LICEO CLASSICO “GIULIO CESARE” - RIMINI

Materials for English Literature

Form 3 B

Prof. Fabio Pesaresi

a.s. 2012 - 2013

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Poetry: the best words in the best order. (S.T. Coleridge)

William Blake

(…) Every night and every mornSome to misery are born,Every morn and every nightSome are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,Some are born to endless night.

(…)

Find examples of: rhyme, anaphora, parallel, chiasmus,

Rhythm

Night MailBy W.H. Auden

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,Bringing the cheque and the postal order,Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,The shop at the corner and the girl next door.Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:The gradient's against her, but she's on time.Past cotton-grass and moorland boulderShovelling white steam over her shoulder,Snorting noisily as she passesSilent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;They slumber on with paws across.In the farm she passes no one wakes,But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.Down towards Glasgow she descendsTowards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnacesSet on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.All Scotland waits for her:In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochsMen long for news.

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Letters of thanks, letters from banks,Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,Receipted bills and invitationsTo inspect new stock or visit relations,And applications for situationsAnd timid lovers' declarationsAnd gossip, gossip from all the nations,News circumstantial, news financial,Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,Letters to Scotland from the South of France,Letters of condolence to Highlands and LowlandsNotes from overseas to HebridesWritten on paper of every hue,The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,Clever, stupid, short and long,The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleepDreaming of terrifying monsters,Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,Asleep in granite Aberdeen,They continue their dreams,And shall wake soon and long for letters,And none will hear the postman's knockWithout a quickening of the heart,For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

What is poetry about?Maya Angelou

Come. And Be My Baby

The highway is full of big cars going nowhere fast And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn Some people wrap their lives around a cocktail glass And you sit wondering where you’re going to turn I got it. Come. And be my baby.

Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow But others say we've got a week or two The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror And you sit wondering

what you’re gonna do. I got it. Come. And be my baby.

John Cooper Clarke

I Wanna Be Yours

let me be your vacuum cleaner breathing in your dust let me be your ford cortina i will never rust if you like your coffee hot let me be your coffee pot you call the shots

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i wanna be yours

let me be your raincoat for those frequent rainy days let me be your dreamboat when you wanna sail away let me be your teddy bear take me with you anywhere i don’t care i wanna be yours

let me be your electric meter i will not run out let me be the electric heater you get cold without let me be your setting lotion hold your hair with deep devotion deep as the deep atlantic ocean that’s how deep is my emotion deep deep deep deep de deep deep i don’t wanna be hers i wanna be yours

Lullaby (Rosemary Norman)

  Go to sleep, Mum, I won't stop breathing suddenly, in the night.   Go to sleep, I won't

climb out of my cot and tumble downstairs.   Mum, I won't swallow the pills the doctor gave you or put hairpins in electric sockets, just go to sleep.   I won't cry when you take me to school and leave me: I'll be happy with other children my own age.   Sleep, Mum, sleep. I won't fall in the pond, play with matches, run under a lorry or even consider sweets from strangers.   No, I won't give you a lot of lip, not like some.   I won't sniff glue, fail all my exams, get myself/ my girlfriend pregnant. I'll work hard and get a steady/ really worthwhile job. I promise, go to sleep.   I'll never forget to drop in/phone/write and if I need any milk, I'll yell.  

Lullaby by Rosemary Norman

What is the poem about?A child addresses his/her mother, trying to reassure her and persuade her not to worry. Each stanza refers to a different age in childhood - the newborn, the baby, the toddler, the first day at school, primary school age, adolescence, leaving school and then leaving home.

The parentThe mother who is the focus of this poem is the caring, worrying, over-anxious protective mother whose concerns and worries for her child are practically universal. You can hear the mother's voice in some of the phrases used by the child in which there is a sense of mimicry: " I won't/give you a lot of lip/not like some" and "a really worthwhile job".

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The childThe universal child (it is made clear that this child represents both sons and daughters in lines 25 - 26) is being gently mocking as she/he tries to reassure his/her mother that she has been well brought up and is prepared to face the world alone without a mother fussing around. The child is also trying to reassure his/her mother that they are aware of danger and know how to keep themselves safe.

The tone of the poemThe poem has the sound of a lullaby - the "Go to sleep" beginning, the repetition, the lulling pattern of "Sleep, Mum, sleep" - but, of course, it is a lullaby on its head as mothers sing lullabies to their babies. Which is, of course, where the poem begins, at the cot side of the newborn.

The shape of the poemA long, thin poem, divided into stanzas, each one dealing with a different part of childhood. It is also circular in its ideas - the new grown-up leaving home promising, "if/I need any milk, I'll yell" which revisits babyhood with its yelling for milk as well as linking with the milk for tea and coffee in independence. This could be seen as ironic - for the mother can't sleep when the baby's yelling for milk!The poet uses list form to great effect, particularly in stanzas 3, 5 and 7, as the worries increase in number and magnitude as the child grows.

Some examples of the poet's specific use of languageThe poet uses friendly, colloquial language - "Mum" "won't" "drop in" to create a sense of snug intimacy

You can really hear the timing and expression of a young person when the poem is read aloud - the emphasis in "Go to sleep, Mum" and "Mum, I won't swallow/the pills the doctor gave you". There's a sense of exasperation about "..or even consider/Sweets from strangers".

The poet reflects the alliteration of everyday speech to create aural emphasis: "climb out of my cot" "sweets from strangers", and "a lot of lip".

The poet breaks with convention and uses the oblique (forward slash) to separate yet join words "myself/my girlfriend" - this shows that the poem is not seen as spoken by any specific boy or girl. Another example is "I won't forget/to drop in/phone/write" - this reflects the way people speak which isn't in formal sentences!

A last thought: the poet is a woman. Is the poet a mother? Is the poet a mother reassuring herself by telling herself what she would like to hear? A mother's lullaby to herself?

What now?

You have to make up your own mind about this poem. How do you see the relationship being described here? What do you like about the poem and why? (Think about descriptions and uses of language.) Which poems would you compare it with? (Look at Samuel, Catrin and Nettles)

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Beowulf

Plot OverviewKING HROTHGAR OF DENMARK, a descendant of the great king Shield Sheafson, enjoys a prosperous and successful reign. He builds a great mead-hall, called Heorot, where his warriors can gather to drink, receive gifts from their lord, and listen to stories sung by the scops, or bards. But the jubilant noise from Heorot angers Grendel, a horrible demon who lives in the swamplands of Hrothgar’s kingdom. Grendel terrorizes the Danes every night, killing them and defeating their efforts to fight back. The Danes suffer many years of fear, danger, and death at the hands of Grendel. Eventually, however, a young Geatish warrior named Beowulf hears of Hrothgar’s plight. Inspired by the challenge, Beowulf sails to Denmark with a small company of men, determined to defeat Grendel.Hrothgar, who had once done a great favor for Beowulf’s father Ecgtheow, accepts Beowulf’s offer to fight Grendel and holds a feast in the hero’s honor. During the feast, an envious Dane named Unferth taunts Beowulf and accuses him of being unworthy of his reputation. Beowulf responds with a boastful description of some of his past accomplishments. His confidence cheers the Danish warriors, and the feast lasts merrily into the night. At last, however, Grendel arrives. Beowulf fights him unarmed, proving himself stronger than the demon, who is terrified. As Grendel struggles to escape, Beowulf tears the monster’s arm off. Mortally wounded, Grendel slinks back into the swamp to die. The severed arm is hung high in the mead-hall as a trophy of victory.Overjoyed, Hrothgar showers Beowulf with gifts and treasure at a feast in his honor. Songs are sung in praise of Beowulf, and the celebration lasts late into the night. But another threat is approaching. Grendel’s mother, a swamp-

hag who lives in a desolate lake, comes to Heorot seeking revenge for her son’s death. She murders Aeschere, one of Hrothgar’s most trusted advisers, before slinking away. To avenge Aeschere’s death, the company travels to the murky swamp, where Beowulf dives into the water and fights Grendel’s mother in her underwater lair. He kills her with a sword forged for a giant, then, finding Grendel’s corpse, decapitates it and brings the head as a prize to Hrothgar. The Danish countryside is now purged of its treacherous monsters.The Danes are again overjoyed, and Beowulf’s fame spreads across the kingdom. Beowulf departs after a sorrowful goodbye to Hrothgar, who has treated him like a son. He returns to Geatland, where he and his men are reunited with their king and queen, Hygelac and Hygd, to whom Beowulf recounts his adventures in Denmark. Beowulf then hands over most of his treasure to Hygelac, who, in turn, rewards him.In time, Hygelac is killed in a war against the Shylfings, and, after Hygelac’s son dies, Beowulf ascends to the throne of the Geats. He rules wisely for fifty years, bringing prosperity to Geatland. When Beowulf is an old man, however, a thief disturbs a barrow, or mound, where a great dragon lies guarding a horde of treasure. Enraged, the dragon emerges from the barrow and begins unleashing fiery destruction upon the Geats. Sensing his own death approaching, Beowulf goes to fight the dragon. With the aid of Wiglaf, he succeeds in killing the beast, but at a heavy cost. The dragon bites Beowulf in the neck, and its fiery venom kills him moments after their encounter. The Geats fear that their enemies will attack them now that Beowulf is dead. According to Beowulf’s wishes, they burn their departed king’s body on a huge funeral pyre and then bury him with a massive treasure in a barrow overlooking the sea.

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THE SEAFARER

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This tale is true, and mine. It tells How the sea took me, swept me back And forth in sorrow and fear and pain, Showed me suffering in a hundred ships, In a thousand ports, and in me. It tells Of smashing surf when I sweated in the cold Of an anxious watch, perched in the bow As it dashed under cliffs. My feet were cast In icy bands, bound with frost, With frozen chains, and hardship groaned Around my heart. Hunger tore At my sea-weary soul. No man sheltered On the quiet fairness of earth can feel How wretched I was, drifting through winter On an ice-cold sea, whirled in sorrow, Alone in a world blown clear of love, Hung with icicles. The hailstorms flew. The only sound was the roaring sea, The freezing waves. The song of the swan Might serve for pleasure, the cry of the sea- fowl, The death-noise of birds instead of laughter, The mewing of gulls instead of mead. Storms beat on the rocky cliffs and were echoed By ice-feathered terns and the eagles screams; No kinsman could offer comfort there, To a soul left drowning in desolation. And who could believe, knowing but The passion of cities, swelled proud with wine And no taste of misfortune, how often, how wearily, I put myself back on the paths of the sea, Night would blacken; it would snow from the north;

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Frost bound the earth and hail would fall, The coldest seeds. And how my heart Would begin to beat, knowing once more The salt waves tossing and the towering sea! The time for journeys would come and my soul Called me eagerly out, sent me over The horizon, seeking foreigners' homes.

But there isn't a man on earth so proud, So born to greatness, so bold with his youth, Grown so grave, or so graced by God, That he feels no fear as the sails unfurl, Wondering what Fate has willed and will do. No harps ring in his heart, no rewards, No passion for women, no worldly pleasures, Nothing, only the oceans heave; But longing wraps itself around him. Orchards blossom, the towns bloom, Fields grow lovely as the world springs fresh, And all these admonish that willing mind Leaping to journeys, always set In thoughts travelling on a quickening tide So summer's sentinel, the cuckoo, sings In his murmuring voice, and our hearts mourn As he urges. Who could understand, In ignorant ease, what we others suffer As the path of exile stretch endlessly on?

And yet my heart wanders away, My soul roams with the sea, the whales' Home, wandering to the widest corners Of the world, returning ravenous with desire, Flying solitary, screaming, exciting me To the open ocean, breaking oaths On the curve of a wave.

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The Ballad

Traditional Poetic Form:

Normally a short narrative arranged into four line stanzas with a memorable meter. Typical ballad meter is a first and third line with four stresses (iambic tetrameter) and then a second

and fourth line with three stresses (iambic trimeter). The rhyme scheme is typically abab or abcb. Often uses colloquialisms to enhance the story telling (and sometimes to alter the rhyme scheme). A Ballad is usually meant to be sung or recited in musical form. Contains iambic pentameter.

Greensleeves

Alas, my love, you do me wrong,To cast me off discourteously.For I have loved you so long,Delighting in your company.

Chorus:Greensleeves was all my joyGreensleeves was my delight,Greensleeves was my heart of gold,And who but my Lady Greensleeves.

I have been ready at your hand,To grant whatever you would crave,I have both wagered life and land,Your love and good-will for to have.

Well, I will pray to God on high,that thou my constancy mayst see,And that yet once before I die,Thou wilt vouchsafe to love me.

The Unquiet Grave

Cold blows the wind tonight my love Cold are the drops of rain I only had one but true-love, And in greenwood she lies slain.

I'll do as much for my true-love As any young man may; I'll sit and mourn upon her grave For twelve months and a day.

The twelve months and a day veing o'er, A voice cries from the deep; "Who is it weeps upon my grave, And will not let me sleep? "

"'Tis I, 'tis I, your own true-love Who sits upon your grave, 'Til I have one kiss from your cold lips, No comfort will I have. "

"My lips are cold as clay my love, My breath is earthy strong, And if you had one kiss from my cold lips, Then your time would not be long.

O down in yonder shady grove, Love, where we used to walk, The fairest flower that groweth there Is withered to a stalk.

And the stalk is withered dry true-love So will our hearts decay. So make yourself content my love,

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"Til Death calls you away. "HENRY MARTYN

There were three brothers in merry Scotland,In merry Scotland they were three And they did cast lots which of them should go, should go, should go And turn robber all on the salt sea.

The lot it fell first upon Henry Martyn,The youngest of all the three;That he should turn robber all on the salt sea, the salt sea, the salt sea For to maintain his two brothers and he. He had not been sailing but a long winter’s nightAnd a part of a short winter’s day When he espied a stout lofty ship, lofty ship, lofty ship Come a-bibbing down on him straightway.

"Hullo! Hullo!", cried Henry Martyn,"What makes you sail so nigh?""I’m a rich merchant ship bound for fair London town, London town, London town,Will you please for to let me pass by?"

"Oh no! Oh no!" cried Henry Martyn,"That thing it never could be;For I am turn’d robber all on the salt sea, the salt sea, the salt sea For to maintain my two brothers and me.

"Come lower your topsail and brail up your mizz’nAnd bring your ship under my lee, Or I will give you a full cannon ball, cannon ball, cannon ball And your dear bodies drown in the salt sea."

"Oh no! We won’t lower our lofty topsail Nor bow ourselvers under your lee,And you shan’t take from us our rich merchant goods, merchant goods, merchant goods Nor point our bold guns to the sea."

With broadside and broadside and at it they wentFor fully two hours or three,Till Henry Martyn gave to them the death shot, the death shot, the death shot And straight to the bottom went she.

Bad news, bad news to old England came,Bad news to fair London town:There’s been a rich vessel and she’s cast away, cast away, cast awayAnd all of the merry men drown’d.

HENRY MARTYN

C’erano tre fratelli nella bella Scozia, Nella bella Scozia ce n’erano tre, Tirarono a sorte chi di loro dovesse andare, andare, andare, E diventar un pirata sul mare salato.

La sorte decise che Henry Martyn, Che era il minore dei tre, Diventasse un pirata sul mare salato, salato, salato Per mantenere i fratelli e se stesso.

Non aveva navigato che una lunga notte d’inverno E una parte d’un breve giorno invernale Quando scorse una fiera e superba nave, una nave, una nave Che gli si parava incontro impavesata.

"Ehilà Ehilà!" gridò Henry Martyn, "Qual buon vento vi porta qui?" "Siamo una ricca nave mercantile che va a Londra, a Londra, a Londra Per favore, ci lasciate passare?"

"No di certo!", gridò Henry Martyn, "Questo proprio non lo posso fare! Perché son diventato pirata sul mare

salato, salato, salato Per mantenere i miei fratelli e me stesso.

"Ammainate la vela di gabbia e alate la mezzana E portatemi la vostra nave sottovento, Oppure vi sparo una bella cannonata, cannonata, cannonata E i vostri cari corpi annegheranno nel mare salato."

"No che non ammaineremo la vela di gabbia E neanche aleremo la mezzana; Tu non ci ruberai le nostre ricche mercanzie, mercanzie, mercanzie Né farai volgere i nostri cannoni verso il mare."

E combatterono fianco contro fianco Per due ore piene, o forse tre, Finché Henry Martyn non li colpì a morte, a morte, a morte E la nave colò subito a picco.

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Cattive notizie giunsero nella vecchia Inghilterra, Cattive notizie a Londra la bella: C’era una ricca nave e ora è

andata perduta, perduta, perduta E tutto l’equipaggio è annegato.

GEORDIE

As I walked out over London bridge One misty morning early, I overheard a fair pretty maid Was lamenting for her Geordie.

Ah, my Geordie will be hanged in a golden chain, 'Tis not the chain of many He was born of king's royal breed And lost to a virtuous lady.

Go bridle me my milk white steed, Go bridle me my pony, I will ride to London court To plead for the life of my Geordie.

Ah, my Geordie never stole nor cow nor calf, He never hurted any, Stole sixteen of the king's royal deer, And he sold them in Bohenny.

Two pretty babies have I born, The third lies in my body, I'd freely part with them every one If you'd spare the life of Geordie.

The judge looked over his left shoulder, He said fair maid I'm sorry He said fair maid you must be gone For I cannot pardon Geordie.

Ah, my Geordie will be hanged in a golden chain, 'Tis not the chain of many, Stole sixteen of the king's royal deer And he sold them in Bohenny.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

ContextTHE ALLITERATIVE POEM Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, likely written in the mid to late fourteenth century, survives in a late-fourteenth-century manuscript with three other poems—Pearl, Purity, and Patience—by the same author. Very little is known about the author of these poems, but most scholars believe him to have been a university-trained clerk or the official of a provincial estate (this SparkNote refers to him as the “Pearl-poet” or the “Gawain-poet”). Though it cannot be said with certainty that one person wrote all four poems, some shared characteristics point toward common authorship and also suggest that the Gawain-poet may have written another poem, called St. Erkenwald, that exists in a separate manuscript. All the poems except Sir Gawain and the Green Knight deal with overtly Christian subject matter, and it remains unclear why Sir Gawain, an Arthurian romance, was included in an otherwise religious manuscript.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in a dialect of Middle English that links it with Britain’s Northwest Midlands, probably the county of Cheshire or Lancashire. The English provinces of the late fourteenth century, although they did not have London’s economic, political, and artistic centrality, were not necessarily less culturally active than London, where Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland were writing at the time. In fact, the works of the Gawain-poet belong to a type of literature traditionally known as the Alliterative Revival, usually associated with northern England. Contrary to what the name of the movement suggests, the alliterative meter of Old English had not actually disappeared and therefore did not need reviving. Nevertheless, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight exists as a testament that the style continued well into the fourteenth century, if not in London, then in the provinces.Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’s adapted Old English meter tends to

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connect the two halves of each poetic line through alliteration, or repetition of consonants. The poem also uses rhyme to structure its stanzas, and each group of long alliterative lines concludes with a word or phrase containing two syllables and a quatrain—known together as the “bob and wheel.” The phrase “bob and wheel” derives from a technique used when spinning cloth—the bobs and wheels in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight help to spin the plot and narrative together in intricate ways. They provide commentaries on what has just happened, create or fulfill moments of suspense, and serve as transitions to the next scene or idea.Told in four “fitts,” or parts, the poem weaves together at least three separate narrative strings commonly found in medieval folklore and romance. The first plot, the beheading game, appears in ancient folklore and may derive from pagan myths related to the agricultural cycles of planting and harvesting crops. The second and third plots concern the exchange of winnings and the hero’s temptation; both of these plots derive from medieval romances and dramatize tests of the hero’s honesty, loyalty, and chastity. As the story unfolds, we discover that the three apparently separate plotlines intersect in surprising ways.A larger story that frames the narrative is that of Morgan le Faye’s traditional hatred for Arthur and his court, called Camelot. Morgan, Arthur’s half sister and a powerful sorceress, usually appears in legend as an enemy of the Round Table. Indeed, medieval readers knew of Morgan’s role in the destined fall of Camelot, the perfect world depicted in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.The poem’s second frame is a historical one. The poem begins and ends with references to the myth of Britain’s lineage from the ancient city of Troy, by way of Britain’s Trojan founder, Brutus. These references root the Arthurian romance in the tradition of epic literature, older and more elevated than the tradition of courtly literature, and link fourteenth-century England to Rome, which was also founded by a Trojan (Aeneas). Thus, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight presents us with a version of translatio imperii—a Latin phrase referring to the transfer of culture from one civilization (classical antiquity, in

this case) to another (medieval England). The Gawain-poet at times adopts an ironic tone, but he also displays a deep investment in elevating his country’s legends, history, and literary forms—especially Arthurian romance—by relating them directly to classical antiquity.

Plot OverviewDURING A NEW YEAR’S EVE FEAST at King Arthur’s court, a strange figure, referred to only as the Green Knight, pays the court an unexpected visit. He challenges the group’s leader or any other brave representative to a game. The Green Knight says that he will allow whomever accepts the challenge to strike him with his own axe, on the condition that the challenger find him in exactly one year to receive a blow in return.Stunned, Arthur hesitates to respond, but when the Green Knight mocks Arthur’s silence, the king steps forward to take the challenge. As soon as Arthur grips the Green Knight’s axe, Sir Gawain leaps up and asks to take the challenge himself. He takes hold of the axe and, in one deadly blow, cuts off the knight’s head. To the amazement of the court, the now-headless Green Knight picks up his severed head. Before riding away, the head reiterates the terms of the pact, reminding the young Gawain to seek him in a year and a day at the Green Chapel. After the Green Knight leaves, the company goes back to its festival, but Gawain is uneasy.Time passes, and autumn arrives. On the Day of All Saints, Gawain prepares to leave Camelot and find the Green Knight. He puts on his best armor, mounts his horse, Gringolet, and starts off toward North Wales, traveling through the wilderness of northwest Britain. Gawain encounters all sorts of beasts, suffers from hunger and cold, and grows more desperate as the days pass. On Christmas Day, he prays to find a place to hear Mass, then looks up to see a castle shimmering in the distance. The lord of the castle welcomes Gawain warmly, introducing him to his lady and to the old woman who sits beside her. For sport, the host (whose name is later revealed to be Bertilak) strikes a deal with Gawain: the host will go out hunting with his men every day, and when he returns in the evening, he will exchange his winnings for anything

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Gawain has managed to acquire by staying behind at the castle. Gawain happily agrees to the pact, and goes to bed.The first day, the lord hunts a herd of does, while Gawain sleeps late in his bedchambers. On the morning of the first day, the lord’s wife sneaks into Gawain’s chambers and attempts to seduce him. Gawain puts her off, but before she leaves she steals one kiss from him. That evening, when the host gives Gawain the venison he has captured, Gawain kisses him, since he has won one kiss from the lady. The second day, the lord hunts a wild boar. The lady again enters Gawain’s chambers, and this time she kisses Gawain twice. That evening Gawain gives the host the two kisses in exchange for the boar’s head.The third day, the lord hunts a fox, and the lady kisses Gawain three times. She also asks him for a love token, such as a ring or a glove. Gawain refuses to give her anything and refuses to take anything from her, until the lady mentions her girdle. The green silk girdle she wears around her waist is no ordinary piece of cloth, the lady claims, but possesses the magical ability to protect the person who wears it from death. Intrigued, Gawain accepts the cloth, but when it comes time to exchange his winnings with the host, Gawain gives the three kisses but does not mention the lady’s green girdle. The host gives Gawain the fox skin he won that day, and they all go to bed happy, but weighed down with the fact that Gawain must leave for the Green Chapel the following morning to find the Green Knight.New Year’s Day arrives, and Gawain dons his armor, including the girdle, then sets off with Gringolet to seek the Green Knight. A guide accompanies him out of the estate grounds. When they reach the border of the forest, the guide promises not to tell anyone if Gawain decides to give up the quest. Gawain refuses, determined to meet his fate head-on. Eventually, he comes to a kind of crevice in a rock, visible through the tall grasses. He hears the whirring of a grindstone, confirming his suspicion that this strange cavern is in fact the Green Chapel. Gawain calls out, and the Green Knight emerges to greet him. Intent on fulfilling the terms of the contract, Gawain presents his neck to the Green Knight, who proceeds to feign two blows. On the third feint, the Green

Knight nicks Gawain’s neck, barely drawing blood. Angered, Gawain shouts that their contract has been met, but the Green Knight merely laughs.The Green Knight reveals his name, Bertilak, and explains that he is the lord of the castle where Gawain recently stayed. Because Gawain did not honestly exchange all of his winnings on the third day, Bertilak drew blood on his third blow. Nevertheless, Gawain has proven himself a worthy knight, without equal in all the land. When Gawain questions Bertilak further, Bertilak explains that the old woman at the castle is really Morgan le Faye, Gawain’s aunt and King Arthur’s half sister. She sent the Green Knight on his original errand and used her magic to change Bertilak’s appearance. Relieved to be alive but extremely guilty about his sinful failure to tell the whole truth, Gawain wears the girdle on his arm as a reminder of his own failure. He returns to Arthur’s court, where all the knights join Gawain, wearing girdles on their arms to show their support.

Analysis of Major CharactersSir Gawain Though Gawain and Guinevere share the high table at the New Year’s celebration in Arthur’s court, he describes himself as the least of Arthur’s knights in terms of both physical prowess and mental ability. His modest claim to inferiority and his high status at court—he is Arthur’s nephew and one of Camelot’s most famous knights—testify to both his humility and his ambition. Gawain seeks to improve his inner self throughout the poem. After Gawain arrives at Bertilak’s castle in Part 2, it is evident that his reputation is quite widespread. To Gawain, his public reputation is as important as his own opinion of himself, and he therefore insists on wearing the green girdle as a sign of shame at the story’s end. He believes that sins should be as visible as virtues.

Even though the Green Knight essentially tricks Gawain by not telling him about his supernatural abilities before asking Gawain to agree to his terms, Gawain refuses to back out of their deal. He stands by his commitments absolutely, even when it means jeopardizing his own life. The poem frequently reiterates

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Gawain’s deep fears and anxieties, but Gawain’s desire to maintain his personal integrity at all costs enables him to conquer his fears in his quest for the Green Knight.Gawain is a paragon of virtue in Parts 1 and 2 of the poem. But in Part 3 he conceals from his host the magical green girdle that the host’s wife gives him, revealing that, despite his bravery, Gawain values his own life more than his honesty. Ultimately, however, Gawain confesses his sin to the knight and begs to be pardoned; thereafter, he voluntarily wears the girdle as a symbol of his sin. Because Gawain repents of his sin in such an honorable manner, his one indiscretion in the poem actually ends up being an example of his basic goodness.Gawain is not a static character. In his encounter with the Green Knight, he recognizes the problematic nature of courtly ideals. When he returns to Arthur’s court at Camelot, the other lords and ladies still look to him like lighthearted children, but Gawain is weighed down by a new somberness. Though he survives his quest, Gawain emerges at the end of the poem as a humbled man who realizes his own faults and has to live with the fact that he will never live up to his own high standards.The Green Knight (also known as Bertilak de Hautdesert and the Host) The Green Knight is a mysterious, supernatural creature. He rides into Arthur’s court on New Year’s Eve almost as if summoned by the king’s request to hear a marvelous story. His supernatural characteristics, such as his ability to survive decapitation and his green complexion, immediately mark him as a foreboding figure. The Green Knight contrasts with Arthur’s court in many ways. The knight symbolizes the wildness, fertility, and death that characterize a primeval world, whereas the court symbolizes an enclave of civilization within the wilderness. But, like the court, the Green Knight strongly advocates the values of the law and justice. And though his long hair suggests an untamed, natural state, his hair is cut into the shape of a courtly garment, suggesting that part of his function is to establish a relationship between wilderness and civilization, past and present.

At Gawain’s scheduled beheading, the Green Knight reveals that he is also the host with whom Gawain stayed after his journeys through the wilderness, and that he is known as Bertilak de Hautdesert. As the host, we know Bertilak to be a courteous, jovial man who enjoys hunting for sport and playing games. A well-respected and middle-aged lord, the host contrasts with the beardless Arthur. In fact, his beard is “beaver-hued,” a feature which associates the host with the Green Knight. Other clues exist in the text to connect the host with the Green Knight. For instance, both the Green Knight and the host value the power of verbal contracts. Each makes a covenant with Gawain, and the two agreements overlap at the end of the poem.Bertilak’s wife -  Bertilak’s wife attempts to seduce Gawain on a daily basis during his stay at the castle. Though the poem presents her to the reader as no more than a beautiful young woman, Bertilak’s wife is an amazingly clever debater and an astute reader of Gawain’s responses as she argues her way through three attempted seductions. Flirtatious and intelligent, Bertilak’s wife ultimately turns out to be another pawn in Morgan le Faye’s plot.Morgan le Faye  -  The Arthurian tradition typically portrays Morgan as a powerful sorceress, trained by Merlin, as well as the half sister of King Arthur. Not until the last one hundred lines do we discover that the old woman at the castle is Morgan le Faye and that she has controlled the poem’s entire action from beginning to end. As she often does in Arthurian literature, Morgan appears as an enemy of Camelot, one who aims to cause as much trouble for her half brother and his followers as she can.King Arthur -  The king of Camelot. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Arthur is young and beardless, and his court is in its golden age. Arthur’s refusal to eat until he hears a fantastic tale shows the petulance of youth, as does Arthur’s initial stunned response to the Green Knight’s challenge. However, like a good king, Arthur soon steps forward to take on the challenge. At the story’s end, Arthur joins his nephew in wearing a green girdle on his arm, showing that Gawain’s trial has taught him about his own fallibility.

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Queen Guinevere -  Arthur’s wife. The beautiful young Guinevere of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight seems to have little in common with the one of later Arthurian legend. She sits next to Gawain at the New Year’s feast and remains a silent, objectified presence in the midst of the knights of the Round Table.

Themes, Motifs & SymbolsThemesThemes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.The Nature of Chivalry The world of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is governed by well-defined codes of behavior. The code of chivalry, in particular, shapes the values and actions of Sir Gawain and other characters in the poem. The ideals of chivalry derive from the Christian concept of morality, and the proponents of chivalry seek to promote spiritual ideals in a spiritually fallen world.

The ideals of Christian morality and knightly chivalry are brought together in Gawain’s symbolic shield. The pentangle represents the five virtues of knights: friendship, generosity, chastity, courtesy, and piety. Gawain’s adherence to these virtues is tested throughout the poem, but the poem examines more than Gawain’s personal virtue; it asks whether heavenly virtue can operate in a fallen world. What is really being tested in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight might be the chivalric system itself, symbolized by Camelot.Arthur’s court depends heavily on the code of chivalry, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight gently criticizes the fact that chivalry values appearance and symbols over truth. Arthur is introduced to us as the “most courteous of all,” indicating that people are ranked in this court according to their mastery of a certain code of behavior and good manners. When the Green Knight challenges the court, he mocks them for being so afraid of mere words, suggesting that words and appearances hold too much power over the company. The members of the court never reveal their true feelings, instead choosing to seem beautiful, courteous, and fair-spoken.On his quest for the Green Chapel, Gawain travels from Camelot into the wilderness. In the forest, Gawain must abandon the codes of chivalry and admit that his animal

nature requires him to seek physical comfort in order to survive. Once he prays for help, he is rewarded by the appearance of a castle. The inhabitants of Bertilak’s castle teach Gawain about a kind of chivalry that is more firmly based in truth and reality than that of Arthur’s court. These people are connected to nature, as their hunting and even the way the servants greet Gawain by kneeling on the “naked earth” symbolize (818). As opposed to the courtiers at Camelot, who celebrate in Part 1 with no understanding of how removed they are from the natural world, Bertilak’s courtiers joke self-consciously about how excessively lavish their feast is (889–890).The poem does not by any means suggest that the codes of chivalry be abandoned. Gawain’s adherence to them is what keeps him from sleeping with his host’s wife. The lesson Gawain learns as a result of the Green Knight’s challenge is that, at a basic level, he is just a physical being who is concerned above all else with his own life. Chivalry provides a valuable set of ideals toward which to strive, but a person must above all remain conscious of his or her own mortality and weakness. Gawain’s time in the wilderness, his flinching at the Green Knight’s axe, and his acceptance of the lady’s offering of the green girdle teach him that though he may be the most chivalrous knight in the land, he is nevertheless human and capable of error.The Letter of the Law Though the Green Knight refers to his challenge as a “game,” he uses the language of the law to bind Gawain into an agreement with him. He repeatedly uses the word “covenant,” meaning a set of laws, a word that evokes the two covenants represented by the Old and the New Testaments. The Old Testament details the covenant made between God and the people of Israel through Abraham, but the New Testament replaces the old covenant with a new covenant between Christ and his followers. In 2 Corinthians 3:6, Paul writes that Christ has “a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The “letter” to which Paul refers here is the legal system of the Old Testament. From this statement comes the Christian belief that the literal enforcement of the law is less important than serving its spirit, a spirit tempered by mercy.

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Throughout most of the poem, the covenant between Gawain and the Green Knight evokes the literal kind of legal enforcement that medieval Europeans might have associated with the Old Testament. The Green Knight at first seems concerned solely with the letter of the law. Even though he has tricked Gawain into their covenant, he expects Gawain to follow through on the agreement. And Gawain, though he knows that following the letter of the law means death, is determined to see his agreement through to the end because he sees this as his knightly duty.At the poem’s end, the covenant takes on a new meaning and resembles the less literal, more merciful New Testament covenant between Christ and his Church. In a decidedly Christian gesture, the Green Knight, who is actually Gawain’s host, Bertilak, absolves Gawain because Gawain has confessed his faults. To remind Gawain of his weakness, the Green Knight gives him a penance, in the form of the wound on his neck and the girdle. The Green Knight punishes Gawain for breaking his covenant to share all his winnings with his host, but he does not follow to the letter his covenant to decapitate Gawain. Instead of chopping Gawain’s head off, Bertilak calls it his right to spare Gawain and only nicks his neck.Ultimately, Gawain clings to the letter of the law. He cannot accept his sin and absolve himself of it the way Bertilak has, and he continues to do penance by wearing the girdle for the rest of his life. The Green Knight transforms his literal covenant by offering Gawain justice tempered with mercy, but the letter of the law still threatens in the story’s background, and in Gawain’s own psyche.Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.The Seasons At the beginning of Parts 2 and 4, the poet describes the changing of the seasons. The seasonal imagery in Part 2 precedes Gawain’s departure from Camelot, and in Part 4 his departure from the host’s castle. In both cases, the changing seasons correspond to Gawain’s changing psychological state, from cheerfulness (pleasant weather) to bleakness (the

winter). But the five changing seasons also correspond to the five ages of man (birth/infancy, youth, adulthood, middle age, and old age/death), as well as to the cycles of fertility and decay that govern all creatures in the natural world. The emphasis on the cyclical nature of the seasons contrasts with and provides a different understanding of the passage of time from the more linear narrative of history that frames the poem.Games When the poem opens, Arthur’s court is engaged in feast-time customs, and Arthur almost seems to elicit the Green Knight’s entrance by requesting that someone tell him a tale. When the Green Knight first enters, the courtiers think that his appearance signals a game of some sort. The Green Knight’s challenge, the host’s later challenge, and the wordplay that takes place between Gawain and the lady are all presented as games. The relationship between games and tests is explored because games are forms of social behavior, while tests provide a measure of an individual’s inner worth.Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.The Pentangle According to the Gawain-poet, King Solomon originally designed the five-pointed star as his own magic seal. A symbol of truth, the star has five points that link and lock with each other, forming what is called the endless knot. Each line of the pentangle passes over one line and under one line, and joins the other two lines at its ends. The pentangle symbolizes the virtues to which Gawain aspires: to be faultless in his five senses; never to fail in his five fingers; to be faithful to the five wounds that Christ received on the cross; to be strengthened by the five joys that the Virgin Mary had in Jesus (the Annunciation, Nativity, Resurrection, Ascension, and Assumption); and to possess brotherly love, courtesy, piety, and chastity. The side of the shield facing Gawain contains an image of the Virgin Mary to make sure that Gawain never loses heart.

The Green Girdle

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The meaning of the host’s wife’s girdle changes over the course of the narrative. It is made out of green silk and embroidered with gold thread, colors that link it to the Green Knight. She claims it possesses the power to keep its wearer from harm, but we find out in Part 4 that the girdle has no magical properties. After

the Green Knight reveals his identity as the host, Gawain curses the girdle as representing cowardice and an excessive love of mortal life. He wears it from then on as a badge of his sinfulness. To show their support, Arthur and his followers wear green silk baldrics that look just like Gawain’s girdle.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Canterbury Tales

The Reeve’s Prologue and Tale  

The only pilgrim who dislikes The Miller’s Tale is Oswald, the Reeve, who takes the story as a personal affront because he was once a carpenter. He tells the Miller that he will pay him back for such a story, and so he does.

A dishonest miller, who lives close to a college, steals corn and meal brought to his mill for grinding. One day, the manciple (or steward) of the college is too ill to go to the mill to watch the miller grind his corn, and, in his absence, the miller robs him outrageously.

Two students at the college, John and Alan, are enraged at the news of the theft and volunteer to take a sack of corn to the mill. When they arrive, they announce that they will watch the milling. The miller, sensing that the students want to prevent him from stealing, untethers the students’ horse. When John and Alan find the horse missing, they chase it until dark before catching it. Meanwhile, the miller empties half the flour from the sack and refills it with bran.

Because it is now dark, the boys ask the miller to put them up for the night. The miller, who has a wife, a twenty-year old daughter, and an infant son, agrees. Because the house is small, they all sleep in the same room but in separate beds: John and Alan in one bed, the Miller and his wife in another with the cradle beside, and the daughter in the third.

While the miller and his family sleep, John and Alan think of ways to get revenge. Suddenly, Alan announces that he is going to have that “wench there,” referring to the daughter. His logic is “If at one point a person be aggrieved / Then in another he shall be relieved” (“That gif a man in a point be agreved, / That in another he sal be releved”). John, however, stays in bed lamenting his condition; resolved finally to not spend the night alone, he gets up and quietly moves the baby and

cradle next to his bed. About this time, the miller’s wife gets up to relieve herself; returning to her bed, she feels for the baby’s cradle, which is now beside John’s bed. Thinking this her bed, she climbs in beside John, who immediately “tumbled on her, and on this goode wyf, he layed it on well.”

At dawn, Alan says goodbye to the daughter, who tells him where to find his stolen flour. When Alan goes to wake John, he discovers the cradle and, assuming that he has the wrong bed, hops into the miller’s bed. There, he tells John how he had the daughter three times during the night. “As I have thries in this shorte nyght / Swyved (screwed) the milleres doghter bolt upright.” The miller rises from his bed in a fury. The miller’s wife, thinking that the swearing is coming from one of the students, grabs a club and, mistaking her husband for one of the clerks, strikes him down. Alan and John gather their ground wheat and flour and flee the premises.

Commentary

 

The reader should keep in mind that the idea in one tale is often told to repay another. Thus, because the Reeve is upset over the Miller’s tale about a carpenter, the Reeve tells a tale whereby a miller is ridiculed and repaid for his cheating.

STYLE&LANGUAGE

Both tales deal with a seduction within the sanctity of the hearth (or household): In The Miller’s Tale, only the young wife is seduced. In The Reeve’s Tale, however, both the daughter and the wife are “swyved” (screwed) by the young students. As in The Miller’s Tale, a rough sort of poetic justice is meted out. The miller intends to cheat the students and ridicules their education when he tells them to try to make a hotel out of his small bedroom. During the course of the night, the students do, indeed, made a type of hotel (house of prostitution) out of his house.

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Furthermore, the tale includes wonderful medieval puns: John and Alan talk of the grinding of their meal in covertly sexual terms: “Grinding” or “grinding corn” was common fourteenth-century London slang for sexual intercourse (the Wife of Bath also talks of bread and grinding in the prologue to her tale).

The natures of The Miller’s Tale and The Reeve’s Tale again testify to the differences in their personalities. The Reeve, who in The Prologue is described as “old and choleric and thin,” tells a tale that reeks of bitterness and is less funny than The Miller’s Tale, partly because the Miller is a boisterous and jolly person.

The Prioress’ Prologue And Tale

Summary  

In her prologue, the Prioress offers a hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary. She extols Mary, the mother of Jesus and the “whitest Lily-flower.” This hymn acts as a preview of the tale to follow.

In a Christian town in Asia, one fourth of the area is occupied by Jews. Because a school for young Christian children is at the far end of the street through the ghetto where the Jews are isolated, the children are free to walk through the street to and from school. One of the young Christian pupils hears the older children singing O Alma Redemptoris. Day after day, he draws near and listens carefully as the other students sing. In very little time, he memorizes the first verse. Learning that the song is in praise of the Virgin Mary, the child decides to learn the entire song so that, on Christmas day, he can pay reverence to Christ’s mother. Every day, the child walks along the Jewish street, boldly and clearly singing the song. At about this time, Satan whispers to the Jews that this boy is a disgrace to them and that he sings to spite Jewish holy laws. The Jews, conspiring to rid themselves of this boy, hire a murderer. One day, as the child walks through the ghetto singing O Alma Redemptoris, the murderer grasps the child, slits his throat, and tosses his body into a cesspool.

The boy’s mother, a poor widow, goes house to house, inquiring of the Jews the whereabouts of her son. Yet everyone lies to her, saying they know nothing of the child. Then Jesus himself puts in her thoughts the direction to the alley where the child had been murdered and the pit where his body was cast away. As the widow nears the place, the child’s voice breaks forth singing O Alma Redemptoris. The Christian people gather around in astonishment. The provost of the city is called; upon seeing the child, he bids all the Jews to be fettered, bound, and confined. Later, they are drawn by wild horses and hanged.

The child’s body is taken to a neighboring abbey. As the burial mass draws near, the child continues to sing O Alma Redemptoris loudly and clearly. He then tells the abbots that Christ has commanded him to sing until his time for his burial and that the Virgin Mary placed a pearl on his tongue. The child explains that he must sing until the pearl in taken away. “[T]hen a holy monk … / Touched the child’s tongue and took away the pearl; And he gave up the ghost so peacefully, So softly.” (“This hooly monk … hym meene I, / His tonge out caughte, and took awey the greyn (pearl) / And he yaf up the goost ful softely.”)

The child is proclaimed a martyr, and a tomb of marble is erected as a memorial to the young boy, whose name was Hugh of Lincoln.

Commentary  

The Prioress’ prologue aptly fits the Prioress’ character and position. She is a nun whose order relies heavily upon the patronage of the Virgin Mary. Furthermore, her hymn to the Virgin Mary acts as a preview to the tale itself, which concerns the same type of hymn of praise, O Alma Redemptoris. The prologue also functions as an invocation—very similar to the style of invocation found in the great classic epics—in which the Prioress prays for help in narrating the greatness of the “blissful Queen” (the Virgin Mary).

The Prioress’ Tale shows the power of the meek and the poor who trust in Christ. The Prioress is a devoted and meek Christian lady (at least as she understands herself), and she begins by offering a prayer to Christ and especially to the Virgin Mary, the gist of which is that, because the Prioress is herself like a child, the Virgin must help her with this story in her honor.

To fully understand The Prioress’ Tale, one must first understand the background for tales such as these. In medieval England, the Christian hatred of Jews took the form of religious passion. This passion was periodically renewed by stories such as this one and passed along as true. This hatred has been expressed in such literary characters as Shylock (Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice), Rebeccah (Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe), and Fagin (Dickens’ Oliver Twist).

STYLE&LANGUAGE

In the tale, the Prioress sets up an opposition between Jews, whose concern is solely with the power of this world—especially money—and between the Christians, whose concerns are otherworldly. She insists from the start on the

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physical vulnerability of the Christian position. For example, the Christian school is small (“litel”), and the children are repeatedly called small or little (smale or litel); even the book the scholar in the tale reads is also “litel.” His mother is a widow and, by implication, poor and defenseless. But the

seeming power of the Jews, who can accumulate money and kill little children, is overwhelmed by the Virgin’s miracle of restoring the boy’s singing voice and also by treasures of the spirit symbolically represented by the pearl on the dead child’s tongue.

Everyman

Everyman, an allegorical figure of the every man, is summoned by the allegorical figure of death to journey to God to account for the life he has been lent. He discovers that his friends Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, Goods, and Knowledge will not go with him. It is Good Deeds (or Virtue), whom he previously neglected, who finally supports him and who offers to justify him before the throne of God.

Synopsis

A messenger tells the audience to listen well. God speaks to Death about the world's population and the way they sin without thought of consequence. God tells Death to go to Everyman and Death agrees, as he is God's servant. Death will make Everyman understand that by his sinning he has gone against God's wishes. Everyman tries to bribe Death and asks for more time. Death denies this request but tells Everyman he may find a companion for his journey, someone to speak for his good virtues. Fellowship happens along and promises to do anything to help sad Everyman; when Fellowship hears Everyman's request he denies him. Fellowship offers to play and have fun, but refuses to accompany Everyman.

Everyman then sees Kindred and Cousin and asks them to go with him. Kindred flat out refuses, saying he'd rather go to parties and Cousin says he has a cramp in his toe, so he can't go either. Everyman realizes he has put much love towards Goods and so Goods will surely come with him on his journey with Death. Goods will not come with Everyman; he says it is to Everyman's damnation that he put so much effort of his life to Goods and therefore Goods would make Everyman's case even worse. Good-Deeds says she would go with him, but she is too weak as Everyman has not loved her. Her sister, Knowledge will help her onto her feet and Knowledge tells Everyman he must also see Confession. Confession gives Everyman penance. This penance makes Good-Deeds strong enough to walk and she will now go forward with Everyman and help him make his case. Good-Deeds and Knowledge tell Everyman he must also call forward Discretion, Strength, Five-Wits and Beauty. They all agree to go with him, after he goes to a priest to take sacrament. Again, when Everyman tells them where his journey ends, all but Good-Deeds forsake him. A messenger then comes and tells the audience without good deeds every man would be punished eternally.

Fellowship

The day passeth, and is almost a-go;I wot not well what for to do.

To whom were I best my complaint do make?What, and I to Fellowship thereof spake,And show him of this sudden chance?For in him is all my affiance;We have in the world so many a dayBe on good friends in sport and play.I see him yonder, certainly;I trust that he will bear me company;Therefore to him will I speak to ease my sorrow.Well met, good Fellowship, and good morrow!

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Fellowship: Everyman, good morrow by this day.Sir, why lookest thou so piteously?If anything be amiss, I pray thee, me say,That I may help to remedy.Everyman: Yea, good Fellowship, yea,I am in great jeopardy.Fellowship: My true friend, show me your mind;I will not forsake thee, unto my life’s end,In the way of good company.Everyman: That was well spoken, and lovingly.Fellowship: Sir, I must needs know your heaviness;I have pity to see you in any distress;If any have you wronged ye shall revenged be,Though I on the ground be slain for thee,-Though that I know before that I should die.Everyman: Verily, Fellowship, gramercy.Fellowship: Tush! by thy thanks I set not a straw.Show me your grief, and say no more.[...] Everyman: Indeed, Death was with me hereFellowship: Now, by God that all hath brought,If Death were the messenger,For no man that is living to-dayI will not go that loath journey-Not for the father that begat me!Everyman: Ye promised other wise, pardie.Fellowship: I wot well I say so truly;And yet if thou wilt eat, and drink, and make good cheer,Or haunt to women, the lusty companion,I would not forsake you, while the day is clear,Trust me verily!Everyman: Yea, thereto ye would be ready;To go to mirth, solace, and play,Your mind will sooner applyThan to bear me company in my long journey.Fellowship: Now, in good faith, I will not that way.But and thou wilt murder, or any man kill,In that I will help thee with a good will![...]

Good Deeds

Everyman: O, to whom shall I make my moanFor to go with me in that heavy journey?First Fellowship said he would go with me gone;His words were very pleasant and gay,But afterward he left me alone.Then spake I to my kinsmen all in despair,And also they gave me words fair,They lacked no fair speaking,But all forsake me in the ending.Then went I to my Goods that I loved best,In hope to have comfort, but there had I least;For my Goods sharply did me tellThat he bringeth many to hell.

Then of myself I was ashamed,And so I am worthy to be blamed;Thus may I well myself hate.Of whom shall now counsel take?I think that I shall never speedTill that I go to my Good-Deed, But alas, she is so weak,That she can neither go nor speak;Yet I will venture on her now.-My Good-Deeds, where be you?Good-Deeds: Here I lie cold in the ground;Thy sins hath me sore bound,That I cannot stir.Everyman: O, Good-Deeds, I stand in fear;I must you pray counsel,For help now should come right well.Good-Deeds: Everyman, I have understandingThat ye be summoned account to makeBefore Messias, of Jerusalem King;And if you do by me that journey what you will I take.Everyman: Therefore I come to you, my moan to make;I pray you, that ye will go with me.Good-Deeds: I would full fain, but I cannot stand verily.Everyman: Why, is there anything on you fall?Good-Deeds: Yea, sir, I may thank you of all;If ye had perfectly cheered me,Your book of account now full ready had be.Look, the books of your works and deeds eke;Oh, see how they lie under the feet,To your soul’s heaviness.Everyman: Our Lord Jesus, help me! [...] Everyman: Good-Deeds, you counsel I pray you give me.Good-Deeds: That shall I do verily;Though that on my feet I may not go,I have a sister, that shall with you also,Called Knowledge, which shall you abide,To help you make that dreadful reckoning.Knowledge: Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide,In thy most need to go by thy side.Everyman: In good condition I am now in every thing,And am wholly content with this good thing;Thanked be God my creator.Good-Deeds: And when he hath brought thee there,Where thou shalt heal thee of thy smart,Then go with your reckoning and your Good-Deeds togetherFor to make you joyful at heartBefore the blessed Trinity.Everyman: My Good-Deeds, gramercy;

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I am well content, certainly,With your words sweet.

Christopher Marlowe

Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus was probably written in 1592, although the exact date of its composition is uncertain, since it was not published until a decade later. The idea of an individual selling his or her soul to the devil for knowledge is an old motif in Christian folklore, one that had become attached to the historical persona of Johannes Faustus, a disreputable astrologer who lived in Germany sometime in the early 1500s. The immediate source of Marlowe’s play seems to be the anonymous German work Historia von D. Iohan Fausten of 1587, which was translated into English in 1592, and from which Marlowe lifted the bulk of the plot for his drama. Although there had been literary representations of Faust prior to Marlowe’s play, Doctor Faustus is the first famous version of the story. Later versions include the long and famous poem Faust by the nineteenth-century Romantic writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as well as operas by Charles Gounod and Arrigo Boito and a symphony by Hector Berlioz. Meanwhile, the phrase “Faustian bargain” has entered the English lexicon, referring to any deal made for a short-term gain with great costs in the long run.

Plot OverviewDOCTOR FAUSTUS, A WELL-RESPECTED GERMAN scholar, grows dissatisfied with the limits of traditional forms of knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and religion—and decides that he wants to learn to practice magic. His friends Valdes and Cornelius instruct him in the black arts, and he begins his new career as a magician by summoning up Mephastophilis, a devil. Despite Mephastophilis’s warnings about the horrors of hell, Faustus tells the devil to

return to his master, Lucifer, with an offer of Faustus’s soul in exchange for twenty-four years of service from Mephastophilis. Meanwhile, Wagner, Faustus’s servant, has picked up some magical ability and uses it to press a clown named Robin into his service.Mephastophilis returns to Faustus with word that Lucifer has accepted Faustus’s offer. Faustus experiences some misgivings and wonders if he should repent and save his soul; in the end, though, he agrees to the deal, signing it with his blood. As soon as he does so, the words “Homo fuge,” Latin for “O man, fly,” appear branded on his arm. Faustus again has second thoughts, but Mephastophilis bestows rich gifts on him and gives him a book of spells to learn. Later, Mephastophilis answers all of his questions about the nature of the world, refusing to answer only when Faustus asks him who made the universe. This refusal prompts yet another bout of misgivings in Faustus, but Mephastophilis and Lucifer bring in personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins to prance about in front of Faustus, and he is impressed enough to quiet his doubts.Armed with his new powers and attended by Mephastophilis, Faustus begins to travel. He goes to the pope’s court in Rome, makes himself invisible, and plays a series of tricks. He disrupts the pope’s banquet by stealing food and boxing the pope’s ears. Following this incident, he travels through the courts of Europe, with his fame spreading as he goes. Eventually, he is invited to the court of the German emperor, Charles V (the enemy of the pope), who asks Faustus to allow him to see Alexander the Great, the famed fourth-century B.C. Macedonian king and conqueror. Faustus conjures up an image of Alexander, and Charles is suitably

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impressed. A knight scoffs at Faustus’s powers, and Faustus chastises him by making antlers sprout from his head. Furious, the knight vows revenge.Meanwhile, Robin, Wagner’s clown, has picked up some magic on his own, and with his fellow stablehand, Rafe, he undergoes a number of comic misadventures. At one point, he manages to summon Mephastophilis, who threatens to turn Robin and Rafe into animals (or perhaps even does transform them; the text isn’t clear) to punish them for their foolishness.Faustus then goes on with his travels, playing a trick on a horse-courser along the way. Faustus sells him a horse that turns into a heap of straw when ridden into a river. Eventually, Faustus is invited to the court of the Duke of Vanholt, where he performs various feats. The horse-courser shows up there, along with Robin, a man named Dick (Rafe in the A text), and various others who have fallen victim to Faustus’s trickery. But Faustus casts

spells on them and sends them on their way, to the amusement of the duke and duchess.As the twenty-four years of his deal with Lucifer come to a close, Faustus begins to dread his impending death. He has Mephastophilis call up Helen of Troy, the famous beauty from the ancient world, and uses her presence to impress a group of scholars. An old man urges Faustus to repent, but Faustus drives him away. Faustus summons Helen again and exclaims rapturously about her beauty. But time is growing short. Faustus tells the scholars about his pact, and they are horror-stricken and resolve to pray for him. On the final night before the expiration of the twenty-four years, Faustus is overcome by fear and remorse. He begs for mercy, but it is too late. At midnight, a host of devils appears and carries his soul off to hell. In the morning, the scholars find Faustus’s limbs and decide to hold a funeral for him.

Act II, Scene i

FAUSTUS discovered in his study.:

FAUSTUS. Now, Faustus,

Must thou needs be damn'd, canst thou not be sav'd.

What boots it, then, to think on God or heaven?

Away with such vain fancies, and despair;

Despair in God, and trust in Belzebub:

Now, go not backward, Faustus; be resolute:

Why waver'st thou? O, something soundeth in mine ear,

"Abjure this magic, turn to God again!"

Why, he loves thee not;

The god thou serv'st is thine own appetite,

Wherein is fix'd the love of Belzebub:

To him I'll build an altar and a church,

And offer lukewarm blood of new-born babes.

Enter GOOD ANGEL and EVIL ANGEL.:

EVIL ANGEL. Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art.

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GOOD ANGEL. Sweet Faustus, leave that execrable art.

FAUSTUS. Contrition, prayer, repentance—what of these?

GOOD ANGEL. O, they are means to bring thee unto heaven!

EVIL ANGEL. Rather illusions, fruits of lunacy,

That make men foolish that do use them most.

GOOD ANGEL. Sweet Faustus, think of heaven and heavenly things.

EVIL ANGEL. No, Faustus; think of honour and of wealth.

[Exeunt ANGELS.]

FAUSTUS. Wealth!

Why, the signiory of Embden shall be mine.

When Mephistophilis shall stand by me,

What power can hurt me? Faustus, thou art safe:

Cast no more doubts.—Mephistophilis, come,

And bring glad tidings from great Lucifer;—

Is't not midnight?—come Mephistophilis,

And bring glad tidings from great Lucifer;—

Is't not midnight?—come Mephistophilis,

Veni, veni, Mephistophile!

Enter MEPHISTOPHILIS.:

Now tell me what saith Lucifer, thy lord?

MEPHIST. That I shall wait on Faustus whilst he lives,

So he will buy my service with his soul.

FAUSTUS. Already Faustus hath hazarded that for thee.

MEPHIST. But now thou must bequeath it solemnly,

And write a deed of gift with thine own blood;

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For that security craves Lucifer.

If thou deny it, I must back to hell.

FAUSTUS. Stay, Mephistophilis, and tell me, what good will my

soul do thy lord?

MEPHIST. Enlarge his kingdom.

FAUSTUS. Is that the reason why he tempts us thus?

MEPHIST. Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.

FAUSTUS. Why, have you any pain that torture others?

MEPHIST. As great as have the human souls of men.

But, tell me, Faustus, shall I have thy soul?

And I will be thy slave, and wait on thee,

And give thee more than thou hast wit to ask.

FAUSTUS. Ay, Mephistophilis, I'll give it thee.

MEPHIST. Then, Faustus, stab thine arm courageously,

And bind thy soul, that at some certain day

Great Lucifer may claim it as his own;

And then be thou as great as Lucifer.

FAUSTUS.[Stabbing his arm]Lo, Mephistophilis, for love of thee,

Faustus hath cut his arm, and with his proper blood

Assures his soul to be great Lucifer's,

Chief lord and regent of perpetual night!

View here this blood that trickles from mine arm,

And let it be propitious for my wish.

MEPHIST. But, Faustus,

Write it in manner of a deed of gift.

FAUSTUS.[Writing]Ay, so I do. But, Mephistophilis,

My blood congeals, and I can write no more.

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MEPHIST. I'll fetch thee fire to dissolve it straight.

[Exit.]

FAUSTUS. What might the staying of my blood portend?

Is it unwilling I should write this bill?

Why streams it not, that I may write afresh?

FAUSTUS GIVES TO THEE HIS SOUL: O, there it stay'd!

Why shouldst thou not? is not thy soul thine own?

Then write again, FAUSTUS GIVES TO THEE HIS SOUL.

Act 5, Scene 2

FAUSTUS: Ah, Faustus.Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,And then thou must be damn'd perpetually!Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,That time may cease, and midnight never come;Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and makePerpetual day; or let this hour be butA year, a month, a week, a natural day,

That Faustus may repent and save his soul!O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.O, I'll leap up to my God!--Who pulls me down?--See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ!--Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer!--Where is it now? tis gone: and see, where GodStretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!No, no!Then will I headlong run into the earth:Earth, gape! O, no, it will not harbour me!You stars that reign'd at my nativity,Whose influence hath alotted death and hell,Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist,Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds,That, when you vomit forth into the air,My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,So that my soul may but ascend to heaven![The clock strikes the half-hour.]Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon.

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O God,If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,Yet for Christ's sake, whose blood hath ransom'd me,Impose some end to my incessant pain;Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd!O, no end is limited to damned souls!Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?Or why is this immortal that thou hast?Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis, were that true,This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'dUnto some brutish beast! all beasts are happy,For, when they die,Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements;But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell.Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me!No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse LuciferThat hath depriv'd thee of the joys of heaven.[The clock strikes twelve.]O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell![Thunder and lightning.]O soul, be chang'd into little water-drops,And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found![Enter Devils.]My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!I'll burn my books!

Analysis of Major CharactersFaustus Faustus is the protagonist and tragic hero of Marlowe’s play. He is a contradictory character, capable of tremendous eloquence and possessing awesome ambition, yet prone to a strange, almost willful blindness and a willingness to waste powers that he has gained at great cost. When we first meet Faustus, he is just preparing to embark on his career as a magician, and while we already anticipate that things will turn out badly (the Chorus’s introduction, if nothing else, prepares us), there is nonetheless a grandeur to Faustus as he contemplates all the marvels that his magical powers will produce. He imagines piling up wealth from the four corners of the globe, reshaping the map of Europe (both politically and physically), and gaining access to every scrap of knowledge about the universe. He is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing man, but his ambitions are so grand that we cannot help being impressed, and we even feel sympathetic toward him. He represents the spirit of the Renaissance, with its rejection of the medieval, God-centered universe, and its embrace of human possibility. Faustus, at least early on in his acquisition of magic, is the personification of possibility.But Faustus also possesses an obtuseness that becomes apparent during his bargaining sessions with Mephastophilis. Having decided that a pact with the devil is the only way to fulfill his ambitions, Faustus then blinds himself happily to what such a pact actually means. Sometimes he tells himself that hell is not so bad and that one needs only “fortitude”; at other times, even while conversing with Mephastophilis, he remarks to the disbelieving demon that he does not actually believe hell exists. Meanwhile, despite his lack of concern about the prospect of eternal damnation, -Faustus is also beset with doubts from the beginning, setting a pattern for the play in which he repeatedly approaches repentance only to pull back at the last moment. Why he fails to repent is unclear: -sometimes it seems a matter of pride and continuing ambition, sometimes a conviction that God will not hear his plea. Other times, it

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seems that Mephastophilis simply bullies him away from repenting.Bullying Faustus is less difficult than it might seem, because Marlowe, after setting his protagonist up as a grandly tragic figure of sweeping visions and immense ambitions, spends the middle scenes revealing Faustus’s true, petty nature. Once Faustus gains his long-desired powers, he does not know what to do with them. Marlowe suggests that this uncertainty stems, in part, from the fact that desire for knowledge leads inexorably toward God, whom Faustus has renounced. But, more generally, absolute power corrupts Faustus: once he can do everything, he no longer wants to do anything. Instead, he traipses around Europe, playing tricks on yokels and performing conjuring acts to impress various heads of state. He uses his incredible gifts for what is essentially trifling entertainment. The fields of possibility narrow gradually, as he visits ever more minor nobles and performs ever more unimportant magic tricks, until the Faustus of the first few scenes is entirely swallowed up in mediocrity. Only in the final scene is Faustus rescued from mediocrity, as the knowledge of his impending doom restores his earlier gift of powerful rhetoric, and he regains his sweeping sense of vision. Now, however, the vision that he sees is of hell looming up to swallow him. Marlowe uses much of his finest poetry to describe Faustus’s final hours, during which Faustus’s desire for repentance finally wins out, although too late. Still, Faustus is restored to his earlier grandeur in his closing speech, with its hurried rush from idea to idea and its despairing, Renaissance-renouncing last line, “I’ll burn my books!” He becomes once again a tragic hero, a great man undone because his ambitions have butted up against the law of God.Mephastophilis The character of Mephastophilis (spelled Mephistophilis or Mephistopheles by other authors) is one of the first in a long tradition of sympathetic literary devils, which includes figures like John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost and Johann von Goethe’s Mephistophilis in the nineteenth-century poem “Faust.” Marlowe’s Mephastophilis is particularly interesting because he has mixed motives. On the one hand, from his first appearance he clearly

intends to act as an agent of Faustus’s damnation. Indeed, he openly admits it, telling Faustus that “when we hear one rack the name of God, / Abjure the Scriptures and his savior Christ, / We fly in hope to get his glorious soul” (3.47–49). It is Mephastophilis who witnesses Faustus’s pact with Lucifer, and it is he who, throughout the play, steps in whenever Faustus considers repentance to cajole or threaten him into staying loyal to hell.Yet there is an odd ambivalence in Mephastophilis. He seeks to damn Faustus, but he himself is damned and speaks freely of the horrors of hell. In a famous passage, when Faustus remarks that the devil seems to be free of hell at a particular moment, Mephastophilis insists,[w]hy this is hell, nor am I out of it.Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,Am not tormented with ten thousand hellsIn being deprived of everlasting bliss?          (3.76–80)Again, when Faustus blithely—and absurdly, given that he is speaking to a demon—declares that he does not believe in hell, Mephastophilis groans and insists that hell is, indeed, real and terrible, as Faustus comes to know soon enough. Before the pact is sealed, Mephastophilis actually warns Faustus against making the deal with Lucifer. In an odd way, one can almost sense that part of Mephastophilis does not want Faustus to make the same mistakes that he made. But, of course, Faustus does so anyway, which makes him and Mephastophilis kindred spirits. It is appropriate that these two figures dominate Marlowe’s play, for they are two overly proud spirits doomed to hell.

Themes, Motifs & SymbolsThemesThemes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.Sin, Redemption, and Damnation Insofar as Doctor Faustus is a Christian play, it deals with the themes at the heart of Christianity’s understanding of the world. First, there is the idea of sin, which Christianity defines as acts contrary to the will of God. In making a pact with Lucifer, Faustus commits what is in a sense the ultimate sin: not only does he disobey God,

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but he consciously and even eagerly renounces obedience to him, choosing instead to swear allegiance to the devil. In a Christian framework, however, even the worst deed can be forgiven through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, God’s son, who, according to Christian belief, died on the cross for humankind’s sins. Thus, however terrible Faustus’s pact with Lucifer may be, the possibility of redemption is always open to him. All that he needs to do, theoretically, is ask God for forgiveness. The play offers countless moments in which Faustus considers doing just that, urged on by the good angel on his shoulder or by the old man in scene 12—both of whom can be seen either as emissaries of God, personifications of Faustus’s conscience, or both.Each time, Faustus decides to remain loyal to hell rather than seek heaven. In the Christian framework, this turning away from God condemns him to spend an eternity in hell. Only at the end of his life does Faustus desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to Christ to redeem him. But it is too late for him to repent. In creating this moment in which Faustus is still alive but incapable of being redeemed, Marlowe steps outside the Christian worldview in order to maximize the dramatic power of the final scene. Having inhabited a Christian world for the entire play, Faustus spends his final moments in a slightly different universe, where redemption is no longer possible and where certain sins cannot be forgiven.The Conflict Between Medieval and Renaissance Values Scholar R.M. Dawkins famously remarked that Doctor Faustus tells “the story of a Renaissance man who had to pay the medieval price for being one.” While slightly simplistic, this quotation does get at the heart of one of the play’s central themes: the clash between the medieval world and the world of the emerging Renaissance. The medieval world placed God at the center of existence and shunted aside man and the natural world. The Renaissance was a movement that began in Italy in the fifteenth century and soon spread throughout Europe, carrying with it a new emphasis on the individual, on classical learning, and on scientific inquiry into the nature of the world. In the medieval academy, theology was the

queen of the sciences. In the Renaissance, though, secular matters took center stage.Faustus, despite being a magician rather than a scientist (a blurred distinction in the sixteenth century), explicitly rejects the medieval model. In his opening speech in scene 1, he goes through every field of scholarship, beginning with logic and proceeding through medicine, law, and theology, quoting an ancient authority for each: Aristotle on logic, Galen on medicine, the Byzantine emperor Justinian on law, and the Bible on religion. In the medieval model, tradition and authority, not individual inquiry, were key. But in this soliloquy, Faustus considers and rejects this medieval way of thinking. He resolves, in full Renaissance spirit, to accept no limits, traditions, or authorities in his quest for knowledge, wealth, and power.The play’s attitude toward the clash between medieval and Renaissance values is ambiguous. Marlowe seems hostile toward the ambitions of Faustus, and, as Dawkins notes, he keeps his tragic hero squarely in the medieval world, where eternal damnation is the price of human pride. Yet Marlowe himself was no pious traditionalist, and it is tempting to see in Faustus—as many readers have—a hero of the new modern world, a world free of God, religion, and the limits that these imposed on humanity. Faustus may pay a medieval price, this reading suggests, but his successors will go further than he and suffer less, as we have in modern times. On the other hand, the disappointment and mediocrity that follow Faustus’s pact with the devil, as he descends from grand ambitions to petty conjuring tricks, might suggest a contrasting interpretation. Marlowe may be suggesting that the new, modern spirit, though ambitious and glittering, will lead only to a Faustian dead end.Power as a Corrupting Influence Early in the play, before he agrees to the pact with Lucifer, Faustus is full of ideas for how to use the power that he seeks. He imagines piling up great wealth, but he also aspires to plumb the mysteries of the universe and to remake the map of Europe. Though they may not be entirely admirable, these plans are ambitious and inspire awe, if not sympathy. They lend a grandeur to Faustus’s schemes and make his quest for personal power seem almost

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heroic, a sense that is reinforced by the eloquence of his early soliloquies.Once Faustus actually gains the practically limitless power that he so desires, however, his horizons seem to narrow. Everything is possible to him, but his ambition is somehow sapped. Instead of the grand designs that he contemplates early on, he contents himself with performing conjuring tricks for kings and noblemen and takes a strange delight in using his magic to play practical jokes on simple folks. It is not that power has corrupted Faustus by making him evil: indeed, Faustus’s behavior after he sells his soul hardly rises to the level of true wickedness. Rather, gaining absolute power corrupts Faustus by making him mediocre and by transforming his boundless ambition into a meaningless delight in petty celebrity.In the Christian framework of the play, one can argue that true greatness can be achieved only with God’s blessing. By cutting himself off from the creator of the universe, Faustus is condemned to mediocrity. He has gained the whole world, but he does not know what to do with it.The Divided Nature of Man Faustus is constantly undecided about whether he should repent and return to God or continue to follow his pact with Lucifer. His internal struggle goes on throughout the play, as part of him of wants to do good and serve God, but part of him (the dominant part, it seems) lusts after the power that Mephastophilis promises. The good angel and the evil angel, both of whom appear at Faustus’s shoulder in order to urge him in different directions, symbolize this struggle. While these angels may be intended as an actual pair of supernatural beings, they clearly represent Faustus’s divided will, which compels Faustus to commit to Mephastophilis but also to question this commitment continually.Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.Magic and the Supernatural The supernatural pervades Doctor Faustus, appearing everywhere in the story. Angels and devils flit about, magic spells are cast, dragons pull chariots (albeit offstage), and even fools like the

two ostlers, Robin and Rafe, can learn enough magic to summon demons. Still, it is worth noting that nothing terribly significant is accomplished through magic. Faustus plays tricks on people, conjures up grapes, and explores the cosmos on a dragon, but he does not fundamentally reshape the world. The magic power that Mephastophilis grants him is more like a toy than an awesome, earth-shaking ability. Furthermore, the real drama of the play, despite all the supernatural frills and pyrotechnics, takes place within Faustus’s vacillating mind and soul, as he first sells his soul to Lucifer and then considers repenting. In this sense, the magic is almost incidental to the real story of Faustus’s struggle with himself, which Marlowe intended not as a fantastical battle but rather as a realistic portrait of a human being with a will divided between good and evil.Practical Jokes Once he gains his awesome powers, Faustus does not use them to do great deeds. Instead, he delights in playing tricks on people: he makes horns sprout from the knight’s head and sells the horse-courser an enchanted horse. Such magical practical jokes seem to be Faustus’s chief amusement, and Marlowe uses them to illustrate Faustus’s decline from a great, prideful scholar into a bored, mediocre magician with no higher ambition than to have a laugh at the expense of a collection of simpletons.Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.Blood Blood plays multiple symbolic roles in the play. When Faustus signs away his soul, he signs in blood, symbolizing the permanent and supernatural nature of this pact. His blood congeals on the page, however, symbolizing, perhaps, his own body’s revolt against what he intends to do. Meanwhile, Christ’s blood, which Faustus says he sees running across the sky during his terrible last night, symbolizes the sacrifice that Jesus, according to Christian belief, made on the cross; this sacrifice opened the way for humankind to repent its sins and be saved. Faustus, of course, in his proud folly, fails to take this path to salvation.

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Faustus’s Rejection of the Ancient Authorities In scene 1, Faustus goes through a list of the major fields of human knowledge—logic, medicine, law, and theology—and cites for each an ancient authority (Aristotle, Galen, Justinian, and Jerome’s Bible, respectively). He then rejects all of these figures in favor of magic. This rejection symbolizes Faustus’s break with the medieval world, which prized authority above all else, in favor of a more modern spirit of free inquiry, in which experimentation and innovation trump the assertions of Greek philosophers and the Bible.The Good Angel and the Evil Angel The angels appear at Faustus’s shoulder early on in the play—the good angel urging him to repent and serve God, the evil angel urging him to follow his lust for power and serve Lucifer. The two symbolize his divided will, part of which wants to do good and part of which is sunk in sin.

Important Quotations Explained  1. The reward of sin is death? That’s hard. Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas.If we say that we have no sin, We deceive ourselves, and there’s no truth in us. Why then belike we must sin, And so consequently die.Ay, we must die an everlasting death. What doctrine call you this? Che sarà, sarà:What will be, shall be! Divinity, adieu!These metaphysics of magicians,And necromantic books are heavenly!           (1.40–50)Explanation for Quotation #1Faustus speaks these lines near the end of his opening soliloquy. In this speech, he considers various fields of study one by one, beginning with logic and proceeding through medicine and law. Seeking the highest form of knowledge, he arrives at theology and opens the Bible to the New Testament, where he quotes from Romans and the first book of John. He reads that “[t]he reward of sin is death,” and that “[i]f we say we that we have no sin, / We

deceive ourselves, and there’s no truth in us.” The logic of these quotations—everyone sins, and sin leads to death—makes it seem as though Christianity can promise only death, which leads Faustus to give in to the fatalistic “What will be, shall be! Divinity, adieu!” However, Faustus neglects to read the very next line in John, which states, “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). By ignoring this passage, Faustus ignores the possibility of redemption, just as he ignores it throughout the play. Faustus has blind spots; he sees what he wants to see rather than what is really there. This blindness is apparent in the very next line of his speech: having turned his back on heaven, he pretends that “[t]hese metaphysics of magicians, / And necromantic books are heavenly.” He thus inverts the cosmos, making black magic “heavenly” and religion the source of “everlasting death.”

  2. MEPHASTOPHILIS: Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells In being deprived of everlasting bliss? O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.FAUSTUS: What, is great Mephastophilis so passionate For being deprivèd of the joys of heaven? Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude, And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.         (3.76–86)Explanation for Quotation #2This exchange shows Faustus at his most willfully blind, as he listens to Mephastophilis describe how awful hell is for him even as a devil, and as he then proceeds to dismiss Mephastophilis’s words blithely, urging him to have “manly fortitude.” But the dialogue also shows Mephastophilis in a peculiar light. We know that he is committed to Faustus’s damnation—he has appeared to Faustus because of his hope that Faustus will renounce God and swear allegiance to Lucifer. Yet here Mephastophilis seems to be urging Faustus against selling his soul, telling him to “leave these frivolous

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demands, / Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.” There is a parallel between the experience of Mephastophilis and that of Faustus. Just as Faustus now is, Mephastophilis was once prideful and rebelled against God; like Faustus, he is damned forever for his sin. Perhaps because of this connection, Mephastophilis cannot accept Faustus’s cheerful dismissal of hell in the name of “manly fortitude.” He knows all too well the terrible reality, and this knowledge drives him, in spite of himself, to warn Faustus away from his t-errible course.

  3. MEPHASTOPHILIS.: Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self-place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there must we ever be. . . . All places shall be hell that is not heaven.FAUSTUS: Come, I think hell’s a fable.MEPHASTOPHILISS.: Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind.. . .FAUSTUS: Think’st thou that Faustus is so fond to imagine That after this life there is any pain? Tush, these are trifles and mere old wives’ tales.          (5.120–135)Explanation for Quotation #3This exchange again shows Mephastophilis warning Faustus about the horrors of hell. This time, though, their exchange is less significant for what Mephastophilis says about hell than for Faustus’s response to him. Why anyone would make a pact with the devil is one of the most vexing questions surrounding Doctor Faustus, and here we see part of Marlowe’s explanation. We are constantly given indications that Faustus doesn’t really understand what he is doing. He is a secular Renaissance man, so disdainful of traditional religion that he believes hell to be a “fable” even when he is conversing with a devil. Of course, such a belief is difficult to maintain when one is trafficking in the supernatural, but Faustus has a fallback position. Faustus takes Mephastophilis’s assertion that hell will be “[a]ll places … that is not heaven” to mean that hell will just be a continuation of life on earth. He fails to understand the difference between him and Mephastophilis: unlike Mephastophilis, who has lost heaven

permanently, Faustus, despite his pact with Lucifer, is not yet damned and still has the possibility of repentance. He cannot yet understand the torture against which Mephastophilis warns him, and imagines, fatally, that he already knows the worst of what hell will be.

  4. Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss:Her lips sucks forth my soul, see where it flies! Come Helen, come, give me my soul again.

Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips,And all is dross that is not Helena!         (12.81–87)Explanation for Quotation #4These lines come from a speech that Faustus makes as he nears the end of his life and begins to realize the terrible nature of the bargain he has made. Despite his sense of foreboding, Faustus enjoys his powers, as the delight he takes in conjuring up Helen makes clear. While the speech marks a return to the eloquence that he shows early in the play, Faustus continues to display the same blind spots and wishful thinking that characterize his behavior throughout the drama. At the beginning of the play, he dismisses religious transcendence in favor of magic; now, after squandering his powers in petty, self-indulgent behavior, he looks for transcendence in a woman, one who may be an illusion and not even real flesh and blood. He seeks heavenly grace in Helen’s lips, which can, at best, offer only earthly pleasure. “[M]ake me immortal with a kiss,” he cries, even as he continues to keep his back turned to his only hope for escaping damnation—namely, repentance.

  5. Ah Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned perpetually. . . . The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.O I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me

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down? See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah my Christ—Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ;Yet will I call on him—O spare me, Lucifer!. . . Earth, gape! O no, it will not harbor me. You stars that reigned at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist Into the entrails of yon laboring cloud, That when you vomit forth into the air My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths,So that my soul may but ascend to heaven.. . . O God, if thou wilt not have mercy on my soul, . . . Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at last be saved.. . . Cursed be the parents that engendered me: No, Faustus, curse thy self, curse Lucifer,That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven. . . . My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!

. . . Ugly hell gape not! Come not, Lucifer! I’ll burn my books—ah, Mephastophilis!         (13.57–113)

Explanation for Quotation #5These lines come from Faustus’s final speech, just before the devils take him down to hell. It is easily the most dramatic moment in the play, and Marlowe uses some of his finest rhetoric to create an unforgettable portrait of the mind of a man about to carried off to a horrific doom. Faustus goes from one idea to another, desperately seeking a way out. But no escape is available, and he ends by reaching an understanding of his own guilt: “No, Faustus, curse thy self, curse Lucifer, / That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.” This final speech raises the question of why Faustus does not repent earlier and, more importantly, why his desperate cries to Christ for mercy are not heard. In a truly Christian framework,

Faustus would be allowed a chance at redemption even at the very end. But Marlowe’s play ultimately proves more tragic than Christian, and so there comes a point beyond which Faustus can no longer be saved. He is damned, in other words, while he is still alive.Faustus’s last line aptly expresses the play’s representation of a clash between Renaissance and medieval values. “I’ll burn my books,” Faustus cries as the devils come for him, suggesting, for the first time since scene 2, when his slide into mediocrity begins, that his pact with Lucifer is about gaining limitless knowledge, an ambition that the Renaissance spirit celebrated but that medieval Christianity denounced as an expression of sinful human pride. As he is carried off to hell, Faustus seems to give in to the Christian worldview, denouncing, in a desperate attempt to save himself, the quest for knowledge that has defined most of his life.

Study Questions & Essay TopicsStudy Questions1. Is DOCTOR FAUSTUS a Christian tragedy? Why or why not? Answer for Study Question #1Doctor Faustus has elements of both Christian morality and classical tragedy. On the one hand, it takes place in an explicitly Christian cosmos: God sits on high, as the judge of the world, and every soul goes either to hell or to heaven. There are devils and angels, with the devils tempting people into sin and the angels urging them to remain true to God. Faustus’s story is a tragedy in Christian terms, because he gives in to temptation and is damned to hell. Faustus’s principal sin is his great pride and ambition, which can be contrasted with the Christian virtue of humility; by letting these traits rule his life, Faustus allows his soul to be claimed by Lucifer, Christian cosmology’s prince of devils.Yet while the play seems to offer a very basic Christian message—that one should avoid temptation and sin, and repent if one cannot avoid temptation and sin—its conclusion can be interpreted as straying from orthodox Christianity in order to conform to the structure of tragedy. In a traditional tragic play, as pioneered by the

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Greeks and imitated by William Shakespeare, a hero is brought low by an error or series of errors and realizes his or her mistake only when it is too late. In Christianity, though, as long as a person is alive, there is always the possibility of repentance—so if a tragic hero realizes his or her mistake, he or she may still be saved even at the last moment. But though Faustus, in the final, wrenching scene, comes to his senses and begs for a chance to repent, it is too late, and he is carried off to hell. Marlowe rejects the Christian idea that it is never too late to repent in order to increase the dramatic power of his finale, in which Faustus is conscious of his damnation and yet, tragically, can do nothing about it.

2. Scholar R.M. Dawkins once called Faustus “a Renaissance man who had to pay the medieval price for being one.” Do you think this is an accurate characterization of Marlowe’s tragic hero? Answer for Study Question #2Doctor Faustus has frequently been interpreted as depicting a clash between the values of the medieval world and the emerging spirit of the sixteenth-century Renaissance. In medieval Europe, Christianity and God lay at the center of intellectual life: scientific inquiry languished, and theology was known as “the queen of the sciences.” In art and literature, the emphasis was on the lives of the saints and the mighty rather than on those of ordinary people. With the advent of the Renaissance, however, there was a new celebration of the free individual and the scientific exploration of nature.While Marlowe’s Faustus is, admittedly, a magician and not a scientist, this distinction was not so clearly drawn in the sixteenth century as it is today. (Indeed, famous scientists such as Isaac Newton dabbled in astrology and alchemy into the eighteenth century.) With his rejection of God’s authority and his thirst for knowledge and control over nature, Faustus embodies the more secular spirit of the dawning modern era. Marlowe symbolizes this spirit in the play’s first scene, when Faustus explicitly rejects all the medieval authorities—Aristotle in logic, Galen in medicine, Justinian in law, and the Bible in religion—and decides to strike out on his own. In this speech,

Faustus puts the medieval world to bed and steps firmly into the new era. Yet, as the quote says, he “pay[s] the medieval price” for taking this new direction, since he still exists firmly within a Christian framework, meaning that his transgressions ultimately condemn him to hell.In the play’s final lines, the Chorus tells us to view Faustus’s fate as a warning and not follow his example. This admonition would seem to make Marlowe a defender of the established religious values, showing us the terrible fate that awaits a Renaissance man who rejects God. But by investing Faustus with such tragic grandeur, Marlowe may be suggesting a different lesson. Perhaps the price of rejecting God is worth it, or perhaps Faustus pays the price for all of western culture, allowing it to enter a new, more secular era.

3. Discuss the character of Mephastophilis. How much of a role does he play in Faustus’s damnation? How does Marlowe complicate his character and inspire our sympathy? Answer for Study Question #3Mephastophilis is part of a long tradition of fascinating literary devils that reached its peak a century later with John Milton’s portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost, published in the late seventeenth century. Mephastophilis seems to desire Faustus’s damnation: he appears eagerly when Faustus rejects God and firms up Faustus’s resolve when Faustus hedges on his contract with Lucifer. Yet there is an odd ambivalence in Mephastophilis. Before the pact is sealed, he actually warns Faustus against making the deal, telling him how awful the pains of hell are. In a famous passage, when Faustus remarks that Mephastophilis seems to be free of hell at the moment, Mephastophilis retorts, Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells In being deprived of everlasting bliss?         (3.76–80)Again, when Faustus expresses skepticism that any afterlife exists, Mephastophilis assures him that hell is real and terrible.

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These odd complications in Mephastophilis’s character serve a twofold purpose. First, they highlight Faustus’s willful blindness, since he dismisses the warning of the very demon with whom he is bartering over his soul. In this regard, his remark that hell is a myth seems particularly delusional. At the same time, these complications inspire a kind of pity for Mephastophilis and his fellow devils, who are damned to hell just as surely as Faustus or any other sinful, unrepentant human. These devils may be villains, but they are tragic figures, separated forever from the bliss of God’s presence by their pride. Indeed, Mephastophilis and Faust are similar figures: both reject God out of pride, and both suffer for it eternally.

Suggested Essay Topics 1. How does Faustus use the magical gifts that he receives? How are the uses to

which he puts his powers significant? What do they suggest about his character or about the nature of unlimited power?2. What is the role of the comic characters—Robin, Rafe, the horse-courser, and the clown, for example? How does Marlowe use them to illuminate Faustus’s decline?3. When does Faustus have misgivings about his pact with Lucifer? What makes him desire to repent? Why do you think he fails to repent?4. Is God present in the play? If so, where? If not, what does God’s absence suggest?5. Discuss the role of Faustus’s soliloquies—particularly his speeches about the different kinds of knowledge in scene 1 and his long soliloquies in scene 12—in shaping our understanding of his character.6. Is Faustus misled by the devils, or is he willfully blind to the reality of his situation?

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The Sonnet

A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem, traditionally written in iambic pentameter--that is, in lines ten syllables long, with accents falling on every second syllable, as in: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The sonnet form first became popular during the Italian Renaissance, when the poet Petrarch published a sequence of love sonnets addressed to an idealized woman named Laura. Taking firm hold among Italian poets, the sonnet spread throughout Europe to England, where, after its initial Renaissance, "Petrarchan" incarnation faded, the form enjoyed a number of revivals and periods of renewed interest. In Elizabethan England--the era during which Shakespeare's sonnets were written--the sonnet was the form of choice for lyric poets, particularly lyric poets seeking to engage with traditional themes of love and romance. (In addition to Shakespeare's monumental sequence, the Astrophel and Stella sequence by Sir Philip Sydney stands as one of the most important sonnet sequences of this period.) Sonnets were also written during the height of classical English verse, by Dryden and Pope, among others, and written again during the heyday of English Romanticism, when Wordsworth, Shelley, and particularly John Keats created wonderful sonnets. Today, the sonnet remains the most influential and important verse form in the history of English poetry.Two kinds of sonnets have been most common in English poetry, and they take their names from the greatest poets to utilize them: the Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet. The Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two main parts, called the octave and the sestet. The octave is eight lines long, and typically follows a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA, or ABBACDDC. The sestet occupies the remaining six lines of the poem, and typically follows a rhyme scheme of CDCDCD, or CDECDE. The octave and the sestet are usually contrasted in some key way: for example, the octave may ask a question to which the sestet offers an answer. In the following Petrarchan sonnet, John Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," the octave describes past events--the speaker's previous,

unsatisfying examinations of the "realms of gold," Homer's poems--while the sestet describes the present--the speaker's sense of discovery upon finding Chapman's translations:

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;Round many western islands have I beenWhich bards in fealty to Apollo hold.Oft of one wide expanse have I been toldThat deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;Yet did I never breathe its pure sereneTill I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:Then felt I like some watcher of the skiesWhen a new planet swims into his ken;Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyesHe star'd at the Pacific--and all his menLook'd at each other with a wild surmise--Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

The Shakespearean sonnet, the form of sonnet utilized throughout Shakespeare's sequence, is divided into four parts. The first three parts are each four lines long, and are known as quatrains, rhymed ABAB; the fourth part is called the couplet, and is rhymed CC. The Shakespearean sonnet is often used to develop a sequence of metaphors or ideas, one in each quatrain, while the couplet offers either a summary or a new take on the preceding images or ideas. In Shakespeare's Sonnet 147, for instance, the speaker's love is compared to a disease. In the first quatrain, the speaker characterizes the disease; in the second, he describes the relationship of his love-disease to its "physician," his reason; in the third, he describes the consequences of his abandonment of reason; and in the couplet, he explains the source of his mad, diseased love--his lover's betrayal of his faith:

My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease,Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,The uncertain sickly appetite to please.My reason, the physician to my love,

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Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,Hath left me, and I desp'rate now approveDesire is death, which physic did except.Past cure am I, now reason is past care,And frantic mad with evermore unrest,My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,At random from the truth vainly expressed;For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

In many ways, Shakespeare's use of the sonnet form is richer and more complex than this relatively simple division into parts might imply. Not only is his sequence largely occupied with subverting the traditional themes of love sonnets--the traditional love poems in praise of beauty and worth, for instance, are written to a

man, while the love poems to a woman are almost all as bitter and negative as Sonnet 147--he also combines formal patterns with daring and innovation. Many of his sonnets in the sequence, for instance, impose the thematic pattern of a Petrarchan sonnet onto the formal pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet, so that while there are still three quatrains and a couplet, the first two quatrains might ask a single question, which the third quatrain and the couplet will answer. As you read through Shakespeare's sequence, think about the ways Shakespeare's themes are affected by and tailored to the sonnet form. Be especially alert to complexities such as the juxtaposition of Petrarchan and Shakespearean patterns. How might such a juxtaposition combination deepen and enrich Shakespeare's use of a traditional form?

Sir Philip Sidney:Astrophil and Stella - 1

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,That she (dear she) might take some pleasure of my pain;Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know;Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain;

5 I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain;Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flowSome fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;10 Invention, nature's child, fled step-dame study's blows; And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way. Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,'Fool,' said my muse to me; 'look in thy heart, and write.'

 This is one of those (fairly frequent) love poems that is more about the composition of love poetry than about love itself. Its chief narrative thread is this: the author has tried to express his love in poetry, but has been relying on study, rather than on direct perception of the truth to do so; when this fails, the muse advises him, "Look in thy heart and write," a phrase that will serve as a theme for the whole set.

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The poem is either self-exemplifying or self-negating, depending how one views it; for, even though it stands as a denunciation of "learned" techniques in poetry, it also relies on the devices of classical rhetoric and poetry. In the end, even the muse's advice in the end is an appeal to an established topos of its own going back to Plato's suspicion of rhetoric and the Sophists. One can see echoes of Cato the Elder's advice, "Rem tene, verba sequuntur" -- "Pay attention to the matter; the words will follow." In a parallel vein, Ovid develops the idea (Amores I.1) of a frustrated poet going about his job the wrong way, only to be released when he capitulates to Cupid.

StructureLike most Italianate sonnets, this one breaks down into two parts of eight and six lines, respectively. The turning point in line 9 is introduced by the adversative, "But...". The first eight lines set out the idea and the motivation, and describe the failed technique, in a classic (and rational) mode; the last six create a sense of increasing agitation, both through their use of subject matter and by metrical manipulation, until the final release in the end of the last line with a romantic (primarily emotional) advice.

GrammarThe poem's syntax not only carries the message, but also embodies it: the first eight lines are in fact a single periodic sentence exemplifying a rational relationship of cause and effect. The first four contain only dependent material: 1) a complex participial phrase ("loving...and fain...to show)" and 2) a lengthy dependent clause of purpose ("That she...") filling lines 2-4 with the rhetorical figure known as a *climax*, a linked stair-step sequence of terms in which one leads to another. The main clause is thus deferred, but is fairly simple when it arrives in the first half of line 5.

Vocabularyo invention/inventions: refers to 'inventio' -- the ancient division of oratory devoted to producing

novel or interesting material.o halting: limping.o stay: crutch, support.o step-dame: step-mother (traditionally ill-disposed to a child). Used to personify study.o feet: used ambiguously for feet in the walking image and poetic feet.o great with child: i.e., pregnant, ready to deliver a child.

Metrics and rhyme schemeThe rhyme scheme can be represented as: ABAB ABAB CDCD EESidney varies his rhyme schemes rather freely throughout Astrophil and Stella; here the monotony of the ABAB ABAB tends to reinforce the notion of the tedious but fruitless study. The rhyme scheme tends to pick up speed, leading to the acceleration of the climax.

Tony Harrison (1937-)From: The School of Eloquence

The stone's too full. The wording must be terse.There's scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it--

Come on, it's not as if we're wanting verse.It's not as if we're wanting a whole sonnet!

After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker(I think that both of us we're on our third)you said you'd always been a clumsy talkerand couldn't find another, shorter wordfor 'beloved' or for 'wife' in the inscription,but not too clumsy that you can't still cut:

You're supposed to be the bright boy at description

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and you can't tell them what the fuck to put!

I've got to find the right words on my own.

I've got the envelope that he'd been scrawling,mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appallingbut I can't squeeze more love into their stone.

William ShakespeareSonnet 18SummaryThe speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The next eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison. In line 2, the speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the young man from the summer's day: he is "more lovely and more temperate." Summer's days tend toward extremes: they are shaken by "rough winds"; in them, the sun ("the eye of heaven") often shines "too hot," or too dim. And summer is fleeting: its date is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as "every fair from fair sometime declines." The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever ("Thy eternal summer shall not fade...") and never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloved's beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live "as long as men can breathe or eyes can see."CommentaryThis sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeare's sonnets; it may be the most famous lyric poem in English. Among Shakespeare's works, only lines such as "To be or not to be" and "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" are better-known. This is not to say that it is at all the best or most interesting or most beautiful of the sonnets; but the simplicity and loveliness of its praise of the beloved has guaranteed its place.

On the surface, the poem is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved; summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat, but the beloved is always mild and temperate. Summer is incidentally personified as the "eye of heaven" with its "gold complexion"; the imagery throughout is simple and unaffected, with the "darling buds of May" giving way to the "eternal summer", which the speaker promises the beloved. The language, too, is comparatively unadorned for the sonnets; it is not heavy with alliteration or assonance, and nearly every line is its own self-contained clause--almost every line ends with some punctuation, which effects a pause.Sonnet 18 is the first poem in the sonnets not to explicitly encourage the young man to have children. The "procreation" sequence of the first 17 sonnets ended with the speaker's realization that the young man might not need children to preserve his beauty; he could also live, the speaker writes at the end of Sonnet 17, "in my rhyme." Sonnet 18, then, is the first "rhyme"--the speaker's first attempt to preserve the young man's beauty for all time. An important theme of the sonnet (as it is an important theme throughout much of the sequence) is the power of the speaker's poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the beloved down to future generations. The beloved's "eternal summer" shall not fade precisely because it is embodied in the sonnet: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see," the speaker writes in the couplet, "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Sonnet 116Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love

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Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

SummaryThis sonnet attempts to define love, by telling both what it is and is not. In the first quatrain, the speaker says that love--"the marriage of true minds"--is perfect and unchanging; it does not "admit impediments," and it does not change when it find changes in the loved one. In the second quatrain, the speaker tells what love is through a metaphor: a guiding star to lost ships ("wand'ring barks") that is not susceptible to storms (it "looks on tempests and is never shaken"). In the third quatrain, the speaker again describes what love is not: it is not susceptible to time. Though beauty fades in time as rosy lips and cheeks come within "his bending sickle's compass," love does not change with hours and weeks: instead, it "bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom." In the couplet, the speaker attests to his certainty that love is as he says: if his statements can be proved to be error, he declares, he must never have written a word, and no man can ever have been in love.CommentaryAlong with Sonnets 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") and 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"), Sonnet 116 is one of the most famous poems in the entire sequence. The definition of love that it provides is among the most often quoted and anthologized in the poetic canon. Essentially, this sonnet presents the extreme ideal of romantic love: it never changes, it never fades, it outlasts death and admits no flaw. What is more, it insists that this ideal is the only

love that can be called "true"--if love is mortal, changing, or impermanent, the speaker writes, then no man ever loved. The basic division of this poem's argument into the various parts of the sonnet form is extremely simple: the first quatrain says what love is not (changeable), the second quatrain says what it is (a fixed guiding star unshaken by tempests), the third quatrain says more specifically what it is not ("time's fool"--that is, subject to change in the passage of time), and the couplet announces the speaker's certainty. What gives this poem its rhetorical and emotional power is not its complexity; rather, it is the force of its linguistic and emotional conviction.The language of Sonnet 116 is not remarkable for its imagery or metaphoric range. In fact, its imagery, particularly in the third quatrain (time wielding a sickle that ravages beauty's rosy lips and cheeks), is rather standard within the sonnets, and its major metaphor (love as a guiding star) is hardly startling in its originality. But the language is extraordinary in that it frames its discussion of the passion of love within a very restrained, very intensely disciplined rhetorical structure. With a masterful control of rhythm and variation of tone--the heavy balance of "Love's not time's fool" to open the third quatrain; the declamatory "O no" to begin the second--the speaker makes an almost legalistic argument for the eternal passion of love, and the result is that the passion seems stronger and more urgent for the restraint in the speaker's tone.

Sonnet 129

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The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait On purpose laid to make the taker mad; Mad in pursuit and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

SummaryThis complex poem grapples with the idea of sexual desire as it exists in longing, fulfillment, and memory. (That is to say, it deals with lust as a longing for future pleasure; with lust as it is consummated in the present; and with lust as it is remembered after the pleasurable experience, when it becomes a source of shame.) At the beginning of the poem, the speaker says that "lust in action"--that is, as it exists at the consummation of the sexual act--is an "expense of spirit in a waste of shame." He then devotes the rest of the first quatrain to characterizing lust as it exists "till action"--that is, before the consummation: it is "perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame / Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust."In the second quatrain, the speaker jumps between longing, fulfillment, and memory. No sooner is lust "enjoyed" than it is "despised." When lust is longing, the fulfillment of that longing is hunted "past reason"; but as soon as it is achieved, it becomes shameful, and is hated "past reason." In the third quatrain, then, the speaker says that lust is mad in all three of its forms: in pursuit and possession, it is mad, and in memory, consummation, and longing ("had, having, and in quest to have") it is "extreme." While it is experienced it might be "a bliss in proof,"

but as soon as it is finished ("proved") it becomes "a very woe." In longing, it is "a joy proposed," but in memory, the pleasure it afforded is merely "a dream." In the couplet, the speaker says that the whole world knows these things well; but nevertheless, none knows how to shun lust in order to avoid shame: "To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell."CommentaryThe situation of the speaker of this poem is that of a person who has experienced each stage of lust, and who is therefore able to articulate the shame he now feels with reference to his past desire and its consummation. Though the lust of this poem is not explicitly sexual, it is described in highly carnal language--bloody, full of blame, savage, rude, swallowed bait. The most important device of this poem is its rapid oscillation between tenses and times; it jumps between the stages of lust almost uncontrollably, and in so doing creates a composite picture of its subject from all sides--each tinged by the shameful "hell" the speaker now occupies.Another important device, and a rare one in the sonnets, is the poem's impersonal tone. The speaker never says outright that he is writing about his own experience; instead, he presents the poem as an impersonal description, a catalogue of the kinds of experience offerred by lust. But the ferocity of his description belies his real, expressive purpose, which is to rue his own recent surrender to lustful desire. (The impersonal tone is exceedingly rare

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in the sonnets, and is invoked only when the speaker seeks most defensively to deflect his words away from himself--as in

Sonnet 94, where his tone of impersonal description covers a deep-seated vulnerability.)

Sonnet 130SummaryThis sonnet compares the speaker's lover to a number of other beauties--and never in the lover's favor. Her eyes are "nothing like the sun," her lips are less red than coral; compared to white snow, her breasts are dun-colored, and her hairs are like black wires on her head. In the second quatrain, the speaker says he has seen roses separated by color ("damasked") into red and white, but he sees no such roses in his mistress's cheeks; and he says the breath that "reeks" from his mistress is less delightful than perfume. In the third quatrain, he admits that, though he loves her voice, music "hath a far more pleasing sound," and that, though he has never seen a goddess, his mistress--unlike goddesses--walks on the ground. In the couplet, however, the speaker declares that, "by heav'n," he thinks his love as rare and valuable "As any she belied with false compare"--that is, any love in which false comparisons were invoked to describe the loved one's beauty.

CommentaryThis sonnet, one of Shakespeare's most famous, plays an elaborate joke on the conventions of love poetry common to Shakespeare's day, and it is so well-conceived that the joke remains funny today. Most sonnet sequences in Elizabethan England were modeled after that of Petrarch. Petrarch's famous sonnet sequence was written as a series of love poems to an idealized and idolized mistress named Laura. In the sonnets, Petrarch praises her beauty, her worth, and her perfection using an extraordinary variety of metaphors based largely on natural beauties. In Shakespeare's day, these metaphors had already become cliche (as, indeed, they still are today), but they were still the accepted technique for writing love poetry. The result was that poems tended to make highly idealizing comparisons between nature and the

poets' lover that were, if taken literally, completely ridiculous. My mistress' eyes are like the sun; her lips are red as coral; her cheeks are like roses, her breasts are white as snow, her voice is like music, she is a goddess. /PARAGRAPH In many ways, Shakespeare's sonnets subvert and reverse the conventions of the Petrarchan love sequence: the idealizing love poems, for instance, are written not to a perfect woman but to an admittedly imperfect man, and the love poems to the dark lady are anything but idealizing ("My love is as a fever, longing still / For that which longer nurseth the disease" is hardly a Petrarchan conceit.) Sonnet 130 mocks the typical Petrarchan metaphors by presenting a speaker who seems to take them at face value, and somewhat bemusedly, decides to tell the truth. Your mistress' eyes are like the sun? That's strange--my mistress' eyes aren't at all like the sun. Your mistress' breath smells like perfume? My mistress' breath reeks compared to perfume. In the couplet, then, the speaker shows his full intent, which is to insist that love does not need these conceits in order to be real; and women do not need to look like flowers or the sun in order to be beautiful.The rhetorical structure of Sonnet 130 is important to its effect. In the first quatrain, the speaker spends one line on each comparison between his mistress and something else (the sun, coral, snow, and wires--the one positive thing in the whole poem some part of his mistress is like. In the second and third quatrains, he expands the descriptions to occupy two lines each, so that roses/cheeks, perfume/breath, music/voice, and goddess/mistress each receive a pair of unrhymed lines. This creates the effect of an expanding and developing argument, and neatly prevents the poem--which does, after all, rely on a single kind of joke for its first twelve lines--from becoming stagnant.

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Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

There Is No Frigate Like A Book

There is no frigate like a bookTo take us lands away,Nor any coursers like a pageOf prancing poetry.This traverse may the poorest takeWithout oppress of toll;How frugal is the chariotThat bears a human soul!

To Make a Prairie

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—One clover, and a bee,And revery.The revery alone will doIf bees are few.

Emily Dickinson, "I dwell in possibility"

I dwell in Possibility -A fairer House than Prose -More numerous of Windows -Superior - for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -Impregnable of Eye -And for an Everlasting RoofThe Gambrels of the Sky -

Of Visitors - the fairest -For Occupation - This -The spreading wide of narrow Hands

Io abito nella Possibilità -Una Casa più bella della Prosa -Più ricca di Finestre -Superiore - quanto a Porte -

Con Camere come Cedri -Inespugnabili dall'Occhio -E per Tetto PerenneLe Volte del Cielo -

Come Ospiti - i più belli Quanto all'Occupazione - Questa L'ampio dispiegarsi di esigue Mani

To gather Paradise - Per raccogliere il Paradiso -

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A Glossary of Literary Terms

Accumulatio: figure of speech in which the points made previously are presented again in a compact, forceful manner. It often employs the use of climax in the summation of a speech. E.g.: "Your organization, your vigilance, your devotion to duty, your zeal for the cause must be raised to the highest intensity." Winston Churchill, Speech, 14 July 1941.

Alexandrine: a six-foot iambic line.

Allegory: a narrative in verse or prose in which the literal events consistently point to a parallel sequence of symbolic ideas. For example, Dante’s journey in Divina Comedia is also a symbol for the religious man’s progress from sin to redemption.

Alliteration: repetition of the same sound beginning several words in sequence.

*Let us go forth to lead the land we love. J. F. Kennedy, Inaugural

Anacoluthon: lack of grammatical sequence; a change in the grammatical construction within the same sentence.

“he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart.” (William Shakespeare, Henry V IV iii 346-6).

Anadiplosis: ("doubling back") the rhetorical repetition of one or several words; specifically, repetition of a word that ends one clause at the beginning of the next.

*Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state; servants of fame; and servants of business. Francis Bacon

Anapest: a metrical foot in which two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed one:

“on a boat” = U U -

Anaphora: the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines.

*We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, ... We shall never surrender. Churchill.

Anastrophe: transposition of normal word order; most often found in Latin in the case of prepositions

and the words they control. Anastrophe is a form of hyperbaton.

*The helmsman steered; the ship moved on; yet never a breeze up blew. (Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

Antanaclasis: stylistic device in which the same word is repeated, but each time with a different sense. E.g.: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately”, Benjamin Franklin.

Anticlimax: the descent in tension in a story contrasting with a previous rise. See also climax.

Antistrophe: repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses.

*In 1931, ten years ago, Japan invaded Manchukuo -- without warning. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia -- without warning. In 1938, Hitler occupied Austria -- without warning. In 1939, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia -- without warning. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Antithesis: opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction.

*Brutus: Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Apologue. A moral fable, usually featuring personified animals or inanimate objects which act like people to allow the author to comment on the human condition. Aporia: expression of doubt (often feigned) by which a speaker appears uncertain as to what he should think, say, or do.

*Then the steward said within himself, 'What shall I do?' Luke 16

Aposiopesis: rhetorical device by which the speaker or writer deliberately stops short and leaves something unexpressed, but yet obvious, to be supplied by the imagination, giving the impression that he/she is unwilling or unable to continue. It often portrays being overcome with passion (fear, anger, excitement) or modesty. "Well, I lay if I get ahold of you I'll—."(M. Twain, Tom Sawyer)

Apostrophe: a sudden turn from the general audience to address a specific group or person or personified abstraction absent or present.

*For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel.

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Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Archaism: use of an older or obsolete form. *Pipit sate upright in her chairSome distance from where I was sitting; T. S. Eliot, "A Cooking Egg"

Assonance: repetition of the same vowel sound in words close to each other.

*So twice five miles of fertile ground... (Coleridge, Kubla Khan)

Asyndeton: lack of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words. In a list of items, asyndeton gives the effect of unpremeditated multiplicity, of an extemporaneous rather than a labored account:

On his return he received medals, honors, treasures, titles, fame.

The lack of the "and" conjunction gives the impression that the list is perhaps not complete. Compare:

She likes pickles, olives, raisins, dates, pretzels.

She likes pickles, olives, raisins, dates, and pretzels.

Blank Verse. Unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Caesura. A pause, metrical or rhetorical, occurring somewhere in a line of poetry. The pause may or may not be typographically indicated.

Catalog: see enumeration.Chiasmus: two corresponding pairs arranged not in parallels (a-b-a-b) but in inverted order (a-b-b-a); from shape of the Greek letter chi (X).

*Those gallant men will remain often in my thoughts and in my prayers always. MacArthur *Renown'd for conquest, and in council skill'd. Addison et pacis ornamenta et subsidia belli. Cicero, Pro lege Manilia

Cliché: a stereotyped phrase, theme or structural pattern in a literary work.

Climax: arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of ascending power. Often the last emphatic word in one phrase or clause is repeated as the first emphatic word of the next.

*One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Tennyson, Ulysses

Concatenation: stanza- or verse-linking by verbal repetition. “Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain”

(Sidney, Astrophil and Stella)

Conceit. An elaborate, usually intellectually ingenious poetic comparison or image, such as an analogy or metaphor in which, say a beloved is compared to a ship, planet, etc. See John Donne's "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," for example: "Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, / The Intelligence that moves, devotion is."

Connotation. The secondary (non-literal) meaning of a word.

See for example mother / mum / mummy.

Couplet. Two consecutive lines rhyming together.

Decasyllable. A ten-syllable poetical line.

Denotation: the literal meaning of a word, without any particular connotation.

Diction. All the stylistic elements of a single literary work.

Elegy. A poetic composition intended as a lament for the loss of someone.

End-stopped. A line that has a natural pause at the end (period, comma, etc.). For example, these lines are end stopped:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. Coral is far more red than her lips red. (Shakespeare)

Enjambement (run-on-line). The running over of a sentence or thought into the next line without a pause at the end of the line. For example:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds Or bends with the remover to remove. . . . –Shakespeare

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Enumeration: list of words coordinated through asyndeton or polysyndeton. “A novice beginning . . . a farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor…” (W. Whitman)

Epigram. A short, satirical or humorous poem.

Euphemism. The substitution of a mild or less negative word or phrase for a harsh or blunt one, as in the use of "pass away" instead of "die."

Exaggeration: see hyperbole.

Flashback. A device that allows the writer to present events that happened before the time of the current narration or the current events in the fiction.

Foot. The basic unit of meter consisting of a group of two or three syllables. Scanning or scansion is the process of determining the prevailing foot in a line of poetry, of determining the types and sequence of different feet.

Types of feet: U (unstressed); - (stressed syllable)

Iamb: U - Trochee: - U Anapest: U U - Dactyl: - U U Spondee: - - Pyrrhic: U U

Free verse. Verse that has neither regular rhyme nor regular meter. Free verse often uses cadences rather than uniform metrical feet.

Hendiadys: use of two words connected by a conjunction, instead of subordinating one to the other, to express a single complex idea.

*It sure is nice and cool today! (for "pleasantly cool") *I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications. Psalms 116

Heroic Couplet. Two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter. Most of Alexander Pope's verse is written in heroic couplets. In fact, it is the most favored verse form of the eighteenth century. Example:

      u    -   u   -  u   -  u   -  u   -     'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill 

     u  -   u  -   u   -  u  -   u   - 

    Appear in writing or in judging ill. . . .  (Alexander Pope)

[Note in the second line that "or" should be a stressed syllable if the meter were perfectly iambic. Iambic= a two syllable foot of one unstressed and one stressed syllable, as in the word "begin." Pentameter= five feet. Thus, iambic pentameter has ten syllables, five feet of two syllable iambs.]

Hypallage: ("exchanging") transferred epithet; grammatical agreement of a word with another word which it does not logically qualify. More common in poetry.

“Alas what ignorant sin have I committed?”, W. Shakespeare, Othello, 4.2.70

Hyperbaton: separation of words which belong together, often to emphasize the first of the separated words or to create a certain image.

“Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before”, J. Milton, Paradise Lost, 2.703

Hyperbole: exaggeration for emphasis or for rhetorical effect.

*My vegetable love should growVaster than empires, and more slow;An hundred years should got to praiseThine eyes and on thine forehead gaze;Two hundred to adore each breast,But thirty thousand to the rest. (Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress")

Hysteron Proteron ("later-earlier"): inversion of the natural sequence of events, often meant to stress the event which, though later in time, is considered the more important.

*Put on your shoes and socks!

Iamb. The most common foot in English poetry: U -

Invective. Speech or writing that abuses, denounces, or attacks. It can be directed against a person, cause, idea, or system. It employs a heavy use of negative emotive language. Example:

I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. --Swift

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Irony. A mode of expression conveying a reality different from and usually opposite to appearance or expectation. A writer may say the opposite of what he means, create a reversal between expectation and its fulfillment, or give the audience knowledge that a character lacks, making the character's words have meaning to the audience not perceived by the character. In verbal irony, the writer's meaning or even his attitude may be different from what he says: "Why, no one would dare argue that there could be anything more important in choosing a college than its proximity to the beach." The irony is generated by the surprise recognition by the audience of a reality in contrast with expectation or appearance, while another audience, victim, or character puts confidence in the appearance as reality. The surprise recognition by the audience often produces a comic effect, making irony often funny.

Kenning. In Anglo-Saxon poetry, a condensed simile or metaphor: “sky candle” for sun.

Litotes: understatement, for intensification, by denying the contrary of the thing being affirmed. (Sometimes used synonymously with meiosis.)

*A few unannounced quizzes are not inconceivable.

Metaphor: implied comparison achieved through a figurative use of words; the word is used not in its literal sense, but in one analogous to it.

“Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage” Shakespeare, Macbeth “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” W. Churchill

Metonymy: substitution of one word for another which it suggests.

*He is a man of the cloth. *The pen is mightier than the sword. *By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread.

Metre. The rhythmic pattern produced when words are arranged so that their stressed and unstressed syllables fall into a more or less regular sequence, resulting in repeated patterns of accent (called feet). See feet and versification.

Mock Epic. Treating a frivolous or minor subject seriously, especially by using the machinery and devices of the epic (invocations, descriptions of

armor, battles, extended similes, etc.). The opposite of travesty. Examples:

Alexander Pope, The Dunciad Alexander Pope, Rape of the Lock

Novel. Extended prose fiction narrative, broadly realistic--concerning the everyday events of ordinary people--and concerned with character. "People in significant action" is one way of describing it. Another definition might be "an extended, fictional prose narrative about realistic characters and events." It is a representation of life, experience, and learning. Action, discovery, and description are important elements, but the most important tends to be one or more characters--how they grow, learn, find--or don't grow, learn, or find.

Novella. A prose fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. For example Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Octave: an eight-line stanza.

Ode. A long lyric poem that addresses a person, thing or place or celebrates a notable event.

Onomatopoeia: use of words to imitate natural sounds; accommodation of sound to sense.

*bang, buzz, to slam the door

Ottava rima: abababcc.

Oxymoron: apparent paradox achieved by the juxtaposition of words which seem to contradict one another.

*I must be cruel only to be kind. Shakespeare, Hamlet

Pamphlet: a small publication, or a short treatise on a subject, intended to influence public opinion.

Paradox: an assertion seemingly opposed to common sense, but that may yet have some truth in it.

*What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young. George Bernard Shaw

Parallel: two or more words in the same grammatical and logical order in two lines or sentences.

E.g.: “ginger hair, blue eyes”.

Parody. A satiric imitation of a work or of an author with the idea of ridiculing the author, his

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ideas, or work. Fielding's Shamela is, in large part, a parody of Richardson's Pamela.

Paronomasia: use of similar sounding words; often etymological word-play.

*The dying Mercutio: “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.” (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

Pentameter: a ten-syllable poetical line.

Persona. The person created by the author to tell a story. Whether the story is told by an omniscient narrator or by a character in it, the actual author of the work often distances himself from what is said or told by adopting a persona--a personality different from his real one.

Personification: presenting something as human. E.g.: “Busy old fool, unruly sun” (J. Donne).

Pleonasm: use of superfluous or redundant words, often enriching the thought.

*No one, rich or poor, will be excepted.

*I have seen no stranger sight since I was born.

Polyptoton: stylistic scheme in which words derived from the same root are repeated (e.g. "strong" and "strength"). A related stylistic device is antanaclasis, in which the same word is repeated, but each time with a different sense. E.g.: “With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder”. W. Shakespeare, Richard II, II, I, 37.

Polysyndeton is the use of a conjunction between each word, phrase, or clause, and is thus structurally the opposite of asyndeton. The rhetorical effect of polysyndeton, however, often shares with that of asyndeton a feeling of multiplicity, energetic enumeration, and building up.

They read and studied and wrote and drilled. I laughed and played and talked and flunked.

Praeteritio: is a rhetorical figure of speech wherein the speaker or writer invokes a subject by denying that it should be invoked. As such, it can be seen as a rhetorical relative of irony. E.g. "I don't even want to talk about the fact that my opponent is a drunk."

Prolepsis: the anticipation, in adjectives or nouns, of the result of the action of a verb; also, the positioning of a relative clause before its antecedent.

*Consider the lilies of the field how they grow.

Repetition: the appearance of an identical structure or word.

Rhyme. The similarity between syllable sounds at the end of two or more lines. Some kinds of rhyme (also spelled rime) include:

Couplet: a pair of lines rhyming consecutively.

Eye rhyme: words whose spellings would lead one to think that they rhymed (slough, tough, cough, bough, though, hiccough. Or: love, move, prove. Or: daughter, laughter.)

Feminine rhyme: two syllable rhyme consisting of stressed syllable followed by unstressed.

Masculine rhyme: similarity between terminally stressed syllables.

Rhythm: the pattern created by the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Romance. An extended fictional prose narrative about improbable events involving characters that are quite different from ordinary people. Knights on a quest for a magic sword and aided by characters like fairies and trolls would be examples of things found in romance fiction. Examples:

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote Sir Philip Sidney, The Arcadia

In popular use, the modern romance novel is a formulaic love story (boy meets girl, obstacles interfere, they overcome obstacles, they live happily ever after).

Run-on-line: see enjambement.

Sarcasm. A form of sneering criticism in which disapproval is often expressed as ironic praise.

Satire. A literary mode based on criticism of people and society through ridicule. The satirist aims to reduce the practices attacked by laughing scornfully at them--and being witty enough to allow the reader to laugh, also.  Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and several other techniques are almost always present

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Sestet: a six-line stanza.

Setting: the place and time in which narrated events occur.

Simile: an explicit comparison between two things using 'like' or 'as'.

*My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease, Shakespeare, Sonnet CXLVII

Sonnet. A fourteen line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, with a varied rhyme scheme. The two main types of sonnet are the Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean. The Petrarchan Sonnet is divided into two main sections, the octave (first eight lines) and the sestet (last six lines). The octave presents a problem or situation which is then resolved or commented on in the sestet. The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-B-A A-B-B-A C-D-E C-D-E, though there is flexibility in the sestet, such as C-D-C D-C-D.

The Shakespearean Sonnet, (perfected though not invented by Shakespeare), contains three quatrains and a couplet, with more rhymes (because of the greater difficulty finding rhymes in English). The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B C-D-C-D E-F-E-F G-G. In Shakespeare, the couplet often undercuts the thought created in the rest of the poem.

Spenserian Stanza. A nine-line stanza, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter (called an Alexandrine). The rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B B-C-B-C C. Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene is written in Spenserian stanzas.

Stanza: in a poem, a unit of several lines. Typical stanzas are: couplet, tercet, quatrain, sestet, octave.

Subplot. A subordinate or minor collection of events in a novel or drama. Most subplots have some connection with the main plot, acting as foils to, commentary on, complications of, or support to the theme of, the main plot.

Symbol. Something that on the surface is its literal self but which also has another meaning or even several meanings. For example, a sword may be a sword and also symbolize justice. A symbol may be said to embody an idea. There are two general types of symbols: universal symbols that embody

universally recognizable meanings wherever used, such as light to symbolize knowledge, a skull to symbolize death, etc., and constructed symbols that are given symbolic meaning by the way an author uses them in a literary work, as the white whale becomes a symbol of evil in Moby Dick.

Synecdoche: understanding one thing with another; the use of a part for the whole, or the whole for the part. (A form of metonymy.)

*Give us this day our daily bread. Matthew 6

Synesthesia: the association of images pertaining to different human senses: e.g. “a dark voice”.

Tetrameter: an eight-syllable poetical line.

Tone. The writer's attitude toward his readers and his subject; his mood or moral view. A writer can be formal, informal, playful, ironic, and especially, optimistic or pessimistic. While both Swift and Pope are satirizing much the same subjects, there is a profound difference in their tone.

Trochee: poetical foot - U

Turning point: a point that marks a definite change in a story or a poem. Also called volta.

Understatement deliberately expresses an idea as less important than it actually is, either for ironic emphasis or for politeness and tact. When the writer's audience can be expected to know the true nature of a fact which might be rather difficult to describe adequately in a brief space, the writer may choose to understate the fact as a means of employing the reader's own powers of description. For example, instead of endeavoring to describe in a few words the horrors and destruction of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, a writer might state:

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake interrupted business somewhat in the downtown area.

Verisimilitude. How fully the characters and actions in a work of fiction conform to our sense of reality. To say that a work has a high degree of verisimilitude means that the work is very realistic and believable--it is "true to life.".

Versification. Generally, the structural form of a verse, as revealed by scansion. Identification of verse structure includes the name of the metrical type and the name designating number of feet:

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Trimeter: 3 feet Tetrameter: 4 feet

Pentameter: 5 feet

Hexameter: 6 feet

Heptameter: 7 feet

Octameter: 8 feet

The most common verse in English poetry is iambic pentameter. See foot for more.

Zeugma: two different words linked to a verb or an adjective which is strictly appropriate to only one of them.

*Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burnThe living record of your memory.” (W. Shakespeare, Sonnet LV)

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CONTENTS

W. Blake, Every night … 2

W.H. Auden, Night Mail 2

What is poetry about?M. Angelou, Come. And Be My Baby 3

J.C. Clarke, I Wanna Be Yours 3

Rosemary Norman, Lullaby 4

Lullaby, by Rosemary Norman (notes) 4

Beowulf, Plot 6

The Seafarer 7

The Ballad 8Greensleeves 8The Unquiet Grave 8Henry Martin 9Geordie 10

Sir Gawain and the Green KnightContext 10Plot 11Major Characters 12Themes 13Motifs 14Symbols 14

G. Chaucer, The Canterbury TalesThe Reeve’s Tale 15The Prioress’ Tale 16

EverymanSynopsis 17Fellowship 18Good Deeds 18

C. Marlowe, Doctor FaustusPlot 19Act II, scene 1 20Act V, scene 2 21Major Characters 21Themes 23Motifs 25Symbols 25Important Quotations Explained 25Study Questions 28

The Sonnet 30P. Sidney, Astrophil and Stella 1 31T. Harrison,

The School of Eloquence 32W. Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 33W. Shakespeare, Sonnet 116 33W. Shakespeare, Sonnet 129 34W. Shakespeare, Sonnet 130 35

E. DickinsonThere is no Frigate like a Book 36To Make a Prairie 36I Dwell in Possibility 36

A Glossary of Literary Terms 37

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