Wednesday 18 May 2016

Context from 'The Year in Lear' - James Shapiro


  • Unlike most other leading dramatists at this time, Shakespeare chose not to write civic or courtly entertainments in praise of the king. 
  • After Guy Fawkes- there were competing narratives to try and get the audience to imagine the deaths of a monarch- something that Shakespeare had been doing for years. Shakespeare grasped the dramatic potential of popular reaction to the Guy Fawkes plot: 
  • 'a maelstrom of fear, horror, a desire for revenge, an all-too-brief sense of national unity, and a struggle to understand where such evil came from.' 
  • Anthony Weldon in 1650 saw James I as the 'wisest fool in Christendom' 
  • 'The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured/ In-certainties now crown themselves assured/ And peace proclaims olives of endless age.'  All the anxious predictions that preceded the eclipse of Elizabeth were misplaced - the crowning of the new king as a peacemaker had put an end to these 'incertainties' 
  • Will Kemp- played many comedic roles and when he left the King's Men in 1599- it was a blow to the company.  People were drawn to the company for Kemp's clowning as Burbage's tragic roles of Shakespeare's words. 
  • Kemp's replacement was Robert Armin a different kind of comedian. Armin was able to step into Kemp's roles. But Kemp's improvisational and physical style and commonsensical if at times dim-witted demeanour was v. different from sardonic, witty style of Armin 
  • It took Shakespeare a while to write well for Armin- he played Touchstone in As You Like It and Feste in Twelfth Night and the Gravedigger in Othello. But it was the Fool in King Lear that was his defining role as John Davies wrote Armin could 'wisely play the fool' 
  • James I: "Do we not yet remember, that this kingdom was divided into seven little kingdoms, besides Wales? And is it not now the stronger by their union?" 
  • Before 1560, England and Scotland had often been at war, and that Scotland was allied with England's sometime enemy France. England considered themselves superior to their poorer backward nothern neighbours 
  • "I thought the King had more effected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall" - Jacobean playgoes knew that King James' elder son Henry, was the current Duke of Albany and his younger one, Charles, the Duke of Cornwall ( James did prefer Henry over his younger brother). Albany = Scotland (James had previously been Duke of Albany as had his father). For Shakespeare it was an uncharacteristically topical start- the opening gossipy exchange marking the play as distinctively Jacobean 
  • It was treasonous to distinguish between the physical and political bodies of kings (so that subjects couldn't sweat allegiance to one and not the other) 
  • Opening scene when a map of Britain is brought onstage, it wrestles with what Britishness means especially in relationship to the long standing national identities it superseded. 
  • The role in play of the kingdom of France further complicated matters. Playgoers at the Globe should naturally have sympathised with the British forces in their efforts to defeat French invaders. But nationalistic sympathies become compromised when it turns out that the virutous Cordelia now married to the King of France is on the wrong side
  • In King Leir there is now sub plot - but Shakespeare needed it as the story in Leir lacked counterpoint, a way to highlight Lear's figurative blindness by juxtaposing it with something more literal. Enable him to critique the very notions of authority and allegiance at the heart of the main plot
  • Shakespeare uses 'nothing' to suture together the Lear and Gloucester plots. Cordelia's initial response to her father are 'Nothing my lord' and Edmund when asked by Gloucester about the contents of the letter replies with the very same words: 'Nothing, my lord' 
  • The words 'never' and 'nothing' - 30 times and the word 'no' more than 120 times and 'not'- 240 times. Negativity is reinforced by the sixty or so times the prefix 'un' occurs as the characters are 'unprized', 'unfortunate', unmerciful'
  • 'What wilt thou do, old man?' - addressing the King as 'thou'. In Jacobean England ''thou' and 'you' were used with precision and purpose. 
  •  'You' = superiors or members of the upper class speaking to each other eg. 'You have begot me, bred me, loved me.'
  • Inferiors were for 'thou' - even addressing someone of equal rank as 'thou' could be taken as an insult
  • 'Come sonne and daughter, who did me advance/ Repose with me awhile, and then for France.'
  • KL is considered anomalous among Shakespeare's great tragedies because it lacks a supernatural element- ghosts of Caesar and Old Hamlet in Juliet Caesar and Hamlet, magic sin the web of Desdemona's handkerchief in Othello or the sisters in Macbeth. Demonic possession is feigned by Edgar it serves a similar purpose. Invocations of the 'devil' and 'fiend' sliding uneasily between the literal and figurative. 
  • In Lear's increasingly maddened and diseased imagination, women and their sexual organs are reimagined as a site of the demonic, a kind of hell that fills him with revulsion 
  • The mock trial shifts in and out of lucidity,from prose to blank verse to snatches of song, the scene captures the ways in which sanity yields to overpowering and terrifying visions. In collapsing the distance between the possessed and the truly mad it is unlike anything else Shakespeare would ever write- closer to Samuel Beckett than a Jacobean drama
  •  There is evil that stems from the abuse of authority and there is another kind that cannot be so easily explained by self-interest and the human propensity for cruelty. 
  • In KL , WS wrestles with the nature of this kind of evil as well something that Harsnett, in a book about the demonic, takes as given but never confronts. 

Sunday 17 April 2016

Key Themes and Ideas

The Pastoral

Primarily concerned with images of an idealised country life and work. Involves figures of shepherds + tells stories of their humble but happy lives. Concerned with the purifying and gladdening effects of physical labour.

Pastoral, normally classical. But can be associated with Christian ideals of purity and innocence. Depicts people living in harmony with the natural world, and achieving simple satisfaction through their day-to-day work.

Pastoral protagonists = self-sufficent and morally elevated - A + E

english pastoral

Innocence and piety reflected in the amount of gardening work that they do. Labours they take obediently undertake which places them closer to God = peaceful, mild and loving; they live in union with nature.

Milton adds religion to traditionally Pagan mode. Pastoral as part of the religious discourse. However, it's wild pastoral imagery. GofE = unruly jungle and a 'Labyrinth' of vegetation. Imagery surrounding the scene is of obscurity, darkness, mist and dankness.

Harmonious growth and orderliness is not easily identifiable in the 'midnight vapor' of Eden.

Worship

Shifts meaning throughout the book. A + E lead a humble life, labouring in the GofE following God's commandments. Live with an awareness of God watching them + shape all actions in way that is complaint with his precepts. Worshipping God according to Christian ideals of worship- being obedient to him, loving each other + working hard for their daily bread.


Things change when S enters the GofE. Encourages the humans' fall by tempting Eve to breach God's law. Convincing Eve of his false worship of her. False worship is a forceful tool used by Satan to induce Eve to sin

After eating the apple- starts praising the Tree of Knowledge. Admiring the tree as it if was a God, a deity. Beginning of Eve's downfall- returning to Animistic beliefs.

Animism = not only humans have a soul but plants and animals are all spiritual beings worthy of worship. Seen as tribal and savage

Couple experience a sinful sexual awakening. Abandon religious worship altogether. No room for religious worship at the end of Bk 9- irreversibly lose their innocence and goodliness.

Temptation and Sin

Eve tempting Adam to separate- uses rhetorical devices and he yields. A surrenders to E temptation

E's sin when S succeeds in tempting E to the forbidden fruit.


E tempts A again to eat the fruit and breach Gods main commandment.

Separation

Physical and emotional. Couple's physical parting in the beginning of the book. A wary of the idea as sees potential danger in Eve leaving A , but eventually he yields.

E spiritual separation from God after eating the forbidden fruit. Thinks she is in the divine position of an all-knowing goddess. She is a god-like figure + abandons her love for God = separation from Christian tradition.


A + E separate emotionally - relationship breaks down. Turn to spiteful accusations + not much is left from their previous 'State of Mind...full of peace.' Followed by A + E separation from God they are expelled from Paradise.

The Sublime

Feeling that combines both admiration and fear in the presence of a force that is magnificent and mighty. Often powers of nature or spiritual phenomena that evoke the sublime feelings in its beholders.


Sublime through God and S's influence over  A + E.

  • G sublime power as spiritual force that produces a mixture of emotions. Admire and worship him as he's the superior force. Creations are awe- inspiring and wondorous. But they fear consequences of their disobedience + terrified of breaking his laws. 


They love God for the incomprehensible greatness of his creations and they fear God's punishment at the same time.

  • S's = elements of the sublime. E does not resist S's temptation is because she is blinded by his sublime disguise. Unfamiliar but magnificent in its strangeness. 
                                         

  • Tree of knowledge - inexpressible power, wondorously capable of giving a sense and deeper knowledge to any creature that eats its fruit. 
Eve is mesmerised by the tree's grandeur and supernatural characteristics. E seems to praise the tree because of the powers that are beyond her understanding. 

E spiritually elevates the tree + is in awe and inspired by it. Almost seen as Godlike. 

Milton's sublime is negative.



Characters- An Analysis

Adam and Eve- Love, Marriage and the Power Dynamics

The first and only man in the text: 'Growth, Sense, Reason' have 'all summ'd up in Man'. Emphasis on the male and the masculine in the text.

Adam- the Protective an Loving Husband

A tries to protect E from the temptation God warned the couple about. Tries to persuade Eve not to leave his side when she wants to work alone:

"....leave not the faithful side/
That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects." 

Adam's protective attitude and considers 'guarding' Eve as his responsibility and is 'safest' when she is near.

A believes in traditional gender roles + gendered distribution of duties. He appreciates Eve for taking on domestic responsibilities- 'for nothing lovelier can be found/ In Woman, than to studie houshold good' 

Adam is a loving husband who uses 'healing words' in 'his care and matrimonial love'.

He recognizes and admires Eve's celestial qualities. He puts emphasis on Eve's coming second after himself. A treats E as an equal in terms of her human superiority over God's other creatures

Eve- the Independent and Austere Wife

E very different to Adam in her values. Speaks to A first, letting him know of her wish to sepeate and carry on gardening in different areas of the GofE.

Eve dislikes her husband's attempts at her independence:

"With sweet austeer composure thus reply'd"

Eve is 'austeer' which is unlike 'mild' Adam. Milton wanted to introduce a degree of doubt about Eve's celestial qualities even before Eve is tempted by Satan.

The Married Couple

Role reversal taking place. Traditional female sphere (care, domesticity, docility) is embraced by Adam, the figure of a husband. Whilst masculine traits (austerity, independence and mobility) are found in Eve.

Adam is 'the Patriarch of mankind' which is highly empowering, masculine identity- implies Adam's authority and leadership. Adam has enough authority to decide whether to give permission to Eve.

Eve suddenly 'submiss' and finds it difficult to take up the opportunity that has arisen with Adam's permission. Clear submission as Eve refrains from speaking until Adam has finished.

Tasting the Forbidden Fruit

E experience the first feelings of jealousy as she imagines 'Adam wedded to another Eve' and sees this vision as 'a death to think'.

Eve also seems to realise her own inferiority. Sees it not as natural and right but as something imposed on her and limiting her freedom:

"In Femal Sex, the more to draw his love,/
And render me more equal and perhaps/
A thing not undesireable, somtime"

A is their erotic awakening soon afterwards. A experienced 'carnal desire enflaming'. Symbolise the end of their innocence in Paradise and the embracing of carnal pleasures, which seemed base and beastly.

A + E discover shame and seek to cover their intimate body parts with fig leaves. Regard nakedness as 'obnoxious and unseemliest'.

At the end, they are quite equal as Adam submits to E's right of speech before he speaks. Eve wins her equal status- but it does not serve her any good. The consequences of the shift are ruinous and the couple:

"spent the fruitless hours, but neither of them self-condemning/
And of thir vain contest appeer'd no end.

Humanised Satan 

First-person insights into S reasoning help to provide justification for his actions and render him a fuller, rounder character who is disturbingly sympathetic.

His coming to Earth is concealed by mists and vapours rising- Satan comes 'in mist/ Of midnight vapor.' This image is not only obscuring and unsettling the scene, but it also seems to portray the character of Satan as one who is lost and uncertain.

Satan's Soliloquy 

Encouraged to see S as a damned soul, a troubled individual who tries to justify his ways. S talks with painful admiration about the greatness and perfection of the Earth and all of God's creation, including humans.

Destructive power and disposition of Satan.  He is a lost soul, punished by God, unable to partake in any natural pleasures offered by the Earth, and he is only satisfied by acts of destruction, which he laments.

Commits this transgression of denying his submission to God. Suffers the eternal punishment of being excluded from the joys and enjoyments of both Heaven and Earth. Sense of being wronged gives way to envy and destructive desires. Pleasure to 'destroy' stands in contrast with God's constructive pleasure to create forming a clear binary opposition.

Humanisation

Listen to views and motives- hear his spiteful and wronged voice.

  • arch-villain Satan himself, the fallen angel who turned his back to God and uses his infernal powers to destroy God's beloved creations, humans
  • Animalistic appearance of the serpent that Satan deceitfully employs in order to enter the GofE + tempt Eve in disguise 
  • Humanised self , the emotive self, self which seems to stand behind S 1st soliloquy 
S capable of an array of human emotions and feelings 

Triune God- consists of God, his son Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Christian triune God consists of the celestial spirit of God the Father, the humanised God a well as the Holy spirit -represented as a dove.

God?

Transcedent. Deeds are carefully observed and noted by his omniscent figure. Everything in Paradise revolves around God and his commandments- humble life of A + E

God the Maker and the Almighty 

Referred to as 'Maker' and 'the Almightie'. To A, God is his loving 'Lord' and both A and E refer to God with respect and devotion. S explicitly undermines God's authority + status in Paradise. E visibly attracted to the idea of her divine self as she falls for S's rhetoric. 


Shift in her attitude towards G. Idea of goodliness and the divine loses its focus and becomes elusive. Eve sees herself almost like a deity, also refers to 'Gods' - possible return to polytheism + withdrawal from the Christian tradition. Removes God the Maker from the position of authority. 

E thinks that G is not a loving Lord and carer but 'our great Forbidder'. Does not cease to watch the couple with the help of 'all his spies' by which Eve means the angels.  Lost her faith not in God's existence but his authority and sincerity of intentions. 

God is compared to Satan, with his guile and destructive purposes. 

End of Bk 9 = fortifies the notion of God's power over Paradise. A + E suffer from the results of going against God's commandment and are evidently punished. Experience shame and guilt for the 1st time in human history + their relationship crumbles as they argue endlessly and fruitfully, full of the infernal spite. 

Paradise Lost: A Reading Guide

The historical-political context


  • Marriage and the right of man to seek divorce, in an unhappy marriage was something that Milton worried about after his first wife, Mary Powell abandoned him. 
  • Milton appealed to parliament in a prose treatise called 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce' to allow a man to divorce his wife and remarry on grounds of intellectual incompatibility resulting in loneliness of desertion. 
  • Milton wrote 4 highly unorthodox, divorce tracts 
  • According to English canon law - complete dissolution of marriage bond allowing the parties to remarry if there was threat of polygamy or incest or if one person entered the marriage because they were forced
  • Milton argued that marriage was to alleviate loneliness in fit companionship therefore it is unchristian an uncharitable to allow a marriage if the conditions are not met
  • Presence of marriage in paradise- politicizes Eden
  • A + E marriage = ideal married state where wife is obedient intellectual helpmeet to her husband but also ideal human household where masculine principles of rationality and hierarchical liberty must hold sway  
  • A + E split the ideal spiritual and intellectual union they shared
  • Fall becomes a type of divorce = dissolution of the ideal union between man and God, man and wife
  • In earlier divorce tracts, Milton was snobbish towards those who entered marriage solely for the purpose of enjoying legitmised sexual intercourse 
  • Milton stated that the act of procreation when enjoyed for its own sake 'a quintessence of an excrement' BUT narrator celebrates A + E's prelapsarian sexuality
  • Love is founded not in lust but 'reason, loyal, just and pure.'
  • Before the Fall, A + E enter 'Handed' but after inflamed with a sudden lust, Adam'seize' Eve by the hand dragging her 'nothing loath' into a 'shady bank' 
  • In PL, the Fall and the loss of liberty entails debase human desires
  • The resulting slavery of the rational faculties to sensual appetites and passions leave humanity in a state of naked shame divested of 'native righteousness' 

Wednesday 6 April 2016

Grotesque in King Lear


"strange, fantastic, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting...often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms. In art, performance, and literature, however, grotesque may also refer to something that simultaneously invokes in an audience a feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well as sympathetic pity

These NSFW King Lear Illustrations Are Gorgeous—And Incredibly Grotesque G. Wilson Knight, "King Lear and the Comedy of  the Grotesque,"  the point is made that not only are tragic pathos and ridiculous nonsense intermingled most clearly in the storm scenes with Lear, Edgar in his role of 'poor Tom', and the fool, but that even the barbarously cruel events of the play are not devoid of a kind of comedy that these days we would call 'black'

'Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell His way to Dover' is Regan's comment after Gloucester's eyes are put out.


The effect of the grotesque here is to screw even tighter the cruelty and tragedy: one's reaction to Regan's remark would not be so intense were it not expressed in the form of a witticism. And how are we to react, if not with a maximum of pity and with a sense of the comic which only increases the piteousness to the brink of the unbearable, to the blind Gloucester' s mock death? 


Shakespeare's greatest achievement was to experience the comedic elements of the play while not crossing the line of bathos 

Absurdism

This was a term coined in the 1960's as a style of theater.

Their work expressed the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down 

Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.

Absurdism is reflected in many pieces of work but in theater it aimed to how man's reaction to a world apparently without meaning  and man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces . eg. Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot'


  • Broad comedy mixed with horrific or tragic images
  • characters caught in hopeless situation forced to do repetive and meaningless actions
  • dialogues full of cliches, wordplay and nonsense
  • plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive
  • a parody of dismissal of realism and the concept of the 'well-made play'
Absurd drama, by its very nature, subverts logic. It deflates the normal and celebrates the unexpected. Being anti-rationalist, it exhibits how rational thought, just like language, defies meaning, while nonsense offers more liberty for an exploration of the infinite and indescribable. Hence, in such plays, not only actions, but also motives behind them are incomprehensible.

Likewise, in King Lear, several scenes can be termed absurd such as 
  • Gloucester‘s blinding
  • Gloucester's suicide
  •  Cordelia‘s death
  •  madness of Shakespeare‘s characters - real and feigned 
  • Love test 
  • The Fool
  • Storm scene
Anne Paulucci ― "Realism holds a smooth mirror up to nature which distorts and exaggerates familiar things in order to shock us into a new evaluation of experience. The crazy mirror of the Absurd breaks up familiar pattern and forces us to accept a new dimension and a new type of communication" 

Myth of Sisyphus- Push a boulder up a hill and rolls back down as a punishment. It's an eternal punishment and constant struggle - metaphor for life

Random AO4 for Lear

Nature

  • Appears 50 times- highly polysemic
  • Mother Nature
  • Human Nature- instinct/individual personality. Related to your identity- clothing/ sumptuary laws/stripping of clothing and restoration of clothing 
  • Natural - bonds between parent and children
  • Bastards- unnatural children
  • Natural fools
  • Crowns of flowers with weeds- duality. External human nature/ similar to a Fool's cap

Emblem of Map
  • Map represents his kingdom- demarking his land and power
  • Map making increased during this time due to increased global discovery
  • Initially the land is fertile, plentiful but there's a destruction of the land/withering away= represents the loss of his power. The earth is 'empty and bleeding' (Jan Kott) 
Gods
  • They are either there but are benign- In 'King Leir (source material), the Gods were obliging but in Lear they're notable for their absence
  • Or not there at all
  • Absurdism - left to struggle - sense of recklessness and constantly moving but to nowhere
  • Compassion is shown in the servants 
Religion and Suffering
  • For Lear his suffering to the absolute limit of suffering - irreligious as no salvation or no hope
  • Humanism- Dollimore: 'experimental play' - Lear is late in WS's work 
  • Play revolves around 0 therefore a tragedy of nothing
  • 1530's break from Rome = Protestanism = cataclysmic and discord
  • Erasmus- Praise of Folly which corresponds with KHVIII = Humanist thinker - man is at the centre
  • Medieval belief system is shattered and redefines relationship between God and man
  • L starts and ends the play as King= circular structure but nothing happens seen through the symbol of 0
  • Hope which is seen in the source material of 'King Leir' is lost
  • Reconciliation of 4.7= false sense of security and sets up a greater tragedy    
                                      Othello - tragedy of deception/race
                                      Hamlet- tragedy of revenge
                                      Macbeth- tragedy of ambition 

  • People with power and how they handle this power eg. Richard III
  • Most negative ending of any of the tragedies- bleak
  • Normally 1 tragic hero dies - 1 person who can take over in order to represent the future. But Edgar's speech is so depressing that there's no feeling of hope

This is the disease which occurs when the hierarchy is destroyed. 
Job is like Lear but is denied any divine compensation- hints of a Christian redemption - Cordelia is showcase through Christian imagery but this hope is dashed. 

Orthodox Christian journey 

SIN - SUFFER - REPENT - REDEMPTION

Many critics argue that there is no redemption however it can be argued that there are slivers such as the new found humility of Lear that redeems him from his former arrogance. Or Cordelia's forgiveness. 


Revenge Tragedy

Features

  • 'Revenge is a wild kind of justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out' 
  • Senecan/Blood tragedy 
  • Motivated by revenge/codes of honour
  • Violence/Blood
  • Supernatural
  • Set in different countries- Spain/Italy which are associated with corruption,sin and lust
  • Corruption- political/social 
  • Machiavelli/Malcontent
  • Grotesque comedy- tragic events and gruesome
  • Revenger dies and causes them to become morally corrupt
  • Madness

Genre
  • Aristotle/Seneca
  • Aspects of revenge tragedy
  • Morality play tradition
  • Emerging trend of domestic tragedy eg. Othello
  • Tragedy of the state = Hamlet and King Lear but The White Devil is one of sex and lust

Monday 28 March 2016

Introduction and Guided Reading: The White Devil OCR

'Lamentable Tragedy, Mixed Full of Pleasant Mirth'

The 'mixed' moral standard, it is not surprising that readers find it hard to gauge the tone of Webster's 'tragic' writing.

Webster's tone is rarely solemn for long, but endlessly decorated with parts that are quirky and camp so that the audience should be able to laugh comfortably. In Jacobean tragedy, the sustained serious tone of Shakespearean tragedy is the exception rather than the rule.

                         


Horrid Laughter

A mixed even confused response to the events of his tragedy is probably therefore one of Webster's aims. Torturers and  murderers in TWD wind the nerves of their victims and the audience so tight that they take such contorted delight in what they are doing that our laughter may often be no more than an escape valve.

                               



An example is Flamineo staging his death rather than dying in earnest. His language can, in retrospect, seem comically exaggerated. It becomes a chilling parody of the conceits revengers.

A Play of Paradox 

The title itself is a paradox and is assumed to refer to the nature of Vittoria. However, this sense of ambiguity, even duplicity is not confined to Vittoria. It is reflected in every major character of the play- eg. Flamineo whose speeches are hard to interpret

Not What I say, but What I do!

The double signals Webster's characters continually give out is partly owing to the 'mixed' nature of his tragic form. But some critics insist it is also due to the unusual nature of Webster's writing methods.

                                 


Webster focuses more on how events and outcomes, might, after many windings and surprises combine to establish a tragic figure and how much of his meticulously gathered poetry that figure might then plausibly be made to speak.

The Morality Tradition

Before permanent professional theatres in England opened this meant that theatrical performances were given by itinerant companies specializing in Morality plays with characters that were labelled as Vice or Virtue.

                             


It follows that many of the plays of the Jacobean repertoire were expected to convey firm 'morals' so Webster in TWD gives a sententious moral statements to most of his characters. Giovanni, the moral anchor of the play says these a lot (what a fucking wanker)

Yet wise saws are repeatedly placed into the mouths of characters whose actions contradict their statements. Despite the flag-waving conviction of its 'authority figures', moral ambiguity remains the play's prevalent note.

Webster's Women

Women are frequently seen be men as mere commodity. Heroines are accused of lust, infidelity, and men, under the guise of honour are violent and derogatory towards them, partly through malice, partly through an imperial sense that the blood that beats in the veins of a female relation is literally their own.

Dod and Cleaver- Influential 1598 Conduct Book
"Silence is the best ornament of a woman and therefore the law was given to the man, rather then to the woman, to shew that hee should be the teacher and she the hearer."
 
                                

Vittoria's role is its comparative brevity for a title character and how different is her impact in each of them.
In Act 1 -  resilient under sexist curing but tempts Brachiano
Act 2- dispatches the shit lawyer and personates 'masculine virtue' but regains her female voice to cry rape. Assume the qualities of both genders
Act 4: silence and unexpectedly squashed
Final scene: poetic adventurer trying on many modes and roles, from glimmering acceptance of misfortunes to eternal dread

Remakes herself radically between appearances and may be echoing her Flamino.

Her changing role reflects not a shifting or duplicit personality but the brutal accomodations and decit demanded of all women if they are to survive in the patriarchy. An actress not synthesise not a single composite personality but to play a series of distinct, raw female stereotype.


                                    

Zanche is inured to intrigue, promiscuity, theft and betrayal is more professional victim even than Vittora. Traded her emotions so long she seems only vaguely aware of them. Isabella = chaste wife and is a toy for her powerful male relatives and has unpleasantly punitive fantasies towards her rival.

All these women seem victim beneficiaries of a sexist society showing 'masculine virtue' when challenged, but a tendecy to exploit the role of 'wronged woman' when their going is easier.

Interpretations

Monarchy, the Civil War and the Restoration Society

A + E initial respect for their Lord and Maker turns into apprehension and bitter irritation. Eve calls God the 'great Forbidder'. Symbolises the nation realising that the monarch is not the benevolent God's emissary in Britain but rather a tyrant keeping the nation under surveillance and control.

                               


Satan: metaphor for a troubled nation, destroyed by years of unfair monarchic rule, who lost their morality. This nation seeks to overthrow the monarch using radical, brutal steps just like Satan

                       


The title- the Paradise lost to people could suggests the opportunity of forming a republic, also lost to society as the Restoration of the monarchy was carried out. Promise of a new, fair, orderly country was, to Milton, a promise of a political Paradise. PL seems to be Milton's lament over these hopes.




Critique of the restoration or the revolution?

Women

In the 17th century, significant improvement in women's contribution to the society and community. Women were increasingly involved in the newly formed Quakers religious group. Allowed to be active members of the Quaker community but they could also be priestesses- socially empowering change for women in England

Contextual Overview- John Milton

The ''desire to know' is one of the defining characteristics of humanity and a central theme in Paradise Lost.

Political 

The middle decades of the 17th century are the period of the most intense political upheavals and shocking constitutional changes that Britain had not seen yet.


  • Religious disputes + complaints over the royal perogative and unjust taxation lead to the Civil Wars of 1640
  • Parliamentary troops fought in open rebellion against the King Charles I
  • Charles was taken prisoner and tried before parliament and was executed in 1649- leaving England without a crowned head of state
  • Stuart Monarchy is restored in 1660 when Charles II returns from exile and rides in triumph to London in 1660
  • Restoration is widely celebrated and comes as a great relief to the nation. 
  • Over the previous 20yrs every part of the British Isles experienced military maneuvers, forced sequestration of goods, armed skirmishes, the violent suppression of revolt and the murderous power of the canon and musket

Milton's deepest fear- English nation would not prove itself worthy of its newly won civic liberty, Idolatrous tendency in man to settle for the familiar, to resist change and to accept compromise. For Milton the restoration of the Monarchy is a form of self- enslavement by the English nation and a scandalous rejection of their God-given right to freedom.

Epic poem is an attempt to re-educate the English not as a chosen nation but as individuals and restore the ruins of the Restoration. To make the audience fit to become the 'children of reviving liberty'.

Rooted in political disillusionment rather than celebration of national supremacy. Contempt for imperial ambitions- narratorial voice beset with insecurity and anxiety. Story is the failure to live up to an ideal.

However, the epic narrative does admit the possibility of renewal, embedding that message in its imagery: light and darkness, creative forces that are stronger than destructive ones, love that overcomes malice, the seed of hope that grows after despair.


Heroes in Paradise Lost

Real heroes are those who are willing to suffer and to face persecution in the cause of truth. eg. Abdiel, repentant Adam and Eve.

Individual fortitude, inner strength and the courage shown by the solitary individual who keeps faith against the odds are the only achievement deemed worthy of praise in the new world order.

Charles II passed a number of Acts of Parliament are passed which repress all religious observance not conforming to the liturgy of the Church of England. To Milton this is spiritual coercion and  he would encourage the godly minority to hold firm in times of repression

In PL there is an apocalyptic perspective. For Milton it will require the Second Coming of the Son and the destruction by fire of 'Satan with his perverted World' before true prosperity will return to man.





Satan 

Styles himself as an indomitable champion and a brave adventurer though we see him as a profiteer and a colonial exploiter of a new world. Satan's voice is the first thing that gains our attention.

In Satan's vocab we recognise the values closely associated with the pagan hero of Homeric epics- strength, courage audacity etc. and above all else prestige and reputation and fame. Satan combines the strength and pride of Achilles with the linguistic skill of Odysseus. But rhetoric remains obsessed with the founding of an empire.

Satan as an embodiment of evil ambition rather than just evil. Within Satan's version of events, he is the champion of choice and freedom and God is the tyrant, a repressive and envious force. Satan is truly obsessed with being himself one of the gods to be glorified by his followers and to torment ill fated victims of his own.



Paradise Lost as an Alternative Presentation of Homeric Motifs


Narration of the War in Heaven makes us remember the destructive and futile escalation of aggression, the illogicality of immortals engaging in mortal conflict and the diabolical invention of gunpowder. Such shit is contrasted with solitary courage of Abdiel.

From the perspective of Heaven, Homeric war is sterile and destructive and not even the obdient angels manage to keep their dignity as they face cannon shot or throw mountains around.

It can be seen that Milton's presentation of the destructive futility of war draws to the contemporary experience of Civil War.


The Fall

Many think that Adam and Eve fell on the day that they were created. They are in Paradise for 2 weeks- they work, have a sex life and shows them to be rationally monotheistic creatures. He has them to scrutinise their situation, assess a troubling dream, converse with an angelic messenger + debate between themselves.

Sympathise with both individuals at their moment of trial and traces the complexity of their motivation. Uses Edenic experience as a means of discussing human nature and free will.

Responsibility for one's actions and beliefs always lies with the individual. Each individual has ultimately to be able to show their working. Within the epic, revelation is shown to be an unfolding process and one that admits interrogation by rational creatures.

Salvation is neither arbitrary nor pre-selective but lies in the active choice of the individual to accept or deny God's grace.

John Milton: A Brief Guide

Paradise Lost is a covert account of the ageing Milton's response to the momentous historical events in which he had played such an active and uncompromising part: English revolution.

Milton was famous throughout western Europe for his justifications of the execution of King Charles I. Many people were like Milton in disapproving of the increasingly ceremonial high manner in which the church was being to run.

Milton was a puritan and desired a simplifying the forms of worship between the individual believer and God. His confession of commitment to Purtianism was seen in Lycidas (1637) which was an attack on bishops whom Milton thought were causing such harm. Three years later, Milton attacked the very idea of a bishop at length in his anti-episcopal tracts.

In 1640's, Milton argued with the Church over the censorship in the church which forced many authors and works underground and resulted in violent punishment of others.

This is found in Areopagitica which was named after an ancient council in Athens which argued for widespread press freedom that constantly affirms the benefits of permitting people the responsibility to choose between good and evil.

Milton also argued for fundamental changes in the law of marriage. The divorce tracts forced a contradictory awareness between an intense idealisation of female beauty and companionship with a general patriarchial despising of female ability, a conflict which provides its later poetry with so much of its energy and lack of resolution.

Contrast between the allegory of the birth of Death from Sin and Death's rape of his mother in PL Bk 2 with the description of Eve in Bk 4. Beauty is used to point up her frailty until she is effectively blamed for the Fall of Mankind.

Words as sinews

In PL, Milton chooses to abandon rhyme (which he regarded as a personal and political 'bondage') and deliberately ran sentences over lines, to create that 'sinuous' syntax which he thought so necessary for his own language. Milton viewed language in this way as he had been trained in the classical arts of eloquence, oratory and rhetoric.

Rhetoric revived in Renaissance Europe under largely monarchial regimes, origins were in the political ideal of the ancient republican city states, where the requirements of citizenship were fulfilled by virtuous public speaking.

Classical literature showed Milton that kings usually degenerated into tyrants. This was the opinion of Aristotle and in Greek and Roman tragedies, kingly tyranny was exposed at its worst. The only true King is the King Jesus in heave and that the best kind of kingship on earth is the capacity for self-control. 

Reversal 

Having punished England once with the Civil War for an unreformed church, God was now punishing England again, for the policies of the 1650s. In Bk 2 the parliament in Hell can be seen as a reflection of Milton's disillusionment with secular republicanism as the speeches of Satan etc. are just piles of fucking shit. Also seen to be disparaging of language of republicanism.



Context in a Nutshell- John Milton

John Milton was born in 1608 in London to a wealthy family of a composer and scrivener. His strong appreciation for religious values and Puritan traditions influenced his writing.

Milton was very well educated and studied humanities at Cambridge university and graduated with a masters degree in 1632. In 1638 he visited France and Italy, He gave up prospects of training to be an Anglican priest in favour of becoming a poet.

Poetry= serving God and propagating Puritan ideas. He wanted to convey messages of the way of God, to praise morality and to picture disdain for sensuality and baseness.

Keen supporter of the republican movement and in opposition to Royalists.

He had radical thoughts which were controversial at the time but was admired by Republicans for his courageous works.

His vast knowledge of foreign languages meant that the political leader Oliver Cromwell appointed Milton as the Secretary for Foreign Tongues in the Commonwealth of England- the republican state created after King Charles I was executed. After the Civil War in 1642, King Charles was executed in 1649. Milton was devoted to writing republican propaganda and pamphlets

After Cromwell's death in 1658, there was confusion around the government and the ideas of how it should work. Society did not want or need anymore political upheaval but wanted to return to a pre-war 'normality'. Therefore the restoration of the Monarchy took place in 1660 and Charles II came back from exile.

Return of the monarchy left Milton disillusioned. However, he continued writing political tracts on the lack of need for a monarch in England.

Republicanism was no longer the general thought in England therefore he had to hide and was imprisoned for a short time.

Milton eventually became blind and in 1667 dictated Paradise Lost to his daughters.

A New Kind of Hero- Dr Sean McEvoy

Between 1642 and 1650 nearly 200,000 died from famine and plague in the Civil Wars between the Crown and Parliament. The combined population of England and Scotland was only about 6,000,000 in 1640.

By the time he came to write PL in the 1660s he lamented that despite 'God proclaiming peace':

"Yet live in hatred, enmity and strife,
 Among themselves, and levy cruel wars,
Wasting the earth, each other to destroy" 

In Book 9 came the rejection of the code of military heroism

Flawed but Free Heroes

His heroes are not the vengeful, honour obsessed warriors typical of Homer's Illiad or Virgil's Aeneid bu out common ancestors, a man and a woman commit a tragic and fatal error of judgement in human history.

The mistake is not out of self- regard or vindictive anger. They fall because they think honestly for themselves as free-beings and out of love. Like classical heroes, Eve is able to take responsibility for her actions but unlike Greek forbears, their suffering is not catastrophic.

Their disobedience leads to repentance which will merit a loving God's self-sacrifice in human form.

Testing Virtue and Truth

This is the situation in which God has placed mankind by giving him free will to choose between sin and virtue. It is an argument echoed in Milton's political tract 'Areopagitica'  in 1644 against government censorship.

During the marital debate Adam sees that Eve's personal integrity requires personal freedom and concedes:
"Go, for thy stay, unfree, absents thee more"

Rejecting Classical Learning

As Eve departs she is compared to the chase hunter-goddess Diana but is like us for she is only armed with gardening tools lol,  As a result she will only have human wit to defend her.

Here, heroic classical rhetoric sis here the work of the devil. Milton is able to use high-status classical learning only to reject its values.

Eve's Choice- Free Will 


Satan tells Eve that he has tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and it has given him speech and intelligence beyond a serpent. Shifting into the discourse of the classical world he asserts it will make them 'gods'. Eve is confused by the argument but still succumbs out of free choice.

After the Fall in them nature does not seem to blame humans for the terrible and irreversible environmental damage caused by Eve's mistake:

"Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat.
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe
That all was lost" 

The Motive of Love

The fallen Eve's motive to make Adam eat the fruit are mixed but not wicked. She reflects that if God has seen her transgression and she does die than Adam will be granted a new woman in her place so jealously motivates Eve.

"So dear I love him, that will all deaths/
I could endure, without him live no life.! 

Adam sees what is going on and the garland he holds made from 'choicest flowers' withers and dies. In Book 18 of Iliad- the hero Patroclus is about to die, the helmet Achilles has lent him falls to dust. Milton echoes this but Adam's demise is not about fighting soldiers and glory but out of love.

Adam follows Eve's disobedience as he can't live without her:
"Loss thee/
Would never from my heart"

Modern Responsible Heroism 

Adam is 'fondly overcome with female charm' . As Adam eats, 'nature gave a second groan' as a new sinful world is born. Fallen Adam invites Eve to make love with him which recalls the seduction of Helen by the hero 'godlike' Paris in the Iliad.

Classical heroism is part of the fallen world. But unlike Patroclus or Paris who will not live to see Troy fall, A + E survive expulsion from Eden, wiser and repentant confident of God's grace and of the importance of their own freedom in the fallen world beyond the gates.

"They hand in hand with wandering steps and slowly,/
Through Eden took their solitary way"

Modern heroism is not to fight and kill but to take responsibility for one's actions in an imperfect but shared world to continue to love and to maintain hope in the prospect of a better world to come.

Saturday 12 March 2016

Eikonoklastes

Introduction 

• Eikonoklastes is a book by John Milton, published October 1649. In it he provides a justification for  the execution of Charles I, which had taken place on 30 January 1649.

• By appointment of the Council of State, Milton was assigned to write Eikonoklastes as the      Secretary of Foreign Tongues in March 1649.

• Declaring that “I take it on me as a work assigned rather, than by me chosen or affected,” Milton    wrote Eikonoklastes as a response to Charles’ Eikon Basilike. Commissioned by the Council of State  in March 1649.

Eikon Basilike

• Eikon Basilike , “The King’s Image” was written in defence of King Charles I, who ascended the    throne in 1625 subtitled "the Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings." It  purports to be the king's spiritual autobiography. Written in simple, direct, and moving language, it  ran into many editions and was translated into several languages.

• It claims to be a private record of the thoughts and prayers of Charles through the last years,    months, weeks, days, even hours of his life. Charles is pictured as a monument to piety,  conscientiousness, and faith; he is shown as a man who loves his family, a King concerned for the  welfare of his people, and a pious Protestant much given to earnest prayer.


• It was circulated shortly after his execution in an effort, as editors Daems and Faith Nelson suggest,  “to embed the rhetoric of kingship into the minds of its early modern-readers, despite the physical  absence of the king.”


• Charles was executed in January 1649 following disputes and charges from
 his parliament, and he was perceived by his English opponents to be a
 political tyrant based on his desire for divine authority and kingly rule


• Eikonoklastes primary purpose was to counter Eikon Basilike, therefore the text was written in    English as it was intended for an English audience

Eikonoklastes aims to shatter the king’s image. With its text title of the Greek word for “iconoclast,” which means “a breaker or destroyer of images”, Eikonoklastes strips Eikon Basilike,

The language and style of Eikonoklastes, show that Milton’s intentions were specifically aimed towards demystifying Charles’ political misrepresentations and unveiling his real intentions.

Milton employs linguistic methods to persuade his readers while integrating political references and biblical scripture in achieving his goal.

Milton attacks Charles I's rhetorical flourishes throughout Eikon Basilike, and he claims that "the whole Book might perhaps be intended a peece of Poetrie".

Milton criticises every aspect of Eikon Basilike to the point that when Charles I claims that he was with gentlemen, Milton responds "Gentlemen indeed; the ragged Infantrie of Stewes and Brothels".

The Main Points in Eikonoklastes 

Milton’s defense of the regicide of Charles the First takes both political and religious angles.
     
Religious Justifications for the Regicide 
Responding directly to the Eikon Basilike,Milton stresses repeatedly that service to God and service to the King are not one in the same, that is, service to God could (and indeed, in Charles case did) constitute the removal of the King.

Milton’s discourse in effect shatters the icon of the "Godly" ruler from a protestant angle by subjecting the notion of a King's right to rule by divine right to critical interpretation, separating the King from the religious doctrines that justified his reign.

Milton’s religious argument is grounded in his protestant ethic: He repeatedly stresses that God’s favor (the supposed instrument of a King’s right to rule) cannot center around one individual but is instead accessible to all.

Thus, Milton asserts that Charles' execution was justified in the eyes of God because the King had threatened to trivialize the purity of the Church of England by moving it in the wrong direction that confused the authority of God with the power of the King.

The Radical Politics of a Regicide
Milton establishes Parliament, not the King, as the most genuine expression of the collective will of the English nation.

His political argument stresses the King’s manipulation of Parliament by only calling it into session for the purposes of requesting wartime appropriations, and the frequency with which he dissolved it when the commons refused to cooperate with his goals.

He uses this example to equate Charles’s rule with subjugation for the English people, that is, Charles had as much concern for the people's aims as he did parliament's.

Milton shows the reader that Charles’ ruled with an illogical single-mindedness that was antithetical to the kind of religious republic that he, and radicals like him, hoped to create.

Milton argues that there is a potential in all monarchical governments for the potential of enslaving a population, which was an argument he previously relied on in his The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.

Milton's view of freedom was not limited to just having the right to property, but to be free from the potential of arbitrary domination by a monarch.

Starting in 1649, Milton began to connect his various prose publications with the plan of a future epic to be composed, and Eikonoklastes was one such work.

Some critical interpretations highlight the multiple parallels between the actions of Charles I monarchy and Satan's rule in hell found within Paradise Lost. Although, this interpretation is perfectly fine, care must be taken to not simplify ‘Paradise Lost’ into a political category- this is does not examine the deeper subtleties and meanings within the text

However, the description of a rise of an antichristian monarchs near the end of Eikonoklastes declares that such individuals rely on an ambiguous language to gain power. Likewise, Milton's Satan relies on the same kind of rhetoric. Likewise, the deviant followers of Charles I are connected to demons in hell who drink and blaspheme

Quotes from Eikonoklastes
Milton’s intent is "for their sakes who through want of better custom, simplicity, or want of better teaching, have not more seriously considered kings than in the gaudy name of majesty" to argue against the pious picture of King Charles that has been presented in the recent book, Eikon Basilike.

“ inevitably throw us back again into all our past and fulfilled miseries; would force us to fight over again all our tedious wars and put us to another fatal struggling for liberty and life, more dubious than the former."

“that our consciences were destined to the same servitude and persecution … under him, or if it should so happen, under his son; who count all protestant churches erroneous”

Charles’ death does not, in and of itself, make him a true martyr: "if to die for ‘the testimony of his own conscience’ be enough to make him martyr, what heretic dying for direct blasphemy, as some have done constantly, may not boast a martyrdom?"

that people that should seek a king claiming what this man claims, would show themselves to be by nature slaves and arrant beasts—not fit for that liberty which they cried out and bellowed for, but fitter to be led back again into their old servitude like a sort of clamoring and fighting brutes

“ know not how to use or possess the liberty which they fought for, but with the fair words and promises of an old exasperated foe are ready to be stroked and tamed again into the wonted and well-pleasing state of their true Norman villeinage, to them best agreeable."

Critical Views 


The work failed: it is the general view that Milton's work did not succeed, in terms of rebutting the Eikon Basilike

However, this book was the first work by Milton to be at all widely read. Public sentiment still supported Charles I, but the tract was able to appeal to a larger audience than many of Milton's previous works.

The Act of Oblivion was enacted on 29 August 1660, and Milton was not among those who were listed to suffer the death penalty for their part in Charles I's execution.
On the other hand, a proclamation by the king demanded that Eikonoklastes and Defensio pro Populo Anglicano be burned.

Friday 11 March 2016

The Author/Narrator Difficulties- Who Really Speaks?

The short introduction is narrated by an omniscient, third person narrator. But in the main body of the text are the first person narrator who uses third person narrative to report the characters' proceedings to us.
  • After Satan's soliloquy, the narrator words are scarce + intertwine with the characters' monologues in the form of short comments on who is speaking and the tone. The narrator is then reduced to structuring the characters' narrative. Reminds us of stage directions- dramatic, theatrical qualities. 
  • Elaborate soliloquies and monologues gives characters a degree of narrative authority. First person, subjective narrative

First person narrative is not reliable- not omniscient and subjective. If our narrator is not all knowing than how can he narrate biblical events with the focus on emotional depth and insights into Adam, Eve and Satan. Possible for 3rd person narrator but uses the 'I'- enables the narrator's objectivity. 

Narrator draws the reader into the narrative by using 'we', highlighting the reader's equality to the narrator. Technique is slightly rhetoric- forms a bond between the narrator and reader as equal moral standing= same guilt and shame of the original sin. 

Poem scripted by the author. Work is not all art but a religious revalation, inspired by divine forces- not Milton. But possibility it's him- narrator's racist remark about Native American people in A + E's downfall:

"To that first naked Glorie. Such of late
Columbus found th'American so girt/
With feathered Cincture, naked else and wilde."

Newly fallen Adam compared to the Native American colonised by European empires. Compares Adam's worst traits with the Native American people is an echo of Milton's own imperial outlooks.

Blank Verse 

No rhyme structure. Does not look or sound as structured and melodic as rhymed poetry. Slows the poem down, interrupts the easy 'flowing' of the text. Makes text harder and more laborious. Complements the mood of the poem- sombre tale of human tragedy. 

Speech-like quality- makes poem's narrative sound more life-like. Run on lines adds to the poems realism + renders its sound like a speech. 

Iambic Pentameter 

Natural rhythm of the English language. 5 unstressed syllables followed by 5 stressed ones. 
Narratives and monologues are more realistic. PL as a product of religious revelation rather than a crafted piece of literature. 

Syntax

Foreign feel of Milton's syntax is due to the author's first studied language being Latin. Milton wanted his epic poem to resemble the greatest literary works of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Milton creates a sense of his poem being a replica or a translation of an ancient poem.

Elevate the poem's style- more lofty and worthy of the epic field. Makes the reading slower and more difficult. 

Binary Oppositions 

Create a moral depth- contrasting the good and evil. 
  • God/Satan
  • sin/virtue
  • punishment/praise
  • infernal/the divine
  • God's creating/Satan's destroying inclinations
Create tensions and turning points. Organize the plot + dictate the audience's sympathy. But when binary opposites are broken (virtuous Eve tempted to sin) challenges the text + unsettles the audience.  Questions characters and morality. 

Satan's first soliloquy. Binaries are:
  • light/dark
  • pleasure/torment
  • productive/destructive
  • delight/woe
  • sweet/bitter
Showcase Satan's troubled state of mind and anger. 

The man/woman binary introduces a differentiation based on characters' gender. Also shows how one of the genders is superior to the other. 

Binary oppositions highlight Eve's moral superiority to Satan. 
Images of 'innocence', 'softness', 'sweetness' vs 'evil', 'fierceness', 'malice', 'envie' and creates a tension and suspense in anticipation of Satan and Eve's first interaction. 

Oppositions are troubling- know that Eve is going to commit the sin. Undermines the oppositions present in the text. Does it also undermine the God/Satan and punishment/praise. Linked to political interpretation- the Civil War. 

Lexis and Its Effect on the Imagery 

Bk 9 Ln 145-178 

Satan is gliding through the Earth's underground in the 'midnight vapor' Everything is 'obscure', 'dark' and 'foul'. Add uncertainty, mystery and unpleasantness and danger.  Satan laments that he has to enter Paradise as 'a beast' who is 'mixt with beastial slime'. Abundance of forceful, negative lexis in this passage.

Presented with bitter 'revenge'. There are thickets of 'Danck and Drie' picturing the setting as moudly, damp and disorderly. Introduces images of decay and destruction. Semantic fields of beastiality and anger contribute to the grim, dark imagery of the passage. 

Rhetoric 

Rhetoric widely used eg. Eve to persuade Adam to seperate + work in different parts of the Garden. Used by Adam to prevent her from doing so. Satan uses it to tempt Eve.

Examples

Adam and Eve. Eve uses many personal pronouns e.g. 'us' , 'we'  and 'our'. which she repeats. Employs emotive, forceful phrases combined with rhetorical questions: "How are we happie, in still in fear of harm." Eve's repetition as she repeats 'foul' three times. Lastly Eve uses Adam's love and submission to God:

"Let us not then suspect our happie State/
Left so imperfet by the Maker wise."

Adam uses a similar array of rhetorical devices to keep Eve by his side and dissuade her embarking on solitary work. Uses personal pronouns and praises Eve: "immortal Eve/For such thou art, from sin and blame entire."
Uses emotive and forcedul lexis and uses triples: "More wise, more watchful, stronger"

Last example is Satan's rhetoric to tempt Eve to the forbidden fruit. Addresses Eve as 'Queen of this Universe' and bestows her with flattery to gain her trust and fondness. Criticises God for denying Adam and Eve the privileges an pleasures of tasting the forbidden fruit. Makes negative points about God's commandements: "Why then was his forbid?... Why but to keep ye low and ignorant."

"By the Fruit? It gives you life..."

Satan makes himself more attractive and accessible. Opposition to God who is 'The Threatener' and offers Eve more positive and encouraging info. Appeals to Eve's common sense.

Includes many contrasts in his speech- binary oppositions to highlight the perceived injustice of God's restrictions

"Shall that be shut to man, which to the Beast
Is open?"

Man'/Beast and shut/open. Fruit should not be forbidden and the ban is not reasonable. Undermines God's reasonability and authority in Eve's eyes. Ultimate effect of Satan's rhetoric- Eve's obedience to the God's commandment, moments after she listens to the serpent's deceitful speech. 

Milton's Theological Heresies

Milton's vast theological treatise, De Doctrina Christiana- assembles thousands of scriptural passages which meant a a great deal to the blind, solitary writer, for he considered it his "dearest and best possession" and his "greatest comfort".

Christian Doctrine was an attempt to illuminate his 'dark' mind with the texts and spirit of the Bible.

The Bible: "the onely Book left us of Divine authority."

As he was working on Paradise Lost, Milton was compiling his voluminous treatise on Biblical matters. Therefore connections can be seen between the two texts.

This text was written with the hope that his work might, "wipe away those two repulsive afflictions, tyranny and superstition from human life and human mind."

Similar to other Puritans, Milton deeply resented the invocations of Archbishop William Laud who had subordinated the status of scripture and individual conscience by emphasizing the Church of England's power and ceremonialism. Church has asserted its splendour + authority.

Milton believed that: "God has revealed the way of eternal salvation only to the individual faith of each man."
The Scripture itself is a vital and dynamic spiritual force both in his age and within the upright heart of each Protestant individual.

As in Areopagitica he valorises 'free discussion and inquiry'. Anti Trinitarian in his theological beliefs. Dismantles the orthodox trinity so that the Son though subordinate to the father is an independent entity.  The Son lacks the Father's omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence.

The Son's divine nature is distinct and inferior to the Father's. Milton emphasizes filial subordination.

Milton's radical Arminianism is the most significant for understanding Paradise Lost. Passionate belief in human free will which distinguished him from orthodox Calvinist Puritans. Man's Nature was so debased and enslaved by sin that it precluded his ability to achieve salvation through free will,

Calvinists focus on man's utter depravity, powerlessness and 'infected will- Man's fallen nature is diseased and has corrupted us. No point- already damned to hell...

Milton stressed God's foreknowledge but firmly wished to deny that future events were predestined or happened by necessity. Milton attempts to differentiate his God from the Calvinist God of arbitary power.

God does forsee events but humankind may choose freely to stand or fall when it comes to temptation the choice is always ours- "there can be no absolute divine decree about the action of free agents.' The fall was not inevitable - this is a Protestant poet who attempts to highlight the freedom of human agency though without ever abandoning a belief in God's omnipotence.

Wednesday 9 March 2016

Milton's Divorce Tracts

Milton's divorce tracts refer to the four interlinked polemical pamphlets—The Doctrine and Discipline of DivorceThe Judgment of Martin BucerTetrachordon, and Colasterion. 

Milton's Marriages 

  • Milton married Mary Powell in May 1642, and, shortly after, she left him and returned to live with her mother. He wanted to divorce her to marry another, but the legal statutes of England did not allow for Milton to apply for a divorce.
  •  Although it is impossible to know why exactly Powell separated from Milton, it is possible that Powell's family, a strong royalist family, caused a political difference that was exacerbated by the English Civil War. 
  • Regardless of her reason, the action motivated Milton towards researching and eventually writing on the topic. 
  • Milton began writing a series of divorce tracts. Sometime between 1642 and 1645
  • Milton met and attempted to pursue another woman known only as Miss Davis.
  • During his involvement with her, he attempted to convince her that his marriage should have resulted in a divorce and that it would be appropriate for her to marry him although he was already legally married; this resulted in failure. 
  • However, this did not dissuade his campaign to reform the divorce laws, and he continued to pursue the topic until his wife returned to him. 
  • Milton and Powell's marriage lasted until 1652; Powell died while giving birth to Deborah, the couple's third daughter. 
  • She was followed by the death of John, their infant and only son. Milton remarried Katherine Woodcock in 1656. This marriage was far more successful than Milton's previous, but, like his first wife, Woodcock died from complications experienced while giving birth. 
OVERARCHING ARGUMENT: Milton's argument hangs on his view of human nature and the purpose of marriage, which rather than the traditional ends of procreation or a remedy against fornication, he defines as "the apt and cheerful conversation of man with woman, to comfort and refresh him against the evils of solitary life". 

Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce argues for the ability to have a second chance at marriage. In particular, Milton claims, that no one can always know the disposition of their spouse before they enter into marriage. 

Milton's argument and stance on divorce continues to the point that he implies that a divorcer could actually be the one who understands and defends marriage the most. 
"that desire which God saw it was not good that men should be left alone to burn in; the desire and longing to put off an unkindly solitarines by uniting another body, but not without a fit soule to his in the cheerfull society of wedlock. Which if it were so needfull before the fall, when man was much more perfect in himself, how much more is it needfull now against all the sorrows and casualties of this life to have an intimate and speaking help, a ready and reviving associate in marriage."

Judgment of Martin Bucer
Published in July 1644, Judgment of Martin Bucer consists mostly of Milton's translations of pro-divorce arguments from the De Regno Christi of the German Protestant reformer Martin Bucer
By finding support for his views among Protestant writers, Milton hoped to sway the members of Parliament and Protestant ministers who had condemned him. 
Tetrachordon
Tetrachordon appeared in March 1645, after Milton had published his defence of free speech, Areopagitica, in the interim. The title means "four-stringed" in Greek, implying that Milton was able to harmonise the four Scriptural passages dealing with divorce: 

Genesis 1:27–28:  "God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it." 

Deuteronomy 24:1- "When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house."

Matthew 5:31–32 and 19:2–9 
“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
I Corinthians 7:10–16. 
"A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife."
"How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?"
Milton suggests that the secondary law of nature permits divorce in the post-lapsarian world. This tract is the largest and most ponderous of Milton's arguments of divorce, consisting of over 100 pages. Its Scriptural emphasis anticipates that of De Doctrina Christiana.
Colasterion
Meaning "rod of punishment" in Greek, the brief Colasterion was published along with Tetrachordon in March 1645 in response to an anonymous pamphlet attacking the first edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Milton makes no new arguments, but harshly takes to task the "trivial author" in vituperative prose.