubla Khan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is about the poem. For the emperor, see Kublai Khan.

Kubla Khan is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which takes its title from the Mongol/Chinese emperor Kublai Khan, of the Yuan dynasty. Coleridge claimed that it was written in the autumn of 1797 at a farmhouse near Exmoor, but it may have been composed on one of a number of other visits to the farm. It may also have been revised a number of times before it was first published in 1816.

Coleridge claimed that the poem was inspired by an opium-induced dream (implicit in the poem's subtitle A Vision in a Dream), but that the composition was interrupted by the person from Porlock. This claim seems unlikely, as most opium users have tremendous difficulty recalling dreams when opium was ingested just prior to sleeping. Some have speculated that the vivid imagery of the poem stems from a waking hallucination, albeit most likely opium-induced.

There is widespread speculation on the poem's meaning, some suggesting the author merely is portraying his vision while others insist on a theme or purpose. Some critics see it as a metaphor for sexual intercourse. Others believe it is a poem stressing the beauty of creation.

The full text is reproduced here, along with the famous note with which it was accompanied when first published, as well as a marginal note on an original manuscript copy in Coleridge's own hand, and a quote from William Bartram which is believed to have been a source of the poem.

Kubla Khan inspired the creators of the Xanadu House in the 1980s to name it Xanadu.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Kubla Khan
OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.
A FRAGMENT.
Coleridge's published note and another note on its composition

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In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

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Autumn of 1797 or (more likely) spring of 1798, published 1816, 1828, 1829, 1834
(proofed against E. H. Coleridge's 1927 edition of STC's poems and a ca. 1898 edition of STC's Poetical Works, ``reprinted from the early editions'')

Notes on Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan, Coleridge's note, published with the poem
The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], and, as far as the Author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits.

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage: ``Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.'' The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!

Then all the charm

Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other. Stay awile,
Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes--
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo, he stays,
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror.
Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. : but the to-morrow is yet to come.
As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease.

Kubla Khan, STC's note on a manuscript copy
This fragment with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a sort of Reverie brought on by two grains of Opium taken to check a dysentery, at a Farm House between Porlock & Linton, a quarter of a mile from Culbone Church, in the fall of the year, 1797.

Kubla Khan, One of STC's sources
From William Bartram (1739-1823) record of his travels to America, Travels, published 1792:

... in front, just under my feet, was the enchanting and amazing crystal fountain which incessantly threw up from dark rocky caverns below, tons of water every minute, forming a basin, capacious enough for large shallops to ride in, and a creek of four or five feet depth of water and near twenty yards over, which meanders six miles through green meadows, ... directly opposite to the mouth or outlet of the creek, is a continual and amazing ebullition where the waters are thrown up in such abundance and amazing force, as to jet and swell up two or three feet above the common surface: white sand and small particles of shells are thrown up with the waters near to the top, ... The ebullition is astonishing and continual, though its greatest force of fury intermits, regularly, for the space of thiry seconds of time: ...

Kubla Khan, Marj's note
This transition reminds me of Ravel's Bolero, where the orchestra screams and grunts and plunks itself down into a new, sweeter, key, and then builds in intensity again.
Later note - I listened again to a recording of Bolero, and of course that's not how Bolero really goes--merely how it goes in my head when I read Kubla.

Essay: P. B. Shelley "A Defence of Poetry"

2006-02-01T01:29:00.000-08:00

Selections from
A Defence of Poetry
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
Selected by Jack Lynch

An observation of the regular mode of the occurrence of this harmony, in the language of poetical minds, together with its relation to music, produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms of harmony and language. Yet it is by no means essential that a poet should accomodate his language to this traditional form, so that the harmony which is its spirit, be observed. The practise is indeed convenient and popular and to be preferred, especially in such composition as includes much action: but every great poet must inevitably innovate upon the example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versification. The distinction between poets and prose-writers is a vulgar error. The distinction between philosophers and poets has been anticipated.

Plato was essentially a poet — the truth and splendour of his imagery and the melody of his language is the most intense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forebore to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include under determinate forms, the varied pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence of his periods but with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm which satisfies the sense no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect; it is a strain which distends, and then bursts the circumference of the readers' mind and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy. — All the Authors of revolutions in opinion are not only necessarily poets as they are inventors, nor even as their words unveil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in the life of truth; but as their periods are harmonious and rhythmical and contain in themselves the elements of verse; being the echo of the eternal music. Nor are those supreme poets, who have employed traditional forms of rhythm on account of the form and action of their subjects, less incapable of perceiving and teaching the truth of things, than those who have omitted that form. Shakespear, Dante and Milton (to confine ourselves to modern writers.) are philosophers of the very loftiest powers.

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But in periods of the decay of social life, the drama sympathizes with that decay. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great master-pieces of antiquity, divested of all harmonious accompaniment of the kindred arts; and often the very form misunderstood: or a weak attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer considers as moral truths; and which are usually no more than specious flatteries of some gross vice or weakness with which the author in common with his auditors are infected. Hence what has been called the classical and the domestic drama. Addison's Cato is a specimen of the one, and would it were not superfluous to cite examples of the other! To such purposes Poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion: which divested of imagination are other names for caprice and appetite. The period in our own history of the greatest degradation of the drama is the reign of Charles II when all forms in which poetry had been accustomed to be expressed become hymns to the triumph of kingly power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone illuminating an age unworthy of him. At such periods the calculating principle pervades all the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit succeeds to humour; we laugh from self complacency and triumph instead of pleasure; malignity, sarcasm & contempt succeeds to sympathetic merriment; we hardly laugh, but we smile. Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more active if less disgusting: it is a monster for which the corruption of society for ever brings forth new food; which it devours in secret.

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The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the stream of time which unites the modern and the antient world. The distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton have idealised, are merely the mask and the mantle in which these great poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a difficult question to determine how far they were conscious of the distinction which must have subsisted in their minds between their own creeds and that of the people. Dante at least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it by placing Riphæus whom Virgil calls justissimus unus in Paradise, and observing a most heretical caprice in his distribution of rewards and punishments. And Milton's poem contains within itself a philosophical refutation of that system of which, by a strange and natural antithesis, it has been a chief popular support. Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character as expressed in Paradise Lost. It is a mistake to suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, these things are evil; and although venial in a slave are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy — not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alledged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has so far violated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as to have alledged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius. He mingled as it were the elements of human nature, as colours upon a single pallet, and arranged them into the composition of his great picture according to the laws of epic truth; that is, according to the laws of that principle by which a series of actions of the external universe, and of intelligent and ethical beings is calculated to excite the sympathy of succeeding generations of mankind. The Divina Comedia, and Paradise Lost have conferred upon modern mythology a systematic form; and when change and time shall have added one more superstition to the mass of those which have arisen and decayed upon the earth, commentators will be learnedly employed in elucidating the religion of ancestral Europe, only not utterly forgotten because it will have been stamped with the eternity of genius.

Essay: Analysis in Volpone

2006-01-24T03:16:00.000-08:00

Dedication, Argument, and Prologue
From Sparknotes

Summary
The play is dedicated to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, both of which had recently awarded Jonson honorary doctorates at the time of the play's writing. He briefly discusses the moral intentions of the play and its debt to classical drama. In the Argument, Jonson provides a brief summary of the play's plot in the form of an acrostic on Volpone's name. The prologue then introduces the play to the viewing audience, informing them that "with a little luck," it will be a hit; Jonson ends by promising that the audience's cheeks will turn red from laughter after viewing his work.

Analysis
These opening parts of the play, before we are introduced to the action, may seem superfluous. But they help us understand the play in several ways. First, in the banal sense; the Argument, as Jonson terms it, provides in brief encapsulated form the premise of the play, a premise that will be fully introduced in the first scene.

The Dedication, however, gives us a clue as to Jonson's intentions in writing Volpone. First of all, he is intent on writing a "moral" play. By taking to task those "poetasters" (his derogatory term for an inferior playwright) who have disgraced the theatrical profession with their immoral work, Jonson highlights the moral intentions of his play. His play will make a moral statement. And it will do so in line with the traditions of drama followed by classical dramatists, that is, the dramatists of ancient Greece. This connection to the past further indicates that the play we are about to read (or see) is a work of serious intellectual and moral weight.

But, in the Prologue, we see a different side of Jonson. This side of Jonson is boastful—this play was written in five weeks, says Jonson, all the jokes are mine, I think it's going to be a huge hit, and you are all going to laugh hysterically until your cheeks turn red. The Prologue sets a boisterous tone that the rest of the play will follow. So in these opening passages, Jonson begins to mix a serious intellectual and moral message with a boisterous, light- hearted and entertaining tone, reinforcing the explicit promise he makes in the Prologe "to mix profit with your pleasure." In other words, says Jonson, Volpone will be a work that will educate you but also entertain you at the same time.

Essay: George Eliot and Middlemarch

2006-01-20T04:35:00.000-08:00

George Eliot (1819-1880) - pseudonym for Mary Ann Cross, also Marian Evans, original surname Evans
From Kirjasto

Victorian writer, a humane freethinker, whose insightful psychological novels paved way to modern character portrayals - contemporary of Dostoevsky (1821-1881), who at the same time in Russia developed similar narrative techniques. Eliot's liaison with the married writer and editor George Henry Lewes arise among the rigid Victorians much indignation, which calmed down with the progress of her literary fame.

"Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years as a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common." (from Middlemarch, 1871-72)
Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) was born in Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire. Her father was a carpenter who rose to be a land agent. When she was a few months old, the family moved to Griff, a 'cheerful red-brick, ivory-covered house', and there Eliot spent 21 years of his life among people that he later depicted in her novels. She was educated at home and in several schools, and developed a strong evangelical piety at Mrs. Wallington's School at Neneaton. However, later Eliot rejected her dogmatic faith. When her mother died in 1836, she took charge of the family household. In 1841 she moved with her father to Coventry, where she lived with him until his death in 1849. During this time she met Charles Bray, a free-thinking Coventry manufacturer. His wife, Caroline (Cara) was the sister of Charles Hennel, the author of a work entitled An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (1838). The reading of this and other rationalistic works influenced deeply Eliot's thoughts. After her father's death, Eliot travelled around Europe. She settled in London and took up work as subeditor of Westminster Review.

In Coventry she met Charles Bray and later Charles Hennell, who introduced her to many new religious and political ideas. Under Eliot's control the Westminster Review enjoyed success. She became the centre of a literary circle, one of whose members was George Henry Lewes, who would be her companion until his death in 1878. Lewes's wife was mentally unbalanced and she had already had two children by another man. In 1854 Eliot went to Germany with Lewes. Their unconventional union caused some difficulties because Lewes was still married and he was unable to obtain divorce. Eliot did not inform her close friends Caroline and Sarah Hennell about her decision to live with Lewes - the both friends were shocked and angry because she had not trusted them.

Eliot's first collection of tales, SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, appeared in 1858 under the pseudonym George Eliot - in those days writing was considered to be a male profession. It was followed by her first novel, ADAM BEDE, a tragic love story in which the model for the title character was Eliot's father. He was noted for his great physical strength, which enabled him to carry loads that three average men could barely handle. When impostors claimed authorship of Adam Bede, it was revealed that Marian Evans, the Westminster reviewer, was George Eliot. The book was a brilliant success. Her other major works include THE MILL ON THE FLOSS (1860), a story of destructive family relations, and SILAS MARNER (1861). Silas Marner, a linen-weaver, has accumulated a goodly sum of gold. He was falsely judged guilty of theft 15 years before and left his community. Squire Cass' son Dunstan steals Marner's gold and disappears. Marner takes care of an orphaned little girl, Eppie and she becomes for him more precious than the lost property. Sixteen years later the skeleton of Dunstan and Marner's gold is found. Godfrey Cass, Dunstal's brother, admits that he is the father of Eppie. He married the girl's mother, opium-ridden Molly Farren secretly before hear death. Eppie and Silas Marner don't wish to separate when Godfrey tries to adopt the girl. In the end Eppie marries Aaron Winthorp, who accepts Silas Marner as part of the household.

MIDDLEMARCH (1871-72), her greatest novel, was probably inspired by her life at Coventry. The story follows the sexual and intellectual frustrations of Dorothea Brooke. Eliot weaves into her story other narrative lines, which offer a sad comment upon human aspirations. Among Eliot's translation works are D.F. Strauss's Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet (published anonymously in 1846), Ludwig Feuerbach's Das Wesen des Christentum, and Spinoza's Ethics (unpublished).Eliot's thoughts of religion were considered at that time advanced. When she visited Cambridge University in 1873 and discussed with F.W.H. Mayers of "the words of God, Immortality, and Duty", she pronounced "with terrible earnestness how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable was the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third."

Middlemarch is a novel of English provincial life in the early nineteenth century, just before the Reform Bill of 1832. The book was called by the famous American writer Henry James a 'treasure-house of detail.' It fuses several stories and characters, creating a a network of parallels and contrasts. One of Eliot's main concerns is the way which the past moulds the present and the attempts of various characters to control the future. Harold Bloom has noted in The Western Canon (1994) the implicit but clear relation of the work to Dante's Comedy. Dorothea, an idealistic young woman, marries the pedantic Casaubon. After his death she marries Will Ladislaw, Casaubon's young cousin, a vaguely artistic outsider. Doctor Tertius Lydgate is trapped with the egoistic Rosamond Vincy, the town's beauty. Lydgate becomes involved in a scandal, and he dies at 50, his ambitions frustrated. Other characters are Bulstrode, a banker and a religious hypocrite, Mary Garth, the practical daughter of a land agent, and Fred Vincy, the son of the mayor of Middlemarch. For modern feminist readers Middlemarch has been a disappointment: Dorothea was not prepared to give up marriage. "'I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a state of higher duties, I never thought of it as mere personal ease,' said poor Dorothea." However, Eliot's lament for Dorothea left no doubts about her views: "Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the nature of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, the the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite lovestories in prose and verse." - The book is required reading in university English courses.

In 1860-61 Eliot spent some time in Italy collecting material for her historical romance ROMOLA. It was published serially first in the Cornhill Magazine and in book form in 1863. Henry James considered it the finest thing she wrote, "but its defects are almost on the scale of its beauties." In 1871 she mentioned to Alexander Main: "I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence." When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote admiringly of Silas Marner in 1869 Eliot began a correspondence with her. In a letter from 1876 she wrote about DANIEL DERONDA (1876): "As to the Jewish element in 'Deronda', I expected from first to last in writing it, that it would create much stronger resistance and even repulsion than it has actually met with. But precisely because I felt that the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is - I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid when viewed in the light of their professed principles, I therefore felt urged to treat Jews with such sympathy and understanding as my nature and knowledge could attain to. Moreover, not only towards the Jews, but towards all oriental peoples with whom we English come in contact, a spirit of arrogance and contemptuous dictatorialness is observable which has become a national disgrace to us."

After Lewes's death Eliot married twenty years younger friend, John Cross, an American banker, on May 6, 1880. They made a trip to Italy and according to a story, he jumped in Venice from their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal. After honeymoon they returned to London, where she died of a kidney ailment on the same year on December 22. Cross never married again. In her will she expressed her wish to be buried in Westminster Abbey, but Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey rejected the idea and Eliot was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Eliot's interest in the interior life of human beings, moral problems and strains, anticipated the narrative methods of modern literature. D.H. Lawrence once wrote: "It was really George Eliot who started it all. It was she started putting action inside." The young Henry James described her "magnificently, awe-inspiringly ugly," but also studied her work carefully, critically, and acknowledged her greatness as a writer: "What is remarkable, extraordinary - and the process remains inscrutable and mysterious - is that this quiet, anxious, sedentary, serious, invalidical English lady, without animal spirits, without adventures, without extravagance, assumption, or bravado, should have made us believe that nothing in the world was alien to her; should have produced such rich, deep, masterly pictures of the multifold life of man." (Henry James in The Atlantic monthly, May 1885)

The Role of Women in George Eliot's "Middlemarch"

2006-01-17T05:59:00.000-08:00

The Role's of Women in George Eliot's "Middlemarch"
by Mary Elizabeth Rupp

A major theme in George Eliot's novel, Middlemarch, is the role of women in the community. The female characters in the novel are, to some extent, oppressed by the social expectations that prevail in Middlemarch. Regardless of social standing, character or personality, women are expected to cater to and remain dependent on their husbands and to occupy themselves with trivial recreation rather than important household matters. Dorothea and Rosamond, though exceedingly dissimilar, are both subjected to the same social ideals of what women should be.

Dorothea and Rosamond are on different levels of the intricate social spectrum in Middlemarch. As a Brooke, Dorothea's connections "though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably ëgood'"(p.7). Rosamond is of a slightly lower status, especially given that her father has married an innkeeper's daughter, thus further lowering the family's social rank. Although Dorothea and Rosamond enjoy similar amenities such as servants, the detailed social continuum of Middlemarch separates them.

Dorothea and Rosamond's responses to their respective social classes differ much more widely than the actual social gap between them. Rosamond is particularly aware of her social standing; she "felt that she might have been happier if she had not been the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer. She disliked anything which reminded her that her mother's father had been an innkeeper" (p.101). While Dorothea does not dissociate herself from her wealthy peers, she shows an affinity for the lower class by helping to improve the standard of living among them through new cottages. Dorothea's philanthropic view of the lower class contrasts with the distain Rosamond feels for them.

Accordingly, the two women's material views differ as well. Not only is Rosamond painfully aware of her social position vis-a-vis Dorothea's, she actively seeks to increase it by marrying Lydgate. When Lydgate's material wealth reaches its limit and Rosamond's dreams of social supremacy vanish, the marriage quickly deteriorates. Contrastingly, Dorothea relinquishes a great deal of money for her love of Will. Dorothea's lack of concern for material goods and Rosamond's preoccupation with them are a striking example of the disparity between them.

In spite of the vast differences between them, Middlemarch society applies the same tenets to both Dorothea and Rosamond. As females, both women are expected to follow certain social norms that hinder their personal objectives, material in Rosamond's case and intellectual in Dorothea's.

A key function of women in Middlemarch society is that of a wife. Lydgate marries Rosamond expecting someone who will compliment his busy lifestyle by making his home-life pleasant. He compares women to geese and men to ganders when reflecting on the psychological differences between them, namely: " the innate submissiveness of the goose as beautifully corresponding to the strength of the gander." (p.356) He presupposes Rosamond's obedient devotion. Caussabon, too, expects that Dorothea will aid him in his work. In his proposal to her, he writes: "But I have discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness - " (p.43). His letter is not a profession of love but an indication that he finds Dorothea worthy of assisting him. The men expect nothing but support from their wives.

Not only do the men demand complete dedication, they fail to comprehend the women's autonomous nature. To them, Dorothea and Rosamond entered into marriage not as equal partners, but as compliant, dependent supporters. Caussabon willingly recognizes that Dorothea will assist him with his work but refuses to entertain the idea that she has her own intellectual goals. Dorothea doubts her own intellect but retains her thirst for knowledge. " She would not have asked Mr. Caussabon at once to teach her the languages, dreading of all things to be tiresome instead of helpful; but it was not entirely out of devotion to her future husband that she wished to know Latin and Greek." (p. 64) When Caussabon fails to fully include Dorothea in his studies, he undermines her intellectual ambitions and alienates her within the marriage.

Lydgate's views of women become apparent when, upon meeting Dorothea, he muses that a women with her intelligence and strong views would make a tiresome wife. He seeks a wife who will be complacent and not interrupt his budding career. As such a wife, Rosamond is supposed to occupy her time with trifling pursuits such as needlework and music. Lydgate presumes that Rosamond will help to reduce his debt from within the household by lowering expenditures, but refuses to listen to her ideas about appealing to the wealthy Sir Godwin. This forces Rosamond to go behind his back and ask for a loan herself. Not only does the request for help injure Lydgate's pride, but also, Rosamond's disobedience enrages him. He rebukes her, " - Have you sense enough to recognize now your incompetence to judge and act for meóto interfere with your ignorance in affairs which it belongs to me to decide on?" (p. 665) Lydgate cannot accept anything but Rosamond's ineptitude in managing financial affairs.

In addition to her husband's lack of confidence in her, Rosamond must deal with skepticism from other members of the community. When Sir Godwin receives her letter, he immediately assumes that Lydgate is behind it and admonishes him for dealing through his wife. It does not cross Godwin's mind that Rosamond herself generated the request. In Godwin's reply to Lydgate, he insists, "Don't set your wife to write to me when you have anything to ask - I never choose to write to a woman on matters of business." Lydgate's and Godwin's treatment of Rosamond in the matter of her request reveal general misogynistic tendencies of the society in Middlemarch.

Society puts pressure on Dorothea to conform to its model of the ideal woman as well. After the death of Caussabon, society deems it inappropriate for her to continue living at Lowick alone, managing the parish. Even another woman, Mrs. Cadwallader, warns her, "You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions." (p.537) Society frowns upon the dependence of women, even Dorothea with her great inner strength.

Although Dorothea and Rosamond differ in almost every aspect, their husbands and society consider them simply as women and apply the same standards to each. By holding Dorothea and Rosamond to the same standards and ignoring the vast dissimilarity between them, society minimizes the unique nature of the two women and contributes to the oppression of females throughout the community.

The Mood and Tone in the Love-Poems of Donne

2006-01-17T05:49:00.000-08:00

The Great Variety of Mood and Tone in the Love-Poems of Donne
(with reference to the poems: The Canonization, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, The Sunne Rising, and The Ecstasy)
By: Purwarno Hadinata

John Donne revolved against the Petrarchan tradition in love poetry, with its lovers in flower gardens; its smooth lawns (grass) and gentle and murmuring streams; its goddesses of mythological and pastoral imagery; and its conventions of chivalry. From the time to Wyatt, Surrey, and their contemporaries, English lyrical and amatory poetry had been flowing continuously in the Petrarchan channel. Now, instead, we have a violent assertion of sexual realism. Donne is neither Platonic nor ascetic, but frankly and honestly sensuous. His interest is in his experience of love, and his endeavor (attempt) is to understand it, not to deny or suppress it, and still less to present it untruthfully.

Donne’s reputation as a love poet rest on his fifty-five lyrics written at different periods of his life, but were published for the time in 1633 in one volume called Songs and Sonnets. Donne’s love poem cover a wide range of feeling from extreme physical passion to spiritual love, and express varied moods ranging from a mood of cynicism and contempt to one of faith and acceptance. His love experiences were wide and varied and so is the emotions range of his love poetry. He had love affairs with a number of women, some of them lasting and permanent, others only of a short duration. It would seem that Donne has given as exhaustive an analysis of the psychology of love as he possibly could. He insists that love is properly fulfilled only when it embraces both body and soul. He images the future canonization of himself and his mistress as saints of a new religion of love.

According to Grierson “there is the strain of conjugal love to be noticed in Donne’s Valediction: Forbidding Mourning addressed to his wife, Anne Moore whom he loved passionately and in his relationship with her he attained spiritual peace and serenity.” In the poem, addressed to his wife at the moment of separation, the well-known conceit of the compass has been brought in to prove that physical separation does not affect the union of spirits. “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” shows a combination of passion, tenderness, and intellectual content, as perfect as anything in Browning:

Such wilt be thou to mee, who must
Like the’ other foot obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begunne.
(A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, lines 33-36)

Donne’s treatment of love is both sensuous and realistic. He does not completely reject the pleasure of the body even in poems where love is treated as the highest spiritual passion. This emphasis on the claims of the body is another feature which distinguish Donne from the poets both Petrarchan and Platonic schools. Donne claims that love, merely of the body, is not love but lust. But he is realistic enough to realize that it cannot also be of the soul alone; it must partake both of the soul and the body. It is the body which brings the souls together, and so the claims of the body must not be ignored. The beloved must not hesitate to give herself body and soul to her lover even though they have not got married yet. In The Canonization, the lovers unite body and soul to form a ‘neutral sex’ while in The Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, the poet does not consider physical contact as necessary for the continuation of spiritual love. Thus Grierson rightly points out, “neither sensual passion, nor gay and cynical wit, nor scorn and anger, is the dominant note in Donne’s love poetry.”

Donne’s tells us very little about the beauty of the women he loves. He writes exclusively about the emotion of love and not about its cause. He describes and analyses the experience of being in love and the charm of his mistress are either not mentioned at all or can only be guessed from the stray hints that happen to drop.

Neither does Donne accept the contemporary view that marriage alone sanctifies the sexual act, nor the medieval view that sex is alike sinful within or without the marriage bond. According to his view, the purity of the sexual act depends on the quality of the relation between the lovers. If delight in one another is mutual, physical union is its proper consummation, but if the lovers are not inter-assured of the mind, then “the sport” is, “but a winter-seeming, summer’s night”. He may sometimes accept the human laws, which forbid the consummation of love outside marriage, but he does so with great reluctance. Indeed, he often makes the woman’s readiness to give herself entirely, body and soul, to her lover as the test of her love for him. As Joan Bennet puts it, “Donne’s love poetry is not about the difference between marriage and adultery, but about the difference between lust and love.” Further Donne asserts that the sexual act without love is merely lust whether within or outside marriage.

The last stanza of the Canonization admirably sumps up Donne’s sexual metaphysic; that the really valid and complete relationship between man and woman fuses their soul into a complete whole, and they become a microcosm of the loving world. This very attitude is expressed in a number of his other poems. For true lovers the entire world is contracted into the eyes of each other and this world is better because it is not subject to decay and dissolution.

Donne rebelled not only against the sugared sonnets in which the Petrarchan convention found expression, but also against the whole creed of chivalry and woman-worship. For the sugary language, he substituted a more realistic use of words “such as men do use”, and a more dramatic and passionate lyrical verse. As for woman-worship, he looked upon woman as not a goddess but a creature, desirable indeed, though not adorable. However, no poet has at times used the language of adoration more daringly to express the feeling of the moment (The Sun Rising).

There are, indeed, several strands in Donne’s songs and elegies. Some of the love-poems are frankly, even arrogantly, sensual. In others the tears of passion are touched with shame and scorn. Others again are directly and splendidly passionate, like the following: “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love” (The Canonization). But there are still other poems in which Donne rises to a purer conception of love, neither Petrarchan nor Platonic, but something more concrete than either, compounded of passion and tenderness, mutual trust and entire affection. In The Ecstasy, he sings of the inter-dependence of soul and body.

The dominant note in Donne’s love poetry is neither sensual passion, nor gay and cynical wit, nor scorn and anger. The finest note here is the note of joy, the joy of mutual and contented passion. His heart might be subtle to torment itself, but its capacity for joy is even more obvious. It is only in the songs of Burns that we shall find the sheer (pure) joy of loving and being loved finding expression in the same direct and simple language as in some of Donne’s songs, and only in Browning that we shall find the same simplicity of feeling combined with a similar swift and subtle dialectic: “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love” (The Canonization).

But Donne does not write only love poems dealing with the heart and the senses. He writes purer poems, in more complex moods. The Ecstasy is a metaphysical poem, not only in the sense of being erudite (learned) and witty, but also in the proper sense of being reflective a d philosophical. The Ecstasy makes us realize fully what Ben Jonson meant by calling Donne “the fist poet in the world for some things”.

Donne’s contribution to love-poetry may then be summed up thus: He introduced a new realism in love-poetry, revolting against the Petrarchan tradition. His poems are an attempt to deal exhaustively with the psychology of love. That accounts for the variety of mood and tone in his love poetry. Some of his love poems cynical (pessimistic) and he mocks at women and at love. Some poems sing of the joy of love and contented mutual passion. He also introduced colloquial language in love-poetry.

Summary: The Tempest

2006-01-17T05:29:00.000-08:00

Short Summary: The Tempest
By: William Shakespeare

Act I

The play begins on a ship, with a ship-master and a boatswain trying to keep the ship from wrecking in a tempest. Alonso, King of Naples, is on board, as are his brothers Antonio and Sebastian. Alonso comes above deck merely to give the mariners an unnecessary order; the boatswain begs the nobles to keep below deck during the storm, so that the men can do their jobs without distraction. However, Antonio and Sebastian take the opportunity to make rude and sarcastic remarks to the good boatswain, and can do nothing to help. A spell comes over all on board, and the mariners all flee in desperation; the nobles on deck decide that all is lost without the sailors, and go below deck to say goodbye to their king.

Miranda and Prospero are revealed on the island; Miranda laments that a shipful of men must have died in the tempest, but her father reassures her that none were hurt, and that the tempest was of his own doing. Upon Miranda's request, Prospero begins to tell her of his history, and how they came upon the island; Miranda was very young when she left the island, and cannot remember anyone but her father, not even her dead mother. Prospero tells her how his kingdom was usurped by his brother Antonio, while Prospero was distracted by his studies, and how the king of Naples supported Antonio's rule. Antonio then cast Prospero and Miranda out of Milan, and ordered both of them killed; however, Prospero tells his daughter how the good councilor Gonzalo arranged for them not to be killed, which led to their landing on the island.

Prospero declares his intention of reclaiming his dukedom, and that the tempest and his brothers' shipwreck on the island are part of this plan. Ariel makes his first entrance, and declares that Prospero's bidding has been perfectly performed, and none of the party are harmed; the sailors are still upon the ship, while the King and his companions have been scattered about the island. Ariel reminds Prospero of his promise to free Ariel, and Prospero impresses upon him how much more generous a master he believes himself to be than Sycorax.

Caliban enters, stating his claim to the island that comes through his mother Sycorax; Prospero's teachings, for whatever reason, have failed upon Caliban, and Caliban retains his more primitive nature, for which Prospero and Miranda despise him. Ferdinand stumbles upon Miranda, and they immediately fall in love, due to Ariel's magic; but Prospero decides to make him a servant, and will put him to hard tasks about the island.

Act II

King Alonso has landed on the island, with his brothers Sebastian and Antonio, noblemen Adrian and Francisco, and the councilor Gonzalo. Gonzalo tries to console Alonso upon their good fortune of surviving the shipwreck - but Alonso is grieved - not only because his son Ferdinand is missing and presumed dead, but because he was returning from his daughter's wedding in Africa, and fears he will never see her again because of the distance. Antonio and Sebastian show great skill with mocking wordplay, and use this skill to stifle Gonzalo and Adrian's attempts to speak frankly to the rest of the party. Ariel's magic makes the party fall asleep, with the exception of Antonio and Sebastian.

A strange seriousness, of Ariel's doing, falls upon Antonio and Sebastian. Antonio begins to concoct a plan to get his brother the kingship, which will be much easier if Ferdinand, the current heir, really is dead; and since Alonso's daughter is very far away in Tunis, Sebastian might be able to inherit the crown with only two murders, those of Alonso and Gonzalo. Ariel, however, hears to conspirators plan, and wakes Gonzalo with a warning of the danger he is in. Ariel intends to let Prospero know that the conspiracy has indeed been formed as he wished, and Prospero in turn will try to keep Gonzalo safe, out of appreciation for his past help in preserving the lives of Prospero and Miranda.

Caliban curses Prospero, as another storm approaches the island; he takes the storm as a sign that Prospero is up to mischief, and hides at the approach of what he fears is one of Prospero's punishing spirits. Trinculo, Alonso's court jester, finds Caliban lying still on the ground and covered with a cloak, and figures him to be a "dead Indian"; but, the storm continues to approach, so he also hides himself, using Caliban's cloak as a shelter, and flattening himself on the ground beside Caliban's prostrate form.

Alonso's drunken butler, Stephano, enters, drunk and singing, and stumbles upon the strange sight of the two men under the cloak; he figures, in his drunken stupor, that Trinculo and Caliban make a four-legged monster. Caliban,in his delirium, thinks that Stephano is one of Prospero's minions, sent to torment him; Stephano thinks a drink of wine will cure Caliban of what ails him, and bit by bit, gets Caliban drunk as well. It takes Stephano a while to recognize his old friend, Trinculo, whom Caliban seems to be ignoring. Because of Stephano's generosity with his "celestial liquor," Caliban takes him to be some sort of benevolent god; much to Trinculo's disbelief, Caliban actually offers his service to Stephano, forsaking the "tyrant" Prospero. Stephano accepts the offer.

Act III

Ferdinand has been made to take Caliban's place as a servant, despite his royal status; and though he does not like Prospero, he does the work because it will benefit his new love, Miranda. Ferdinand and Miranda express their love for each other, and both express their desire to be married - though they have known each other for less than a day.

Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban are drinking; Trinculo and Sebastian continue to insult Caliban, though Caliban only protests against Trinculo's remarks, and tries to get Stephano to defend him. Caliban begins to tell the other two about the tyranny of his old master, Prospero, and how he wants to be rid of Prospero forever; Ariel enters, causes further discord among the group, and gets Caliban to form a murder plot against Prospero. Caliban promises Stephano that if Prospero is successfully killed, he will allow Stephano to be ruler of the island, and will be his servant. He also promises that Stephano will get Miranda if the plot is successful - Ariel leaves, to tell Prospero of these developments.

Alonso, Adrian, Francisco, Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo are still wandering about the island, and Alonzo has finally given up any hope of his son Ferdinand being alive. Antonio and Sebastian decide to make their murderous move later that night, but their conspiracy is interrupted by Prospero sending in a huge banquet via his spirits, with he himself there, but invisible. They are all amazed, but not too taken aback that they will not eat the food; but, as they are about to eat, a vengeful Ariel enters, taking credit for their shipwreck, and makes the banquet vanish. Alonso recognizes Ariel's words as being of Prospero's pen, and the great guilt of Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian begins to take them over, at the thought of Prospero being alive, and so nearby.

Act IV

Prospero stops Ferdinand's punishment, and decides to finally give Miranda to him, since he has proven his love for her through his service. Prospero accepts the union, but issues them a warning; if Ferdinand takes Miranda's virginity before a ceremony can be performed, then their union will be cursed. Ferdinand swears to Prospero that they shall wait until the ceremony to consummate their marriage, and then Prospero calls upon Ariel to perform one of his last acts of magic. A betrothal masque is performed for the party by some of Prospero's magical spirits; Juno, Ceres, and Iris are the goddesses who are represented within the masque, and the play speaks about the bounties of a good marriage, and blesses the happy couple. This act of magic so captivates Prospero that he forgets Caliban's plot to kill him; for a moment, he almost loses control, but manages to pull himself out of his reverie and take action.

Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo come looking for Prospero, and swipe a few garments of Prospero's on their way. Caliban still wants very much to kill Prospero, and carry out this plot; however, Trinculo and Stephano are very drunk, as usual, and prove completely incapable of anything but petty theft. Prospero catches them - not difficult, since they are making a huge amount of noise--and sends Ariel after them as they flee.

Act V

Prospero finally has all under his control; Ariel has apprehended Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio, and they are all waiting for Prospero's judgment. Finally, Prospero makes up his mind against revenge, and makes a speech that signifies his renunciation of magic; the accused and the other nobles enter the magic circle that Prospero has made, and stand there, enchanted, while he speaks. Prospero charges Alonso with throwing Prospero and his daughter out of Italy, and Antonio and Sebastian with being part of this crime. Prospero announces Ariel's freedom after Ariel sees the party back to Naples, and Ariel sings a song out of joy. Alonso and Prospero are reconciled after Alonso declares his remorse and repents his wrongs to Prospero and Miranda, and Prospero finally wins back his dukedom from Antonio. Prospero, perhaps unwillingly, also says that he forgives Antonio and Sebastian, though he calls them "wicked" and expresses his reservations about letting them off the hook.

After despairing that his son is dead, Alonso finds out that his son Ferdinand is indeed alive, and the two are reunited; then, Ferdinand and Miranda's engagement is announced, and is approved before the whole party by Alonso and Prospero. Gonzalo rejoices that on the voyage, such a good match was made, and that the brothers are reunited, and some of the bad blood between them is now flushed out. Ariel has readied Alonso's boat for their departure, and the boatswain shows up again, telling them about what happened to all of the sailors during the tempest.

Caliban apologizes to Prospero for taking the foolish Stephano as his master, and Prospero, at last, acknowledges Caliban, and takes him as his own. Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban's plot is exposed to the whole group, and is immediately forgiven. Prospero invites everyone to pass one last night in the island at his dwelling, and promises to tell the story of his and Miranda's survival, and of the devices of his magic. The play ends with Prospero addressing the audience, telling them that they hold an even greater power than Prospero the character, and can decide what happens next.

Related link:
1. William Shakespeare
2. Summary and Analysis Each Act

Source: Gradesaver

Biography: Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

2006-01-17T05:14:00.000-08:00

The life of Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
By: Luminarium

Ben Jonson was born around June 11, 1572, the posthumous son of a clergyman. He was educated at Westminster School by the great classical scholar William Camden and worked in his stepfather's trade, bricklaying. The trade did not please him in the least, and he joined the army, serving in Flanders. He returned to England about 1592 and married Anne Lewis on November 14, 1594.

Jonson joined the theatrical company of Philip Henslowe in London as an actor and playwright on or before 1597, when he is identified in the papers of Henslowe. In 1597 he was imprisoned for his involvement in a satire entitled The Isle of Dogs, declared seditious by the authorities. The following year Jonson killed a fellow actor, Gabriel Spencer, in a duel in the Fields at Shoreditch and was tried at Old Bailey for murder. He escaped the gallows only by pleading benefit of clergy. During his subsequent imprisonment he converted to Roman Catholicism only to convert back to Anglicism over a decade later, in 1610. He was released forfeit of all his possessions, and with a felon's brand on his thumb.
Jonson's second known play, Every Man in His Humour, was performed in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Globe with William Shakespeare in the cast. Jonson became a celebrity, and there was a brief fashion for 'humours' comedy, a kind of topical comedy involving eccentric characters, each of whom represented a temperament, or humor, of humanity. His next play, Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), was less successful. Every Man Out of His Humour and Cynthia's Revels (1600) were satirical comedies displaying Jonson's classical learning and his interest in formal experiment.

Jonson's explosive temperament and conviction of his superior talent gave rise to "War of the Theatres". In The Poetaster (1601), he satirized other writers, chiefly the English dramatists Thomas Dekker and John Marston. Dekker and Marston retaliated by attacking Jonson in their Satiromastix (1601). The plot of Satiromastix was mainly overshadowed by its abuse of Jonson. Jonson had portrayed himself as Horace in The Poetaster, and in Satiromastix Marston and Dekker, as Demetrius and Crispinus ridicule Horace, presenting Jonson as a vain fool. Eventually, the writers patched their feuding; in 1604 Jonson collaborated with Dekker on The King's Entertainment and with Marston and George Chapman on Eastward Ho.

Jonson's next play, the classical tragedy Sejanus, His Fall (1603), based on Roman history and offering an astute view of dictatorship, again got Jonson into trouble with the authorities. Jonson was called before the Privy Council on charges of 'popery and treason'. Jonson did not, however, learn a lesson, and was again briefly imprisoned, with Marston and Chapman, for controversial views ("something against the Scots") espoused in Eastward Ho (1604). These two incidents jeopardized his emerging role as court poet to King James I. Having converted to Catholicism, Jonson was also the object of deep suspicion after the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes (1605).

In 1605, Jonson began to write masques for the entertainment of the court. The earliest of his masques, The Satyr was given at Althorpe, and Jonson seems to have been appointed Court Poet shortly after. The masques displayed his erudition, wit, and versatility and contained some of his best lyric poetry. Masque of Blacknesse (1605) was the first in a series of collaborations with Inigo Jones, noted English architect and set designer. This collaboration produced masques such as The Masque of Owles, Masque of Beauty (1608), and Masque of Queens (1609), which were performed in Inigo Jones' elaborate and exotic settings. These masques ascertained Jonson's standing as foremost writer of masques in the Jacobean era. The collaboration with Jones was finally destroyed by intense personal rivalry.

Jonson's enduring reputation rests on the comedies written between 1605 and 1614. The first of these, Volpone, or The Fox (performed in 1605-1606, first published in 1607) is often regarded as his masterpiece. The play, though set in Venice, directs its scrutiny on the rising merchant classes of Jacobean London. The following plays, Epicoene: or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614) are all peopled with dupes and those who deceive them. Jonson's keen sense of his own stature as author is represented by the unprecedented publication of his Works, in folio, in 1616. He was appointed as poet laureate and rewarded a substantial pension in the same year.

In 1618, when he was about forty-five years old, Jonson set out for Scotland, the home of his ancestors. He made the journey entirely by foot, in spite of dissuasion from Bacon, who "said to him he loved not to see poesy go on other feet than poetical dactyls and spondæus." Jonson's prose style is vividly sketched in the notes of William Drummond of Hawthornden, who recorded their conversations during Jonson's visit to Scotland 1618-1619. Jonson himself was sketched by Hawthornden: " He is a great lover and praiser of himself ; a contemner and scorner of others ; given rather to lose a friend than a jest ; . . . he is passionately kind and angry ; careless either to gain or keep ; vindictive, but, if he be well answered, at himself . . . ; oppressed with fantasy, which hath ever mastered his reason."1 After his return, Jonson received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Oxford University and lectured on rhetoric at Gresham College, London.

The comedy The Devil is an Ass (1616) had turned out to be a comparative flop. This may have discouraged Jonson, for it was nine years before his next play, The Staple of News (1625), was produced. Instead, Jonson turned his attention to writing masques. Jonson's later plays The New Inn (1629) and A Tale of a Tub (1633) were not great successes, described harshly, but perhaps justly by Dryden as his "dotages."

Despite these apparent failures, and in spite of his frequent feuds, Jonson was the dean and the leading wit of the group of writers who gathered at the Mermaid Tavern in the Cheapside district of London. The young poets influenced by Jonson were the self-styled 'sons' or 'tribe' of Ben, later called the Cavalier poets, a group which included, among others, Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace.

Jonson was appointed City Chronologer of London in 1628, the same year in which he suffered a severe stroke. His loyal friends kept him company in his final years and attended the King provided him some financial comfort. Jonson died on August 6, 1637 and was buried in Westminster Abbey under a plain slab on which was later carved the words, "O Rare Ben Jonson!" His admirers and friends contributed to the collection of memorial elegies, Jonsonus virbius, published in 1638. Jonson's last play, Sad Shepherd's Tale, was left unfinished at his death and published posthumously in 1641.

Related link:
1. Volpone
2. Summary of Volpone

Summary: Volpone Act V, Sc I - III

2006-01-17T05:03:00.000-08:00

Act V, scene i–scene iii
By: Sparknotes

Summary
Act V, scene i
Volpone returns home after the drama at the Scrutineo, tired. He declares that he has grown tired of his con and wishes it were over. Pretending to be sick in public has made some of the symptoms he has been falsely presenting, such as cramps and palsy (tremors), feel all too real. The thought that he might actually be getting sick depressed and frightens him; to banish it he takes two strong drinks and calls Mosca.

Act V, scene ii
Volpone calls Mosca and informs him that he wants to be over with the con. They discuss how well the entire con went off and congratulate themselves on being so erudite, so brave, and so clever. Mosca advises that Volpone should stop his life of trickery here, for he will never outdo himself. Volpone seems to agree, and the begin discussing the matter of payment to Voltore for his services, something that Mosca insists on. But Volpone suddenly decides to carry out one final joke on the legacy hunters. He calls in Castrone and Nano, and tells them to run through the streets, informing everyone that Volpone is dead. He then tells Mosca to wear his clothes and to pretend that Volpone has named him the heir to the estate when the legacy hunters arrive, using an authentic will naming Mosca as heir. Mosca remarks on how distraught all four of the people involved in the deceit at the Scrutineo—Voltore, Corbaccio, Corvino, and Lady Politic—will be when they come to believe that Mosca has been chosen over them. Soon, Voltore arrives, and Volpone hides behind a curtain.

Act V, scene iii
Voltore enters to find Mosca making an inventory. Thinking that the property is now his, he praises Mosca's hard work. He takes the will in order to read it. Corbaccio, clearly near death, is carried in by his servants. Corvino soon after enters, and soon Lady Politic Would-be enters too. All the while, Mosca continues to take an inventory of Volpone's property. All four characters then read the will; they understandably react with shock, and demand an explanation. Mosca replies to each of them in turn, reminding them in a short speech of the lies and other immoral acts each of them committed. Lady Politic apparently offered to provide Mosca with sexual favours in return for Volpone's estate. Corvino, of course, unjustly declared his wife an adulterer and himself a cuckold; Corbaccio disinherited his son. For Voltore, Mosca is somewhat sympathetic; he expresses sincere regret that Voltore will not be made heir. After Mosca is finished to talking to a character, that character leaves. After Voltore leaves, Mosca and Volpone are again alone, and Volpone congratulates Mosca on a job well done. Volpone wants to gloat directly in the faces of the four dupes, so Mosca suggests that he disguise himself as a commandadore (a sergeant or guard), and approach them on the street. Volpone congratulates Mosca on his excellent idea.

Analysis
The intention of Jonson throughout the play has been to satirize greed in all its forms. At first, Volpone was the instrument of Jonson's satire; he turned the greed of the legacy hunters against itself, creating a situation where greed resulted in not only a complete loss of dignity on the part of the legacy hunters but also, ironically, the loss of the very thing they were seeking to gain: money. But now, Volpone has succumbed to his own form of greed; greed driven by his private desires and appetites for Celia. Because of this, he has defamed two innocent characters, Celia and Bonario. In the moral universe of Jonson's comedy, this transgression cannot go unpunished or uncommented upon; Celia and Bonario were guilty of nothing except dullness; their imprisonment is, to put it simply, "not funny". So Volpone is no longer the instrument of Jonson's satire. In fact, he is now made the target of it, and the attack proceeds, again, through irony.

A central motif in the final act is that of the disguise-made-reality; Volpone has convinced so many people of his lies that his falsehoods now come to stand in the public sphere as truth, with terrible consequences for Volpone. Volpone wishes to be done with his con-game clearly indicates his wish to be done with his con-game, but we receive indications that it will not be so simple, that the lies Volpone has told are too powerful and too widely accepted to simply disappear. He returns from the senate complaining of cramps and aches that roughly coincide with those he has been imitating; the "cramp" and the "palsy," which he had mocked Corbaccio for succumbing to in Act I. These may be indications of a guilty conscience; but they also stand as a metaphor for the way in which Volpone has successfully blurred the line between lies and reality. Again, we can use the metaphor of stagecraft here: in Act IV, Volpone crosses boundary between the "stage" (Volpone's private life) and "reality" (the public realm of the Scrutineo), by carrying his "play" into the world and appearing sick in public. Ironically, it is at this moment that Volpone impulsively decides to kill himself off, and he does it using the medium of the playwright, the written word (the will).

So when Volpone thinks he is writing himself out of his deceitful game, his "play," he is actually writing himself out of reality altogether. The "exit from reality" occurs when Volpone goes behind the arras, he for a moment becomes a member of the audience of Volpone, the drama written by Ben Jonson; in other words, he is a spectator, not a participant, in his own life. Mosca, at this stage, assumes Volpone's role both as the center of the play's action and as its (admittedly dubious) moral voice; it is he who scolds each legacy hunter in turn for their hypocrisy. Volpone delights-almost sadistically—in the vindictiveness with which Mosca reminds each character of the callous and immoral acts they committed in the pursuit of Volpone's treasure. But the irony of the situation is encapsulated by Volpone's statement "Rare, Mosca! How his villainy becomes him!" which foreshadows the events later in the act.

Related link: Summary of Volpone

Summary: Volpone by Ben Johnson

2006-01-17T04:44:00.000-08:00

Plot Overview

The following note is a note which tell about the summary of Benjamin Johnson's Drama entitled Volpone. Volpone was published in 1606. I copy this note from google site that is sparknotes. If you are interested about it you may read or copy it. Volpone takes place in seventeenth-century Venice, over the course of one day. The play opens at the house of Volpone, a Venetian nobleman. He and his "parasite" Mosca—part slave, part servant, part lackey—enter the shrine where Volpone keeps his gold. Volpone has amassed his fortune, we learn, through dishonest means: he is a con artist. And we also learn that he likes to use his money extravagantly.

Soon, we see Volpone's latest con in action. For the last three years, he has been attracting the interest of three legacy hunters: Voltore, a lawyer; Corbaccio, an old gentleman; and Corvino, a merchant—individuals interested in inheriting his estate after he dies. Volpone is known to be rich, and he is also known to be childless, have no natural heirs. Furthermore, he is believed to very ill, so each of the legacy hunters lavishes gifts on him, in the hope that Volpone, out of gratitude, will make him his heir. The legacy hunters do not know that Volpone is actually in excellent health and merely faking illness for the purpose of collecting all those impressive "get-well" gifts.

In the first act, each legacy hunter arrives to present a gift to Volpone, except for Corbaccio, who offers only a worthless (and probably poisoned) vial of medicine. But Corbaccio agrees to return later in the day to make Volpone his heir, so that Volpone will return the favor. This act is a boon to Volpone, since Corbaccio, in all likelihood, will die long before Volpone does. After each hunter leaves, Volpone and Mosca laugh at each's gullibility. After Corvino's departure Lady Politic Would-be, the wife of an English knight living in Venice, arrives at the house but is told to come back three hours later. And Volpone decides that he will try to get a close look at Corvino's wife, Celia, who Mosca describes as one of the most beautiful women in all of Italy. She is kept under lock and key by her husband, who has ten guards on her at all times, but Volpone vows to use disguise to get around these barriers.

The second act portrays a time just a short while later that day, and we meet Sir Politic Would-be, Lady Politic's husband, who is conversing with Peregrine, an young English traveler who has just landed in Venice. Sir Politic takes a liking to the young boy and vows to teach him a thing or two about Venice and Venetians; Peregrine, too, enjoys the company of Sir Politic, but only because he is hilariously gullible and vain. The two are walking in the public square in front of Corvino's house and are interrupted by the arrival of "Scoto Mantua," actually Volpone in diguise as an Italian mountebank, or medicine-show man. Scoto engages in a long and colorful speech, hawking his new "oil", which is touted as a cure-all for disease and suffering. At the end of the speech, he asks the crows to toss him their handkerchiefs, and Celia complies. Corvino arrives, just as she does this, and flies into a jealous rage, scattering the crows in the square. Volpone goes home and complains to Mosca that he is sick with lust for Celia, and Mosca vows to deliver her to Volpone. Meanwhile, Corvino berates his wife for tossing her handkerchief, since he interprets it as a sign of her unfaithfulness, and he threatens to murder her and her family as a result. He decrees that, as punishment, she will now no longer be allowed to go to Church, she cannot stand near windows (as she did when watching Volpone), and, most bizarrely, she must do everything backwards from now on–she must even walk and speak backwards. Mosca then arrives, implying to Corvino that if he lets Celia sleep with Volpone (as a "restorative" for Volpone's failing health), then Volpone will choose him as his heir. Suddenly, Corvino's jealousy disappears, and he consents to the offer.

The third act begins with a soliloquy from Mosca, indicating that he is growing increasingly conscious of his power and his independence from Volpone. Mosca then runs into Bonario, Corbaccio's son, and informs the young man of his father's plans to disinherit him. He has Bonario come back to Volpone's house with him, in order to watch Corbaccio sign the documents (hoping that Bonario might kill Corbaccio then and there out of rage, thus allowing Volpone to gain his inheritance early). Meanwhile Lady Politic again arrives at Volpone's residence, indicating that it is now mid-morning, approaching noon. This time, Volpone lets her in, but he soon regrets it, for he is exasperated by her talkativeness. Mosca rescues Volpone by telling the Lady that Sir Politic has been seen in a gondola with a courtesan (a high-class prostitute). Volpone then prepares for his seduction of Celia, while Mosca hides Bonario in a corner of the bedroom, in anticipation of Corbaccio's arrival. But Celia and Corvino arrive first—Celia complains bitterly about being forced to be unfaithful, while Corvino tells her to be quiet and do her job. When Celia and Volpone are alone together, Volpone greatly surprises Celia by leaping out of bed. Celia had expected and old, infirm man, but what she gets instead is a lothario who attempts to seduce her with a passionate speech. Always the good Christian, Celia refuses Volpone's advances, at which point Volpone says that he will rape her. But Bonario, who has been witnessing the scene from his hiding place the entire time, rescues Celia. Bonario wounds Mosca on his way out. Corbaccio finally arrives, too late, as does Voltore. Mosca plots, with Voltore's assistance, how to get Volpone out of this mess.

A short while later, in the early afternoon, Peregrine and Sir Politic are still talking. Sir Politic gives the young traveler some advice on living in Venice and describes several schemes he has under consideration for making a great deal of money. They are soon interrupted by Lady Politic, who is convinced that Peregrine is the prostitute Mosca told her about—admittedly, in disguise. But Mosca arrives and tells Lady Politic that she is mistaken; the courtesan he referred to is now in front of the Senate (in other words, Celia). Lady Politic believes him and ends by giving Peregrine a seductive goodbye with a coy suggestion that they see each other again. Peregrine is incensed at her behavior and vows revenge on Sir Politic because of it. The scene switches to the Scrutineo, the Venetian Senate building, where Celia and Bonario have informed the judges of Venice about Volpone's deceit, Volpone's attempt to rape Celia, Corbaccio's disinheritance of his son, and Corvino's decision to prostitute his wife. But the defendants make a very good case for themselves, led by their lawyer, Voltore. Voltore portrays Bonario and Celia as lovers, Corvino as an innocent jilted husband, and Corbaccio as a wounded father nearly killed by his evil son. The judge are swayed when Lady Politic comes in and (set up perfectly by Mosca) identifies Celia as the seducer of her husband Sir Politic. Further, they are convinced when Volpone enters the courtroom, again acting ill. The judges order that Celia and Bonario be arrested and separated.

In the final act, Volpone returns home tired and worried that he is actually growing ill, for he is now feeling some of the symptoms he has been faking. To dispel his fears, he decides to engage in one final prank on the legacy hunters. He spreads a rumor that he has died and then tells Mosca to pretend that he has been made his master's heir. The plan goes off perfectly, and all three legacy hunters are fooled. Volpone then disguises himself as a Venetian guard, so that he can gloat in each legacy hunter's face over their humiliation, without being recognized. But Mosca lets the audience know that Volpone is dead in the eyes of the world and that Mosca will not let him "return to the world of the living" unless Volpone pays up, giving Mosca a share of his wealth.

Meanwhile, Peregrine is in disguise himself, playing his own prank on Sir Politic. Peregrine presents himself as a merchant to the knight and informs Politic that word has gotten out of his plan to sell Venice to the Turks. Politic, who once mentioned the idea in jest, is terrified. When three merchants who are in collusion with Peregrine knock on the door, Politic jumps into a tortoise-shell wine case to save himself. Peregrine informs the merchants when they enter that he is looking at a valuable tortoise. The merchants decide to jump on the tortoise and demand that it crawls along the floor. They remark loudly upon its leg-garters and fine hand-gloves, before turning it over to reveal Sir Politic. Peregrine and the merchants go off, laughing at their prank, and Sir Politic moans about how much he agrees with his wife's desire to leave Venice and go back to England.

Meanwhile, Volpone gloats in front of each legacy hunter, deriding them for having lost Volpone's inheritance to a parasite such as Mosca, and he successfully avoids recognition. But his plan backfires nonetheless. Voltore, driven to such a state of distraction by Volpone's teasing, decides to recant his testimony in front of the Senate, implicating both himself but more importantly Mosca as a criminal. Corvino accuses him of being a sore loser, upset that Mosca has inherited Volpone's estate upon his death, and the news of this death surprises the Senators greatly. Volpone nearly recovers from his blunder by telling Voltore, in the middle of the Senate proceeding, that "Volpone" is still alive. Mosca pretends to faint and claims to the Senate that he does not know where he is, how he got there, and that he must have been possessed by a demon during the last few minutes when he was speaking to them. He also informs the Senators that Volpone is not dead, contradicting Corvino. All seems good for Volpone until Mosca returns, and, instead of confirming Voltore's claim that Volpone is alive, Mosca denies it. Mosca, after all, has a will, written by Volpone and in his signaure, stating that he is Volpone's heir. now that Volpone is believed to be dead, Mosca legally owns Volpone's property, and Mosca tells Volpone that he is not going to give it back by telling the truth. Realizing that he has been betrayed, Volpone decides that rather than let Mosca inherit his wealth, he will turn them both in. Volpone takes off his disguise and finally reveals the truth about the events of the past day. Volpone ends up being sent to prison, while Mosca is consigned to a slave galley. Voltore is disbarred, Corbaccio is stripped of his property (which is given to his son Bonario), and Corvino is publicly humiliated, forced to wear donkey's ears while being rowed around the canals of Venice. At the end, there is a small note from the playwright to the audience, simply asking them to applaud if they enjoyed the play they just saw.

Irony in Jane Austen's Novel

2006-01-04T04:22:00.000-08:00

The Use of Irony in Jane Austen's Novel

In the context of Austen, irony is best understood as a mode of expression that calls into question the way things appear. As Marvin Mudrick remarks, ‘irony ... consists in the discrimination between impulse and pretension, between being and seeming, between ... man as he is and man as he aspires to be’ (3). irony, he adds, is not always comic: ‘it becomes comic when its very neutrality is exploited as a kind of relief from man's conventional response of outrage and involvement toward delusion and error’ (3). Austen, however, used irony for satiric as well as comic effect. Often, then, the ironic comments in her novels do more than expose her characters' misguided assumptions; irony helps her condemn the social norms that help foster such beliefs.

In Austen's novels, irony can appear in innumerable ways. It can occur during a verbal exchange. For instance, in Sense and Sensibility, this is how Elinor defends Colonel Brandon's use of a flannel waistcoat: ‘Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not there something interesting to you in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?’ (Austen, Sense 38). Obviously, the real object of Elinor's remark is to reveal the absurdity of Marianne's romantic sensibilities. Sometimes Austen's irony is visual. For example, in Emma, the fact that Emma blithely idealizes a portrait of Harriet Smith underscores the fact that Emma imagines much that is not true about her new friend. Austen's irony may also depend upon a disparity between what can be seen and what is invisible. Willoughby's ‘person and air’ are ‘equal to what [Marianne's] fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story’ (Austen, Sense 43); however, he behaves like a cad. The disparity between Willoughby's appearance and character calls into question readers' assumptions about what heroes ought to look like and casts doubt onto novels that glorify excessive sensibility.

In Emma, the heroine's ignorance of her own heart is suggested thus:

Emma continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love [with Frank Churchill]. Her ideas only varied as to the how much. At first, she thought it was a good deal; and afterwards, but little. She had great pleasure in hearing Frank Churchill talked of ... she was very often thinking of him, and quite impatient for a letter. ... But, on the other hand, she could not admit herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed for employment than usual; she was still busy and cheerful; and, pleasing as he was, she could yet imagine him to have faults. [Austen, Emma 264]

By the end of this passage, the only thing more apparent than Emma's indifference to Frank Churchill is the absurdity of her criteria for judging the extent of her own affections. As Rachel Brownstein points out, the danger facing Emma, and all of Austen's heroines, is that they may ‘let the right man and the chance for action pass them by’ (90). Consequently, she adds, the happy conclusions of the novels depend upon the heroines' ability to know their own hearts and to interpret the world around them correctly (91). Often, as in Sense and Sensibility or Emma, this requires that the heroines reject romantic conventions. Despite her earlier prejudice against them, Marianne finally realizes that second attachments may actually work while Emma eventually accepts the difference between her real and imagined worlds.

Emma is a story about how a girl learns to be kind. Set on a pedestal by virtue of her social position, spoiled by her father, Emma ‘dangerously imagines herself a splendid free young goddess whose connection to most people is an amused puppeteer's’ (Brownstein 104). Throughout the novel, Emma gradually learns that she is like everyone else. However, until she learns to value and join a community, the third-person narration mercilessly exposes Emma's delusions and satirizes the social conventions that nurture them.

Austen herself wrote that Emma was a heroine that ‘no one but myself will much like’ (quoted in Austen-Leigh 157), and to all intents, she should have been right.

Essay: Self-deception in Jane Austen's Emma

2006-01-04T03:44:00.000-08:00

Emma as a Novel of Self-deception
By: Penguin Classic

Introduction

Though her novels are known for their relatively small scale and controlled emotion, few authors inspire such extremes of feeling as Jane Austen. Self-professed "Janeites" form societies in her honor, while detractors call her fiction insular and trivial. Because Austen's name and a general idea of the world of her fiction are common cultural currency, it is difficult for readers to approach her novels without preconceptions but essential that they do so to appreciate her art. Emma opens as if it will be a simple narrative about a young woman who is "handsome, clever, and rich" (p. 7), but it becomes instead a penetrating study of the human capacity for self-deception, self-knowledge, and love.

The novel is dominated by Emma Woodhouse, a young woman who possesses great social and personal advantages but no awareness of her limitations. We learn in the opening chapter that Emma has "lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her" (p. 7)—an indication that something soon will. The story's action begins when Isabella Taylor, Emma's former governess and current companion, leaves the household to marry. Long motherless, Emma is now left with only a well-meaning father who imposes no restraint on her.

One of the most important lessons Emma must learn is the folly of plotting the fates of others. She begins the novel determined to "improve" and make a brilliant marriage for Harriet Smith, the illegitimate young woman new to Highbury. Emma believes she is acting solely for Harriet's benefit, but the narrator makes clear Emma's unacknowledged motives. Emma declares matchmaking "the greatest amusement in the world!" (p. 13), and her failure to take seriously the marriage market's strictures leads to Harriet's humiliation and threatens her with permanent unhappiness. Emma cannot see the intentions of Mr. Elton and Frank Churchill, believing both are smitten with Harriet even as clues to their true feelings abound. Why is Harriet's future so important to Emma that she is blind to many of the realities of her world, even disregarding the warnings of her old friend Mr. Knightley?

If Emma represents a restless personality often impatient with social expectations, Mr. George Knightley embodies the rational embrace of those expectations. Sixteen years older than Emma, Mr. Knightley is the only character in the novel able to see Emma's faults and rebuke her for them. He warns Emma that her friendship with Harriet will harm both of them and predicts that Mr. Elton will never marry a woman who is not his social equal. When, despite Emma's efforts, Mr. Elton proposes to her rather than to Harriet and, rebuffed, goes on to marry the socially superior if personally odious Miss Hawkins, Emma is shocked, but not enlightened. Mr. Knightley's coolness toward newcomer Frank Churchill, whose impetuousness and flirtatious manner attracts Emma, distances them further. Because the reader understands early on that it is Mr. Knightley who loves Emma and whom she loves, we wonder when she will realize this.

Austen never allows us to forget how high the stakes are for marriageable young women, whose only power in this society is consenting to or refusing the men they attract. A woman's social, economic, and emotional future is almost wholly determined by her marriage, as illustrated by the marriages of Mr. Elton and Miss Hawkins, Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax, and Robert Martin and Harriet Smith. Emma's own development is revealed primarily through her reactions to her romantic prospects. In the course of the novel she receives a proposal from Mr. Elton, which she refuses; recognizes that she does not want to marry Frank Churchill if he asks her; and, at long last, realizes that it is Mr. Knightley she loves.

Emma's final realization is delayed until the last chapter, when a group outing to Box Hill leads her to reassess Frank, Knightley, and herself. Led on by Frank's flirtatiousness, Emma makes a joke at the expense of her old friend Miss Bates, an aging spinster whose prolix rambling irritates Emma. Despite Miss Bates's blushing embarrassment, Emma does not realize she has pained her friend until Mr. Knightley asks, "How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?" (p. 351). Mr. Knightley's rebuke awakens Emma to the reality of social status, and to her unthinking abuse of her advantages over Miss Bates. Emma can no longer ignore Mr. Knightley's advice; he has shown her where her attitudes lead.

Whether Austen's novels endorse or critique the class system that they depict has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Emma's marriage to Mr. Knightley weds high social status to worth of character. Yet the novel also makes us aware of how often social class and true worth are not united. Mr. and Mrs. Elton, for example, are in every way but social status far inferior to Robert Martin and Harriet Smith. Does Austen's depiction of the range of worth within each social class imply criticism of the class system itself?

Emma also illustrates the potential conflicts between an ethical life and society's demands. Emma and Mr. Knightley's marriage unites the two, but the convoluted plot leading to it implies the unlikeliness of such a pairing. The novel suggests that true communication and real connections between people are difficult to achieve. The misunderstandings that drive much of the plot, while superficially comic, also highlight the disasters that can result from miscommunication. To what extent misunderstandings are inevitable and to what extent they result from a society's way of organizing itself is a puzzle that lingers long after we lay the book aside.

Essay: Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of The Rights of Woman"

2005-12-26T03:34:00.000-08:00

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
by Sarah Kearney

During the early years of the French Revolution, England became a place of new beginnings, where the idea of the individual emerged, the world of literature was reborn and authority was thoroughly questioned and often uprooted. Great poets and philosophers were awakened, and the 'war of pamphlets' began, proclaiming revolutionary theories, arguing social and political change, and urging self-examination. Mary Wollstonecraft, "pioneer of feminist thought" (Jane Moore, 1999) in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was the first to bring the subordinate attitude that society had towards women into the open, arguing that women were men's intellectual equals and therefore affirming a woman's right to a full education.

"A profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore." (Page166) Continuing on from this radical observation, Wollstonecraft states, that through the education of women, relationships between husbands and wives will be better and the children, future of society will receive a better education. By including the children into these benefits, Wollstonecraft appeals to the men, who at that time considered "females rather as women than human creature; have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers." Wollstonecraft continues to say that women are elevated, acknowledging the "homage" that men pay to women, yet this "homage" is purely directed towards purile qualities rather than noble.

She argues that this elevation does nothing but weaken the women. Wollstonecraft's preferable woman figure is a rational and useful citizen.
It is not only the attitude of men towards women that Wollstonecraft directed her arguments against. Much of her criticism was aimed at the women's perception of themselves and their own abilities. Wollstonecraft claims in chapter two, page 170, that the only education women receive is that which is taught by their mothers, "softness of temper, outward obedience and a scrupulous attention to a purile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man..." Who, "...try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood." (Page 170-171) Wollstonecraft continues throughout her book to refer to the "wife" as being an "overgrown child." In connecting the way women are treated to how children are treated, emphasis is placed on the fact that as children are dependant on adults, (men), for intellectual guidance, so to do women rely on men, rather than becoming responsible for their own intellectual growth.

Keeping these views of women in mind, Wollstonecraft's ideas were revolutionary. They were the beginnings of emancipation for women.
Wollstonecraft argues that men may well be more virtuous in their bodies, yet when it comes to the virtue of one's nature, she defies any idea of virtue being different for men or women; "in fact how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard?" (Page 176) This is one of her main objectives that woman's physical inferiority has led to false assumptions about her intellectual ability. By including God in the argument, Wollstonecraft dares to confront the church, a leader power of the time, and its opinion that it is only men who have certain Godly qualities.

She alludes once again to the Christian teachings, yet this time backing up her point by using the Old Testament. In this case she is against Dr Gregory in his "Legacy to his daughters," that girls should "give lie to her feelings, and not dance with her spirit..."continuing to advise the restraint of speech lest it make her seem immodest. Wollstonecraft fights back by quoting "the wiser Solomon" saying that the heart should be pure, abundant and natural, out of this state the mouth would speak true knowledge. Thus the heart is more important than trivial ceremonies placed on women and children, because even people with vice in their heart can perform such actions. This is a very confrontational approach, as both men and women partook of church ceremonies for no other reason than to heighten people's opinion of themselves.

Throughout the Vindication, Wollstonecraft makes clear her position that to be a good mother and responsible citizen the woman must be equal with her husband, "and not the humble dependant" (page 178) the only way to achieve this is through friendship, and a natural understanding that both are "creatures of reason." Wollstonecraft does not however deny the passion that is felt in a marriage, she says that when this passion should subside, there should be a friendship in which to educate children and form strong morals on which society can move forward. To have a strong friendship with one's wife would be an absurd idea to many men at that time, but because of the revolutionary awakening occurring, Wollstonecraft was able to try and change this constraining idea which men had.

Rousseau is another poet that she fights against to prove her point. While he is concerned about power plays and feeling lacking in some way, Wollstonecraft states "I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves." (Chap 4, page 187) This is her main point, equality, and understanding of ones self. She is encouraging women to educate themselves, push past the false limitations which society has placed on women and begin to cultivate rationality, understanding and peace of mind. (Page 181) None of her arguments seek to make women higher than men, they are rather encouraging woman to embrace this time of new beginnings.

Bibliography
Moore, J Mary Wollstonecraft UK (1999)
Wollstonecraft, M A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, (1792) in Norton Anthology of English LiteratureNew York (2000)

Essay: Book I "Paradise Lost" by John Milton

2005-12-26T03:22:00.000-08:00

Summary and Analysis of John Milton's "Paradise Lost Book I"
By: Purwarno Hadinata

Summary
Book I of Paradise Lost begins with Milton describing what he intends to undertake with his epic: the story of Man's first disobedience and the "loss of Eden," subjects which have been "unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." His main objective, however, is to "justify the ways of God to men."

The poem then shifts to focus on the character of Satan who has just fallen from heaven. The scene opens in a fiery, yet dark, lake of hell. Satan, dazed, seems to be coming to consciousness after his fall and finds himself chained to the lake.
He lifts his head to see his second in command, Beelzebub,
the Lord of the Flies, who has been transformed from a beautiful archangel into a horrid fallen angel. Satan gets his bearings and, in a speech to Beelzebub, realizes what has just happened: Satan, presuming that he was equal to God, had declared war on the creator. Many angels had joined Satan, and the cosmic battle had shaken God's throne.

Satan and his cohorts had lost and been cast "nine times the space that measures day and night" to hell. Still, Satan tells Beelzebub that all is not lost. He will never bow down to God and now, knowing more of the extent of God's might, the rebel angels might better know how to continue to fight him in an eternal war.

Beelzebub questions why they themselves still exist. What plan did God have for them since he did not kill them completely, but left them their souls and spirits intact to feel pain in hell?

Satan replies that God indeed wanted to punish them by forcing them to languish in hell for eternity. But, he says, that means that they don't ever have to obey God again. In fact, Satan says, they must work to instill evil in all good things so as to always anger God.

Satan and Beelzebub gather their strength and fly off the fiery lake to firmer, though still fiery, ground. They look around at the dark wasteland that is hell, but Satan remains proud. "Better to reign in hell, then serve in heaven."

They see their army lying confused and vanquished in the fiery lake. Satan calls to them and they respond immediately. Satan gathers his closest twelve around him .
Music plays and banners fly as the army of rebel angels comes to attention, tormented and defeated but faithful to their general

They could not have known the extent of God's might, Satan tells them, but now they do know and can now examine how best to beat him. Satan has heard of a new kind of creation that God intends on making, called man. They will continue the war against heaven, but the battlefield will be within the world of mankind.

The army bangs their shields with their swords in loud agreement. The rebel angels then construct a Temple, a throne room, for their general and for their government, greater in grandeur than the pyramids or the Tower of Babylon.

All the millions of rebel angels then gather in the Temple for a great council, shrinking themselves and become dwarves in order to fit.

Analysis

Milton tells us that he is tackling the story told in Genesis of the Fall of Adam and the loss of the Garden of Eden. With it, Milton will also be exploring a cosmic battle in heaven between good and evil. Supernatural creatures, including Satan and the Judeo Christian God himself, will be mixing with humans and acting and reacting with humanlike feelings and emotions. As in other poetic epics such as Homer's Iliad and Ulysses, the Popul Vuh, and Gilgamesh, Milton is actually attempting to describe the nature of man by reflecting on who his gods are and what his origins are. By demonstrating the nature of the beings who created mankind, Milton is presenting his, or his culture's , views on what good and evil mean, what mankind's relationship is with the Absolute, what man's destiny is as an individual and as a species. The story, therefore, can be read as a simple narrative, with characters interacting with each other along a plot and various subplots. It can also, however, be extrapolated out to hold theological and religious messages, as well as political and social themes.

Milton introduces Book I with a simple summary of what his epic poem is about: the Fall of Adam and the loss of the Garden of Eden. He tells us that his heavenly muse is the same as that of Moses, that is, the spirit that combines the absolute with the literary. The voice is of a self-conscious narrator explaining his position. There is some background in the past tense, then suddenly the reader finds himself in the present tense on a fiery lake in hell. The quiet introduction, the backing into the story, then the verb change and plunge into the middle of the action, in medias res, creates a cinematic and exciting beginning.

On this lake we meet Satan, general and king of the fallen rebel angels.
Milton's portrait of Satan has fascinated critics since Paradise Lost's publication, leading some in the Romantic period to claim that Satan is, in fact, the heroic protagonist of the whole work. Certainly Milton's depiction of Satan has greatly influenced the devil's image in Western art and literature since the book's publication.

The reader first meets a stunned Satan chained down to a fiery lake of hell, surrounded by his coconspirators. In this first chapter, the reason for his downfall is that he thought himself equal to God. Hell, however, has not taught him humility, and, in fact, strengthens his revolve to never bow to the Almighty (Interestingly, the word "God" is not used in the chapters dealing with Hell and Satan).

Satan is often called a sympathetic character in Paradise Lost, despite being the source of all evil, and in the first chapter the reader is presented with some of Satan's frustration. Satan tells his army that they were tricked, that it wasn't until they were at battle that God showed the true extent of his almightiness. If they had been shown this force previously, not only would the rebel angels not have declared war on heaven, but Satan, also, would never have presumed that he himself was better than God. Now they have been irreversibly punished for all eternity, but, rather than feel sorry for themselves or repent, Satan pushes his army to be strong, to make "a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

Hell reflecting heaven and, later, earth reflecting both, will be a common theme throughout the work. Satan chooses twelve close friends: all of them drawn from pagan mythology or from foreign kings in the Hebrew Bible: to echo and mimic Christ's twelve apostles. Satan's angels build a large a glorious temple and call a council, both of which will be echoed in heaven. In fact, Satan uses the same architect as heaven, now called Mammon in hell.

Many of the structures and symbols are similar. In heaven and hell there is a king and a military hierarchy of angels. In most cases, however, they the reverse of each other. In Book I, we are shown that the most prominent thing about hell is its darkness, whereas heaven is full of luminous light. As well, the fallen angels, previously glorious and beautiful, are now ugly and disfigured.

These mirror, and therefore reverse, images of heaven and hell also work on a theological level. The darkness of hell symbolizes the distance Satan and his army are from the luminous light and grace of God. Simultaneously, the rebel angels pulled away from God by their actions and are forced away by God himself, outside of all the blessings and glory that come with God's light and into the pain and suffering that comes with distance away from him. The physical corruption and disfigurement that occurs to all the fallen angels is symbolic of the corruption which has occurred in their souls.

Hell itself is described as a belching unhealthy body, whose "womb" will be torn open to expose the "ribs" of metal ore that are necessary to build Satan's temple. Natural occurrences in hell, such as the metaphor of the eclipsed sun, are symbols of natural, and therefore spiritual, decay.

Psychological motivations also work in reverse in hell. Hell is punishment for turning away from the Good, but instead of learning his lesson, Satan becomes more stubborn and more proud. While heaven is a place where all are turned toward the good and toward pleasing and obeying God, Satan makes hell a place turned away from God and turned deliberately toward displeasing him. Whereas before falling from heaven, Satan was only guilty of presuming to be greater than God (pride), now Satan has, in fact, become a creator himself. He has created evil: the direction away from God.

Other critics have examined the political implications of Milton's hell. Like Dante's hell, the characters and institutions in Milton's hell are often subtle references to political issues in Milton's day. The Temple of Satan, for example, has been thought to symbolize St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, the "capitol" of Roman Catholicism and home of the Pope. The comparison of the glory of hell to the light of an eclipsed sun was thought to be a veiled critique of the Sun King, King Charles, who reigned during Milton's time.

A full understanding of the metaphors and images that Milton uses, however, would take more than a knowledge of his contemporary history or religious background. Describing Satan's kingdom, Milton takes from a myriad of sources, including Greek mythology and epic poetry, Egyptian and Canaanite religious traditions, the Hebrew Bible and Mishnaic texts, the New Testament and apocryphal texts, the Church Fathers, popular legends, and other theological texts.

It should be noted that, in the epic tradition, Milton is using poetry to tell his story, following most prominently the style of Homer. The work, therefore, can also be examined through the lens of poetry with an eye toward rhythm and sound. In the first sentence, Milton uses an alliteration to conduct what is referred to as a double discourse: "Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree..." Not only does the repeated "f" sound add to the aesthetic of the sentence, it connects the "f" words to present a different idea than the sentence itself is presenting. In this case, "first... fruits" are "forbidden." This double discourse, literally two sentences spoken at the same time, is repeated throughout Milton.

The Role of Plot in a Tragedy

2005-12-24T03:12:00.000-08:00

Plot in a Tragedy

Aristotle says: “We maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy, is plot.” E. M. Forster in his Aspects of Novel says that a plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. ‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and the queen died of grief’ is a plot.

A plot is a sequence of evens in a narrative. It is divided into three parts, those are:
1. epitasis or rising action: in which the incidents described tend to reach a definite conclusion.
This part is divided into exposition and complication. The Dramatist seeks to explain the necessary events that occurred before the beginning of the dramatic action to the audience. That purpose is served by the exposition.

2. peripety or climax or the turning-point of the incidents which follows the rising action.
Peripety or climax deals with the fortune of the hero, which is, in fact, the turning point of his life and career. In this section, we have the Aristotelian anagnorisis. In Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, for example, Oedipus comes to realise that he has killed his father and married his mother. It is extremely revealing. The hero has the anagnorisis or recognition of the grim truth, and that is the turning-point of his life.

3. the denouement or falling action, in which the incidents are brought to a conclusion.
It deals with that part of a drama, when the hero is faced with an inescapable situation, and is left with no alternatives.

Aristotle thinks the plot to be the soul of Tragedy. But since the Renaissance, ‘character’ has been of supreme importance. When we read a play called Hamlet, we feel that Hamlet’s character is what matters most. When Aristotle speaks of ‘plot’, he uses the word in a very comprehensive sense.

In Greek, there’re three words which is very famous: ethos which is translated ‘character’, muthos ‘plot’, and praxeos ‘action’. The meaning of the Greek ethos is far narrower; it excludes behaviour and is limited to a certain moral bent in a person’s make-up, which may, or may not, express itself in action. Praxeos, the latter word thus including not only what we call action but the greater part of what we mean by character. The word muthos, translated ‘plot’, includes not only, as the English word suggests, the external happenings, the bare bones of the story with ‘character’ left out, but every activity, mental, emotional, even verbal, by which ethos becomes praxeos; in other words, what we call character is as much a part of muthos as is plot in our sense of the word. All that muthos excludes is moral tendencies - qualities - which have not expressed themselves in action. It is in this sense that Aristotle is using the words when he says that ‘Tragedy is not an imitation of persons’ - that is to say of what people have it in them to be before their ethos becomes praxeos - ‘but of action’, ‘the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity and not a quality,’ and, “the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak of tragedy, is plot.”

Aristotle makes three rather brief remarks on the plot:
1. The plot must have a certain length
2. It must have a certain structure
3. It must be the soul of the drama.
The length of the plot must not be enormous. It must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The plot must not be “like a creature a thousand miles long.” The beginning, middle, and end must be integrated. The middle is atonce the cause and sequence of the beginning, while the end is the consequence of the middle. In a drama, the causal connection and inevitability are essential to mark it not only artistic, but logically convincing. For example, Oedipus Rex. The play begins with the plague in Thebes, which can be removed only when the guilty man is punished. The middle relates to the discovery that Oedipus himself is the guilty man; and the end in his punishment.

Some critics have complaint that the ‘exposition’ of the plot in ancient Greece did not rouse sufficient interest, for the audience knew all about the plot even before going to the theatre. Aristotle, however, does not always suggest that only the well-known traditional stories and legends are what dramatist should exclusively draw upon. Even if the stories are known to the audience, there is no harm. It is the artistic handling of the plot that matters. The question of exposition gives rise to another problem - how much should the dramatist expose? If there is no dramatic suspense, if the last page of a detective fiction or a thriller is well in advance, the known audience will feel bored. Lope de Vega says: “keep your secret to the end. The audience will turn their faces to the door and their backs to the stage when there is no more to learn. For Example, while Hamlet is taking to his mother, the arras suddenly moves. Hamlet does not know who is behind it. He assumes that it must be the king. Later the person proves to be Polonius. Shakespeare has thus kept it guarded secret from the audience.

Aristotle says that a work of a art must be complete and have “all the organic unity of a living creature.” Tragedy must be “complete in itself,” and must be “a whole”, and “complete in itself.” The same idea is repeated as “one action, a complete whole.” An epic, like a tragedy, “is based on a single action, one that is a complete whole in itself.” The comparison of a plot and a living creature is very apt. He compares work of art with a living being. A work of art is complex thing., which, as Humphry House points out, “involves the interaction of parts in effective movement.”

When Aristotle speaks about the magnitude or ‘right size’ of a plot, he means that it should have proportion. As regards the proper size of a tragedy, Humphry House says that it governed by two criteria:
1. The function of tragedy itself; it must be of such a size that it can adequately display the hero passing by a series of probable or necessary stages from misfortune to happiness, or vice versa.
2. The capacity of the spectator or reader; the play must not exceed the length that compressed by the human memory: otherwise the essential unity of impression will be lost. But, so far as it consistent with its comprehensible as a whole, the longer the better.

Peripeteia and Anagnorisis

Aristotle speaks of two types of plot - simple and complex. A simple plot is one without peripeteia and anagnorisis; while a complex plot has peripeteia or anagnorisis or both.

Peripeteia has been translated as ‘reversal of fortune’. A peripeteia occurs when a person sought to aim at a particular result, but the reverse of the result was produced. It brings about the irony. In Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, Barabas was boiling oil in a cauldron to destroy his enemy, but he himself dropped in it and died. While in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth heard the equivalent prophecy of the witches and sought to kill Banquo and all his enemies. But in reality, he got no peace and security, but only the damnation of his soul.

Anagnorisis may be translated as ‘recognition’ or ‘discovery’. Anagnorisis is a sudden realisation of a grim truth. Aristotle has spoken of six types of anagnorisis. The first type relates to the discovery by signs. The second type is the discovery, rather arbitrarily suggested by the dramatist. The third type of discovery is based upon memory. The fourth type of it is made through reasoning. The fifth type is based on false reasoning. And the last type is made by natural means.

A simple plot has no tragic irony. A complex plot is more artistic, and it is based on errors and irony. The hero of tragedy is suffering from hamartia, i.e. tragic error. Hamartia is only a false step - a leap in the dark, which brings about the downfall of the hero. For example, Desdemona dropped her handkerchief, and that was a fatal mistake. Othello made a serious mistake when he gave credence to Iago’s report. For all practical purposes Iago’s villainy did not bring about the tragedy. As Meredith rightly points out:
In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be, Passions spin the plot:
We are betrayed by what is false within.

No extraneous force brings our disaster. Our enemy is always lurking within ourselves. And that enemy is hamartia. In an ideal tragic plot, peripeteia, anagnorisis, and hamartia are all inextricably interwined and deeper the tragic irony.

Definition of Tragedy

2005-12-22T02:41:00.000-08:00

A Definition of Tragedy

The term ‘Tragedy’ is used in a common parlance, and yet it cannot be reduced to a formula, for it has so many shades that it actually defies a logical analysis. An American critic has admirable summed up Tragedy in a few words: “Courage and inevitable defeat.” Now-a-days we can never think of a Tragedy without an unhappy ending. But the Greeks did. Philoctetes by Sophocles, for example, has no unhappy ending. There is a similarity between the ancient Greek Tragedy and a modern Tragedy. The hero and certain other characters are caught in a difficult situation.

The character and plot in most of Tragedies are linked up. In Greek Tragedies fate played a very important part, but after the Renaissance character became more and more prominent. In some of Shakespearian Tragedies, despite the importance of character, the motivation of action comes from the supernatural forces or even external circumstances. In modern Tragedies, the hero is often the victim of social forces.

Aristotle defined Tragedy as “a representation of an action, which is serious; complete in itself, and of a certain length; it is expressed in speech made beautiful in different ways in different parts of the play; it is acted, not narrated; and by exciting pity and fear it gives a healthy relief to such emotions.”

Tragedy must be spoudaious i.e. noble, serious, and elevated. The Greek root for Tragedy is tragoidia, which means something serious, but not necessarily a drama with an unhappy ending. Plato has called Homer’s Odyssey a Tragedy, though it is not drama. Seriousness of subject is what really matters.

Tragedy, F. L. Lucas maintains, had three different meanings in the three periods of literary history. In ancient times, a Tragedy meant a serious drama; in medieval times, a Tragedy meant a story with an unhappy ending; and a modern Tragedy is a drama with an unhappy ending.

“Tragedy is an imitation of an action.” And ‘action’ again gives rise to a lot of troubles. A novel or an Epic is narrated, while a drama, be it a Tragedy or a Comedy, is acted. Can there be action without narration? The answer is obvious. The Greek Dramaturgy did not allowed any act of violence on the stage. Even a romantic playwright like Shakespeare had some of the murders reported by messengers. Lucas rightly points out, “Not everything permits itself to be acted. ‘Let not Medea slay her sons before the audience’: things like that, at least, on the Greek stage were relegated to a Messenger’s speech.”

With regard to “an action which is complete in itself,” the controversy has been raging for a long time. What is actually meant by completeness? An action having a beginning, a middle, and an end is said to be complete. T. R. Henn defines ‘completeness’ as totality which Matthew Arnold later called ‘architectonice’. Aristotle himself, in different chapter of the Poetics, has saught to define ‘completeness’. If the play begins abruptly, the reader or the audience may not understand what it is about. Let not the reader ask “What happens then?” The work of art should be rounded off. The Greek art, whether plastic or non-plastic, always insisted on symmetry. Along with symmetry there is frugality. The details are not extraneous. On the contrary, it is an organic unity. If there are details, they are not ornamental, but functional, Aristotle means by ‘completeness’ the organic unity.

The organic unity is linked up with the size of the work of art. If the art has no appropriate limit or size, it loses its symmetry. “Whatever is beautiful, whether it be a living creature or an object made up of various parts, must necessarily not only have its parts properly ordered, but also be of an appropriate size for beauty is banned up with size and order.” If a thing is a thousand miles long, that will also not be beautiful, for the whole thing cannot be taken in all at once, and the unity of the art will be lost sight of Aristotle while speaking of the Plot, again emphasis that the plot of a play, being but representation of an action, must present it as an organic whole. Aristotle says that the Tragedies “should center upon a single action, whole and complete, and having a beginning, a middle and an end, so that like a single complete organism the poem may produce a special kind of pleasure.”

Aristotle emphasizes that the Tragedy should be “expressed in speech made beautiful.” But in the modern age, Tragedies have become realistic, and therefore, the language has become drab and colourless. Another part of Aristotle’s definition of Tragedy is that it should be “acted, not narrated.” This also is a bone of contention.

Essay: Aristotle's Views on Imitation

2005-12-19T06:30:00.000-08:00

Aristotle’s Views on Imitation

Aristotle had refuted Plato’s conception of imitation. Plato thought imitation to be a deviation from truth. Aristotle thought imitation to be the re-creation of something better than reality. Aristotle in Poetic says:
“Epic poetry and Tragedy, as also Comedy, Dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and lyre-playing are all, viewed as a whole, modes of imitation.”

Aristotle does not bring all the types of art. He speaks only of Epic poetry, Tragedy, Comedy, Dithyrambic poetry and Music. Aristotle has equated poetry with music, while Plato has equated poetry with painting. Aristotle in his opinion said that Poetry and Music have a deeper significance than painting, which is concerned with what has actually happened and with what may happen; not as in Painting which cannot go deep into reality, it is always on the surface. That’s why Aristotle clinches the issue: “From what we have said it will be seen that the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing which might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary.”

Poetry, therefore, is the better form of art. It deals with eternal varieties, and not mere facts. It deals with the permanent human thoughts, feelings and action – the eternal passion, the eternal pain. The poet should imitate men who are better than they are in actual life. A poet is not an imitator. He is a maker. The term ‘imitation’ is to be taken in the sense of creation making. It should be remember that the poet, who is maker, does not make anything in material terms. It has no substantial existence. Yet something has been made. Such a making is not perceptible; and it can only be realised.

“Hence Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statement are of the nature of universal, whereas those of history are singulars. By a universal statement I mean one as to what such and such a kind of man will probably or necessarily say or do – which is the aim of poetry.....by a singular statement one as to what, say, Alcibiades did or had done to him.”
The passage above tells us that a poet deals with human thought and passions as they always are. The poet has, no doubt, observed human beings very closely. The poet is not concerned with the passions and action of a particular man. ‘Imitation’, therefore, has a deeper significance for Aristotle.

Aristotle says that a poet deals with the essence. He is not concerned with man’s passing moods of feeling or the transient emotions. Human life is the original of all art, and poetry is no exception. Human life – its mental processes, its spiritual movement, its outward acts issuing from deeper sources; in a word, all that constitutes the inward and essential activity of the soul is what a poet is concerned with.

Poetry becomes the idealised representation of life. It is interesting to note that Hegel, centuries later, said that art is the sensuous representation of the ideal. Imaginative sensibility and idealisation are the constituents of imitation. It may sound paradoxical, that a poet has to be subjective. Aristotle, the father of classical criticism, the doughty champion of objectivity, unconsciously perhaps justified subjectivity. The empirical world – the world of experience, is thus transmuted into an ideal world. Aristotle has nowhere used the term ‘Imagination’.

God has created man and natural phenomena. The poet has re-created them. The poet re-creates the universal element in human life. Art deals with the permanent and essential elements of the original. It may be noted that the real and the ideal are not opposed to each other. The poet with his creative vision can reproduce or re-create an ideal world. ‘Imitation’ is not a copy of the original. It is a creative act, and nature is an artist. She has many contradictions in her creation. She creates beauty as well as ugliness. The poet is nature’s rival, and he outshines her, he creates things not as they are, but as they ought to be. The conclusion is irresistible that a poet does not beguile us with the deceptive shows and illusions of life. He is a creator – a greater creator than nature herself.

Summary: Aristotle "Poetics"

2005-12-19T06:21:00.000-08:00

A Brief Summary of Aristotle’s “Poetics”

Aristotle opens the Poetics by defining poetry as Mimesis or imitation. Imitation is the common principle of all arts. Some arts imitate by means of colour and shape; while some imitate by means of voice.

Aristotle never gives an explicit analysis of the term ‘imitation.’ He has taken the term from Plato, who believes that art is the copy of the copy, twice removed from truth. Aristotle’s conception of imitation is a corrective to Plato. Art imitates the world of man’s mind. Art is not mere imitation. It is a re-creation. “Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statement are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”

Poetry, according to Aristotle, is imitation of men in action. They may be even as they are. In Tragedy, men are better than they are, while in Comedy men are worse than they are. In Tragedy, the characters are good, but if they are almost deified they cannot rouse our sympathy. Similarly in Comedy, the men are worse than they are. They are worse than common men not as regards any and every sort of fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the ridiculous which is a species of the ugly.

Aristotle divides the poetry into the narrative and dramatic. The narrative poetry is known as the Epic, while dramatic poetry is Tragedy or Comedy. He believes that poetry owes its origin to the primitive instincts to imitate. Whenever there was the imitation of the good and noble, there was the birth of Tragedy and Epic; when the poets imitated the ignoble and the mean, they produced Comedy and Satire.

Epic poetry and Tragedy have been contrasted by Aristotle. They have three similarities; 1) they are metrical, 2) they are imitations of serious subjects in a grand style, and 3) the poets try to idealize the characters. Meanwhile, the differences between them are; 1) the Epic is in narrative form, written in one single kind of verse or metre, while Tragedy is written in a number of metres. 2) an Epic does not observe the unity of time, it may cover many days, while Tragedy observes the unity of time and endeavours to keep within a single circuit of the sun, i.e. one day.

Tragedy is an imitation of an action; the language will have pleasant accessories, which means language, rhythm and tune. The action of the Tragedy should be complete. It must have a beginning, middle and end. If there is an abrupt beginning, it will not be intelligible to the readers or the audience. The length of the play must also be appropriate, neither too short nor too long. If it is too short or too long, the unity and wholeness of it will be lost sight of. The end must also be emotionally and intellectually satisfying. He said that the end of Tragedy is Catharsis or Purgation or emotional relief. The direct object of Tragedy is to arouse pity and fear – the pity of the audience is for the hero, while the fear is for themselves.

A Tragedy, according to Aristotle, has six parts of elements; Plot, Character, Thought, Diction or Language, Melody or Music, and Spectacle. Plot is the soul of Tragedy. It must be a complete whole and should have logical coherence. The plot of Tragedy should deal with ideal or universal truth. Plot are generally divided into two types – simple and complex. A simple plot is a plot without peripeteia and anagnorisis, while a complex is one having peripeteia or anagnorisis both. Peripeteia means the change of fortune; and anagnorisis means discovery, recognition or revelation. The third element in plot, beside peripeteia and anagnorisis, is tragic suffering, i.e. murder or persecution displayed on stage.

Aristotle is in favour of avoiding three types of plot. A good man must not be seen passing from happiness to misery, or a bad man from misery to happiness. If it happens, it may be morally satisfying, but nevertheless it will not move us to pity or fear.

As regards the characters in a Tragedy, Aristotle likes the playwright to aim at four things. First, the character should be good. Secondly, the portrayal should be appropriate. Thirdly, the characters should be life-like, i.e. true to type and equally true to human nature. Last, the characters should have consistency.

In general, the ideal tragic hero should be neither too good nor too bad. He should be the intermediate kind of personage, one not pre-eminently virtuous and just whose misfortune is brought about by hamartia, i.e. an error of judgment.

In Tragedy, according to Aristotle, has six types of discovery. First, the discovery by means of signs or tokens. These signs may be congenital, or they may be acquired, for example, in Ulysses, the nurse could identify Ulysses through his scar. Second, the self revelation of a person. For example, in Iphigenia in Tauris, Orestes reveals himself to his sister. Third, the discovery through the effect of associations. For example, in the Tale of Alcinous, Ulysses weeps when the minstrel’s harp reawakens the past for him. Fourth, The discovery as the result of reasoning. For example, in the Chouphori, there is a statement “Someone who is like me has come; no one is like me except Orestes; therefore it is Orestes who has come.” Fifth, It arises from the fallacious reasoning. For example, In Odysseus the False Messenger, the speaker said that he would know the bow, which he had not seen. It is obviously absurd that a person should recognize a thing hither to unknown. Sixth, the discovery which is brought about by the incidents themselves.

Every Tragedy must have its complication and its denouement. Complication means that part of the story from the beginning to the stage immediately before the significant change to good or bad fortune. And by denouement is meant the part from this change to the end of the Tragedy. The deepening of the plot is ‘complication’, and the unravelling of complication is ‘denouement’. A master artist should know them well. There are four types of Tragedy – Complex Tragedy which depends exclusively on peripeteia and anagnorisis, Tragedy of Character which emphasizes the moral character of the hero, Tragedy of Suffering which deals with the suffering of the hero as in the play of Ajax, and Spectacular Tragedy which offers excellent spectacles as in Peleus.

Aristotle also defines a letter, a vowel, a semi-vowel, a syllable, a connecting-word, an article, a noun, a verb, case, inflexion, and a phrase. He also dwells at length on metaphors. The language abounding in an unfamiliar usages has some dignity, for it is lofty. There are two main extremes – meanness and extravagance, which are to be avoided. The best language must be that lying in the middle of them.

Aristotle’s discussion of Epic poetry is rather fragmentary. This is partly because much of what he has written on Tragedy applies to Epic also. Like a Tragedy, an Epic should also deal with single event. The action should be single, whole and complete, having a beginning, middle and end. As Tragedy, it also can be divided into two groups – simple and complex. The simple Epic turns on the moral character of the hero while the complex Epic turns on suffering and passion. Heroic hexameter is the right metre for an Epic. An Epic poet should speak as little as possible in his own person. In an Epic, the element of the marvellous should be introduced. Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

About Criticism, he says that the poet should aim at the representation of life: and there are ways of representation – either as they are, or as they are said to be or seem to be, or as they ought to be. In poetry, improbabilities may be justified as long as the art attains its true end. It also may be justified on the ground that they idealize the reality. They may also be poetically true, though not actually true.

In the last section of the Poetics, Aristotle discusses the relative merits of Epic and Tragedy. In Epic, it free from the vulgarity of acting; while in Tragedy, the vulgarity is the fault of the actors. Aristotle insists that Tragedy is the better form of art as it has all element of Epic, besides, it also has music and spectacle to which Epic can lay on claims. Its effect is more compact and concentrated, and also more unity than Epic. That’s why he said that Tragedy is the better form of art.

Essay: Thomas More's Utopia

2005-12-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

The First Book of Utopia

The first book of Utopia was written second, on More’s return to England from his embassy. The object of Book I is to point the contrast between a rationally ordered state, such as the far-off island commonwealth of the Utopians described in the second book, and the Europe of More’s day, where all, from Kings downward, are bent on self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. Kings manipulate alliances, war with each other for territory, exhorts money from their subjects. Their subjects, in turn, oppress others of their subjects.

It is important to realize that in this account of the evils of his day as well as in the description of utopia itself, More is no radical reforms, looking to see a system swept away and a bright new one put in its place. His view of society is of an ordered hierarchy and just keeping of degree, from the divinely invested, God fearing King downward. It was to the keeping of that social order in its best and fairest form that More devoted himself both in theory and in practice and it is to full participation in that form that he invites the scholar and philosophers in the first book of his Utopia.

The author is introduced, by the town clerk of Antwerp, to one of the 24 men left behind in South America by Vespune. The man is Raphael Hythlodaeus, whose name is derived from Greek, like most of the names in the Utopia and means ‘babbler’, who has returned after making voyages of his own and seeing strange places. Hythlodaeus talks of his adventure and travels, tells of a society where all are ordered according to the dictates of reason and of nature, where people do not say one thing and to another. (He describes America as a breeding ground for thieves). The matter of the first book is a criticism of the condition of England, and cloth are the rule among the privileged (included among these are the clergy) and where there is a ceaseless quest for wealth.

More’s serious with never obscures the implied comparison between the virtuous pagans of utopia with the professed Christians of Europe, who fall so short of standards of reasonable conduct, either pagan or Christian Utopia demand that all its citizen participate for a set time in the agriculture which supplies the necessities of an unpretentious life from the labour of a six-hour day. Its social organisation is patriarchal, in family units, with slaves for menial duties. All property is held in common and the Utopians are indifferent to money, gold, silver, and previous stones. All the activities of the citizens are carefully supervised, included travel, marriage, the care of the sick, the elimination of the old and infirm. The Utopians hate war, but if they cannot avoid it, they try to minimize its harm to the state by shortening it by every means available, including treachery, and by hiring mercenaries to fight it for them. They are not afraid to do what is morally reprehensible in order to secure a greater good. In peace, they keep faith, both public and private, and therefore have no need of buns and lawyers. They tone knowledge and wisdom, they pursue happiness. In “good and decent pleasure, they worship a single God, and they believe in the immortality of the soul and the happiness of the life after death. They observe the greatest solemnity in the practice of their religion and are convinced of its truth, but they would abandon it for one that could be proved better.

Essay: Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'Ubervilles"

2005-12-18T08:52:00.000-08:00

Narrative Technique in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
By: George Fleischer

"All works of fiction tell a story but what sets them apart is the particular way in which the story is told". Discuss the narrative technique of Hardy in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and what this method enables hardy to achieve. The narrative technique of an author in any novel is crucial to the readers understanding of the narrative. The way in which a novel is written influences the way in which the reader interprets the events which occur throughout the novel and allows the author to convey the feeling of time, place, and people in the society in which the author is attempting to impart to his or her readers.

In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, author Thomas Hardy uses a variety of narrative techniques in order to convey his own impressions of the society in which both he and his character Tess lived. Hardy's use of a third person omniscient narrator who is all knowing adds to the vulnerability of Tess by the reader's knowledge of what other characters say and do, whilst simultaneously detaching himself from the tragedy of Tess. The use of extensive description of setting by Hardy allows the reader to interpret the action, reactions, and moods of the characters in relation to the specific atmosphere in which they exist at the time and the influence which such a setting has on the character's feelings and emotions. Hardy's use of religious and mythological allusions and metaphysical symbols allow the reader to reflect on the religious and sociocultural environments in which the narrative is set so as to allow the reader to better understand and interpret the actions and emotions of the characters due to the reader's knowledge of their environmental influences. An effective narrative technique used by Hardy is the provision of a more direct means of communication between his characters and the reader. This is achieved through the use of dialogue, letter writing, and songs and poetry. Dialogue between characters allows Hardy to present his characters to his readers in a more direct way. It permits Hardy to allow his readers to interpret the characters in a way which is less influenced by his own narration and by which the readers are able to judge for themselves the characters by how they speak and communicate with others as well as the content of their converse. Letter writing and songs and poetry allow the reader to be directly informed of the actions and their rationale as well as the feelings of a specific character by which the reader is able to interpret these being influenced by the specific character rather than Hardy himself, and also allows the reader an insight into the social and cultural backgrounds of the society as reasoning for the characters behaviour and emotions. The way we read, interpret, and reflect on a novel is greatly influenced by the author and his or her use of narrative techniques in order to appropriately convey the characters and their society. An omniscient narrator is one who knows all and sees all. It allows the reader and indirect insight into the actions and emotions of specific characters. The omniscience of the narrator allows the reader to not be influenced by the character in the interpretations of the character's behaviour and feelings and also encourages the reader to sympathise with Tess in her tragic and unfortunate predicament. Using such a narrative technique, Hardy allows himself to be somewhat detached from his characters, often appearing as though he himself does not sympathise with the tragedy that is Tess. The effect of the novel not being narrated by Tess is that we as the reader are given a perception of the lives of other characters which Tess herself is unaware of. It allows us to interpret for ourselves the predicament which characters other than Tess are placed in through our own eyes with the influence of Hardy and not through Tess. However, this style of narration prevents the reader from having a direct line into the thoughts and feelings of Tess and other characters, and does not allow for the character to directly communicate with their readers in a way which would inform the readers of the workings of the character's mind, what they do, and why they do it. However Hardy manages to overcome this difficulty through the use of other narrative techniques such as dialogue and letter writing. Setting in this case refers to the specific surrounding environment and it's atmosphere in which a character exists at a specific point in time. The particular setting in which a character exists reflects the character's moods, actions, reactions, and their rationale for these, whilst the setting also influences how a character behaves. Hardy's comprehensive description of these settings also conveys to the reader the insignificance of individual characters in relation to the social atmosphere in which they live as a whole. Upon the commencement of chapter two, Hardy describes the county of Marlott and the surrounding Vale of Blackmoor in terms of its rural beauty and cultural atmosphere whereby a May Day dance is being held. This description of setting reflects the peaceful atmosphere of the county at that time, much like that of Tess and her family, creating suspense for the events to come. Prior to Alec's violation of Tess, Hardy describes the setting of Chaseborough as "a decayed market town" (Chapter 10) where Alec, Tess, and their companions have chosen to spend their evening drinking. An atmosphere of chaos and disorder has thus been set with Tess's intoxicated and unruly companions turning into "satyrs clasping nymphs" (Chapter 10). This creation of a embroiled and uncomfortable environment for Tess alerts the reader to advancing events. Hardy makes note of the fog in the woods which is regarded as a metaphorical representation of entrapment. It is during this tumult that Alec takes advantage of the sleeping Tess.

In the second phase of the novel, Tess is seen making her way back to Marlott at which point she is overtaken by Alec. Tess refuses converse with him and leaves him to go down the "crooked lane" (chapter 12). It is here where we realise that Hardy's created topography of Wessex represents the moral condition of the characters. Two distinct setting placed in stark contrast to each other are Tess's journey to The Slopes where Alec lives and Tess's journey to Talbothay's dairy. Upon departing for The Slopes, Tess is reluctant and indisposed to her impending situation. She does not enjoy the journey in the least, feeling that her excursion will result in unwanted consequences. However travelling to Talbothays Tess's ride is swift and pleasant. Tess feels a sense of purpose in beginning a fresh new chapter of her life, and considers the journey more of a "pilgrimage" (chapter 16). Upon arriving at the dairy, Tess observes that this a place of good spirits where "she appeared to feel that she really had laid a new foundation for her future" (chapter 16). Hardy juxtaposes the residences of both Alec and Angel, contrasting Alec's estate on The Slopes and Angel's elevated dwelling. This contrast in setting reflects Tess's respective relationships between herself and both Alec and Angel. In the midst of the blossoming relationship between Tess and Angel at the dairy, Hardy describes the setting as "oozing fatness and warm ferments... the hiss of fertilisation... The ready bosoms existing there were impregnated by their surroundings". (chapter 23). This description of setting reflects the relationship between Tess and Angel and the atmosphere in which their relationship matures. However this was not to last. Following the demise of Tess and Angel's marriage, Tess arrives at Flincomb Ash. Such a name conveys the impression of a stark and desolate setting which reflects Tess's on misery and suffering. The land in harsh and barren, possibly representing the love of lack thereof between Tess and Angel. The work is onerous and toilsome, contrasting considerably with Tess's joyful labour at Talbothay's. Tess's depression reaches it's climax here in the barren wasteland and "the joyless monotony of things" (chapter 46). it is amidst this desolate and destitute environment where Alec surfaces again to declare his love for Tess. Tess refuses his pleas, still hoping for the return of her beloved Angel. When Angel finally does return, it is amidst the luxurious seaside resort at Sandbourne whereby Tess is described as being expensively dressed and living in affluence. This setting conveys the impression of both an inappropriate environment for Tess, representing her union with Alec, but also a prosperous environment representing her reunion with Angel.

Hardy's effective use of dynamic setting is used in order to allow Hardy to convey the moods and feelings of his characters which are reflected by the setting in which the specific characters exist at that time. Hardy's characters are greatly influenced by the religious and social environments in which they live. Religious and mythological allusions enable Hardy to convey these aspects of his society to his readers. In the opening of the novel, the first character the readers are introduced to is Parson Tringham. No physical description is given and his dialogue is limited, creating an alluding and mysterious figure. The parson represents the religiosity of Hardy's society and communicates to the readers that this is a religious society, whilst also setting the scene for Tess's introduction to the readers and for the events to come. At the commencement of the second phase of the novel "maiden no more", Tess is seen burdened with a heavy basket and a large bundle. This can be regarded as the metaphysical symbol of oppression and hardship. Some time later as Tess and Angel depart from the dairy after their wedding ceremony, a cock is heard crowing. Such is an omen of bad luck, and according to biblical references, the cock crowing three times as it had done intensifies the omen even more. This religious allusion represents the religious implications and consequences for Tess's decision not to inform Angel of her past, whilst also creating suspense for the reader as to the events to come.

An effective narrative technique used by Hardy is dialogue between characters. How a character speaks and what they say allow a greater insight into the nature of their individuality. It permits the reader to judge the characters on the basis of their own communication with other characters rather than on Hardy's own interpretation of their converse. Dialogue also informs the reader of a specific character's thoughts and feelings as well as their intentions and rationale for previous actions. Upon the commencement of the novel, the reader is introduced to John Durbeyfield. His dialogue with the unknown parson indicates to the reader that this is an uneducated man who is a member of the lower classes. His dialect may give an indication of his county of origin but also conveys to the readers that he is possibly intoxicated, which we later find out he is, and also slightly pompous without reason. Thus Hardy's use of dialogue here sets the scene for Tess's introduction to the reader. Also used by Hardy in order to create a more intimate relationship between the characters and his readers is the use of letter writing and songs. Having set their wedding date for New Years Eve, Tess and Angel relish their time together, however upon trying on her wedding dress, Tess cannot help but remember one of her mother's songs: "That would never become a wife That had once done amiss" (chapter 32) This song allows Tess to return to her childhood in her adulthood, and also allows her to convey a typical value of the society in which she lived, a women who had committed an indiscretion in her early years shall never be married. This song also imparts to the reader Tess's fears and doubts, and the extent to which her guilty conscience is imploring her to inform Angel of her past. During the climax of Tess's depression whereby she is in a state of "utter stagnation" (chapter 41), Tess receives a letter from her former dairymaid friend Marian, asking Tess to join her at Flincomb Ash. Once having arrived at Flincomb Ash, and Tess having subjected Alec to an "insulting slap" (chapter 48), Tess resolves to write to Angel, imploring him to "save me from what threatens me!" (chapter 48). Having returned home to her ill mother, only to be informed of her father's death, Tess now resolves to write to Angel yet again, this time in a bitter letter abusing Angel for his mistreatment of her. Having received no reply from Angel, Marian and Izz write to Angel beseeching him to return to Tess. The use of letter writing enables Hardy to create a more intimate relationship between his characters and the readers, allowing the readers to understand the character's behaviour and their rationale. Hardy's use of an omniscient narrator, descriptive setting, allusion and metaphysical symbols, and letter writing and songs in Tess of the D'Urbervilles enables Hardy to influence the way his readers understand an interpret the events of the novel. These narrative techniques are highly effective in establishing a relationship between the characters and the reader and also in conveying to the readers the various aspects of Hardy's society. An understanding of these religious, social, and cultural aspects allows the reader to rationalise the actions and emotions of the characters in relation to the society in which these character's live. It is crucial for the readers to comprehend the background and aspects of Hardy's society in order that they be able to realistically explicate the plot of the novel in relation to the environment in which the characters exist.

Hamlet: The Grave Digger Scene

2005-12-18T08:25:00.000-08:00

The Light from the Grave

“He sobb’d and he sighted, and a gurgle he gave
Then he plunged himself into the billowy wave
And an echo from the suicide grave
Oh! Willow, tit willow, tit willow.”

I talk to thee mortals, who doth not know what death is... when I commeth... I encompass the novels of the poor and the palaces of the Kings. I spare no mortal! –high or low, rich or poor.

Death is tragic, painful, somber, grotesque. But who ever knew that death could even be laughed at. In William Shakespeare tragedy Hamlet; grave diggers scene is one place where seriousness, intermingles with the comic element...and the end product? One of the greatest works of literature is born.

The occasional admission of comic ingredient in a tragedy to make it light, humorous is one of the most interesting forms of tragedy. This intrusion of the comic into the tragic mode is called comic relief. Though Aristotle in his Poetics does not make allowance for the dilution series action, English drama fortunately is replete with instances to show how comedy and tragedy occurred frequently in mystery, miracle and morality plays. In early Elizabethan tragedy, the same tradition was continued making Sir Philip Sidney define his confusion in his Apology for Poetry. Pre-Shakespearian dramatist like Marlowe, in his DR. Faustus and The Jew of Malta alternates the tragic with the comic.

The incongnous mixture, in the Jew of Malta, becomes so insistent as to take away the tragic impact of the play together – it becomes, in the words of Elliot, “A monstrous force, rather than either a comedy or a tragedy.”

But the apotheosis of this tendency of using the comic in tragedy and its final canonization become popular in Shakespeare. The comic relief is a regular feature in Shakespeare.

The part played by fool in Kinglear, porter in Macbeth is the same as the apart played by the grave diggers in Hamlet. The amalgamates of comic sequences introduces low tragedy into a high tragic situation. In there cases, the function of the comic scene is not only to provide relief and lesson the tragic-illusion, but also to intensify the tragic. Just like chicken soup intensifies your appetite before taking in chicken Biryani.

The grave digger scene is divided into two parts; in the first part, Hamlet contemplates the morality of man as he watches the human skull being tossed from their sleepy graves by the grave diggers. The grave digger are med to foreshadow that more deaths will occurs in his tragic play, and the audience is made to wonder for whom the next grave will be readied.

The entry of Hamlet, marks the second part of the scene. He comes out of his pretended madness when he faces the reality of the death of Ophelia. It is heart rendering for all of us to observe Ophelia’ burial and realize that Hamlet has lost her forever. Pre-occupied with his vengeance he knows that he has allowed her to slip from his grasp into the river. This is the river of death, dear readers from where one can only sink deeper and deeper and never come out. Hamlet feels alone, having lost his father, mother and true love. When Hamlet cannot take the pain any longer, he jumps into her grave, grave beside Leartes. This totally human response for Hamlet demonstrates that no amount of philosophizing can reduce his heart ache and that no amount of rengience can fill the void left by the death of a loved one.

The grave diggers was a place between the rapidly rising actions of the last few tragic scenes and the suploning final tragedy. It also allows the audience to see Hamlet again in his normal disposition. Possessing a fine slues of humor, he is capable of appreciating the wit of the grave diggers even in the midst of perils and pitfalls, even in the midst of his loneliness, his troubles. Possessing a depth of sentiments and emotions. Hamlet frees himself from the pretense and openly expresses his grief by entering Ophelia’s grave – he does not realize that he will soon be entering his own grave.

In Kinglear, the fool serves precisely the purpose of providing relief with words of ironic significance, constantly reminding tears of his own foolishness. The fool actually exists on the margins of tragedy and comedy. He even helps fear to plunge into the tragedy of madness. In Macbeth, the function of the porter scene is equally ambiguous. The porters, drunken messiment relieves the horror of Duncais murder and at the same time confines Macbeth castle to hell. Like the porter and the fool, the grave diggers introduce symbolic dimension in the play, making in realize the philosophers of death.

The grave diggers are thus, professed clowns of the play and they provide a unique kind of humor in the play. The humor provided by the grave diggers serve to lighten the tragic stress of Ophelia’s death but their humor is not out of peace. In keeping with the sombre spirit of the play, the jest about graves and corpses, bones, and skulls. As they discourse on death. They comment on growing in the most light hearted manner.

“Here us the water-good here stands the man good
If the man go to this water and drown himself
It is, will he will he, he goes, mark you that. But
If the water come to him, he drowns not himself.”

Then the first grave digger says there is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grade markers, because they hold up Adams when Hamlet and Horatio arsine the witty talks are intensified with more humors. Hamlet tells him “Thou liest in it”, the grave digger replies “One that was a woman, sir, but nest horsoul, she is dead.”

The comic relief for Shakespeare is in tune with the tragic temper. A Jacobean audience would promptly appreciate the serious intension of this black comedy. The grave diggers of Shakespeare in way represent the grave that Hamlet life has become. He connects it to the dwellers of Danesque inferno.

The grave digger scene is technically very important for a perfect climax. It gives the King and Leartes tune and scope to change their costume from Act IV Sc VII, critics feel that the stage talking in Act V Sc II, needed certain changes as well, as a result the grave diggers scene becomes highly imperative at this point of time.

The grave diggers scene is one of the most popular events in English literature. A young man in black examining a skull at arms length – gives us the image of Hamlet. Hamlet and Yorick become the single most powerful icon of the actor and his property in all of English Drama rather Western Drama. Shakespeare props in Drama are highly functional as well as symbolic. They maybe perfectly neutral objects but greatly embroiled in action. Like handkerchief embroidered with strawberries. The dagger in Macbeth, blood spreads across the stage in the wasting scene, and like flag which stands for revolutions.

The entering of Hamlet and Horatio responds to grave diggers’ song, as they generally perceive his activity. The grave diggers verses were first pointed in Tottles miscellany.

In Act V Scene I, however have only discussed about dust, but the scene can be understand as pushing the macabone meditation (a single figure of death in tates dialogue with various stations and estates) even further. Hamlet is caught here in an universe of hopelessness. Hamlet thus burst out into a rhyme, perhaps even into song. Hamlet is here perhaps anticipating his own death. Hamlet has not only totally absorbed the point of view of the grave diggers, but his real and physical energies as well.

“Here comes the King” at line 210 moves us abruptly into next unit of action, the grave diggers fade as the stage fills with actors. The open trap with perhaps displayed skulls remain a focus of attentions. However we clearly observe, Yorick’s bones broken apart and spread to make a last resting place for Ophelia. The fool and Death, The fool as Death, Death and Maiden, a fresh corpse and withened old bones. We are now moreover, within a Shakespearian archetypal construct that is not peculiar to Hamlet, the association of fool and Maiden – Viole, Feste, Rosalina Touchstone, leans fool and Cordillia. The symbolism has little to do with traditional folksy a submitting woman wiles of fleeting earthly beauty. It has everything to do with the experience of innocence, vulnerability and fragile joy. Hamlet under moments over Yorick’s skull are physically and imaginatically linked to all that he has lost in Ophelia. His earlier “mad” perusal of Ophelia’s face “as a would draw it” (2.1) might have already indicated the artist experiencing the skull beneath the skin. Yorick, he opened grave indeed becomes, the curiously imploded stage for Hamlet’s supreme act of folly in the antic disposition, his struggle with Leartes for Ophelia’s love. And thus we can see the humble prop, emerges out of a tradition, become in Act V of Hamlet of the great whell of folly, love, and Death upon which so much of Shakespeare turns.

The grave covers every defect extinguishes every resentment from its peaceful bosom springs none but fond regrets and tender recollection who can look down upon the grave of an enemy and not feel a compunctions throb that he should have warsed with the poor handful of dust that lies moldering before him.

Shakespeare: Hamlet "to be, or not to be."

2005-12-18T08:17:00.000-08:00

Shakespeare's Hamlet: "To be, or not to be, that is the question:"
By: Purwarno Hadinata

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The sling and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
(III, I, 56 – 60)

The above lines are part of a famous soliloquy by Hamlet in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. The revelation made by the ghost of Hamlet’s dead father had come as a shock to Hamlet who had therefore formed a resolve to avenge the murder of his father by his uncle Claudius. However, he has so far not able to take any steps in the direction of the revenge which he has been contemplating. He has merely been brooding over the problem with which he is faced, but he has not yet been able to come to any definite decision. In the soliloquy from which these lines have been taken, Hamlet discusses with himself the pros and cons of suicide. Hamlet asks himself whether he should kill himself of he should continue to live and endure the sorrows of life. The question before him is whether it would be nobler for him to undergo the mental torture caused by the blows and buffeting administered to him by an arbitrary fate, or it would be nobler to fight against the overwhelming force of life’s misfortunes and thus try to put an end to those misfortunes.

Source: Purwarno Hadinata

Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

2005-12-18T08:10:00.000-08:00

Shakespeare's "Hamlet": "To die--to sleep,"
By: Purwarno Hadinata

To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep:
To sleep, perchance to dream—
(III, I, 60 – 65)

The above lines are part of the most famous soliloquy by Hamlet in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. The above lines talk about Hamlet’s view towards death. According to Hamlet Death means a kind of sleep. Indeed, to die is no more than to sleep. Suppose that by falling into the slumber of death we can put an end to our mental suffering and to the numerous blows which descend upon every human being in this world. If, with our death, all our misfortunes really come to an end, it would mean that we have achieved a result which is sincerely and seriously to be desired. To die means to fall asleep; and to fall asleep may mean perhaps seeing dreams.

Source: Purwarno Hadinata