27/2/07 - Classical Literature - Aristotle's Theory of Tragedy

Aristotle's Poetics is a very strange and difficult book. It was not written for a public audience. Surviving Aristotelean works were designed as lecture notes. Esoteric writings were aimed at wider audiences, but these are lost.

The sentence of the Poetics defining the subject and aim of the book
"Let us discuss the art of poetry in general and its species - the effect which species of poetry has and the correct way the construct plots if the poetry is of high quality, as well as the number and nature of its component parts, and any other questions that arise within the same field of enquiry."

The Poetics are divided into:
1. Poetical Foundation (ch. 1-5)
2. Poetics of Tragedy (ch. 6-22)
3. Poetics of Epic (ch. 23-26)
[4. Poetics of Comedy, possibly never written or lost]

Some fundamental considerations
- The Poetics as a part of Aristotle's philosophical enterprise, as phenomenological enquiry and as teleological reconstruction.
- The Poetics as normative, prescriptive literary theory. The subject is not Attic tragedy of the fifth century BC, but the ideal tragedy according to Aristotle's theoretical postulates and philosophical presuppositions. Despite the paradigmatic role played by Sophocles' Oedipus the King in the Poetics, not a single surviving Greek tragedy fulfils all postulates of Aristotle's theory.
- The Poetics is centred on the notion of the pre-eminence of the (emotional) effect of poetry. The best tragedy is the one that serves best to arouse the specific tragic emotions of pity and fear in the audience.

The emotional effect of tragedy: the problem of Aristotle's notion of tragic katharsis
Definition of tragedy: "Tragedy is a mimesis of an action which is elevated, complete, and of magnitude; in language embellished by distinct forms in its sections; employing the mode of enactment, not narrative; and through pity and fear accomplishing the catharsis of such emotions."
[6.1449b21-31]

Giorgias' theory of the emotional power of tragedy: "I both deem and define all poetry as speech with meter. Fearful shuddering and tearful pity and grievous longing come upon its hearers, and at the actions and physical sufferings of others in good fortunes and evil fortunes, through the agency of words, the soul experiences a suffering of its own."
[Helen, DK 82 Fr. 11,9]

Plato's theory of the emotional (and destructive) power of tragic poetry: Resp. 10.605c6-606d7.

Katharsis in Aristotle's Politics, 1342a4-15: "The emotion which affects some minds violently exists in all, but in different degrees, e.g. pity and fear, and also enthusiasm; for some people are prone to this disturbance, and we can observe the effect of sacred music on such people; whenever they make use of songs which arouse the mind to frenzy, they are calmed and attain as it were healing and katharsis. Necessarily, precisely the same effect applies to those prone to pity or fear or, in general, any other emotion, and no others to the extent that each is susceptible to such things: for all there occurs katharsis and pleasurable relief."

Tragic plot
Tragedy as mimesis not of persons but of action and life:
- The resulting primacy of action. The Poetics and Aristotle's theory of action.
- The resulting primacy of the plot as 'the first principle and the soul' of tragedy. Tragic plot (muthos) as the construction (sustasis) of the events (and actions).
- The emotional effect of tragedy as resulting from the structure of the tragic plot and dramatic action.

Reversal (peripéteia): "is a change to the opposite direction of events and one in accord, as we insist, with probability and necessity: as when in the Oedipus the person who comes to bring Oedipus happiness, and intends to rid him of his fear about his mother, effects the opposite by revealing Oedipus' true identity." (ch. 11)

Recognition (anagnôrisis): "is a change from ignorance to knowledge, leading to friendship or to enmity, and involving matters which bear on prosperity or adversity. The finest recognition is that which occurs simultaneously with reversal, as with the one in the Oedipus." (ch. 11)

The plot of the ideal tragedy and the problem of Aristotle's notion of tragic hamartia
"Next, after forgoing discussion, we must consider what should be aimed at and avoided in the construction of plots, and how tragedy's effect is to be achieved. Since, then, the structure of the finest tragedy should be complex not simple, as well as representing fearful and pitiable events (for this is the special feature off such mimesis), it is, to begin with, clear that
a) neither should virtuous man be shown changing from prosperity to adversity, as this is not fearful nor yet pitiable but repugnant,
b) nor bad man changing from adversity to prosperity, because this is the least tragic of all, possessing none of the necessary qualities, since it neither satisfies our human feeling not arouses fear and pity.
c) Nor, again, should tragedy show the very wicked person falling from prosperity to adversity: such a pattern might satisfy our human feeling, but it would not arouse pity or fear, since the one is felt for the undeserving victim of adversity, the other for one like ourselves (pity for the undeserving, fear for the one like ourselves); so the outcome will be neither pitiable nor fearful.
d) This leaves, then, the person in between these cases. Such a person is someone not pre-eminent in virtue and justice, and one who falls into adversity through evil and depravity, but through some kind of error [hamartia], and one belonging to the class of those who enjoy great renown and prosperity, such as Oedipus, Thyestes, and eminent men from such families.
The well-made plot then, ought to be single rather than double, as some maintain, with a change not to prosperity from adversity, but on the contrary from prosperity to adversity, caused not by depravity but by a great error or a person neither like stated, or better rather than worse ...
So the finest tragedy of which the art permits follows this structure." (ch. 13)

- Tragic hamartia and Aristotle's theory of action: cf. Aristotle, EN V 8.1135b11-25 & III 1-3.

The rediscovery of Aristotle's Poetics in the Italian Renaissance and its consequences. The influence of the Poetics on European theories of tragedy based on its misunderstanding as the authoritative descriptive analysis and thus the key to the understanding of Greek tragedy and the ultimate Book of Rules for playwrights.

27/2/07 - English Literature - Behn: Oroonoko

The full title of the text is Oroonoko, Or the Royal Slave: A True History. Yet it must be remembered that during the Renaissance, historical narratives were just as made up as fictional narratives. Also, the text is more like a novella than a 'history'.

"I Do not pretend, in giving you the history of this royal slave, to entertain my reader with the adventures of a feigned hero, whose life and fortunes fancy may manage at the poet’s pleasure; nor in relating the truth, design to adorn it with any accidents, but such as arrived in earnest to him. And it shall come simply into the world, recommended by its own proper merits, and natural intrigues; there being enough of reality to support it, and to render it diverting, without the addition of invention.

"I was myself an eye-witness, to a great part, of what you will find here set down; and what I could not be witness of, I received from the mouth of the chief actor in this history, the hero himself, who gave us the whole transactions of his youth; and though I shall omit, for brevity’s sake, a thousand little accidents of his life, which, however pleasant to us, where history was scarce, and adventures very rare; yet might prove tedious and heavy to my reader, in a world where he finds diversions for every minute, new and strange. But we who were perfectly charmed with the character of this great man, were curious to gather every circumstance of his life."

Despite Behn's assurance that the text is a 'true' history, the line "I shall omit, for brevity’s sake, a thousand little accidents of his life" should make us question the truth status of the text. The use or abuse of narrative power is a key issue.

1. What kind of a text is Oroonoko?

If we take the text as a novella, surely the content should be pure romanticism? Yet what about its colonial realism and political allegory? Where did the idea for the story come from? It illustrates for us very well 17th century perceptions of colonialism and slavery.

Yet the text sometimes tries to eradicate the 'otherness' of Oroonoko by assimilating him to Western ideals of beauty.

"His face was not of that brown rusty black which most of that Nation are, but of perfect Ebony, or polished Jet. His Eyes were the most awful that cou’d be seen, and very piercing; the White of ‘em being like Snow, as were his Teeth. His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth the finest shaped that could be seen; far from those great turn’d Lips, which are so natural to the rest of the Negroes. The whole Proportion and Air of his face was so nobly and exactly form’d, that bating his Colour, there could be nothing in Nature more beautiful, agreeable and handsome."

Yet it could be seen as actually reinforcing difference: "bating his colour."

Later in the story, it is said that his royalty cannot be hidden despite his slave's garb: "Nothing of the slave but the name."

Yet Oroonoko, like a Western man, sees slavery as a trade. He has his own slaves.

2. The narrator and Oroonoko

"[I] told him, I took it ill he should suspect we would break our words with him, and not permit him and Clemene to return to his own kingdom ....He made me some answers that showed a doubt in him, which made me ask him, what advantage it would be to doubt? It would but give us a fear of him, and possibly compel us to treat him so as I should be very loath to behold: that is, it might occasion his confinement. Perhaps this was not so luckily spoke of me, for I perceived he resented that word, which I strove to soften again in vain. However, he assured me, that whatsoever resolutions he should take, he would act nothing upon the white people. And as for myself, and those upon that plantation where he was, he would sooner forfeit his eternal liberty, and life itself, than lift his hand against his greatest enemy on that place ....

"Before I parted that day with him, I got, with much ado, a promise from him to rest yet a little longer with patience, and wait the coming of the Lord Governor, who was every day expected on our shore. He assured me he would, and this promise he desired me to know was given perfectly in complaisance to me, in whom he had an entire confidence.

"After this, I neither thought it convenient to trust him much out of our view, nor did the country who feared him; but with one accord it was advised to treat him fairly, and oblige him to remain within such a compass, and that he should be permitted, as seldom as could be, to go up to the plantations of the Negroes; or, if he did, to be accompanied by some that should be rather in appearance attendants than spies. This care was for some time taken, and Caesar looked upon it as a mark of extraordinary respect, and was glad his discontent had obliged them to be more observant to him."

Here the narrator Westernises Oroonoko by pitying him, yet there is a lack of trust in him.

The narrator at times believes she has some influence over Oroonoko. She is in between her European counterparts and the 'Other': note her change of address, from "I" to "us". Note that Oroonoko is named 'Caesar', befitting his station as a leader of the group, yet also it is his slave name, not his true name. The narrator teaches Oroonoko the history of Rome, yet teaches Imoinda songs and religion - note that although Oroonoko and Imoinda are a racial 'Other', they are treated gender specifically.

In other areas of the story, he is first described sympathetically, and then as a savage. In one part, the narrator and her attendants flee due to fear of attack from Oroonoko, even though she has previously said that she was potential influence over him. She blames the men, perhaps hiding her own guilt.

Should we trust the narrator? The real Behn would not have had so much authority. Perhaps she narrates the difference in cultures as an allegory of difference between the sexes.

3. The narrator and Imoinda

"a beauty that, to describe her truly, one need say only, she was a female to the noble male; the beautiful black Venus, to our young mars; as charming in her person as he, and of delicate virtues."

Imoinda is described as a "mirror" reflecting Oroonoko's glory. Behn does not identify with Imoinda, she is an alien 'Other'. Imoinda's attraction is accentuated by the white men's reaction to her, therefore she is defined by them separately from other negroes. But her place in the story is somewhat outside of it; Oroonoko spends more time trying to save the narrator than Imoinda.

Imoinda's death is justified by the narrator, and it is noteworthy that she is rarely called by her Christian name 'Clemene', but her negro name, making her an 'Other'.

So why does the text end with Imoinda's name? This only serves to accentuate her absence in the rest of the text. Perhaps it serves to deconstruct the notions with which the text begins.

It it easy to overlook the fact that the early part of the text is very concerned with Imoinda, which is a contradiction of the above. How does this notion bode with her relation to Behn? Perhaps there is a larger margin of romance than the text is given credit for. Would there be much of a difference in the text if there was a shift in focus from royalism to romance?

26/2/07 - Classical Literature - Plato's Denial of Tragedy

Why study ancient responses to ancient drama? In Aristophanes' Frogs, Dionysus fetches an ancient poet back to life because he thinks that Athens needs a poet to save her from the war. This implies that tragedy at this time was dead. This is not strictly true; tragedies were performed in Athena after Aristophanes, until 4 BC, although none survive after Aristophanes. Tragedy was considered moral and educational.

There continued to be powerful responses to Greek tragedy, especially by Plato and Aristotle. Plato's Republic was his philosophy on ideal life and how people should be educated. He contrasts his philosophy with 'tragic poetry'. Plato was criticised for focusing mainly on Homer, but this is because he considered Homer to be the template/master of the poets that followed him, and because Homer looks at the human condition more fully than do the other poets.

Plato's charges against 'tragic poetry'

1) In tragic poetry Gods are responsible for evil (Resp. 2.379a-380c)
"God, therefore, being good, cannot be responsible for everything, as is the common opinion, but only of some few things in human life. There is much for which he bears no responsibility. Our blessings are far fewer than our troubles, and while none but God is responsible for the blessings, we must seek other causes for the troubles ...
We must therefore not allow Homer or any other poet to make foolish mistake about gods, and to day that 'by Zeus' door stand two jars full of dooms,/one good, one bad' and if Zeus gives a man mixture of the two, 'sometimes he is in trouble, sometimes in luck,' while is he gives him the one kind unmixed, 'grim famine drives that man over the earth.' Nor can we allow that Zeus is 'steward of our goods and ills.' ... Young people must not be allowed to be told, in Aeschylus' words, that 'God breeds a crime in men/when he would utterly destroy a house.'
If a poet does write about the story of Niobe, or the House of Pelops, or the Trojan War, or anything like that, then either he must be allowed to say that they are not the works of God, or if they are, he must concoct some such account as the one we are now seeking, and say that what God did was just and good, the victims profited from their punishment. What the poet mustn't say is that God did it, and the victims are wretched. It is all right to explain that the wicked were wretched because they needed punishment and profited from receiving punishment at the God's hands. But that god, who is good, is the cause of evil to anyone is a proposition to be resisted at all costs. No one must hear it said. This goes for young and old, for tales in verse and prose. Such tales, if told, would be wicked, unprofitable, and self-contradictory."

2) In tragic poetry these ruthless and destructive Gods take on different shapes, lie, and deceive human beings (Resp. 2.380-383c)

3) In tragic poetry death is perceived an evil to be feared, being a negation of everything worth living for (Resp. 3.386a-387c)

4) In tragic poetry even the greatest heroes regard the death of those they cherish as an ultimate loss (Resp. 3.387d-388d)

5) In tragic poetry justice and happiness are not correlated, the world is not made for goodness (Resp. 3.392c8-e2)
"Because we shall say that poets and prose-writers make serious bad statements about men - that there are many unjust man who are happy and just men who are wretched, that secret wrongdoing is profitable, that justice is the good of others at our own loss - and so on. We shall have to forbid them to say this, and command them to compose songs and fables to the opposite effect."

6) Tragic poetry as 'mimesis', as imitation of an image and thus 'twice removed' from the truth (Resp. 10.595a-605c)
"We must now consider tragedy and its leader, in the light of this, for we hear it said by some that tragedians know all arts, all human affairs where vice and virtue are involved, and all divine things too: for they say, the good poet must compose with knowledge if he is to compose well on any subject. We must therefore consider whether these people have fallen within a set of imitators who have deceived them and have failed to realise that their works, which they see, are 'third removes' from the reality and are easy to make even if you do not know the truth. They are images, not realities. Or do you think there is something in what they say, and good poets really do know about the things which ordinary people think they describe as well?"
[10.598d7-599a4]

7) 'The greatest accusation': tragedy's emotional power to make the best of us 'surrender' ourselves to the tragic conception of life and thus to make us 'more wretched' (Resp. 10.605c6-606d7)
"But we still haven't brought the greatest accusation against it. It is a terrible thought that it can ruin good men, apart from a very few.
... When the best of us hear Homer or some other tragic poet imitating a hero in mourning, delivering a long speech of lamentation, singing, or beating his breast, you know how we feel pressure and give ourselves up to it, how we follow in sympathy and praise the excellence of the poet who does this to us most effectively."
"The element which forcibly restrained in our own misfortunes, starved of tears and the satisfaction of lamentation, though it naturally desires this, is the very element which is satisfied and given pleasure by the poets. In these circumstances, our best element, not being adequately trained by reason or habituation, relaxes its watch over this element of lamentation, because the sorrows it sees are others' sorrows and there seems no disgrace in praising and pitying a man who claims to be virtuous and is mourning out of season; indeed, the pleasure seems a positive gain, and we can't bear to reject the whole poem and so be deprived of it. Not many people can see that the consequences of others' experience invades one's own, because it is difficult to restrain pity in one's own misfortunes when it has grown strong on others."
"Poetical imitation in fact produces the same effect in regard to sex and anger and all the desires and pleasures and pains of the mind - and these, in our view, accompany every action. It waters them and nourishes them, then they ought to be dried up. It makes them our rulers, when they ought to be under control so that we can be better and happier people rather than worse and more miserable."

Since Plato's Republic many people have felt the need to defend poetry, such as Jones, a professor at the University of Oxford, who published a defence of poetry in 1964.

Consequences 1: Plato's denial of tragedy and repudiation of Homer and tragic poetry
"So when you find admirers of Homer saying that he educated Greece and that for human management and education one ought to take him up and learn and direct one's whole life of his principles, you must be kind and polite to them - they are as good as they are able to be - and concede that Homer is the foremost and most poetical of the tragic poets; but you must be clear in your mind that the only poetry admissible in our city is hymns to the gods and encomia to good men. ... Well these are the points that I wanted to recall to complete our justification for wishing to banish poetry from the city, such being its nature."
[10.606e-607e]

Consequences 2: Plato and the perennial defence of tragedy
"And we might also allow her defenders, who are lovers of poetry but not themselves poetical, to make prose speech on her behalf, to show that she is not only pleasing but useful for government and life; and we shall be glad to listen. After all, it will be our gain if she turns out useful as well as pleasing."
[10.607c-d]

Compare Plato's view of the human condition to Sophocles':

"O generations of mortals,
I count your lives as equal
To nothingness itself.
For who, tell me who,
has happiness that stretches further
Than a brief illusion
And, after the illusion, decline?
Considering you as a model,
Considering your daimon, yours alone,
O wretched Oedipus,
I count no mortal blessed."
[Sophocles, Oedipus the King, 1186-1196]

"Not to be born is the best by every reckoning; and once one has appeared, to go back to where one came from is the next best thing. For while youth is with one, carrying with it light-headed thoughtlessnesses, what painful blow is far away? What hardship is not near? Murders, civil strife, quarrels, battles, and resentment! And the next place, at the end, belongs to must-dispraised old age, powerless, unsociable, friendless, where all evils of evils are our neighbours."
[Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1224-1238]

23/2/07 - English Literature - Marvell: Upon Appleton House

Upon Appleton House was written by Andrew Marvell around 1651 (actual date unknown). It is part of a little-known genre of poetry called 'country house' poetry or more appropriately for this poem, 'estate' poetry. It is about a particular place and written for a particular person (that is, it is written about Appleton House, and for Lord Fairfax). Like Jonson and Lanyer, Marvell deals in specifics of time and place. Because of this, we need a clear sense of what was happening then and there at the time the poem was written, and who the people are, and what the relationship of the poet to the house and family is. This understanding of history helps to fix the poem in its place.

Andrew Marvell was a young aspiring poet. He was trying to develop a public role for himself but his work was not yet in print (his poems were published posthumously). He did however have connections to public figures and public circles; consequently he knew the Fairfax family.

The Fairfaxes were a public family. Thomas Fairfax was the leader of the parliamentarian armies and he had great success in the 1640s. He turned his back on public affairs after the execution of King James VI because he did not approve of the decisions that had been made by the government. Despite his best efforts, his public role went with him into retirement and he was still a major figure. His absence was surely felt by the parliament.

Nunappleton was the quiet country retreat in York to which he retired. It was therefore both a public and a domestic family house. The country estate was set back from the main road, where the public went back and forth between London and the north/Scotland. It was especially busy at times when there was conflict between royalists and the Scottish.

Marvell was employed by the Fairfaxes as secretary and as tutor to their daughter Mary. He was therefore involved in Fairfax's public affairs, private life and projects. It is likely that they held intellectual conversations with each other. The poem Upon Appleton House comes out of the intellectual relationship between them.

Lines 1-10: The house. An assessment and interpretation of the building. This entails not just a guide book description, but also the building's significance and what it does. A moral and theological meaning is imposed on the building. It begins with a sober frame. Lots of wealthy people had large houses, yet Nunappleton is described as modest and virtuous. Marvell paints a picture of the house's setting (hence 'estate' poetry). The poem meanders and digresses to the house's fate...
11-34: Nuns! They are not to be trusted: the narrator finds the female community of peace and pleasure dodgy. These women are not producing heirs so their lives must be false, delusional and indulgent. Isabel is "rescued" for fertility to produce Fairfaxes and the saviour is hailed. The house 'speaks' its history. It is a kind of digression, yet it does describe the house's history.
35-46: The garden. A quaint but quasi-military space. A conceit is developed ; the layout of the garden represents military area. The way in which military and horticultural life may be brought into a relationship is explored. The military is used as a metaphor for things that normally happen in gardens. This slips on its head so that the garden becomes the metaphor of safe military/political situations. Nunappleton changes from an entertainer of safe military likeness to becoming a metaphor itself of public events. This pattern repeats itself - it seems safe at first, then turns on itself and becomes a problem.
47-60: The meadows and the season. Agricultural people, e.g. mowers. Marvell watches the labour of midsummer. The meadows become infected with images of war: mowers' scythes killing a bird, heaps of hay likened to heaps of corpses, women become pillagers.
61-81: The woods, the birds (and the bees). Described as safe yet wild. Poet is absorbed into the wood, he speaks to the birds, engages in communion with nature... which is eroticised (74-5). The narrator has the urge to give himself up to nature. He sees himself as Narcissus.
82-93: Maria. Human power?
94-97: Eden and the Antipodes in shoes.

The sequence of the poem follows family history, national history and then world history. The poem's frame works to interpret our own lives. The Fairfax family speaks of national history and of political and public struggles. "What should he do?" can be asked of Thomas Fairfax with reference to public struggles and choices. The family's history is made sense of in terms of national and world history, in terms of prospect, knowledge and the Fall from Paradise. The poem demonstrates the Fall. As it looks for context it encounters difficulties in form. It engages in disruptions of perception. In line 47, the narrator goes into the meadows, and such vocabulary as "abyss", "unfathomable" and "grasshoppers like giants" is used. That is, going into the meadows is like a fall into the abyss, something of unknown depth and impossible to understand. Marvell is mapping and trying to understand form yet he comes up to vertiginous drops and unfathomable depths.

22/2/07 - History of Art - Heritage

The National Trust for Scotland, founded 1931, is a conservation charity that has 270,000 members, 500 employees, 2,500 volunteers and 128 properties. Kellie Castle in Fife needs one property manager, one gardener, volunteers and staff for the tearoom and shop. The NTS Head Office on 28 Charlotte Square employs a registrar, an archivist, photolibrarians, a head curator, a curator of painting and sculpture, a curator of the decorative arts, a head conservator (liasing with regional conservators), plus administration, finance, marketing and educational department, restaurant and workshop workers.

According to the NTS in the Manual of Housekeeping, conservation is the careful management of change. It is about revealing and sharing the significance of places and ensuring their special qualities are protected, enhanced, understood and enjoyed by present and future generations.

One issue conservationists must deal with is the management of dust in historical houses. A study by the University of East Anglia 1999 tried to find the answers to certain issues, such as what damage dust and frequent cleaning causes, how often surfaces should be cleaned and how, how the amount of dust that lands on objects can be reduced by preventative measures and which measures to take, how much it costs to remove dust, whether it is better to leave dust, what visitors' perception of dust is and whether dust is associated with historicity. Dust comes mainly from the clothing of visitors and can leave mud-like packs of dirt if left unchecked. Yet cleaning too often may lead to small-scale surface damage. A survey by the University of East Anglia studied questionnaires given to visitors of Culzean Castle and Kellie Castle. They found that visitors thought dust simply added to the historic and grand feeling of age. These findings suggest that old houses should be cleaned less often while grand houses should be kept clean to emphasise the elaborate, sophisticated parties that used to be held there.

The National Research Inventory Project (NIRP) is currently conducting a project on the collections of historic houses, including Hill of Tarvit in Fife. In 1904-1906, the house was designed by Robert Lorimer for F. B. Sharp (1862-1932). In 1949 it was bequeathed to the NTS. The principle aims of NIRP are to create a publicly accessible database of all 22,000 continental European paintings from 1200 to 1900 in over 200 collections and to contribute new scholarly research to museums' own documentation. Many researchers are currently working across the UK.

In the Sharp collection there are twelve paintings of 'kolfing' of which Sharp was a fan, and he later collected still-lives, portraits, 18th century English paintings, countryside paintings and horse paintings. He bought them from reputable dealers rather than the modern art market. His most expensive acquisition was Lady in Blue Dress, for £1005. He was a traditional and old-fashioned collector, perhaps wanting to imitate the tastes of the old-fashioned aristocracy.

Through the NIRP there is a historic rehang of the original Sharp collection. Sharp had wanted to show off his wealth and taste, and to provide a comfortable family home. Conservators had to rehang the paintings in accordance with this. Luckily, Sharp left behind inventories which listed the items of each room, and they have been very useful is the recreation of the original hanging of the paintings. Next, the conservators had to recreate the order and height of the paintings in each room. A compiler had listed the items in the rooms in order, starting with those above the fireplace and moving anticlockwise around the room. It was noticeable after the rehang that Sharp had placed themed paintings together so that they complemented each other and the room in which they were hung. For example, the smoking room, where he entertained his male guests, had mostly hunting paintings and horse paintings. The library had mostly portraits.

However, the inventory was not 100% reliable, so the conservators' 'recreation' is probably not accurate. For example, the inventory does not include all the paintings, there appear to have been no paintings in the drawing room, which is odd, and there is a list of minor paintings in the storage room. Sometimes the conservators have had to rely on guesswork.

22/2/07 - Classical Literature - Aristophanes: The Frogs (3)

In the Frogs, Dionysus is a stark figure. In 430 BC a play was produced called Dionysalexandros. In it, Dionysus impersonates Paris in order to get Helen. Another play was produced later, Taxiarchs, in which Dionysus is taught to be a sailor by Eupolis. The quest theme was becoming particularly popular in Greek theatre.

In Demes, by Eupolis, great men are brought back from the dead. Aristophanes built upon this idea, and in Frogs, he has Dionysus bring back poets in particular (rather than just great men) from the underworld.

Frogs took place at an emergency point of the war. Athens was about to lose the war that year. Dionysus, in the play, wants to bring back Euripides to entertain Athens at its peak of crisis.

The normal structure for tragedy is to have a prologue, a parodos and then an agon in which the hero comes up against conflict and wins some opponents over. After the agon, there are episodes in which the poet fits in as many jokes as are funny. In Frogs, the episode comes second and the agon comes at the end.

The underworld is ruled by Pluto ('the wealthy one') and Persephone.

The opening speech outlines that the play will be a mixture of both old and new gags (Xanthias: "one of the usual [gags]?").

Plays usually take their names from the hero or the chorus; in this case, it is taken from a non-chorus. Aristophanes may have done this because there were not enough resources for frog costumes and because it plays with the audience's expectations. At the last minute, an alternative chorus may have been substituted, carrying torches which were much easier to obtain and make.

Xanthias ("blondie" - slaves came from northern Europe, descendants of the Celts) is a character known as the 'clever slave'. In new comedy (a hundred years after Frogs), the clever slave became a standard character. Xanthias has been seen as the first clever slave in Greek drama.

Frogs is a play of two halves: there is the initial quest scene with people coming back and forth. Then comes the expository scene, the slave conversation, and the second half is thereafter.

Does Frogs go too far as literary criticism and does this detract from its comic value? It depends on the literary audience; the audience participated in the theatre as it was a national event. Frogs seems to be concerned with what makes good poetry, what works in drama, etc.

Aeschylus tended to start his plays in medas res, while Euripides had a character come onstage and introduce to the audience the setting, characters, circumstances, etc. Euripides introduced female characters into the theatre while Aeschylus showed us the great issues of life. In Frogs, Aeschylus poses the question of the purpose of art directly. The purpose of poetry could be in demonstrating skill, aiding moral improvement or the teaching of the masses. Both poets suggest the latter is the real purpose of poetry. Aeschylus says art should be didactic and moral, while Euripides says it should be truthful. In the end, choosing Aeschylus was most appropriate, politically and morally.

22/2/07 - English Literature - The New World

This lecture is interrelated with lectures on Renaissance encounters with other cultures: The Tempest and the relationship in the Renaissance to Jews, Turks and Moors. The lecture framework runs as follows:

• The Renaissance and Discovery
• Encountering/assimilating/possessing the cultural and racial 'Other'
• The Tempest and the New World
• Language and power
• Colonialism: dehumanising/demonising of the savage 'Other'
• Post-colonialism: opposition and resistance to colonial domination.

Notions of the 'discovery' of America

"In traditional interpretations of the Renaissance, re-discovery and discovery have come to be seen as defining characteristics of the movement. In their different ways, both are thought to entail an expansion in consciousness; a broadening of the mental horizons.

"Travel enables one to collect information, to verify rumours, to witness marvels, to distinguish between fables and truth. It represents a willingness to escape from the cultural narrowness that attends only knowing one’s own people. It enables one to place familiar customs in relation to the customs of others and hence to view the ordinary and everyday in a revealing new light. It offers the dream of what Christian Meier calls ‘a multi-subjective, contingency-oriented account."
[Stephen Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, p. 123]

Here is the idea of travel broadening the mind, and seeing oneself in a different light. One's values and customs are not natural any more, when it comes to light that another culture has radically different values and customs.

Columbus may not have had scientific motivations for his excursion to prove that the world was round. In 1492 Columbus sailed to America and Spain forced Jews to convert to Christianity.

"Like the Renaissance as a whole, the ‘discovery’ of the New World has come to be seen as one of the historical moments at which European culture was displaced from the centre of its own universe.

"In the year that Moorish Granada fell and the Jews were driven from Spain, Columbus set sail for the East. On December 26, 1492, moored off Hispaniola, Columbus made an entry in his log-book that Las Casas transcribed with particular care. The Admiral will leave some of his men behind in the hope that when he once again returns to the newly discovered lands these men would have obtained by barter a cask of gold, ‘and that they would have found the gold mine and the spicery, and those things in such quantity that the sovereigns [Ferdinand and Isabella], before three years (are over), will undertake and prepare to conquer the Holy Sepulcher . . . for thus I urged your Highnesses to spend all the profits of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem.’"
[Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions, p. 51]

So Columbus was concerned about profit. He wanted to search for gold to fund the war in Jerusalem.

Encounter, Assimilation and Possession

There was 'wonder' and 'marvel' at the discovery of America, at the shock of the new, after the 'first encounter'.

"Wonder is, I shall argue, the central European figure in the initial response to the new World.

"Wonder . . . is the quintessential human response to what Descartes calls a ‘first encounter’.

"The marvellous is a central feature, then, in the whole complex system . . . through which people . . . apprehended, and then possessed or discarded the unfamiliar."
[Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions, p. 14, p. 20, and pp. 20-21]

The new and unfamiliar was thereafter translated into familiar terms: those of primitivism versus barbarism, innocence versus corruption and the invocation of Eden. No effort was made to understand this new race in their own terms, but in terms of preconceived modern culture. The New World was considered as something to be possessed, as something female and virginal.

Language and Power

It was reinforced in European accounts that the people of the New World did not have a language. The reality was that they did have language, simply not a European one. In Ferdinand's encounter with Miranda in The Tempest, he is surprised that she speaks his language. There was also the humanist notion of spoken eloquence, which distinguished humans from animals. So Ferdinand makes a statement about his power. He draws on the trope that the land is virginal, hence he asks Miranda if she is a maiden.

Ferdinand Most sure, the goddess
On whom these airs attend. Vouchsafe my prayer
May know if you remain upon this island,
And that you will some good instruction give
How I may bear me here. My prime request,
Which I do last pronounce, is – O you wonder! –
If you be maid or no?

Miranda No wonder, sir,
But certainly a maid.

Ferdinand My language! Heavens!
I am the best of them that speak this speech,
Were I but where ‘tis spoken.
[Act 1, Scene 2, 422-31]

Colonisers often claimed that natives were 'brutish' because they could not speak. Miranda also treats Caliban like an animal.

Miranda Abhorred slave,
Which any print of goodness will not take,
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish. I endowed thy purposes
With words that made them known. But thy vile race –
Though thou didst learn – had that in’t which good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou
Deservedly confined into this rock;
Which hadst deserved more than a prison.
[Act 1 Scene 2 Lines 350-61]

The Tempest and the New World

The Tempest is set on an island in the Mediterranean, between North Africa and Italy. But this does not mean that it has nothing to do with the New World. There are allusions to Setebos, a god of the Patagonians. What is new to one person is old to another.

Miranda O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t!

Prospero ‘Tis new to thee.
[Act 5 Scene 1 Lines 181-4]

The Tempest as a colonial and post-colonial text

The figures of Prospero and Miranda are the voices of western settlers. They dehumanise and demonise natives. There must be a moral justification for dispossessing others of their land - they must be either animals or devils. Caliban is alternatively called a slave, son of the devil, a fish, a monster, and others.

The play is post-colonial in a sense of discourse that resists colonial domination. Caliban resists domination and questions Prospero's reasons for domination. He uses the word "sty" as a reference to pigs, and references to dehumanisation. Language is used as a justification of domination.

Caliban
You taught me language, and my profit on’t
Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!
[Act 1 Scene 2 Lines 362-4]

Here Caliban uses his master's language to speak out against oppression (this technique is also used in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). Caliban even shows lyricism:

Caliban
Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not,
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again, and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.
[Act 3 Scene 133-41]

Caliban curses the use of language yet shows great humanity in this poetic speech. He shows a liking for music, also thought to be a humanising quality.

20/2/07 - Classical Literature - Aristophanes: The Frogs (2)

Chronology of events:

431-404 BC: Athens v Sparta in the Peloponnesian War
413: Sicilian expedition; Athenian fleet wiped out
411: Thesmophoriazusae; coup; democracy established
406: Special effort (hardship for Athens) in battle of Arginusae; enfranchised all slaves willing to fight. Led to great victory although it only held off the inevitable. Loss of men and ships. Prosecuted generals who did not rescue Athenians. Athens was running out of money while Sparta got money from Persia to build a fleet. Athens then ran out of money, including their emergency supply and soused copper plated silver. Elite were exiled and left.
404: Second coup

Aeschylus died in 456 BC. Euripides was exiled because of alleged sympathy to upper classes, and died in 406 BC. Sophocles also died in 406 BC.

Sophocles is not considered in Dionysus' search for the greatest poet to save the Athenians. One of the poets had to be got rid of because an agon can only be constructed between two characters, and those with opposing arguments. As Aeschylus and Euripides have the most diverse arguments, they were chosen for the parts. They each had strong artistic values, while Sophocles believed in art within art. How much of Aeschylus did Aristophanes' audience know? The plays were only staged once. The most probable answer is that people learned lines from the plays in school and in general culture.

20/2/07 - English Literature - Topographical Poetry: Ben Jonson and Amelia Lanyer

A new genre of 'country-house' poetry arose. Jonson's To Penshurst and Lanyer's Description of Cookham were written around the same time, but it is much disputed which was written first.

To Penshurst: Plenitude in Paradise?

33-8: Fish sacrifice themselves for food. Not realism.

Williams criticised Jonson's poem.

"What is really happening, in Jonson’s … celebrations of a rural order, is an extraction of [the fact of labour], by the power of art: a magical recreation of what can be seen as a natural bounty and then a willing charity: both serving to ratify and bless the country landowner, or, by a characteristic reification, his house. Yet this magical extraction of the curse of labour is in fact achieved by a simple extraction of the existence of labourers. The actual men and women who rear the animals and drive them to the house and kill them and prepare them for meat; who trap the pheasants and partridges and catch the fish; who plant and manure and prune and harvest the fruit trees: these are not present; their work is all done for them by a natural order. When they do at last appear, it is merely as the ‘rout of rural folk’, … and what we are then shown is the charity and lack of condescension with which they are given what, now and somehow, not they but the natural order has given for food, into the lord’s hands. It is this condition, this set of relationships, that is finally ratified by the consummation of the feast."
[Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London 1973), 32]

So why does Jonson obscure the fact of labour?

The inhabitants of Penshurst were Sir Philip Sidney, Lady Mary Sidney (Countess of Pembroke), Sir Robert Sidney and Lady Mary Wroth.

Lines 1-8: Architecture, beginning with negation. Is that strange? The description reinforces the buildings differences from other family seats. 'Ancient pile': history which is 'reverenced'. Fair due is given to soil, air, wood and water.
9-44: Reinforces this natural environment.
45-88: The building. Focus is on the occupants and visitor and their social relations. It is a paradise for all, 'farmer to clown.'
61-64: In contrast to general practise, at Penshurst the poet and peasant eat as well as the lord/king; the poet imagines himself as king.
89-102: Epilogue. Praise of family. Religion over nature. 95-99

Perhaps not much is said about females. There is mention of "housewifery" 85, "Lady's Oak" (childbirth) 18, daughters and "gifts" 54-6, fruitfulness and chastity and lineage.

Perhaps it is a celebration of patriarchy. The place is preserved by its lord who dwells permanently in it. It is an ideal.

The Description of Cookham: Paradise Lost?

The differences between this poem and the former could be put down to the difference in sex between the two poets, and the social political condition relating males and females to their duties.

Lanyer's poem is not a celebration or an ode, but an elegy. It focuses on loss and bereavement. Jonson's poem was constant, but Lanyer's begins and ends with departure. It is a valediction on the loss of an idyllic pastoral place. It draws on classical idylls, but also challenges them. It resists Virgilian state politics by relating them to marriage politics.

Lines 1-6: Farewell. Introduction and position of poet in relation to the place.
7-52: Nature protects Margaret Clifford. She is identified with Diana, but she is also masculine.
53-96: Focuses on trees, especially one identified with the Tree of Knowledge.
97-126: Focuses on Anne Clifford, differences in degree.
127-204: Desolation of the landscape. Female aspects of the landscape and departure of the ladies.
205-10: 'The Last Farewell', return to the relation of the poet.

There are two perspectives: the poet's 'place' is explored in Jonson's poem. It relates the way other people see the place. The place is continual in time. In Lanyer's poem, other people are related to the place: it is a first person past tense narrative. The people described no longer exist and cannot be seen again in the future. The place is subject to change; the emphasis is on mutability not stability. For Lanyer, the natural world protects the women. For Jonson, manmade walls house the lord. Lanyer's poem is more religious in its imagery. The "grace" of God and of the countess is mentioned. There is a kind of spiritual meditation going on in the garden. It seems like a bower of bliss. There is a trinity between the mother, daughter and poet. But it is not a totally egalitarian paradise. Lanyer calls for a reorder of women's place in society; she questions the validity of sexual inequality. The poem ends by reminding the countess of her obligation to the poet. Both poets use Sidney's Defense of Poesy as part of their argument. The kiss in Lanyer's poem could represent the betrayal of the countess to the poet, like Judas's betrayal of Jesus.

19/2/07 - Classical Literature - Aristophanes: The Frogs (1)

Summary of plot:

Prologos: Xanthias, Dionysus' slave, rides a donkey while he himself is laden down with parcels, and asks his master if he would like "one of my jokes", i.e. old gags, including farts and low buffoonery. Dionysus, dressed half as a woman, half as Heracles, says he would like something wittier, and gripes about the current crop of comic poets. The pair come to a door and knock: Heracles opens it and collapses in laughter at the sight of Dionysus.
Dionysus explains his plan: while serving in the navy, he read the Andromeda of Euripides, and was struck with longing to have him back (Euripides died the year before). He proposes to descend to the underworld and fetch him. "Why not Sophocles?" asks Heracles. (Sophocles had also passed away recently.) "He's contented anywhere"; plus, Dionysus wants somebody 'generative/seminal', i.e. really creative. Heracles is sceptical, but agrees to help Dionysus 'go to hell'. Dionysus and Xanthias set out.

Episodes: They try, unsuccessfully, to hire a corpse to help with the baggage.
Charon the ferryman teaches Dionysus how to row, while Xanthias has to walk around the lake (the Athenians were all accomplished sailors, so Dionysus will have seemed particularly inept).
The Frog chorus? Probably only heard behind the scene, not seen. The chorus degenerates into a shouting match with Dionysus.
Dionysus considers whether he should try to slay some monster, like Heracles, but runs away, and soils himself.

Parodos: The chorus enter as the procession of Mystic Initiates of Eleusis, and combine the usual cry of "Begone profane" (=non-initiates) and a parabasis-like call to rid the city of various miscreants. The women also have a song. (The Mysteries were an important civic cult which promised its initiates survival in the afterlife.) Xanthias asks them for the location of Pluto's house.

More episodes: Dionysus and Xanthias knock on the door. Aeacus, one of the underworld judges, promises to repay Heracles (i.e. the disguised Dionysus) for the damage he caused on his last visit. Dionysus urges Xanthias to trade costumes, but then a maid announces that Persephone is laying out a feast for Heracles, so they trade again. Two landladies enter to sue for damages and Aeacus returns with some help. Both Xanthias and Dionysus claim to be gods, and Xanthias proposes that they settle the matter by a test of pain endurance, which proves inconclusive. They both go in.

Parabasis: The chorus pleads for reconciliation. The poet/chorus leader praises the decision to enfranchise the slaves for Arginusae, and thinks it all the more reason to let all exiles return. The analogy of the old and new coinage: the good coins of old are out of circulation (i.e. the old elite) and we now use cheap copper coins. But let us now use the good again.

Second start: (the expository features of this scene mark a second beginning to the play, and the scene itself introduces a completely new theme: the contest for the chair of Poetry)
Xanthias and Pluto's slave are chatting about their masters, and Pluto's slave explains that a mighty quarrel has erupted in the underworld between Aeschylus and Euripides, over the chair of tragedy. (Sophocles had conveniently retired from the contest.) Pluto has now chosen Dionysus to arbitrate their quarrel.

The agon: Euripides challenges and rails at Aeschylus, who tries at first to ignore Euripides, but he is drawn in. Dionysus makes a prayer to be able to judge the contest.
a) Euripides' critique of Aeschylus: the silent figure; poetic obscurity; Euripides put over-stuffed tragedy 'on a diet'; he made 'domestic' dramas, taught people to think.
b) Aeschylus' reply: the dramatist's job is about technical skill and improvement. Aeschylus put great heroes on the stage, and worked in the noble tradition of Homer, whereas Euripides wrote stories of rape, incest, etc.
c) Prologues: Aeschylean obscurity, repetition; Euripides 'ran out of oil.'
d) Lyrics: Aeschylean repetition/monotony; Euripidean nonsense choral verse and mock monody - "woe for my chicken."
e) The weighing of verses: Dionysus says "Euripides is so sophisticated and Aeschylus so rewarding." (A better translation of the line is "the one [Aeschylus] I consider wise, the other I enjoy.")
f) The giving of advice to the city: should Athens recall Alcibiades? Both give obscure advice. Dionysus chooses Aeschylus.

Exodos: Pluto gives Aeschylus some tools with which to dispatch a few corrupt politicians/war mongers down to Hades, and Aeschylus chooses Sophocles to hold the chair of poetry.

Gorgias said: "he who is deceived is more just (fairer) than he who is not." The challenge of theatre is to create plausible endings. See Aristotle's Poetics. In comedy, the challenge is to break the illusion. Think of the difference between Agathon and Mnesilochus - they are both played by men, but Agathon is good at being a woman and Mnesilochus is not.

The scene at the Thesmophoria is metatheatrical. It alludes to the fictional status of the play. In the play there is a man dressed as a woman, using shocking and abusive language. Is Mnesilochus' speech persuasive or convincing? Is he plausibly characterised? Mnesilochus is unsuccessful at persuading. Outside of the play, the audience witnesses a character trying to persuade the audience within the play. We see through the illusion because it is bad fakery. But it is successful as an unconvincing scene - it is convincingly unconvincing. At a 'meta' level it is convincing. Mnesilochus' mistake is to produce an image of a woman who is worse than real life. He is trying to pry into the lives of the women but he has such a negative view of them that he unwittingly exposes himself. Comedy distorts people so they are represented as worse than in real life. The theme of the play is the problematisation of bad art, so that it becomes funny.

When Mnesilochus steals the baby, he is parodying Euripides' heroine. Aristophanes implicitly says that Euripides' plays are fake and therefore ridiculous. He also parodies Euripides' Andromeda when Euripides flies in to rescue Mnesilochus dressed as Perseus, and fails.

In the archer scene, Scythian archers (Russian slaves) are employed by magistrates. Aristophanes puts Euripides into one of his own plays, but shows that it is ineffectual. However, a dancing girl is effectual. Comedy saves the day. Comedy wins over tragedy.

The subject of the play is dramatic illusion (specifically, bad dramatic illusions of Euripides' recent plays). Gendered roles are utilised: male actors play female characters, so there is a challenge in making it plausible. But these roles can be used to different effects in the different genres of comedy and tragedy. Comedy intends to make us laugh, it is light-hearted, fantastical, metatheatrical, life-affirming and the ending sees the restoration of normality. On the other hand, tragedy makes us sad, it is serious, realistic, there is no break in the illusion and there is no return to normality at the end.

Aristophanes thought that Euripides had confused comedy and tragedy because his plays combined the attributes of both genres. Euripides' plays could be unrealistic, life-affirming and have happy endings, yet they were still labelled as tragedies. Other confusions which Euripides explored was that between men and women, and illusion and reality.

16/2/07 - English Literature - Renaissance Bodies

Here we will discuss the theorisation and representation of the body in the Renaissance.

1. Physical Bodies

There was the 'one sex' model, or hermaphrodism, based on how the body operated. Bodies of all beings were perceived to be alike in substance, based on degrees of perception. The amount of vital heat generated indicated their position on the axis of perfection. Humans were thought to be the hottest and therefore the most perfect, and also males were hotter and therefore superior. Genitals of the male and female were thought not to be very different, simply placed differently (according to Galin's model). Each female organ corresponded to a male one.

The one sex models privileged men yet there was perceived to be no biological difference between the sexes. There was an anxiety that women might one day become too hot and their genitals would fall outside of their bodies and therefore they could become male.

2. Reproduction

It was considered that both men and women got pleasure from sex.

"But out of all doubt, unlesse nature had prepared so many allurements, baits, and provocations of pleasure, there is scarce any man so hot or delighted in venereous acts, which considering and marking the place appointed for humane conception, the loathsomnesse of the filth which daily falleth downe unto it … but would shun them embraces of women. Nor would any woman desire the company of man, which once premeditates or forethings with her selfe on the labour shee shal sustaine in bearing the burden of her childe nine moneths, and of the almost deadly paines that she shall suffer in her delivery."
[Paré 887]

Here men would experience disgust, and women fear of death if it were not for the pleasure gained during sex. For Galin, climax was essential for both to create enough heat for two seeds to fertilise into a child. However there were arguments over whether each sex produced a seed, whether sex changes were possible and over what importance the clitoris is.

"The Clitoris is a sinewy hard body … and [it] will stand and fall as the Yard doth and makes women lustful and take delight in Copulation, and were it not for this they would have no desire delight, nor would they conceive … commonly it is but a small sprout, lying close hid under the Wings, and not easily felt, yet sometimes it grows so long that it hangs forth … like a Yard, and it will swell and stand stiff if it be provoked."
[(Sharp,1671) 1999, 39-40]

"If the Yard be of a moderate size, not too long, nor too short, it is as good as the Tongue is, but if the Yard be too long, the spirits in the seed flee away; if it be too short, it cannot carry the Seed home to the place it should do."
[(Sharp,1671) 1999, 24]

"The matter is the seed, which may fail three several [different] ways, wither when it is too much, and then the members are larger, or more than they should be, or too little, and then there will be some part or the whole too little, or else the seed of both sexes is ill mixed, as of men and women with beasts."
[(Sharp,1671) 1999, 91]

The above are taken from Jane Sharp's Midwive's Book of 1671. It is often perceived that sex was a taboo subject before the Victorian era but this is not the case.

3. Imagination and Monstrosity

It was thought at the time that the pregnant woman's imagination had an effect on the development of the child. This was the explanation for the 1.77% of intersex children Born each year. This theory was not very well developed but still it was a prevalent thought.

4. Humoural Theory

Parts of the human body were thought to conflict or consent through sympathy. Blood could change into substances such as milk, semen, etc.

The archetypal melancholic was Hamlet. He is one who shows 'unmanly' inactive behaviour that is akin to laziness. Claudius was the typical choler: his emotions rage in the flesh out of anger. The treatment for choleric was bleeding. It changed the balance of fluids against emotions and the body.

Lady Anne Halkett talked at length about letting the blood of Janet. Halkett had had some medical training and had done service to wounded soldiers. She probably used venesection - opening of a vein using a lancet.

"The indisposition that I heard my Daughter [1] was in att Pitfirane all this weeke was a trouble to mee to heare itt[, a]nd so much the more that the Long distemper I haue beene in my selfe (hauing nott these 9 months beene able to ride any where) made mee vnfitt to goe outt to see her. And my aprehensions for her was the greater because rising well outt of her bed shee tooke so sodaine & so violent a paine in her backe & one side yt shee was nott able to stirre butt as shee was caried to her bed. Docter St Clare was sent for & hee nott beeing in Towne & Doctor Halkett nott well himselfe could nott come to her[, a]nd so wanted them when shee had most need[. B]utt itt seemes Dr Halkett beeing informed of her condittion sent word to haue her take 9 or 10 ounces of blood. And this Morning hearing accidentally that shee had sent for Saundus Petry to doe itt[, a]nd hee nott beeing att home{,} I Looked vpon itt as a duty in mee too goe & offer my selfe to performe that seruice to her. [T]hough I had many debates with my selfe whether I should goe or noe[,] [321] first nott beeing well my selfe & then perhaps riding might make mee worse And yn I would nott bee able to performe the thing I went for. Then I considered how many whose imployment itt was to lett blood had had very ill succese with itt so that some had lost the vse of there arme.[2] And if such an accedent should fall outt vnder my hand itt would bee a trouble to mee as Long as I Liued. Butt on the otherside I considered that if any ill consequences should fall outt vpon her nott beeing bled; That on the otherside would trouble mee as much. So in this as in all things els of concerne; I sought the Lord[3] & hee heard mee and deliuered mee from all my feares. [F]or Blesed bee his holy Name I went outt safe & returned in safety And Lett her blood very well And I hope ye Lord will make itt conduce to her recouery. One of my troubles before I went was that this beeing a day of my retirement wch I indeauer to spend in Deuotion that my going outt would bee an interuption to that[.] Butt I considered with my selfe that itt was the retirement [322] of the heart from all vaine & sensuall delight[4] and to abstaine from all apeareance of euill which was the best way to make my abstaince[5] acceptable to God who was in all places, and therfore could make all places & occations contribute to that end for wch I doe deuote ye day to his seruice. I thought perhaps the Lord had giuen mee this occation to goe there this day to stirre vp my owne Deuotion by taking some prudent way to excite good thoughts and reflection in others. And I had the more opertunity to doe itt from the account my Daughter gaue mee of my Lord Newarke[6] who in a moment was choaked & neuer spoke a word. I had allso the sattisfaction of going quiettly into the roome where my Dearest Sr James died where; as I remembred his death (wch was vpon this day of the weeke) with a sencible sadnese So I could not adore & blese & Magnify the Great & holy God for suporting mee then vnder that affliction; And for continung his goodnese to mee vnto this minuiet [sic] vnder all the tryalls & troubles that I haue mett with neere 24 yeare wch none butt himselfe could doe[.] Exalted bee the God of my Saluation[, a]men[.]"
[Lady Anne Halkett, ‘Of Watchfulness.’ 1693/4-95. NLS Ms. 6500. 320-2]

Lecturer's Footnotes:
[1] I.e., Sir Charles Halkett’s wife, Janet.
[2] Although leeches were used in blood-letting in the seventeenth-century, Halkett’s reference to the potential loss of a limb suggests that she was planning to use venesection, which involved opening a vein, usually with a lancet (a small two-edged knife). A false cut could slice a nerve or a tendon (Johnson (1665): 441-4).
[3] psa/34/4.
[4] 1 The/5.22
[5] Sic. Possibly absence or abstain.
[6] Probably David Leslie, second Lord Newark, who succeeded to the title on his father’s death in 1682 (Henderson ‘Leslie’).

15/2/07 - Classical Literature - Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae

Structure of Thesmophoriazusae:

Scene 1, Prologue: Euripides, with his relation Mnesilochus in tow, tries to convince the effeminate poet Agathon to sneak into the women's festival, so as to defend him from the women's accusations. Agathon, in semi-drag, performs a sample of his 'sexy', enticing music, but declines to help. Mnesilochus then agrees to do the job, so Euripides shaves him and dresses him up in drag.

Scene 2: The forecourt of the temple of Demeter Thesmophoros.

Parodos: Entrance of chorus of women.

Agon: Mnesilochus sneaks into the women's festival. The women gather in assembly. The first woman makes a speech accusing Euripides of slandering women in his plays and proposes to have him done away with. A second woman seconds her, adding that his atheism is hurting her garland business. Mnesilochus, somewhat carried away by the first two speakers, forgets himself and confesses a number of outrageous womanly crimes. The women have already turned on him, when Cleisthenes (another soft, half-man) arrives to denounce Euripides' plot. The women undress Mnesilochus to ascertain his gender (a lot of physical humour in this). He is found out and in despair takes a baby hostage (this is taken from an earlier play of Euripides', Telephus, where the hero does the same) but the baby turns out to be a wine-skin. Caught, he crafts a cunning secret message, as he saw Palamedes do in Euripides' Palamedes, and awaits rescue.

Parabasis: The women defend their sex to the audience, using examples taken from contemporary Athens. They suggest rewards and punishments be given to the mothers of good and bad politicians. (Note, in the parabasis the chorus addresses the audience directly to discuss Athenian issues outside of the play, although in this instance the chorus stays in character.)

Episodes: Mnesilochus and Euripides try to fool the women guarding Mnesilochus by reciting parts of the Helen, a play all about escape. The women find the pair thoroughly unconvincing. A magistrate arrives, and Euripides dashes off.
The magistrate, accompanied by a Scythian archer (a foreigner hired to act as a policeman), sentences Mnesilochus to be tied to a plank and exposed to public ridicule in his woman's clothes. The magistrate departs.
Choral interlude.
Further episodes. The Scythian leaves to fetch a mat on which to nap while he guards Mnesilochus. Euripides sails in on a crane, as Perseus to Mnesilochus' Andromeda (Euripides' Andromeda was also produced in 412 BC). Echo, from the same play, is brought in, but she only gets Mnesilochus into trouble with the Scythian. Euripides touches down as Perseus, but cannot convince the Scythian that he is Perseus. He leaves.
Choral interlude.
Exodus.
Euripides returns, cuts a quick deal with the women, and resorts to a ploy the Scythian can finally understand: dressed as a bawd, he lures the Scythian away with a (real) sexy dancing-girl and frees Mnesilochus. The point: the comic solution works, while Euripidean tragedy cannot save the day.

Thesmophoriazusae is interested in theatricality and illusion. Actors in drama shaved their beards so it was easier to wear the mask, but normally shaven men were considered to be effeminate in antiquity.

Rules for gender identity were rigidly established. Women covered themselves and wore a veil when they were outside the home, especially young women. There was no advertisement of sexuality or availability. Woman married young, often to older men who were the heads of their household. Women had the status of a child to their husband, in terms of obedience. They were expected to leave the house to attend religious festivals and ceremonies. It is debated whether women were allowed to go to the theatre, but the evidence suggests that they were. It was Plato who said that women and men would choose tragedy as their favourite entertainment.

The Thesmophoria was a women's festival lasting three days. The women camped out in tents and did secret things (we don't know what) in honour of Demeter and her daughter Kore (meaning bride/maid). The festival took place in autumn. The myth took its cue from a Homeric hymn to Demeter. In it, Hades abducts Kore while she picks flowers and in the underworld she eats six pomegranate seeds and thus becomes his wife. Her mother complains to Zeus, who agrees that Kore can live in the underworld and be Hades' wife for six months every year, and be allowed to come home to her mother for the remaining six, hence the seasons of summer and winter.

The play calls on themes of agriculture and sexuality/fertility. It is a symbolic re-enactment of the myth. On the second day of the festival, the women fast and on the third day they celebrate birth.

Was Euripides a misogynist? In his plays, Medea kills her own children and Phaedra falls in love with her son-in-law; yet he is sympathetic towards women and domestic drama and he gave birth to the rise of the tragic heroine. Euripides experimented with what could be dramatised, hence the invention of 'kitchen sink' drama, i.e. realistic, gritty theatre. Euripides included women who were fully characterised, so they had a mixture of heroism and immorality.

In Euripides' last days, 415 and following, he seems to have invented the romance and adventure genres. In 415 he produced Trojan Women, Ion in 417, Helen in 412 and Iphigenia in Tauris in 413. They all have happy endings, exotic locations and escape plots, including adventure and intrigue. These plays raise many issues: are they untragic?; are they as they seem (e.g. Helen and the eidolon)?; are they convincing as drama? And Aristophanes introduced one other issue: what happens when Euripides is put into his own plays? This introduces theatre within theatre: metatheatricality, or self-awareness.

The plot of Agathon goes nowhere, so is it pointless? It is expository: it questions the gender of Agathon, and it questions theatricality. By modern standards, Agathon is homosexual; Plato wrote than Agathon had had an older male lover (which was common), but they stayed together for longer than was usual. In the play, Agathon is good at being a woman, whereas Mnesilochus is not.

15/2/07 - English Literature - Shakespeare: Macbeth

Here we will discuss:

• Macbeth and the moralisation of politics (distinguishes good from evil and friend from foe)
• The moment of Macbeth (historical context: a highly charged time with accusations against James I, and the gunpowder plot)
• Equivocation (verbal of the part of the conspirators of the gunpowder plot, which is reflected in Macbeth)
• The language of Macbeth.

So Macbeth is a play aware of the values and ideas of the Jacobean period, but it is not necessarily in agreement with them in its language.

"Macbeth is Shakespeare’s ‘most profound and mature vision of evil’; ‘the whole play may be writ down as a wrestling of destruction with creation’; it is ‘a statement of evil’; ‘it is a picture of a special battle in a universal war, and the battleground is in the souls of Macbeth and his wife’ . . . the contrast between light and darkness is part of a general antithesis between good and evil, devils and angels, evil and grace, hell and heaven."
[Muir, Kenneth. Ed. Macbeth. London: Methuen, 1951, p. xlv]

Macbeth shows tragic power in that evil turns on the good. The play shows both moral and metaphysical expression. Political disobedience is considered to be sinful and evil, not just criminal. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth destroy others and themselves in a ritualistic way. Ritual is accrued around Macbeth. There is opposition also between the natural and the unnatural: "I begin to grow aweary of the sun." Macbeth's and Lady Macbeth's bodies turn against them in the form of insomnia and madness. Mature itself expels them from the world.

Old Man: 'Tis unnatural, Even like the deed that's done . . .

ROSS: And Duncan's horses--a thing most strange, and certain--
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.

Old Man: 'Tis said they ate each other.

ROSS: They did so, to th’ amazement of mine eyes
That look'd upon't.
[Shakespeare, William, Macbeth. Ed. Nicholas Brooke. Oxford: University Press, 1990. 2.4.10-19]

What does Macbeth stand for?

"Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind."
[1.7.16-25]

Here is a rhetorical expression of Duncan's kingship, the antithetical being to Macbeth. It enlightens us as to how the universe would react if Duncan was violated, and it praises his virtue. Spoken by Macbeth, which is somewhat equivocal. Is Macbeth condemning himself? He is ambitious and is bitter about being overlooked for accession to the throne. Duncan's kingship is based on generosity and beneficence towards others and the world. Macbeth's kingship is based on rage and ambition, violence and terror. Duncan has the same friends throughout the play, and his enemies are those who betray him; Macbeth has no friends and many enemies: Macduff, Banquo's children, Ross, Malcolm, etc.

At the time Macbeth was written, James I of Scotland was acceding to the English throne in 1603. Shakespeare's company changed its name from Chamberlain's Men to the King's Men, showing their royal patronage. Now they became interested in the king's interests, and performances changed because they were written for the king. So Scotland and witches became the basis of Macbeth's plot. Also the gunpowder plot had traumatised London and the royal family, as it was an attempt to destroy James VI of England and his family.

"Kings are in the word of God it selfe called Gods, as being his Lieutenants and Vice-gerents on earth, and so adorned and furnished with some sparkles of the Divinitie . . . a destruction prepared not for me alone, but for you all that here present, and wherein no ranke, age, not sexe should have bene spared; This was not a crying sinne of blood . . . but it may well be called a roaring, nay a thundering sinne of fire and brimstone, from the which GOD hath so miraculously delivered us all."
[James VI and I, ‘Speech to Parliament, 9 November 1605.’ In Political Writings. Ed. Johann P. Sommerville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. p. 147; pp. 148-49]

This speech was written four days after the revelation. Macbeth was written synchronistically with this. Macbeth has no sons, so he sees that his sovereignty will disappear in the future. The form as well as the content of Macbeth was considerate of the events of that year. There is fluidity between the scenes, yet no sub-plot and no room for sceptical thought: it is the kind of form that suggests there is a message to give.

Now on to the subject of equivocation. The speeches in Macbeth about the multiplying villainies of nature hint that there is something in nature that is unnatural; perhaps a little stumble in the natural order of Macbeth? In Latin the word 'equivocation' means 'equally to call'. It means there are conflicting but co-existing ways of reading something. This means there is an uncertainty of response. The gunpowder conspirators learned to speak equivocally even under oath. It entails 1) disclosing one part of the mind which when spoken sounds true, but withholding more information so you are speaking only partially truthfully. It is used only to protect oneself or others. 2) One is entitled to use uncertain, ambiguous speeches, i.e. can be read more than one way. To people of the time, equivocation was the language of traitors, of deceitful and false people.

Shakespeare was curious about the language of equivocation. The porter's speech is unequivocated - he captures the Jacobean view of equivocation as the language of traitors. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are continually caught out in equivocation and deceit, e.g. in Lady Macbeth's welcoming speech to Duncan she must practise private reservation. For Macbeth, the only way he can speak to others is in equivocation and he becomes susceptible to it in others, such as the witches; he becomes distanced from human natural speech.

Doubtful equivocations extend beyond the evil characters. Equivocation can also mean exceeding truth.

but all's too weak:
For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name--
Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like Valour's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave-
Which ne'er shook hands nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.

Duncan: O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman.
[1.2.15-23]

Duncan recognises Macbeth's actions but is perhaps out of context. Duncan's sovereignty is also one through violence, shown in his praising of Macbeth's bloody triumph over Macdonald.

Mythic language in the play turns against itself. The definition of treason is questioned; Ross admits that they are all traitors. Lady Banquo says that a traitor is one who swears and lies. Macduff says to Malcolm that he is a traitor. Unlike states are in fact similar. Malcolm and Macbeth are similar, not different.

13/2/07 - Classical Literature - Aristophanes: Old Comedy

There are two types of ancient comedy: old comedy (of which only Aristophanes is extant), and new comedy. There is also such a thing as 'middle comedy', but this is a misleading term. Aristophanes was probably the best poet of the time, but perhaps not the best at comedy. New comedy is simply romantic comedy.

"One way to describe an Aristophanic comedy is a compromise between a musical and a variety show. What I mean by this is that the plot alone does not dictate the structure of the action, but the genre itself, and thus the audience's expectations, compromised a number of features extraneous to the plot and which you may find puzzling. What follows is a sort of statistical average - although it should be stressed that no single extant comedy has all these structural elements in full. But please keep it in mind for later, when we will consider to what extent Thesmophoriazusae and Frogs do and do not conform to this model."
[Simon Trépanier]

Comedies tend not to have a sturdy plot unity but this is not important. Comedies contain political commentary and satire. They could mock people by name and use topical subjects, e.g. politicians and those of more fame than they deserved. Slander laws meant that it was only possible to mock people for reasonable issues. Use of obscenities and curses was allowed. Comedy had less universality than tragedy; they were rooted to a particular culture at a particular time. It reinforced one's sense of the normal by humouring abnormal things. There were racist and sexist jokes, which must nowadays be read historically. There were frequently happy endings, although sometimes the joke was on the audience. Artistic form and structure were discussed in this literary form. Unfortunately, any physical humour and music performed in the comedies is now lost to us.

Both comedy and tragedy dealt with wide issues. Comedy, in Greek, was kommos, which also meant a party or drunken procession. This reflects the idea that comedy is a drunken song. There is a hierarchy of comedy ranging from buffoonish to dignified, based on the level of language used: farce - low comedy involving physical humour and no morals; high comedy involving realistic characters, serious morals and a little farce; parody, involving imitation, sometimes for ridicule, and accuracy; satire - aimed at a specific person or people with malicious intent.

Note that there is a different between laughing at and laughing with. Characters could be eiron, a liar or dissembler, someone who knows more yet pretends to know less, creating irony. Alternatively, there was alazon, a buffoon with whom we do not sympathise, someone who knows little yet pretends to know much. We laugh at their ignorance. Characters don't necessarily fall neatly into one category or another, but can be both eiron and alazon.

Thesmophoriazusae, or Woman at the Thesmophoria (the female religious festival) was an atypical comedy for Aristophanes, because most of his comedies focus on a particular political occurrence. Thesmophoriazusae and Frogs are his most literary plays, written at a time of crisis. Both plays are escapist, and seem unpolitical for the time, because it was too dangerous to write about political subjects at such a delicate time. Most comedy is gestural because the masks restricted the actors' emotional expression.

The structure of Aristophanic comedy

There are perfunctory choral odes; every piece of dialogue is followed by a song which contributes nothing to the plot, but allows for the actors to change. The protagonist uses an agon to win over half of the chorus to his side. It might seem out of sync in terms of comedy and plot, but this is because there is a rigorous formal structure for the theatre. There are episodes after the entire chorus has been won over and the most creative freedom can be used unrestricted. This form probably developed since the performance of the first Greek comedy.

13/2/07 - English Literature - Webster: The Duchess of Malfi

Firstly we will consider The Duchess of Malfi in terms of Jacobean tragedy. But what is a Jacobean tragedy and how useful is the term? Secondly we will compare the play to Hamlet and to Shakespeare's tragedies more generally. lastly we will consider the duchess as a female tragic heroine with a public role (which is unusual); her power is a reason for tragic consequences. Is she a wanton widow? There was a play prior to this one in which there was a 'wanton widow'.

The setting in the beginning is an anti-Catholic trope, suggesting corruption. There is an ambivalence about Catholicism - it is exciting as well as corrupt, implication that Catholics are better at killing than non-Catholics, that Catholicism is glamorous.

The Jacobean comes from 'Jacobus' or James, i.e. King James I (reigned 1603-25). This is how Wymer defines Jacobean tragedy:

"For the general reader or theatre-goer . . . Jacobean [tragedy signifies] a theatrically sophisticated and self-conscious preoccupation with extreme situations and motivations, accompanied by a melancholic and satiric brooding upon death, sexuality, and court corruption."
[Rowland Wymer, Webster and Ford (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 16]

He mentions self-conscious, extreme situations and motivations, such as cruelty, melancholic brooding on death, corruption and sexuality. Webster was seen as a quintessential Jacobean tragedian, but Jacobean tragedy takes its cue from Shakespearean tragedy, especially Titus Andronicus, Hamlet and Othello. There had been distinctive developments in tragedy in Elizabeth's reign; 1599 was more significant than 1603 (when both Julius Caesar and Hamlet were staged).

"Many of the distinctive features of Jacobean drama derive from developments in the last few years of Elizabeth’s reign. It was under Elizabeth that Jonson wrote his first comedies and under Elizabeth that Shakespeare embarked on his sequence of tragedies. In fact, if one is looking for the date that inaugurated a new phase in the history of the theatre, then 1599 seems more significant than 1603."
[Wymer, Webster and Ford, p. 18]

So Jacobean tragedy came about at the end of Elizabeth's reign.

"A number of characteristically ‘Jacobean’ political tragedies are in fact Elizabethan. . . . Since these late Elizabethan plays were particularly influential on Jacobean tragedy, one obvious possible conclusion is that the drama may exist in a real but perpetually displaced relation to social and political events. Plays written in the context of a disillusion with the last years of Elizabeth’s reign – years of war, inflation, bitter factionalism at court, and increasingly erratic and autocratic behaviour by the ageing Queen – were artistically powerful enough to generate their own theatrical momentum, provoking a succession of imitations lasting for several years into James’s reign. Such an argument acknowledges that the primary influence on literature is always previous literature, without trying to seal off drama altogether from society."
[Wymer, Webster and Ford, p. 31]

Disillusion and the milieus that Wymer lists are explored in Jacobean tragedy as reflections of the end of Elizabeth's reign, when she grew old and began to fall apart. These plays are so powerful that despite ensuing success to the throne, playwrights continued to be influenced by Elizabeth's reign.

Now we move on to the second part of the discussion, comparing The Duchess of Malfi to Hamlet (although other tragedies are key also). Bosola finds an equivalent in Iago. Edmund and Iago are both free thinkers, and both sceptical. There is morbid humour, not festive or joyful but macabre and resigned, and related to death. There is philosophical and political doubt. These lead to reflections on the meaning of life (or meaninglessness therein) and scepticism. Bosola and Hamlet discuss these things outside of the action. Human and political corruption are major themes in both. The social and political milieus are the same - court setting, paranoia, surveillance, spying, tyranny and corruption. Each has a self-conscious theatricality, using the courts as theatre because the courts are likely to be overlooked by others, so theatricality and seeming are actively practised at court. There is conflict between public roles and private feelings, particularly in Hamlet and the Duchess. There is the conflict between bodies and minds.

Jacobean tragedy tends to polarise critical opinion.

• An aesthetic dead end – it increasingly relies on sensation and a capacity to shock for its emotional and artistic effect. Spectacle a substitute for emotional engagement. Elevates cruelty to an art form – energies directed at devising ever more lurid and gruesome deaths for its protagonists.
• 
  A genuinely transgressive form of theatre that exposes the hypocrisy of the powerful, bringing to light the self-interested motives underlying their actions. Emotionally and psychologically unsettling and politically destabilising.

The Duchess of Malfi lacks philosophy of the human condition and its speeches are short in comparison with Hamlet's. In Hamlet, the speeches build momentum; The Duchess of Malfi lacks this also. The shock of spectacle is more dramatic in Webster than in Shakespeare. It is transgressive theatre.

There is plenty of morbidity in the play:

Bosola Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best, but a salvatory of green mummy. What’s this flesh? A little cruded milk; fantastical puff paste; our bodies are weaker than those paper prisons boys use to keep flies in – more contemptible, since ours is to preserve earth worms. Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body; the world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o’er our heads like her looking-glass, only given as a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison.
[Duchess of Malfi, Act IV, Scene II, Lines 118-126]

Notice the word 'contemptible.'

Hamlet focuses on the mutability of the flesh.

King Now Hamlet, where’s Polonius?
Hamlet At supper?
King At supper! Where?
Hamlet Not where he eats but where ‘a is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean begger is but variable service, two dishes at one table. That’s the end.
King Alas, alas.
Hamlet A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
[Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 3, Lines 16-27]

Hamlet states that all people are subject to the processes of decay, so king and beggar are equal. The Duchess of Malfi takes morbidity of death from Hamlet.

Courtly milieu is also taken from Hamlet. Why were such plays set in courts? Due to their self-conscious theatricality. Courts were the extended households of the king, or since the Tudors, the seat of government. They attracted powerful and ambitious people, and tragedy involves power and ambition.

Antonio
Consid’ring duly that a prince’s court
Is like a common fountain, where should flow
Pure silver drops in general, but if chance
Some cursed example poison’t near the head,
Death and disease through the whole land spread.
And what is’t makes the blessed government
But a most provident council, who dare freely
Inform him the corruption of the times?
Though some o’th court hold it presumption
To instruct princes what they ought to do,
It is a noble duty to inform them.
[The Duchess of Malfi, Act I, Scene I, Lines 11-21]

Antonio speaks of what a court should be like. Compare this to Bosola's speech on what a court is really like.

Basola
He and his brother are like plum trees that grow crooked over standing pools; they are rich, and o’erladen with fruit, but none but crows, pies and caterpillars feed on them. Could I be one of their flatt’ring panders, I would hang on their ears like a horse-leech till I were full, and then drop off.
[The Duchess of Malfi, Act I, Scene I, Lines 48-53 ]

Bosola uses the language of parasites and rottenness, which is taken from Hamlet.

Hamlet
‘tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely [completely]
[Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2, Lines 135-137]

Marcellus Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
[Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4, Line 90]

The theme of spying is presented through Bosola, who is an intelligencer, a spy. Here is the implication that honesty is incompatible to serve a nobleman; one must be dishonest.

There is the association between court and theatre where the courts are centres of theatre, a source of entertainment. But the court is also a public place where one has a role to be performed. This idea is integrated into both plays.

To move on to the last point, is the Duchess of Malfi a wanton widow? The phrase 'tragic heroine' is a bit of an oxymoron because women tend to be victims rather than agents, to be passive and marginal in tragedy. So the Duchess of Malfi is counter-generic; the duchess is often condemned because she takes control. Webster takes a different view to the norm. Her description in the character list is defined by her relation to other men, never simply herself: "Duchess of Malfi, a young widow, later Antonio’s wife, and the twin sister of Ferdinand and sister of the Cardinal." As a sovereign, she encounters the problem of choosing a husband.

Antonio I must lie here.
Duchess Must? You are a Lord of Misrule.
Antonio Indeed, my rule is only in the night.
[The Duchess of Malfi, Act III, Scene II, Lines 7-8]

Notice that conventional courtly roles have been switched. In tradition, the woman is powerful only during the wooing stage, and when she marries her husband becomes her lord. The Duchess of Malfi however is a category error because Antonio must conceal his identity as her husband. So he becomes a 'Lord of Misrule', the opposite to the natural order.

12/2/07 - Classical Literature - Euripides: Bacchae (2)

Dodds' psychoanalytic reading into the Bacchae sees Pentheus as a "dark Puritan."

Dionysus appears differently to everyone. Dionysus and Pentheus are both obsessed with power and women, but their first meeting, written in stichomythia, reveals they have different views entirely. Pentheus takes Dionysus' words literally. Pentheus wants something that he can't have, as only Dionysus' followers know the rituals and Dionysus uses this against him. Dionysus tells Pentheus he doesn't know who he is or what he is doing. Everything thereafter is about Dionysiac ritual and initiation.

Dionysus goes into the palace and shouts descriptions of the magical occurrences happening inside (gods never go inside in Greek tragedy). The chorus give an emotive reaction. Ancient rituals always begin with absolute darkness to separate one from one's identity and the light appearing represents a god coming or a miracle happening. Dionysus in the palace represents this initiation. Pentheus' reaction is diametrically opposed to the chorus'; he tries to fight against it and doesn't understand it.

The messenger constantly corrects Pentheus. The messenger relates the happiness and relaxation of the Bacchae to Pentheus, but warn that they are violent when attacked (they later attack all symbols of civilisation against the shepherds). Dionysus becomes a mystagogue, leading Pentheus through the last part of the initiation process at around line 677. The stages of initiation are related - clothing, a journey. Pentheus has eros, a sexual desire, to see the women on the mountains. Pentheus surrenders his masculinity to go to the mountain, although Pentheus and Dionysus use military language, emphasising Pentheus' role as a spy rather than a woman. Dionysus' plan comes at lines 717-727. He seems to display pleasure and amusement at Pentheus' punishment (humiliation and death), and remember that Pentheus is Dionysus' cousin. The play uses black comedy.

Pentheus sees two Dionysuses at line 777. Dionysus is actually two people - Pentheus' view and his own view. Pentheus is dressed like a sacrificial animal. Black humour shows Dionysus' enjoyment of Pentheus' humiliation. Pentheus hasn't changed, however. He still believes the women are sinning (815).

The messenger scene is a doublet of the earlier messenger scene, one which describes the Bacchae.

Pentheus moves through different levels identification with Dionysus; where Dionysus pulls down the pine tree (symbol of Dionysus and thyrsus) for Pentheus to sit on, the representation is of Dionysus' erection with Pentheus at his mercy. The scapegoating ritual means taking an animal and driving it out in a representation of the cleansing of the city. The bacchants throw stones at Pentheus like the scapegoat. Euripides makes the dismemberment scene as grotesque as possible. Pentheus pleads with his mother, to no avail. The body parts are scattered. It is grotesque for the Dionysia because 1. the Greeks considered human sacrifice as vile, and 2. after ripping the animal apart they eat the meat raw (one bacchant goes to the mountain with a foot). Cannibalism was a taboo subject for the Greeks, but Dionysus relishes in this description.

Euripides makes the punishment of Agave and Cadmus as vile as possible. See Cadmus' speech, 1079-81. Other Thebans are also punished by Dionysus. The recognition scene is the epiphany of Dionysus; Pentheus' head is placed on a thyrsus, and Cadmus and Agave acknowledge why they have been punished. Cadmus brings Agave out of her madness slowly by telling her to look on something else and to relate her past to him - this is the first mention of therapy in literature. Dionysus is restored to divinity at the end, by swinging on the machina of the Greek stage. Cadmus begs for mercy but Dionysus calmly refuses and seems to feel no sympathy. Cadmus says the gods should not resemble humans in their passions; he does not think that Dionysus was fair.

Euripides does not answer any questions, but stages issues with no answers. The nature of power is called into question - what is it, who has it (society, an individual or politicians) and how to control it. The worlds of Dionysus and Pentheus represent many oppositions (binary opposites), but which is most successful? One old and discounted view is that Euripides was writing about the awesome power of divinity (1150), rather than satirising the gods as usual, because he was close to death himself. But Dionysus' too human power, the extremity of the punishment and Dionysus' enjoyment of it disputes this theory. Perhaps Euripides simply wanted to portray the gods like humans, as beings who are not rational. Possibly the play represents the danger of suppressing the Dionysiac qualities within ourselves. Is it about the struggle between old and new religion? It could be an attempt to blur the divisions between male and female by demonstrating the destruction that can happen when rigid gender constructions collide. It could be about political power being taken over by an outsider. Or it could be a tragic view of life in general.