Tennyson's "Ulysses" as a Poem of Quest

Ulysses is widely considered to be a poem of quest, a theme representative of the overarching Victorian spirit of enterprise. The goal of Ulysses’ quest is knowledge – Ulysses, having caught a glimpse of “an untraveled world” feels compelled to pursue it even if it were to elude him forever. While Ulysses believes that even senility and death are no obstacles, he is conscious of the deadline, so to speak, that death, ever-looming, imposes on him. Ulysses underlines the extraordinary character of the poem’s protagonist – who, even in the face of pain and death, is determined to come out a hero.

Another interpretation of Ulysses could be that it is a poem about conquest – giving voice to the thirst for power in the age of unfettered imperialism. The protagonist, in some ways, appears to embody the spirit of the Victoria age with his yearning for knowledge and his desire to explore the ends of the earth. Considering how the age of European imperialism transpired, the last line of the poem - about striving, seeking, finding, and never yielding - might as well have been the rallying battle cry of imperialists. 

Salient Features of Victorian Poetry

The Victorian era of the United Kingdom lasted from 1837, when Queen Victoria was crowned monarch, until her death in 1901. The Victorian age was marked by extraordinarily rapid changes, of heady confidence in the inexorable march towards progress.

Perhaps, the most important change that transformed Britain from an agrarian economy (based on land ownership) to a modern urban economy (based on manufacturing and enterprise) was the industrial revolution. The nature of such a change hardly lent itself to poetic inspiration, and that is obvious from the works turned out during the period. Albeit, it is noteworthy that the Victorian age saw the rise of prose, especially novels – novels were, without doubt, the most creative output of the age.

Every age in literature attempts to define its own identity by revolting against the values and practices of its predecessors. This was true of the Victoria age too – who reacted against what they felt was the soppy, flighty, and saccharine sweet poetry of late Romanticism. Victorian era poets, such as Robert Browning and Tennyson, developed a more purposeful poetry that focused on narrative and concrete, everyday issues in the real world. The overarching character of Victorian-era poetry was a preference for the intellectual over the emotional. Poetry was turned into a forum for discussing the socio-cultural conflicts that preoccupied the leading minds of the time. In this manner, Victorian poets reacted against what they perceived to be excessive emotionalism of the Romantics and turned poetry into a rational, intellectual criticism of contemporary society. The works of the poets of the age displayed a strong concern for the problems of the age – the streak of social awareness that characterized the writings of the age confirmed the transformation of the poet into social activist. Some of the leading social activist-poets of the time were Lord Alfred Tennyson, Mathew Arnold, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

In addition to social concern, the other salient feature of Victorian poetry was religion. The Victorian age witnessed new discoveries and inventions of science that transformed the common man’s conceptions of the meaning and nature of world and life. Darwin’s theory of evolution brought Biblical myths under inspection and the consequent conflict between rationalism and faith become a defining characteristic of Victorian life. With the threat of potential religious annihilation looming large, religious poetry became an important aid to spread faith and reassert the importance of the divine. Victorian poets such as John Keble insisted that poetry could induce Christians to deeper acts of devotion. Famous hymns, such as Lead Kindly Light by John Henry Newman, were authored during the period. It is significant that despite the strong currents of skepticism that swept across Victorian society, religious concerns continued to hold sway over many minds.

The Role of Childhood Memories in Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"

The focus of Tintern Abbey is memory, specifically memories from William Wordsworth’s childhood of communing with nature. Tintern Abbey is William Wordsworth’s first great ode to his primary motto, which is that memories of communing with unspoilt mother nature in childhood works on the mind even into adulthood, when access to those pure memories are thought to be lost. The poet employs a device that he once described as two consciousnesses – he conjures up a “picture in the mind”, from memory, of a place that he has visited before, which he then juxtaposes with the visual of the same place in front of him in the present day. He recollects the memory of his past experiences from the area, and superimposes them over his present view of them. When the two visuals fail to match, the poet is, at once, sad and perplexed.

The poet acknowledges that he is a different person today, when compared to how carefree he was those many years ago, when he bounded over the hills and waded through the streams. He is now acutely aware of everything that the present scene offers him – all his senses are heightened.

The poet believes that the past is firmly behind him and he has no need to mourn it. Life has compensated him with a new set of gifts centered on the theme of maturity. On the whole, he is happy knowing that his present experience will, in turn, provide many happy memories for the years to come.

Romantic Poets, Creative Imagination, and the Transformation of the Individual and Society

Romantic stalwarts such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth believed that imagination should be regarded as a superior human faculty, the transubstantiator of experience. The towering Percy Bysshe Shelley felt that without moral imagination, man - in an acquisitive society – “having enslaved the elements, remains a slave himself”. Equally important to Shelley was sympathetic imagination, the faculty by which an individual overleaps the limits of his own neural, emotional, and ideological absorptions, and identifies himself with the thoughts and feelings of other men. Shelley avers that the faculty in poetry, which allows us to share the joys and sorrows of imagined characters, is also the basis for all morality, because it compels us to feel for others what we feel for ourselves, to do unto others what we do to ourselves. 

John Keats, the main figure in the second generation of Romantic poets, was certain that he was certain of nothing, “but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination…” He was convinced that what the imagination saw as beauty must be truth and laid great stress on negative capability (or selfless receptivity) – that great poetic capacity wherefore man effaces his own personal identity by immersing it sympathetically and spontaneously with the given subject. 

Romantic poets considered the imagination in poetry, especially nature poetry, as a catalyst for individual meditative reflection – to tool to assist them in tackling and resolving personal crises. Some Romantic poets used the lyric form of poetry to channel their personal feelings. They were able to achieve a sense of kinetic grandeur and infinity, and sometimes even irrationality and fear, through the power of imagination.

Frederich von Schiler - German poet, dramatist, philosopher, and historian extraordinaire – was convinced that imagination, through the use of symbols, enables the reconciliation and transcendence of reality through a heightened state of consciousness. In a distant echo of Keats, Schiller believed that what a person’s imagination saw as beauty could ennoble his nature. Imagination, according to Schiller, harmonized duty and inclination through art, and could make every one of us a beautiful soul (schöne Seele). 

For the Romantics, imagination (as poetry) – through its colour, contour, and character – could humanize a faceless world. It could, at once, provide both an impetus to action as well as a means to escape the harshness that is sometimes reality.

The Classical and Romantic Periods of Western Literature

The terms ‘Classical’ and ‘Romantic’ refer to periods in Western literature and other art forms.

The Classical period was named thus retroactively by Renaissance-era scholars with reference to the pre-Christian Greeks and Romans of antiquity. Thinkers of the Renaissance, literally meaning ‘rebirth’ in French, considered themselves as the heirs of the Classical heritage, even if that inheritance were interrupted by the Middle Ages (sometimes branded as the Dark Ages). What set the Classical period apart was its stringent, rigid focus on traditional forms and structures, on unity, wholeness, and rational design. In literature, this meant a preference for urban settings in prose and poetic storylines; attention to detail in metre, rhyme, and stanza; and an unrelenting focus on formal execution.

For example, the over 14000 lines of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia are written in a disciplined rhyming pattern known as terza rima.

The Romantic period witnessed an artistic movement that celebrated all strong emotions, including that of love (which most people immediately assume is what the word ‘romantic’ refers to). Writers from the Romantic period searched for beauty and truth in all aspects of life – imagination and emotion, not reason, were considered the beacons of truth and raison’d etre of art.

Romantic thinkers placed more importance on the understanding and expression of strong emotion rather than technical perfection, which was an obsession with Classicists. In some ways, the Romantic period was a reaction, a sort of backlash to the rigidity of the Classical period. We find evidence of this Romantic overthrow of Classical preoccupations in the displacement of urban settings, so preferred by Classical and Neoclassical writers, by rural landscapes and backdrops.

Thus, we find an example in William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, a poem about an eponymous monastery in the rural, southern Welsh country of Monmouthshire. The poem was composed in blank verse - unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter; lines that do not exactly conform to the stress patterns of the metre. Loosely-metred writings such as this would have been anathema to Classical writers, but were passionately embraced by Romanticists. 

The Use of Allegory in Swift's "Gulliver's Travels"

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a satirical masterpiece from cover to cover and is rife with allegorical meaning. The novel satirizes almost every aspect of human life – government, knowledge, human relationships, morals, technology, and even excrement! One could even take the view that the novel, in its entirety, is an allegory of the collapse of human values, and the various seemingly-exotic peoples that he encounters are actually allegories of various aspects of the human race.”

In the section describing Gulliver’s sojourn in Lilliput, Swift ridicules the empty rituals and meaningless courtesy of the court there. For example, the status of Liliputian ministers depends on how high they can jump over a rope – a totally irrelevant qualification for a government official! This is a not-so-subtle allegorical reference to the ostentatious formality among the British upper class and nobility and their obsession with etiquette, manners, rules, and regulations.

Swift also satirizes human obsession with appearance and its inability to look beyond it. Within this satire lies a deep allegorical lesson – that size has little to do with power. For example, even though Gulliver was a veritable giant among the Lilliputians, he was still petty in rank and status. On the other hand, even though he was no more than a cockroach, in terms of size, in Brobdingnag, one of its inhabitants, Glumdalclitch, actually takes care of him. Even the queen of Brobdingnag is kind toward him, even if she sees him as a source of entertainment.

In various parts of the book, Swift mocks humans for their obsession with power, and suggests that all human relations are based, not on virtue, but on power – on who exercises power, who is controlled by power, and who understand the dynamics and politics of power. Thus, we have the following account from Gulliver while he was in Lilliput:

Providence never intended to make the Management of publick Affairs a Mystery, to be comprehended only by a few Persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an Age.

In this extract, Swift is actually lampooning the institution of Parliament that the English were so proud of, which, they felt set them apart from the barbaric and uncivilized natives. In reality, Swift charges that the whole parliamentary process is shrouded in unnecessary mystery and when the common man seeks to understand it, he is often dismissed for his supposed lack of training in the process! The only people who seem to perpetually benefit from such an arrangement are the people in power and the people who understand power – usually the rich and the powerful. Gulliver goes so far as to describe the English parliament as “a knot of pedlars, pickpockets, highwaymen and bullies”!

In the concluding section, Gulliver hesitates to inform the King of his discovery of new realms because he fears the scourge of colonization that might follow. Consider the following quote from Gulliver:

…they see an harmless people, are entertained with kindness, they give the country a new name, they take formal possession of it for the King, they set up a rotten plank or a stone for a memorial, they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more by force for a sample, return home and get their pardon…

This is a devastating allegorical indictment of the history of European colonialism. In my opinion, a better and as-succinct-a summary of this shameful chapter in history is yet to be written.

During his stay at Brobdingnag, when Gulliver teaches the king the use of gunpowder, the king is flabbergasted at its destructive potential and at the people who invented it. The king declares that humans are “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” Brutal words, these, but a fair assessment of a people that seemed to take pride in their ability to engage in mass destruction.

Swift, writing during the period of Enlightenment, when Reason reigned supreme in all the land, does not hold back from satirizing even knowledge and mankind’s pride in his ability to pontificate and philosophize. This, he does through the descriptions of the lives of the inhabitants of Laputa, Lagado, and Balnibari – In Laputa, for example, the inhabitants are brilliant mathematicians; however, in their obsession to calculate when the sun will burn out and so on, they have ignored practical, everyday considerations such as building straight walls and square corners! Swift goes on in a similar vein about Lagado and Balnibari as well.

As a final piece of evidence of how Gulliver’s Travels works as an allegory, I’d like to discuss what some people call Swift’s “scatological vision.” Swift spends a lot of time describing bodily functions and how their produce might be processed after expulsion! Consider, for example, how the scientists in Lagado attempt to make food from excrement. In my opinion, this is just Swift’s allegorical way of telling us how ugly, in reality, the human body is and how sickening its functions are, no matter how we may have willed ourselves into believing otherwise.

In this manner, Swift, through scathing satire, provides insightful allegories to understand not just specific English customs and manners, but also the general human condition.

"Joseph Andrews" and the Satirization of English Society

The satire in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews is an acerbic commentary on 18th century English social life, manners, and etiquette, especially the pretensions of the people of the time to morality and virtue.

In the book, we find that behind the veneer of reserved virtue that English women of good society were expected to exhibit, they were constantly in pursuit of amorous excitement. We find multiple women from various strata of English society, Lady Booby, Mrs. Slipslop, and Betty, who brazenly attempt to seduce, in vain, the handsome eponymous protagonist.

Yet, with Fielding, there are no cardboard characters and the picture is never one-sided, unlike the characters in Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. (Incidentally, Fielding depicts Andrews to be the brother of Pamela, from Richardson’s novel!) Every virtuous character is shown to have vices in them, and vice versa.

Parson Adams, a man of the cloth, viewed favorably by all, is also shown to be a vain man – consumed with vanity about his profession, his knowledge, and his teaching abilities. He is also depicted as an extremely selfish and materialistic man. Au contraire, while Betty is generally considered promiscuous, she is also compassionate and generous. Then, we have the humble postilion who takes pity on Andrews’ miserable plight and gladly gives him his coat, even when of the postilion’s well-bred passengers previously refused the request to admit the nearly-frozen, beaten, and robbed Andrews into the coach. Here, Fielding shows that a charitable spirit is not the exclusive preserve of those who have plenty; in fact, the poor, may, sometimes, be more giving than the rich. However, we later find that the same do-gooder postilion is convicted of stealing.

Fielding brutally depicts society’s insincerity through his representation of the judges, who are as dishonest as the parson and the squire. The squire, in fact, attempts to abuse his position by raping Fanny, Andrews’ love interest. Justice Frolick is shown as going out of his way to throw Joseph and Fanny behind bars, only to satisfy Lady Booby’s whim.

In summary, Fielding’s novel paints an expansive picture of 18th century English society, and it directs its satirical diatribe not against convenient straw men that the author wants to vilify, but against the foibles, follies, and vices of an entire society.

Interpreting Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

Secondo me, the most convincing interpretation of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is that of colonialism, Christianity, and civilization.

By the time Robinson Crusoe was written, various European nations, including England, had acquired for themselves well-established (and in some cases, vast) empires Asia, Africa, and South America. There were also many written records of the experience of various colonizers by that time, which, no doubt, Defoe would have been familiar with.

The English settlers in North America were attempting to create something new, something different from the old world in Europe. This would have been possible only if the settlers were in absolute control of the place. In the novel, Crusoe realizes the same about his role in the island and goes about attempting to become its governor, ruler, authority, and sole power. With this, the well-established colonial image of the white man, establishing rule and dominion over the natives, comes to the fore. Trader becomes potentate in a strange, faraway land – a colonial story that has repeated itself over and over again in history.

Just like European colonialism in real life, Defoe’s dominion over the island originated as a fantasy of power and control, in a daydream, as we can see in the following excerpt:

My island was now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in Subjects, and it was a merry reflection which I frequently made. How like a King I look’d….My People were perfectly subjected: I was absolute Lord and Law-giver; they all owed their Lives to me, and were ready to lay down their Lives, if there had been such an occasion for it, for Me.

Again, just like European colonialism in real life, Defoe worked hard to make his dream come true. Crusoe, who had just dreamt of himself as a potentate, proceeds to dominate the whole island and his newly-acquired servant, Friday.

It’s noteworthy that Crusoe chooses to name the man that he meets, and acquires as servant, as he sees fit. Friday is called Friday because that’s what Crusoe decided his name would be, regardless of what Friday might have called himself in the past. This was domination in its most complete form. Crusoe doesn’t stop there, however. He goes on to give Friday a new identity altogether, a Christian one. The so-called civilizing mission of the white man is on full display here. The images of the cannibalistic natives who need to be either killed off or subjected to a civilizing mission completes the picture of European colonialism.

After Crusoe has completely conquered the island, and subjugated the natives, he views himself as the sole wielder of power and authority, and dispenser of rule and justice. In the eleventh year of his stay on the island, he speaks of himself thusly:

Lord of the whole Manor, or, if I pleased, I might call myself King, or Emperor over the whole country which I had possession of. There were no rivals. I had no competitor, none to dispute sovereignty or command with me.

The language of dominance is loud and clear, similar to the real-life European colonizers who brooked no dissent. Crusoe, like the colonizers, believed he had an undoubted right to govern and dispose of the natives as he thought fit, by any means and measures necessary.

The Form and Style of Richardson's Pamela

Samuel Richardson wrote the entire story of Pamela in the form of letters that the eponymous protagonist writes and hides. The writing style is intimate and it helps the author present Pamela’s point of view as a first-person account. Therefore, we can call this an epistolary novel.

The author meant for Pamela to be an advice book, meant to “cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the youth of both sexes.” The book and the heroine were meant for the ethical edification of female readers, who, when they contemplated on the heroine’s many lovely virtues, could become like her.
Pamela works very well as a book of advice because it uses character types that symbolize good and bad human strengths and frailties. There is Mr. B, “a fashionable libertine, who allowed himself in the free indulgence of his passions.” We also have Lady Davers, who exhibits “a deformity of unreasonable passion.”

Pamela, on the other hand, has numerous virtues that the author suggests are worth emulating. Among other things, she is shown to be obliging to her equals, possessed of generosity and a forgiving spirit, meek and kind, prudent and charitable, betrothed to her God, and restrained in her feminine passions.

To buttress his claim that the book is based on a true story, the author employs the realist technique, describing events in extensive detail, and characterizing people and situations with clarity and elaborateness. He forms our opinions of his characters both through direct commentary as well as through their own revelatory actions.

In other places in the novel, the author also uses the melodramatic and sentimental novel forms to drive home his agenda.

The Novel's Differences from the Romance, Allegory, and Epic

We could define the novel as a chronicle of quotidian life. The rise of the novel as a mainstream literary form is marked by the shift of focus in storytelling from romance and courtly love to ordinary life. Traditionally, the novel has been traced to the early part of the 18th century, to Daniel Defoe’s realist narratives in Robinson Crusoe.

The Romance, on the other hand, is usually a tale of love, danger, courage, and chivalry. The hero goes through various trials and tribulations before attaining his heroine or rescuing her from some horrible circumstance. The trials usually test his virtue and resolve, but ultimately, the hero’s love and faith triumph and help him win  the battle against evil and temptation.

The Romance dealt with character types (stubborn king, devious villain, and so on) and stock figures (rakes, fops, and so on) and situations (battles, rescues, and so on). It involved improbable events that featured gods, angels, demons in a world that was remote and far removed from that of the readers.

Beowulf and Brut are prime examples of the Romance tradition in English. Both of them explored themes of faith, love, courage, valor, fidelity, moral uprightness, and so on.

Then we have the Allegory, a literary form that worked on multiple levels – the superficial level and the deeper level. Allegorical writers used this form to deliver a message to and instruct attentive readers. John Bunyan’s Christian allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, traces the journey of one individual, Christian, which stands for the journey of all true Christians that are wedded to God. Bunyan sought to, through Christian’s life, create a model of Christian piety for all believers.

Finally, we have the Epic, which was traditionally a genre of poetry, but whose scope has now expanded to novels plays, and other literary forms. The Epic is centered on heroic characters and traces actions that take place on a majestic scale. Epics, typically, explore themes of war, valor, and death, and martyrdom set against the backdrop of grand struggles that last over very long periods of time.

Examples of the Epic genre include Heroides by Ovid, Aeneid by Virgil, and Illiad and Odyssey by Homer. Brut by Layamon and Beowulf can be considered as examples of the Epic genre in English.

An Examination of the Restoration "Comedy of Manners" Genre

The “comedy of manners” genre is a form of comedy that lampoons the life, manners, and pretensions of upper class society. The characters in this genre use social artifice with each other while revealing to the audience their true intentions. This genre was usually characterized by a flamboyant display of bawdy, ribald dialogues, sharp repartee and ripostes, bedroom intrigues, double entendre, sexual innuendoes, foppishness, and rakish, sexually promiscuous behavior.

Our first exhibit of this remarkable genre is William Wycherley’s The Country Wife—a delightful tale about the hostile, May/December marriage between Margery and Bud Pinchwife, and Margery’s affair with local rake, Harry Horner. Horner, a married man, pretends to be impotent to get close to wives of his friends. His friends don’t mind, since they consider him to be impotent, while is he cuckolding them at the same time, including the aforementioned Bud Pinchwife.

The Country Wife embodies all the characteristics of the comedy of manners genre. It uses absurd, over-the-top wordplay to achieve these characteristics. Consider the following question by Lady Fidget to Horner (Scene II, Act I, Lines 658-64):

…cou’d you be so generous? so truly a Man of honor, as for the sakes of us Woman of honor, to cause yourself to be reported no Man? No Man! and to suffer your self the greatest shame that could fall upon a Man, that none might fall upon us Women by your conversation

The much-married Lady Fidget has had a sexual affair with Horner, but now preposterously demands that he confirm to her and to the world that he is truly impotent, so that her reputation may be untarnished! Note the author’s use of the innocuous word “conversation” to mean sex!

Another outstanding example of this genre is William Congreve's The Way of the World, where we have Mirabell, a witty and ironic man-about-town who is in love with and who is loved back by Millament, the ward of vain, crusty, and formidable Lady Wishfort—an old bat with pretensions to beauty. To be able to marry Millament, Mirabell must first win over her aunt. To this end, he embarks on a seduction of Lady Wishfort who returns his sexual advances in kind. When Mrs. Marwood, a woman whose love for Mirabell was not returned, threatens his scheme, Mirabell reveals one of Mrs. Marwood’s past indiscretions to Lady Wishfort – Mrs. Marwood was Lady Wishfort’s son-in-law Fainall’s mistress. Lady Wishfort becomes eternally indebted to Mirabell for saving her daughter from the scandal of a divorce and consents to Mirabell’s marriage to Millament.

This play excellently documents the hypocrisy, double standards, and the two-facedness of the English upper class from the period. Take the following claim made by Lady Wishfort about having raised her daughter to hate men (Act V, Scene V, Lines 161-169):

…I chiefly made it my own care to initiate her very infancy in the rudiments of virtue, and to impress upon her tender years, a young Odium and Aversion to the very sight of men….she’d never look at a man in the face but her own father, or the chaplain.

But, in reality, Lady Wishfort herself is in active pursuit of a man to marry, despite her many protestations to the contrary! Despite her projected self-righteousness, she has no moral qualms about being predatory and ruthless to further her own marital interests. At one point, she tells Mrs. Marwood, “what’s Integrity to an Opportunity”!

In this manner, we see how both The Country Wife and The Ways of the World both embody and epitomize the many wonderful characteristics of the “comedy of manners” genre.

Neoclassicism and the "Mock Heroic" Form

The term “mock heroic” refers to the most prominent poetic style of Augustan poetry. Mock heroic poems imitated the epic poetry of classical Greek and Roman poets such as Homer, Virgil, and Ovid.  However, instead of the epics’ heroic themes of war, valor, and death, and martyrdom, Augustan poets such as John Dryden and Alexander Pope used the form to discuss mundane, quotidian things like family politics, quarrels in a marriage, fashion, and so on. The mock-heroic form of poetry used the elevated epic form to describe (sometimes, ridicule) inconsequential themes.

The mock-heroic form is closely related to the term “neoclassicism,” a Western movement in literature and other art forms that drew inspiration from the classical works of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Writers in the neoclassicism form sought inspiration from what they considered to be classical virtues – balance, order, restraint, and so on – to produce prose, poetry, and drama. Neoclassical writers asserted their intentions in clear, detailed, and often magnificent prose. Some neoclassicists even believed that the only way for writers of their time to become great, even unparalleled, was to imitate the ancients. 

Dryden's Use of Imagery to Satirize Shadwell in "MacFlecknoe"

John Dryden and Thomas Shadwell were contemporaries and rival poets during the Restoration. They disagreed on almost everything: the heritage of the poet Ben Jonson, their preferred styles of wit, the purpose of comedy, and so on. They also had diametrically-opposite political leanings: Shadwell was a Whig, while Dryden was an avowed monarchist.

All of these many differences gave great cause to Dryden to lampoon Shadwell. This he did to spectacular effect in his groundbreaking satirical mock epic, MacFlecknoe (1682). The name of this satire was based on the real-life poet Richard Flecknoe, whom Dryden associated with poetic dullness.  By comparing Flecknoe with Shadwell, Dryden, with extraordinary success, used Flecknoe as a stalking horse from behind which he assailed Shadwell.

As stated earlier, MacFlecknoe is a mock epic. Like a good mock epic, it uses the elevated style of classical Greek and Roman poems to ridicule the object of the author’s contempt. All heroes of classical poems had one defining characteristic: cunning is Odysseus’, wrath is Achilles’, and in the case of Flecknoe (and by extension, Shadwell’s), it was dullness. In one quick, sweeping blow, Dryden appropriates and then subverts the concept of a defining characteristic by assigning to Flecknoe, and Shadwell, a negative defining characteristic as his sole virtue.

The poem works as well as it does because of the sophisticated juxtaposition of the lofty, classical literary style with the Easter egg-like quality of the negative nouns and adjectives used to describe the mock hero.

Dryden also used literary inversion and absurdity with extraordinary effect to attack Shadwell indirectly, as demonstrated in the following lines:

                  The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
                  But Sh------ never deviates into sense.

By accusing other poets of pretending to be meaningful, Dryden seems to be damning them. In the next line, Dryden deploys his skills in inversion to devastating effect: he says that Shadwell is unlike them, with no such vice of pretension to make meaning. Shadwell just never makes sense!

This satirical bait-and-switch is a recurring theme throughout the poem, as we later see Dryden channeling Flecknoe in the following line:

                  Sh------ alone my perfect image bears

A key aspect of satire is to use praise as a way of criticizing, damning with faint praise, as Alexander Pope would put it. Dryden’s opinion of Flecknoe is as clear as daylight: Dryden thinks Flecknoe is dull and stupid! And by using fanciful language and sentence construction to let us know that Flecknoe believes Shadwell to be his literary heir, Dryden delicately lets us know that he thinks Shadwell is equally dull and stupid too!

Restoration Comedy and its Significant Features

The term Restoration refers to the return of monarchy to England with the crowning of Charles II in 1660. However, the restored monarchy was constitutional in nature, which meant that the newly-installed Parliament introduced checks and balances to the previously-untrammelled powers of the monarchy. The Restoration immediately followed a period of social and political upheaval and a short-lived “Protectorate” under Oliver Cromwell.

The most well-known literary genre of the Restoration was drama, especially comedy drama, although it must be said that a large number of tragedy dramas were also staged during this time.
Restoration comedy was usually based in and around London and specialized in lampooning upper class pretensions. Restoration comedy was multifaceted and included three main sub-genres: comedy of manners, humor, and intrigue.

The leading group of 5 comic playwrights of the Restoration period, popularly known as the Big Five, included George Etherege, William Congreve, William Wycherley, George Farquhar, and Sir John Vanbrugh. The primary aim of the Big Five was to rip the mask off the English upper classes and expose the rank hypocrisy, immorality, and corruption that festered within. Their comedies contained a great number of intrigues, especially concerning marriage and morality. Satire was used to great effect, as were character types, such as the innocent widow or the gullible young man. Stock social situations such as cuckoldry and amorous pursuits were par for the course, as were adultery and gossip.

The Theme of Illusion in Shakespeare's "The Tempest"

Let's start by examining the following representative extract from William Shakespeare's The Tempest (Act 4, Scene I, Lines 148-158):

                  Our revels now are ended. These our actors,  
                  As I foretold you, were all spirits and
                  Are melted into air, into thin air:
                  And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
                  The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
                  The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
                  Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
                  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
                  Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
                  As dreams are made on, and our little life
                  Is rounded with a sleep.

These lines are uttered by Prospero during the wedding masque that was organized by Ariel, Prospero’s spirit helper. Ariel summons his acquaintances from the spirit world and puts up a feisty entertainment show for the guests at the wedding party, so much so that Ferdinand, the prince of the Kingdom of Naples, declares that he would very much like to live forever on this magical island. Suddenly, during the masque, Prospero recalls the devious scheme by Caliban and his co-conspirators to take his life. It is at this point that Prospero utters the stirring words from the extract.

His words are sad – he rues the fact that he had come to believe in his own magic so much (the spectacular wedding masque put up by the spirit, Ariel and his cohorts) that, for a moment, he had forgotten about the real life that needed to be lived and protected. His speech emphasizes the pulchritude of this magical world that he has created out of nothing, and yet asserts that all this comes to nought because it is unreal and magical. This is ironical when we contrast this with the fact that it was Prospero himself who created this world for himself on the island so that the concerns of real life did not affect him.

Prospero’s mention of the “great globe” could be interpreted as a reference to the Globe Theater in London, a theater that used to stage Shakespeare’s plays and which most contemporary readers would, no doubt, have recognized. This reference also alludes to Prospero’s demonstrated ability to stage a show, to the way he controls events on the island, like an accomplished director.

The word “rack” which literally means “a mass of smoke” could be interpreted as a pun on “wrack,” or the original shipwreck with which this play began. This pun, and others like it in the play, fuses real-word theater with the magic realism of Prospero’s island. Towards the end of the speech, Prospero wistfully hints that when he gives up the magic and the island, the play will come to an end and the audience, like Prospero, will return to real life. No trace of life on the magical island will be left, not even of the shipwreck, because Prospero says that even that might have been an illusion.

The Creation of an English Identity in Shakespeare's "Henry V"

Through his various history plays, Shakespeare wrote his own version of English history that was meant for the edification of a nascent national identity. Of course, since it was a version of history that Shakespeare had agreed upon, it had only a very distant resemblance to the actual sequence of events. Henry V is a seminal work in many ways – it repackaged past historical events to change how the English viewed themselves and how the world viewed the English. To this end, an enduring myth of a good, kind, and just Christian king, Henry V, was created – this king ruled wisely—and when needed—ruthlessly, and launched just wars, as required against the eternal enemy of the English soul – France.

Shakespeare’s Henry V is based mostly on Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, but condensed it for time to achieve dramatic effect. Ordinary events were over-dramatized, and inconvenient facts were ignored or glossed over.

When Henry V is shown as wrestling with fundamental questions that haunted him as the Christian ruler of a Christian realm – Should a Christian kingdom wage war? Should it wage war against another Christian kingdom? When is such a war justified? Shakespeare ropes in the authority of the Church to explain away such uncomfortable questions. The Archbishop of Canterbury provides the required moral justification for launching this war – Henry V is told that by Salic law, he has a God-given right to the French throne, however obscure that might seem. In this manner, Shakespeare, through Henry V, sets the precedent of the state using the Church as a Public Relations department to justify the state’s seemingly unchristian acts for it. Simultaneously, in all of this turmoil, England is depicted as a firmly Christian nation, Church and State, moving lock in step with each other, united and resolved, furthering each other’s ambitions both at home and abroad.

The Contrasting Speech Styles of Iago and Othello in Shakespeare's "Othello"

An example of Iago’s speech style (Act 1, Scene 1; Lines 91-124)

• "Iago: Are your doors lock'd?
• Brabantio: Why, wherefore ask you this?
• Iago: 'Zounds, sir, you're robb'd; for shame, put on
  your gown;
  Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;
  Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
  Is topping your white ewe. Arise, arise;
  Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,
  Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you:
  Arise, I say.
• Brabantio: What, have you lost your wits?
• Roderigo: Most reverend signior, do you know my voice?
• Brabantio: Not I. what are you?
• Roderigo: My name is Roderigo.
• Brabantio: The worser welcome:
  I have charged thee not to haunt about my doors:
  In honest plainness thou hast heard me say
  My daughter is not for thee; and now, in madness,
  Being full of supper and distempering draughts,
  Upon malicious bravery, dost thou come
  To start my quiet.
• Roderigo: Sir, sir, sir,—
• Brabantio: But thou must needs be sure
  My spirit and my place have in them power
  To make this bitter to thee.
• Roderigo: Patience, good sir.
• Brabantio: What tell'st thou me of robbing? this is Venice;
  My house is not a grange.
  Roderigo. Most grave Brabantio,
  In simple and pure soul I come to you.
• Iago: 'Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not
  serve God, if the devil bid you. Because we come to
  do you service and you think we are ruffians, you'll
  have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse;
  you'll have your nephews neigh to you; you'll have
  coursers for cousins and gennets for germans."

In this excerpt, Iago uses crude bestial and sexual imagery to dehumanize Othello to his father-in-law, Brabantio, and to make him out to be the other, something strange to be wary of. Consider his choice of words to describe Othello: “old black ram,” “Barbary horse,” and so on. To complete the image of bestial sexuality, he even crudely describes Desdemona as a “white ewe” that is topped by the “black ram” of Othello. As we can see, cunning racist code words are aplenty in this excerpt, as well as throughout the play. “Barbary” refers to North Africa, and “coursers,” “gennets,” and “germans” are different types of horses. In short, Iago tells Brabantio, Desdemona’s father, that if he doesn’t do anything about his daughter’s dalliance with Othello, she will deliver a brood of horses.

An Example of Othello’s speech style (Act 2, Scene 1, Lines 183-193)

• "Othello: It gives me wonder great as my content
  To see you here before me. O my soul's joy!
  If after every tempest come such calms,
  May the winds blow till they have waken'd death!
  And let the laboring bark climb hills of seas
  Olympus-high and duck again as low
  As hell's from heaven! If it were now to die,
  'Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear,
  My soul hath her content so absolute
  That not another comfort like to this
  Succeeds in unknown fate."

Othello makes this joyous speech immediately after passing through a storm at sea near Cyprus and being reunited with his beloved Desdemona. Contrast Othello’s elegant choice of words and turns of phrases in describing his feeling of love for, joy in, and sense of contentment in Desdemona with the vulgar and bestial vocabulary. Othello, in this speech, indicates that in Desdemona, his contentment is so complete that it knows no bounds – not of the sky, sea, heaven, or hell and certainly not of death or fate.

"As You Like It" and the Roles of Family, Family Power Structures, and Women in the Shakespearean Age

During the Shakespearean Age, a man’s life was divided into seven ages, but a woman’s into only three: daughter, wife, and widow. Each of these three stages was spent whilst under the control of the man of the house: father, husband, and son. The head of the household exerted his authority widely, in various spheres: determining who would make an ideal groom for his daughter and restricting the womenfolk in his house to within the four walls of the home, for fear of them engaging in their passions and bringing shame to his name and upon the family.

On the other hand, men enjoyed many privileges and few restrictions. Within a family, power flowed from father to son, never to the wife or daughter. Even on the odd occasion when it went to a woman, she governed as a man. Consider Queen Elizabeth I, wily politician and astute monarch, who despite her many strengths, presented herself to her people as “a king of England”! Such were the values and such was the age.

Men could be educated and take up jobs as they willed and where they willed. The head of the household was always male and he enjoyed untrammelled authority over everyone in it. His decisions were final and he rarely accounted for any errors in his ways.

In As You Like It, we find these themes playing out in various ways, with various people. The menfolk in the play are constantly obsessed with power play. In Orlando’s family, we find that his eldest brother, Oliver, who is also the head of the household, has deprived Orlando an education that is rightfully his only because he can, and because no one can openly challenge his decision. Orlando’s only fault for this punishment is his general popularity.

In the affair of the deposition and banishment of the Duke Senior by his younger brother, Duke Frederick, we find multiple themes of family and gender politics from the Shakespearean Age. Although by the concept of primogeniture, Duke Senior should have been the ruler, his position was usurped by his younger brother and he was banished. Even after his deposition, going by the values of the age, Duke Senior was still the head of his household, and he should have been able to do as he pleased with the people in it. However, even this is denied him when Duke Frederick decides that Duke Senior’s daughter, Rosalind, would not accompany her father, and in its stead, would stay back in the court to be a companion to his daughter. What we see here is essentially the ability of the men of the age to violate and abuse existing conventions and codes to do as they pleased, simply because they could. It was the survival of the fittest and the rule of the strongest, in every sense, and this applied not just to women (whose lowly position in society was codified) but also to other men, even when they were superior in rank (notice how all notions of primogeniture were thrown to the wind when Duke Frederick usurped the throne from his elder brother).

In direct contrast to the men and the virile power play, Shakespeare presents to us the comforting sisterhood of Rosalind and Celia. They treat each other as equals, regardless of the status of their respective fathers. Even when Rosalind is exiled by Duke Frederick, Celia continues to be loyal to her sister and friend and joins her in exile, having few qualms about giving up her privileges in and comforts of life in the court.

How the Age of Shakespeare Changed the Face of English Drama

Shakespeare’s prolific dramatic output has hugely influenced drama, both in England and elsewhere in the world. Shakespeare created some of the world’s greatest plays (such as King Lear, Macbeth, and so on). In the process, he also transformed the face of drama in England by redefining the ideas of characterization, plot, language, and genre.

Shakespeare innovated the idea of integrating characterization with plot in a way that if the protagonist were different in any way, the entire plot would have to be changed. Consider Hamlet as a classic case in point in this regard.

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare went out on a limb and mixed tragedy with comedy to create an altogether new romantic tragedy genre (something that was unheard of up till that point). And through his soliloquies, Shakespeare demonstrated he was a man way ahead of his time. He deployed the literary technique of interiority through his soliloquies to explore a character’s inner motivations, feelings, and conflicts. Today, this would be would be considered a Modern idea.

In his comedy plays, Shakespeare didn’t always stick to the formulae du jour. Thus, we find, that even in his comedies, sorrow manages to creep in, and harshness and cruelty play bit, yet significant, parts in the overall scheme of things. Consider the ending of The Merchant of Venice, where we find that even as all the couples rejoice in their happiness, Shakespeare ever-so-briefly dwells on Shylock’s sorrow at his forced conversion.

When it came to his tragedy plays, while all the playwrights of his time, and the ones that preceded him, tightly abided by Aristotle’s precept that drama should observe the unities of action, time, and space, Shakespeare played fast and loose with convention. In Shakespeare’s plays, locales shift, times change, and non-major characters have their own sub-narratives and plots. Finally, death in Shakespeare’s tragedy plays are grandiose affairs: some of his plays end in the death of not just one character (say, the protagonist or the heroine), but sometimes of entire families, the stage riddled with corpses. In his tragedy dramas, Shakespeare brings the audience up close and personal with the uncomfortable quality of death. Not for him, the clinical precision and a gentle, kindly death. In his plays, characters died gory deaths, tortured and mutilated. Just like the way death, sometimes, is in reality too.

His radical experimentation with form, characterization, plotlines, and sub-narratives have influenced generations of writers and artistes since, and that influence is abiding and felt even today (for example, in cinema).

Issues of Class and Disenchantment in Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi."

John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is a terrible, macabre play that is soaked with the twin themes of class and disenchantment.

Act 1, Scene 1 of the play does not contain dialogue exchanges between the Duchess and Antonio and Cariola. However, upon reading the other parts of the play, we find that the conversations between the Duchess on the one hand, and Cariola and Antonio, individually and separately, on the other, particularly reflect the theme of class inequality.

The Duchess was a lifelong aristocrat with a natural sense of entitlement. On the other hand, Cariola, her full-time lady-in-waiting and part-time confidante, and Antonio, a steward in the Duchess’s palatial household, were mere staff in the Duchess’ employ, who were used to a lifetime of servitude. Given this background, it’s easy to understand why the Duchess approached almost all of her conversations with Cariola and Antonio from a position of plenty, power, and privilege.

The Duchess was widowed in the prime of her life and found in Cariola an abiding friend and trustworthy confidante. The Duchess entrusted Cariola with her intimate secrets in a bond that gave Cariola a modicum of power over the Duchess. However, it’s obvious that the friendship between the Duchess and Cariola was based on genuine affection and loyalty. Thus, Cariola alone was invited by the Duchess to witness both her wooing of Antonio and her marriage to him.

In the Duchess’ relationship with Antonio, the class difference is much more pronounced. Their relationship, even though a romantic one, is an instructive study of class inequality during the Renaissance. When the Duchess commenced her wooing of Antonio, he was constantly mindful to interpret all of her conversations as though she was giving orders and he was taking them. On occasion, it appears that the Duchess made it a point to remind Antonio of the class and economic disparity between them – notice how even as she slipped her ring on Antonio’s finger, she pointed out that:

                  This goodly roof of yours is too low,
                  I cannot stand upright in’t, nor discourse

The Duchess did offer to raise Antonio’s station in life through his marriage to her, but Antonio fully recognized the dangers that lay ahead of him. He remarked, “But he’s a fool / That, being a-cold, would thrust his hands i’ th’ fire / To warm them”. In her effort to convince Antonio to marry her, the Duchess goes so far as to discharge him of his debt to her by granting him a quietus.

We find that these reminders of class distinctions between the Duchess and Antonio are a constant and recurring motif in their lives together as a married couple (albeit a secret one). It is only towards the end of the play that we find the Duchess and Antonio being able to put aside their class differences and converse without any echoes of inequality.

Bel-Imperia and the Status of Women in Elizabethan England

In Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, Bel-Imperia was the daughter of the Duke of Castile. Even as Bel-Imperia was blue-blooded and aristocratic, she was bound by the same suffocating gender restrictions that fettered any number of women in Elizabethan England.

Even Elizabeth I, the queen regnant of England and Ireland, whose supreme reign inspired an entire age being named after her, was forced to use Machiavellian plotting to have her way with the nation. Elizabeth I projected herself as “a king of England” even though she had “but the body of a woman”. In this manner, she portrayed herself as a monarch, instead of a woman ruler, in order to make her reign more palatable to her subjects. Elizabeth I’s gender was also a shortcoming when was not allowed to take the title of Supreme Head of the Church of England, which many thought unacceptable for a woman to bear. Instead, she was forced to accept the more muted title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

While Bel-Imperia did have the luxury of making some preliminary choices in love, by showering it, of her own volition, on Andrea and then Horatio, and then challenging her father and brother’s opposition in this matter, the fact remains that she was merely a pawn in a very vast and complex patriarchal game, right up to the bloody, gruesome end.

Admittedly, we witness Bel-Imperia as free and eager to speech, characteristics quite uncommon to the lot of women in Elizabethan England. Bel-Imperia is also able to decisively make preliminary choices in love, first with Andrea, and then upon Andrea’s death, with Horatio, whom she quickly dubs her “second love”. This rapid shifting of affections is revealing, and the revelation startling: she chooses to love Horatio to spite her first love Andrea’s killer, Balthazar. However, it is worth noting that despite her best machinations, her father, brother, and even her uncle, the king of Spain, scuttle her love enterprise and deal with her like chattel to further their own ambitions. This was indeed the lot of most women in Elizabethan England.

The Cruel Death Meted Out to the Eponymous Protagonist at the end of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II

It would be too easy to ascribe a simplistic reason such as crude homophobia to the cruel death meted out to Edward II. In my opinion, the reasons are quite complex and layered.

Edward II was a failure at many levels. His first and foremost failure was as a king. The play, is after all, a major commentary on the crucial issues of kingship and class. In his love for and loyalty to his lover, Piers de Gaveston, Edward II showers him with a plethora of undeserved honours and titles. This only serves to rankle Edward II’s courtiers and subjects. Courtiers, because the noblemen at court consider themselves second only to the king, and yet they find themselves overlooked and bypassed by the king for someone as undeserving and of “base and obscure” origins as Gaveston, all because of Gaveston’s personal relationship with the monarch. So much so that Roger Mortimer, the younger, a nobleman, declares:

                  But this I scorn, that one so basely born
                  Should by his sovereign’s favour grow so pert
                  And riot it with treasure of the realm

Edward’s behavior also rankles the king’s subjects because while the treasury is emptied for the upkeep of Gaveston, the common man is hungry and groaning and “soldiers mutiny for want of pay”. Besides, from the 15th century-everyman’s point of view, by the king’s brazen display of homosexual love for Gaveston, “violence is offered to the church”. This would have only roused the rabble of the age.

Edward II’s other failure was as a husband and partner. The king was a married man and yet, he not just falls in love with another man, but also openly neglects and spurns his queen. She mourns the loss of her husband’s affections when she exclaims, “For now my lord the king regards me not, / in favour of Gaveston’s attractions”. And yet another place, the queen sighs:

                  I will endure a melancholic life
                  And let him frolic with his minion

The queen’s sorrow and the cause for it was public knowledge in the kingdom, and it had the compound effect of further infuriating the masses.

To be a good leader requires expert realpolitik skills, something that Edward II lacked sorely. While his faithfulness and devotion to his lover are admirable, his shirking of responsibilities to his wife, court, subjects, and realm is not. Given the values of the age, an uprising was expected, whether Edward II was homosexual or not. Where homophobia may have played a part in the dénouement is in the terrible and macabre killing of the king by Lightborn, who sodomises the king with a red-hot spit, thus leading to his death.

Ben Jon's Use of Theatrical Illusions to Reinforce Themes of Greed and Deception in "Volpone."

The themes of greed and deception are central to Ben Jonson’s Volpone. The former theme gets an early start in the play, in the first few lines itself, in fact, when Volpone speaks thus, “Good morning to the day, and, next, my gold! / Open the shrine, that I may see my saint”. He also asserts that with money and wealth, even hell is made worth heaven.

The other principal theme of deception is also prominently featured throughout the play. The plays various characters employ constant skullduggery and legerdemain, and this gives both the readers of the script and the audience the impression of unrelenting action.

Volpone contains many theatrical illusions such as playlets (plays within a play) that constantly illustrate these twin themes of greed and deception. We see this play out repeatedly every time Volpone and Mosca, his servant, playact for the benefit of the contenders for Volpone’s fortune – when Volpone dresses up and prepares for the visit of Voltore, the lawyer: using a special wardrobe for the occasion, applying ointment to the eyes to make them look tired, feigning a cough, etc.

We also witness it when Volpone seeks to see Celia for the first time, him dressed as and impersonating a virtuoso mountebank. Another time, we find Peregrine disguised as a merchant, going to Sir Politic’s house to tell the nobleman that the police are seeking him on charges of sedition.

In these and other ways, we constantly observe theatricality among the characters within the play.

Popular Genres and Themes of English Renaissance Drama

The word “Renaissance” means rebirth in French, which, in turn, is derived from the Latin “renascentia”. The Renaissance is a period in European history that started in the 14th century and lasted till the 17th century. The movement originated in the highly urbanized Italian city states (where it was known as “la Rinascita”) and then spread to other parts of continental Europe and the English isles. The Renaissance witnessed a resurgence of learning based on European pre-Christian classical sources (particularly those of ancient Greece and Rome) and the flowering of both Latin and vernacular literatures. Great strides were also made in the spheres of mathematics, different sciences, art, and philosophy during this period.

The most popular genres in the English drama of the 1580s were histories and tragedies, oftentimes, both together. The revenge-tragedy tradition gained currency after the wild success of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (also known as Hieronimo is Mad Again). Revenge-tragedies illustrated the railing of the individual against an often corrupt system.

As stated previously, many times, history was married with tragedy, with much dramatic success. All kinds of history was dramatized – English, Roman, Spanish, and even exotic (from the playwright’s and then audience’s point of view), faraway lands such as Asia. A case in point was Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, a play loosely based on the life and times of the Turkic ruler, Timur the Lame.

The 16th century saw comedies, especially romantic comedies, take centre stage. Key examples of this genre are some of Shakespeare’s finest handiwork – Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, etc. This was followed by a period when wit, satire, and irony gained the upper hand in English drama, particularly urban-themed comedies that focused on cities’ ugly underbellies. The comedies by Benjamin “Ben” Jonson are prime examples of this genre – comical and savage, all at once.

Some of the themes that dominated English Renaissance drama were ambition, class mobility, avarice and excessive consumption, love and religion, and sex and gender. These themes were often genre agnostic. Most English Renaissance drama depicted more than one of these themes, often in the same play. Noteworthy is the fact that the same theme could be played out to tragic or comic ends. Thus, while greed in Ben Jonson’s Volpone results in a comic and enjoyable dénouement, Edmund’s greed in Shakespeare’s King Lear leads to only death and destruction.

Class mobility was frowned upon, as demonstrated by plays such as the macabre, gruesome play by John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi. English Renaissance playwrights were majorly preoccupied with chastity, especially women’s. They had similar obsessions with women-oriented themes such as obedience and submission to their respective families’ menfolk. These themes are brought out in vivid detail in both Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew as well as in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy.

Finally, the divinely-determined roles of individuals within relationships and in their social station was another preoccupation of the playwrights. What might seem a virtue in one character becomes a liability in another. Marlowe portrays Edward II as faithful and loving in his personal relationships, but these very traits become his undoing in his role as a king. Shakespeare, on the other hand, illustrates how faithfulness and self-sacrifice are not prerequisites to be a great leader.

The Styles and Comparisons Used to Represent Eve in Book IX of Paradise Lost

Let's start by examining an extract of what I believe to be a representative depiction of Eve from Book IX (verses 385-396):

            Thus saying, from her Husbands hand her hand
            Soft she withdrew, and like a Wood-Nymph light
            Oread or Dryad, or of Delia's Traine,
            Betook her to the Groves, but Delia's self
            In gate surpass'd and Goddess-like deport,
            Though not as shee with Bow and Quiver armd,
            But with such Gardning Tools as Art yet rude,
            Guiltless of fire had formd, or Angels brought.
            To Pales, or Pomona, thus adornd,
            Likeliest she seemd, Pomona when she fled
            Vertumnus, or to Ceres in her Prime,
            Yet Virgin of Proserpina from Jove.

This extract is replete with references to pre-Christian pagan mythological events. It also makes numerous comparisons of the biblical Eve to pagan characters of antiquity. Milton seeks to convey a very precise meaning, and to that end, employs multifarious rhetorical devices, in the hope that all of them combined may approach the truth he seeks to tell. For the erudite reader, these rhetorical devices also help Milton weave very powerful images in a very short set of verses. Topical erudition, however, is key – only then can the reader understand the rich style tapestry woven by the poet.

Milton compares Eve to Oread or Dryad, nymphs of the trees, groves, woods, and mountain forests, who died when the tree died. At the same time, Eve is also likened to Delia (or Diana), the pagan goddess of hunting. This comparison seems a bit anachronistic, since this is clearly the age of innocence and the concept of hunting is malapropos. On closer examination, the comparison is apposite, since Eve is aware that Satan is seeking to tempt them; and she considers herself to be up to the task of frustrating Satan’s enterprise.

Unlike the pagan goddess, however, Eve is armed with simple gardening tools, not weapons of murder (such as a bow and quiver of arrows), since she is a still a gardener and gatherer. Also, her tools are “guiltless of fire” – again, the poet reminds the reader that this is the age of innocence; metals are yet to be melted or moulded, because fire is yet to be invented.

Milton appears to associate fire with sin, because he states that instruments that are not formed by fire are guilt free. This could be because fire was like a forbidden fruit for pre-Christian Hellenic mythology that Prometheus stole from the gods and gave to humans. Thus, Milton obliquely refers to Eve’s impending encounter with the serpent and the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.

Milton, then, goes on to compare Eve to Pales, the deity of flock and livestock; Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruitful abundance; and Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture. Through these comparisons, the poet seeks to convey a pastoral image of Eve, pottering about with her plants and animals in the Garden of Eden. The comparison to Pomona is particularly pertinent because she was tricked into marriage by Vertumnus, a Roman god who could change his form at will. Similarly, the poet alludes to Satan’s impending trickery of Eve to get her to do what he wants.

Finally, Milton also alludes to Eve as Prosperina, a Roman goddess, whose birth led to the infliction of a long, dark winter on humankind. The imagery turns a dark shade here – the poet implies that Eve, through her existence and action, is set to tip the balance against humankind, when mankind is cast into the wilderness to endure its attendant hardships and miseries.

Paradise Lost's Derivation as well as Departure from the Classical Epic Tradition

John Milton’s Paradise Lost derives from classical epic tradition in many ways, some of which are described below:

• The poem opens with the invocation of the muse, where the poet asks a divine muse – ancient deities – to inspire him in narrating an ambitious take and relaying God’s plan for mankind.
• The beginning of the poem also contains a declaration of the central theme (man’s first disobedience by the partaking of Forbidden Fruit, man’s exile from Eden, his final redemption and salvation through Christ, the savior, etc.). 
• The story begins in media res (in the middle of things), with Satan and his fellow rebel angels chained to a lake of fire in Hell. This allows the poet to narrate an exciting part of the tale first and then provide the backstory in flashback.
• The story’s setting is vast, expansive, and includes many worlds.
• The story contains main heroes and antiheroes: Adam, Son of God, and Satan.
• Turmoil in otherworldly realms – Celestial beings (Satan’s forces against God’s forces) scheme and do battle with one another.
• Liberal use of dramatic irony – The story’s characters fail to see what is clear as daylight to readers. For example, Adam and Eve go about their everyday life oblivious to their impending banishment from Paradise.
• The story’s characters are archetypal in nature, and combine the characteristics of many epic characters. For example:
• Adam, at various points, is:
• Rational man
• Great leader
• Irrational man
• Eve, at once, is:
• Faithful wife
• Femme fatale
• Satan, at once, is:
• Devious plotter and schemer
• Great leader
• Worthy adversary

Although Milton conforms to principles of epic structure, he does make occasional and very important departures from the epic tradition. Some of these departures are as follows:

• Milton invests Satan, the villain, with many of the conventional qualities of an epic hero, and yet, the mantle of hero does not fall on Satan. Thus, Milton scolds the epic tradition for exalting vice as virtue.
• Milton dwells on the protagonist’s suffering and defeat, rather than his triumphs.
• Milton rejected an overtly martial theme.
• The storyline included both divine and mortal forces that were locked in combat. This is a departure from the Homerian epic format, where mortals engaged in battle, while celestial beings watched over and, on occasion, manipulated the action.
• John Milton, in addition to creating epic personifications and types, also wrote about “real” people.

Various Shades and Moods of Love in Shakespeare's Sonnets

William Shakespeare wrote a hundred and fifty four sonnets. The theme of almost every one of these sonnets is love. However, it is to Shakespeare’s credit that he does not make love seem boring - he documents love in verse in its many varying shades and moods.

We do not know who the protagonist of the sonnets is. Unless indisputable evidence is discovered on the matter, we will never know whether Shakespeare was channeling his personal feelings through the poems. This essay treats Shakespeare’s sonnets as a work of fiction, similar to his plays.

The object of the protagonist’s affections in the sonnets appears to be a fair young youth, whom the poet obsessively describes in the minutest of detail, sometimes bordering on and, on occasion, crossing over to hyperbole. Notice Sonnet 18, where the poet starts by comparing the youth to a summer’s day. Later, this comparison morphs into the youth becoming summer itself – the standard by which all truth and beauty are adjudged.

The jury is still out on whether the protagonist is gay (there’s been no conclusive evidence). However, a reading of Sonnet 20, where the poet refers to the youth as “master-mistress of my passion” causes even the most dispassionate reader to stop and ponder about its implications on the relationship between the protagonist and the youth. Even by the literary standards of that period, when it was commonplace for men to express their love and affection (not necessarily sexual) for their male friends (popularly dubbed as “bromance” today), Sonnet 20 seems to be waving the gay-pride flag.

This romantic love that the protagonist feels for the youth is brought into sharper focus when he starts to spew bile on the dark lady that the youth seems to have taken up with. Twenty-four of Shakespeare’s sonnets are addressed to this woman. In Sonnet 144, the protagonist favours the warmth of the fair youth’s body to that of the dark lady. And he squarely hangs the blame for the affair between the dark lady and the youth around the neck of the dark lady. In the poet’s mind, the dark lady is a raven-haired temptress and vixen who parades her absence of morals and virtues to prey on the sexual needs of young men, including the fair youth, thus separating the protagonist from the youth.

In Sonnet 80, we see another aspect of the jealous streak in the protagonist. The protagonist is unsettled by the competition that he faces in his admiration for the youth from a rival poet. However, even here, we see a selfless character to the protagonist, who, even though he feels tongue-tied in the praise competition that he is engaged in with the rival poet, believes that there’s more life in one eye of the youth than which either of the two poets can sufficiently praise.

However, despite the protagonist’s strong romantic feelings for the youth, we see more evidence of the selfless character of the protagonist when he pleads with the youth to marry a woman and procreate; to beget cherubic children who will look just like their father, thus ensuring his immortality. In sonnet 17, the poet even goes so far as to say that the fair youth will be immortalized twice: firstly, through the youth’s children and secondly, through the poet’s verses.

The Use of Hyperbole in Andrew Marvell's Poem, “To His Coy Mistress"

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines hyperbole as “extravagant exaggeration”. We find that even if one engages in a hurried reading of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, the hyperbole is inescapable.

The lover declares his love fervently and vehemently – asserting that he will love his paramour for no less a period than ten years from before the Great Flood to the time of the apocalypse, which traditionalist Christians believe will be accompanied by the conversion of the Jews.

The young man employs syllogistic flattery and reality simultaneously. He suggests that for someone whose countenance is so beautiful, she could postpone responding to his loving supplications by journeying to exotic, faraway lands, such as the banks of the river Ganges, while he would continue to mourn the separation and unresponsiveness by the river Humber (incidentally, in the author’s hometown). However, in the same breath, he insists that in reality, youth is fleeting and so, she must accept his proposal immediately.

It also appears that in his fervent love for his coy lover, the young man has warped the concept of time. He insists that he will need a hundred years to praise her eyes and gaze upon her forehead, two hundred to adore each of the twin constituents of her bosom, and another thirty thousand years to complete the aforementioned activities with the rest of her body.

For all his love-tinged pleas and cries, he does not hold back on the occasional withering commentary; note how the young man uses morbid imagery to shock his mistress into accepting his proposal when he says, “…worms shall try that long preserved virginity…”. Using this not-so-thinly-veiled reference to death, the lover seeks to convince his mistress of the futility of resisting him.

The English Renaissance and the English Reformation

Dating from the late 15^th century to the early 17^th century, the English Renaissance was an artistic and cultural movement with a uniquely (for that period) cosmopolitan character. The Renaissance reached England rather late, in comparison to continental Europe, particularly Italy and France. Because the Renaissance originated in the cultural heart of continental Europe, the trend du jour for English nobility (both young and old) looking for a well-rounded education was to take a so-called “grand tour” of Italy and France to soak in the Renaissance.

The scholars of the English Renaissance, in addition to writing in classical languages, also wrote in English with the intention of elevating the status of the English to be on par with Europe’s classical languages. The Renaissance period also saw the expansion of the English language’s vocabulary – there was a large influx of words from classical languages into the English lexicon.

The Renaissance rescued English literature from the mediocrity that it had fallen into for a while. It provided English literature with the impetus for new and path-breaking literary pursuits. The Renaissance also witnessed a surge in quantity of English literary output. Additionally, commentaries were authored for classical texts; oftentimes, classical texts were also translated and even imitated.

In addition to prose (both fiction and non-fiction), the Renaissance also witnessed an upheaval in how poetry was written and delivered. Renaissance poetry was very ornate and intricate. There was a great emphasis on decorum, vocabulary, and style. English Renaissance poets didn’t just reuse “templatized” poetic forms such as odes, elegies, epigrams, sonnets, and so on; they also improvised on them, especially with regard to meter, stanza, and rhyme.

Some of the most significant literary personages from the English Renaissance were Sir Thomas More and Sir Francis Bacon, who authored works such as Utopia and Novum Organum (“new instrument”), respectively. There was also Sir Walter Raleigh, who authored his magnum opus, History of the World, in 1628. From the world of poetry, towering figures such as Philip Sidney and Richard Tottel penned treatises and anthologies such as An Apologie for Poetrie and Tottel’s Miscellany, respectively.

The English Reformation, on the other hand, was a series of events in the 16^th century that culminated in the English church defying the spiritual authority of Rome and breaking free. While the Reformation in continental Europe was explicitly concerned with theological issues and papal excesses, the English Reformation’s goals were more temporal – they centered on the English monarch King Henry VIII’s desire to divorce his wife and marry another woman. When the Pope would not grant him the divorce, Henry encouraged protestant preachers and rally the masses against Rome. After some high drama, the English church formally broke away from Roman authority, and Henry VIII became the head of the new church by the Act of Supremacy in 1534. Those who disagreed with the English monarch on this doctrinal matter were either imprisoned or executed, and sometimes, both. A case in point was the towering figure of Thomas More, literary genius and author of Utopia, who was found guilty of high treason and beheaded in 1535.

Probably the most significant literary figure of the English Reformation was William Tyndale, who in 1525, translated the New Testament into English. In 1585, Miles Coverdale, a priest, published the first complete English language Bible based on Tyndale’s work. Finally, an authorized version, popularly known as the King James Bible, was released in 1611. This version of the Bible was a watershed moment in the history of the development of the English language. Deep and abiding turns of phrases from this edition, such as “a fly in the ointment,” “root of all evil,” “a nest of vipers,” and “a man after his own heart” endure till this day.

The other important literary work associated with the English Reformation is the Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549 under the editorial stewardship of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. Like the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer has deeply influenced the English language. Common phrases today, such as “tower of strength,” “till death do us apart,” and “to love, to cherish, and to obey” owe their provenance to the Book of Common Prayer.

Lexical and Counterfactual Presuppositions

Presupposition refers to something the assumptions that speakers make before they utter a sentence. Their assumptions are not explicitly expressed and these assumptions are considered as communicated but not said.

Lexical presupposition refers to the assumption made by speakers that when they use one word, another meaning (through unsaid words) will be understood. Consider the following example:

Nilesh is unhappy now. (>>Nilesh used to be happy.)

Counterfactual presupposition refers to the assumption made by speakers that what is assumed is both untrue as well as contrary to know facts. This type of presupposition can usually be expressed through “if-” clauses, using conditional structures called counterfactual conditionals. Consider the following example:

If I had more time, I would have done a better job with my assignments. (>>I do not have more time.)

Sociolinguistics and Linguistics

Linguistics informs us about the structure of languages. Consider the following example:

Kalpana evideyanu? Avale kaanan kittunilla.

Through linguistics, we know that the word “avale” is a gender-appropriate personal pronoun that refers to Kalpana, who is female.

Sociolinguistics, on the other hand, informs us about how people use that structure to interact with each other in everyday situations. Linguistics is concerned with a structural approach, while sociolinguistics is concerned with a functional approach (that is, its use in society). Sociolinguists analyze languages for their use in a social context, while linguists analyze languages out of such contexts.

For example, through sociolinguistics, we know that English works as a marker for status in India. Through sociolinguistics, we are also made aware of the socio-economic/aspirational status of English in India through condominiums that have names like Wimbledon Park, Buckingham Court, and California Bay. Another example is the observation made in sociolinguistics about the tendency of many Indians to reduce their names to initials that represent their English spellings and not their native language’s orthography. 

Code Mixing and Switching in Linguistics

Code can refer to a language, dialect, variety, or style of speech. Code mixing refers to phenomenon where a word from another code is used in the native language, despite the native language having a word for the borrowed concept.

The following is an example of code mixing in Malayalam:

Nee lunch eppozha kazhicha?

(Instead of)

Nee bhakshanam eppozha kazhicha?

Code switching refers to the practice of switching back and forth between two languages or between two dialects or styles of the same language. This phenomenon occurs in spoken communication than in written ones. There are four types of code switching:

                                 i.            Intersentential switching – Switching outside the sentence or clause level, where each sentence or clause is in a different language. Consider the following example in Malayalam and English:

Avanda veettil etthiyattu we will call you.

(For)

We will reach his place and then we will call you.

                               ii.            Intrasentential switching – Switching within the sentence or clause. Consider the following example in Malayalam and English.

Bhakshanam nalla first class aayirinnu.

The food was first class (in taste).

                              iii.            Tag-switching – Switching that involves inserting tag words or set phrases from one language into another. Consider the following example in English and Malayalam:

Their office will be open tomorrow, alle?

Here, alle is a Malayalam tag word for the interrogative set phrase in English, “is it not?”.

                             iv.            Intra-word switching – Switching within a word boundary. For example, bus-u for bus. 

Linguistics as a Scientific Study of Language

Linguistics is a scientific subject because a linguist, similar to a scientist, does the following:

·         Collects data of natural languages

·         Observes trends and patterns

·         Explains the observations by postulating theories and laws

·         Makes predictions on what hasn’t been observed as yet

Consider, for example, very new Italian verbs, such as chattare (meaning: To chat, in the Internet sense), which have been borrowed from the English language. These verbs will observe the following rules:

·         They are regular verbs (verbi regolari)

·         They belong to the first group (primo gruppo)

Therefore, the infinitive form of the verb will always terminate with –are and the verb conjugation will always be predictable. Armed with this data, we can safely predict that the present indicative conjugations for chattare would be as follows:

Person	Singular			Plural
	First	Second	Third	First	Second	Third
Indicative	Io	Tu	Lui/Lei	Noi	Voi	Loro
Conjugation	Chatto	Chatti	Chatta	Chattiamo	Chattate	Chattano

Linguistics refers to the scientific study of language. Let us contrast the word study here with the word learn, in the context of languages. Learning a language refers to learning how to use the language. For example, I have learnt the Italian language in the hopes that it will help me in my travels to Italy.

However, studying a language refers to studying the mechanisms and processes of a given language; to seeking a scientific, unbiased understanding of a language and the way it is organized and spoken. Therefore, while I have learnt the Italian language to a certain extent, I am certainly no linguist in that language. For example, I can’t explain why Italian irregular verbs (verbi irregolari) are the way they are!