Master of Arts in

ENGLISH (MAEG)

MEG-101
BRITISH POETRY, FROM CHAUCER TO MILTON

CONTENTS

MEG- 102: NEOCLASSICAL, VICTORIAN, ROMANTIC AND

MODERN POETRY

Brief Contents

Block Block Unit Unit

No. No.
1 Chaucer, his life and works
Introduction to 2 Chaucer’s style and diction
1 Geoffrey Chaucer
and his works 3 Introduction to the Canterbury Tales

1 Introduction to Nonnes Preestes Tale

Block Block Unit Unit

No. No.
5 Introduction to Edmund Spenser
Spenser’s First Book 6 Style and Diction of Edmund Spenser
2 Of Faerie Queene
7 Spenserian poetry

8 Faerie Queene

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Block Block Unit Unit
No. No.
9 What is Metaphysical Poetry
Poems By Marvell, 10 A study of George Herbert and his works
3 Herbert
11 A study of Andrew Marvell and his works
And Donne
12 A study of John Donne and his works

Block Block Unit Unit

No. No.
13 An introduction to John Milton
Milton’s ‘Paradise 14 A brief history of Milton and his works
4 Lost’,
15 Milton and his style as a poet
Book- 1
16 An introduction to Paradise Lost, Book- I

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EXPERT COMMITTEE
PROF. KALIDAS MISRA
Retd. Professor, Sambalpur University
Jyoti Vihar, Burla

PROF. KAMDEBA SAHU

Retd. Professor, Gangadhar Meher University
Sambalpur

PROF. ASIMA RANJAN PARHI

Head of Department of English, Utkal University,
Bani Vihar, Bhubaneswar

This material has been developed by Odisha State Open University (OSOU),
Sambalpur.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This block has been designed and developed by the Department of English, Odisha State
Open University. Most of the contents have been taken from OER and open resources, the
links for the same has been mentioned in the Bibliography/Suggested Readings section at
the end of each block.

MATERIAL PRODUCTION

Registrar
Odisha State Open University, Sambalpur
(cc) OSOU, 2022. Business Environment is made available
under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
http://creativecommons.org/licences/by-sa/4.0

Printers by:

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 Block- I: INTRODUCTION TO GEOFFREY CHAUCER AND HIS WORKS
Unit 1- Chaucer, his life and works
Unit 2- Chaucer’s style and diction
Unit 3- Introduction to the Canterbury Tales
Unit- 4- Introduction to Nonnes Preestes Tale

Block- II: SPENSER’S FIRST BOOK OF FAERIE

QUEENE
Unit 5- Introduction to Edmund Spenser
Unit 6- Style and Diction of Edmund Spenser
Unit 7- Spenserian poetry
Unit- 8- Faerie Queene

Block- III: POEMS BY MARVELL, HERBERT

AND DONNE
Unit 9- What is Metaphysical poetry?

Unit 10- A study of George Herbert and his works

Unit 11- A study of Andrew Marvell and his works
Unit- 12- A study of John Donne and his works

Block- IV: MILTON’S ‘PARADISE LOST’,

BOOK- 1
Unit 13- An introduction to John Milton
Unit 14- A brief history of Milton and his works
Unit 15- Milton and his style as a poet
Unit- 16- An introduction to Paradise Lost, Book- I
 MCO- 101/OSOU

BLOCK–1: INTRODUCTION TO GEOFFREY CHAUCER AND HIS

WORKS

Unit-1 Chaucer, his life and works

Unit- 2 Chaucer’s style and diction

Unit- 3 Introduction to the Canterbury Tales

Unit- 4 Introduction to Nonnes Preestes Tale

[Type here]

UNIT- 1: CHAUCER, HIS LIFE AND WORKS

Structure

3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Historical Background
3.3 Cultul.al Background
3.4 Intellectual Background
3.5 Literary Background
3.6 The Arts

1.0 OBJECTIVES

Our aim in this unit is to provide an overview of the age in which Geoffrey Chaucer
lived and wrote. He was the outstanding English poet of the late Middle Ages. Since
literature aid society are closely related, this background will help you understand
Chaucer's poetry. Background or context is particularly important here since the
medieval world was very different from our own.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

The unit will introduce you to the different aspects of the world of the late Middle
Ages. It was an age of transition from declining feudalism to an emerging
moneyeconomy. The Norman Conquest in 1066 had brought in French words, literary
conventions and artistic tastes. Historical events in the fourteenth century undermined
the older chivalric, aristocratic culture. The growth of trade and commerce led to the
growth of London. Apart from the conventions of romance and realism, Chaucer's
times also saw the revival of alliterative verse, the vehicle of social and moral protest.

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 1.2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The poetry of Chaucer and his contemporaries is best understood in the context of the
transition in European society from declining feudalism to an emerging
moneyeconomy characterised by the rise of the middle classes. Although the English
people still largely lived in small, self-sufficient villages, the very fact that Chaucer
was an urban poet already suggests a change. Here we need to remember that unlike
France, England had broken out of the feudal system rather early.

Wecould begin by taking a preliminary look at the growing importance and wealth of
towns because of trade and commerce. Because of the lucrative wool trade,
agricultural land was being converted at many places in to pasture for rearing sheep.
This required fewer farm-hands, giving rise to a gradual exodus of labour from
country to town, from farming to the craft-gilds. Of course, such processes of social
transformation do not take place abruptly: in the reign of Henry VIII, Thomas More
continues to attack the 'enclosure' system, that is, the conversion of arable land into
pasture. But at least three historical events can be identified which accelerated
change: the Hundred Years‟ War, the Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt.

In a sense the Hundred Years' War between England and France (beginning in 1337)
is rooted in the feudal structure of European society. The modern nationstate comes
into being in the transition from medieval to Renaissance Europe. Before that, through
matrimonial alliances Kings were feudal lords of laid and property in foreign
countries and often laid claim to their thrones. The basic cause of dispute between
England and France was thus the English possessions on French soil. War with France
and Scotland brought honour to the English monarchy but drained the resources of
the Crown, making the barons more powerful. In the changing situation, the barons
often included the magnates and comparatively recent merchant princes. After the
deposition and murder of the weak and willful king, Edward II, Edward III decided
to recover prestige through foreign campaigns, and for some time, succeeded in
catching the popular imagination. Flanders, the biggest customer for English wool,
appealed for aid to Edward in their conflict with the King of France. Edward's
alliances against France in the Netherlands and the Rhineland (Germany) were
matched by the counter-alliances of Philip VI, the French monarch. The immediate
pretext of the protracted Hundred Years' War was Edward's claim to the .French
throne through his mother, Isabella, challenging that of Philip VI. It is ironic that the
same Philip had been crowned in 1327 and Edward had done homage to him for
Gascony in 1329.

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A series of victories bolstered English pride in the mid-fourteenth century. The
victory at Crecy (1346), where English yeomen archers and Welsh knifemen routed
French chivalry was immediately followed by the Crushing defeat of the Scots at
Neville's Cross. Military glory and patriotic fanaticism that accompanied these
successes reached a peak in the triumph of the Black Prince, son of Edward, over the
French near Poitiers (1356), where the French king was taken prisoner. The peace of
Bretigny in 1360 made Edward ruler of one-third of France, but the financial burden
of the war began to tell on England. The intervention in Spain proved to be unwise,
since despite the Black Prince's last victory against Spain at Najera (13671, the war
dragged on, and reverses mounted upon reverses until finally England was left with
only a foothold around Calais and a weakened navy.

Ultimately what the Hundred Years' War did was to change the old code of chivalry:
Shakespeare brings this out ironically in his history plays (the second tetralogy from
Richard II to Henry V). Edward I and Edward III in asense created the modern
infantry. The yeoman archer, the development of a local militia at home and
something akin to modern conscription gave the English soldiers a definite edge over
the French, The situation on the battlefield contributed to the emergence of
democratic forces in England. The sense of a people's will, representing the rise of
the English people with all their proud defiance, presents a sharp contrast to the
French peasants' situation, and adds new life to the poetry of Chaucer. More
immediately, the looting and pillage of France by English soldiers, that Chaucer must
have witnessed in his French campaigns, may well have resulted in his sympathy for
the helpless.

The war, which had brought prosperity to various classes in England because of the
rich booty and high wages for soldiers, suffered a severe check from the Black Death
(1348-49), a deadly form of the highly infectious bubonic plague carried
acrossEurope by black rats. Because of insanitary conditions, it affected towns more
than villages, and the poor died everywhere like flies. Probably one-third of England's
population perished in the plague. Abating towards the end of 1349, the epidemic
revived in 1361, 1362 and 1369, continuing to break out sporadically until the late
seventeenth century, when medical science improved and the black rat wasdriven out
by the brown rat, which did not carry the disease.

The high mortality at once increased the demand for labour on the farm and weakened
the obligations of feudal tenure. This situation found a parallel among the clergy.
Many livings (ecclesiastical posts) fell vacant, and the clergy often supported the
labourers' demand for higher wages. It is thus not surprising that Chaucer's Franklin
was a freeholder and that even his Plowman had acquired a new freedom enabling
him to offer his services to others. The devastation, however, failed to dampen the
martial ardour of the king and his barons. Even as the Black Death was raging,
Edward III developed his Order of the Garter which became the model for all later
chivalric orders.

It was thus a time of political unrest and uncertainty: we must not forget that two
kings, Edward III and Richard II, were deposed and murdered in the fourteenth
century. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 has to be seen in this background. But first let
us have some idea of the condition of the poor in England. In 1381, more than half
the people did not possess the privileges that had been guaranteed to every 'freeman'
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by the Magna Carta (1215) in the reign of King John. The serf and the villein had the
status of livestock in the master's household, although the abovementioned factors
had started to push them out of bondage to the comparative freedom of crafts in towns.
In theory the-labourers had an elected representative, the Reeve, supposedly to
counterbalance the Steward or Bailiff. But as the wealth of the towns often drew away
an absentee landlord, the Reeve as substitute became a feared enemy of the people,
as in the portraits of Chaucer and Langland. The poor had to pay fines for marriage
or sending a son to school, and the inhuman heriot or mortuary tax exacted at death-
bed was responsible for much resentment.

The immediate provocation for the revolt was the Poll Tax or head tax. The financial
burden of the wars forced the government to ask Parliament to allow heavy taxes. But
since such taxes usually affected the propertied classes which dominated Parliament,
in 1380, taxes were levied on even the poorest. The sudden outbreak of rebellion
under the leadership of Wat Tyler resulted in the peasants, accustomed to levies for
French campaigns, attacking London, destroying property and putting the Archbishop
of Canterbury lo death. The uprising collapsed equally suddenly, partly because of
the shrewdness and courage of King Richard II, who promptly went back on his
promises as soon as the rebels had dispersed. Although the movement failed, it was
for the first time that the poor peasant had fought for his basic right of freedom; there
was very little looting in the Revolt. Despite a brief reference to it in The Nun’s
Priest's Tale, Chaucer concerns himself with the sufferings of individual poor men
and not the poor in bulk. For the portrayal of the rural proletariat as opposed to the
prosperous farmer class which also grew at that time, we have to go to Langland.

What was the situation in the towns? Apart from London, all English towns were
smaller than those of industrialized Flanders and northern Italy. Amedium-sized
English town would have only 3,000 or 4,000 inhabitants, and town and country
flowed into one another. They were fortified by walls since there were no policemen
in the modern sense. Their social and economic life was dominated by the merchants
and the gilds. The merchant gilds were the most powerful and important; the craft
gilds took second place. Parish gilds were also organised for charitable work. Often
engaged in rivalry and competition-in the thirteen-eighties there was virtually a war
between the older food-trade gilds and the newer cloth gilds-the gilds were
easilyidentified by their distinctive liveries. They also competed with each other to
put up on Feast days the colourful pageantry of Miracles and Moralities, drama based
on the Bible and saints' lives.

While working at the Custom-House and living over the Aldgate Tower, Chaucer
came to know and love this colourful London life. He would have noticed churches
as well as taverns around him: we may note in passing that the pilgrimage to the
Canterbury Cathedral (in The Canterbury Tales) begins at the Tabard Inn. London
was a busy town of about 40,000 people with a certain openness about its markets
and shops. Apart from churches and splendid houses of noblemen, the ordinary
citizens‟ and artisans' dwellings had an equally arresting variety. Most of them were
of timber and plaster with only side-gables of masonry to prevent the spreading of
fires. The ground floor was generally open to the street and outside stairs seem to
have been common: There was little comfort or privacy, and instead of glass, the
windows had wooden shutters. Since such shutters and weak walls made
eavesdropping and housebreaking easy, and streets were unlit, wanderers at night

4
were severely punished. Furniture was kept at the barest minimum. There was
generally only one bedroom; for most of the household, the house meant simply the
hall. But the common life of the hall was declining among the upper classes with
increasing wealth and material comfort. The energy and excitement of London was
primarily outdoors, in the street, which was the scene of royal processions and
tournaments, the Mayor's annual ride as well as crime and riot.

1.3 CULTURAL BACKGROUND

As it is well known, Chaucer divides society into the three conventional estatesthe
knight (nobility), the working man (the third estate) and the ecclesiastic (the church).
The fact that he leaves out the two extremes of aristocracy and serfdom suggests a
deliberate choice of a bourgeois perspective: he observes society mainly through the
eyes of the rising middle classes. At the same time, his irony is also directed at them.
This technique enables him to capture the old and the new in his time with rare
subtlety. He begins in The CanterburyTales fairly high in the ecclesiastical hierarchy
with the Prioress and the Monk, then come the Friar and the Nun's Priest or Chaplain,
then the Parson and the Clerk, then the Summoner and the Pardoner.

Perhaps no other element in Chaucer's world brings out the gap between the ideal and
the actual as the code of chivalry and the conventions of courtly love. Harking back
to pagan morality, chivalry anticipates the concept of the modem gentleman. The true
and perfect knight was distinguished by fearless strength, charity and faith. Actually
the knights had been only mounted soldiers and not much more. In 1095, Pope Urban
IIin Rome exhorted the knights of the First Crusade on their way to the Holy Land to
give up cruelty and greed in favour of Christian values of charity, sacrifice and faith.
The Cross is joined with the Sword. With the reduction of war as the twelfth century
advanced, leisure gave rise to war games like jousts and tournaments and the allied
concept of courtly love. Although as a cultural ideal, courtly love had a refining and
civilizing influence, it remained primarily a literary convention and hence will be
dealt with later.

What was the actual state of affairs? From the earliest age of chivalry, chroniclers and
observers have pointed out so many inconsistencies and corruptions that one is left to
question the entire social code. Despite the values of moderation, magnanimity and
protection of the weak, the chivalric ideal presupposed a society where serfs
outnumbered freemen. The code did reach a high point in the first half of the thirteenth
century. But even here the decay began soon enough, caused by the decline in
crusading zeal and by the rising wealth of the merchant classes. Instead of fighting
the infidel for the possession of the Holy Land, Christians either fought among
themselves or led a life of pleasure. The rich citizens brought much material comfort
but their wealth weakened the feudal aristocracy: they began to buy for themselves
the ranks of knighthood. In fact, Edward I perhaps wanted to accelerate this process
by compelling all freeholders possessing an estate of £20 a year to become knights.
At the same time, honest commerce acquired a dignity in every field of life; although
the knights were forbidden by civil law to become traders or merchants, they could
5
hardly resist the forces of history. The Cistercians, possibly the richest religious body
in England derived their wealth mainly from success in the wool trade. Of course,in
the Hundred Years' War, the knights made themselves suddenly rich by looting
efficiently certainly, the custom of ransoming prisoners brought a commercial
element into knightly life. The real trouble between Shakespeare's Henry IV and
Hotspur begins, we may brieflynote, with the ransoming of prisoners.

Courtly love conventions are not a reliable guide to the actual conditions of love and
marriage in Chaucer's time. Marriages were negotiated with great haste on purely
commercial motives; this was also the reason for the many child-marriages. Awoman
could inherit property but in order to defend it she needed a husband. Divorce was
easy, though only for rich people who were scheming for larger inheritance. The
idealised woman of courtly love who was put on a pedestal to be worshipped by the
knight contrasts violently with the widespread practice of beating wives, sisters and
daughters.

Perhaps the idealisation was the natural outcome of the unbearable harshness of
actuality. There being little privacy in the medieval castle, and women being debarred
from the masculine recreations of physical exercise, drinking and war, they were
confined to an intolerable boredom that often encouraged furtive debauchery. Since
marriage was inimical to romantic love, illicit love was idealised in the courtly
convention. The power of the code is evident in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.
Although Criseyde can marry as a young widow, her love with Troilus begins and
ends in secret. Even when Troilus comes to know that Criseyde is to be handed over
to the Greek camp in exchange for the Trojan prince Antenor, he does not make public
their love. That would have at once made them man and wife.

1.4 INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND

The intellectual milieu of Chaucer was ultimately controlled by a religious vision

common to medieval culture. It is of course to be found in the Retractation at the end
of The Canterbury Tales, where the poet prays that his sin of writing secular and
courtly literature may be forgiven. Similarly, gentilesse or nobility and courtly love
acquire a deep spiritual content. This is hardly surprising since the Christian church
played acentral role in the life of the people, and the parish priest, even more than the
passing friar, was the chief instructor. Its dedication to Christ's teachings led it or, at
least, sections of the clergy to denounce the social evils of the day. The Lollards
dominated the literature of satire and complaint. Followers of the heretical Wyclif,
they were aided in their criticism by mystical writers like Dame Juliana of Norwich,
Richard Rolle and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. These mystics
undermined institutional religion by their emphasis on a personal relationship with
God. The Lollards are also remembered for the first English translation of the Bible
under the guidance of Wyclif.

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The cosmos of the Middle Ages was providentially ordered and harmonious. The
earth was the point-sized centre of a system of crystalline concentric spheres for the
planets to go around. This Ptolemaic, geocentric model was displaced in the
Renaissance by the Copernican heliocentric (sun at the centre) universe. But in the
Middle Ages it was held together by Gods' love, which controlled all the cycles of seasons,
tides, birth and death. According to medieval belief, the stars as agents of Destiny combined
with Fortune as powerful influences on human life. Of course, God's providence worked in
everything, although men could not grasp its ways.

Astrology and medicine were closely related in Chaucer's world. Each of the twelve
signs of the zodiac was thought to control a different part of the human body;
moreover, the physical characteristics and nature of each person were determined by
his horoscope at birth. This gave rise to the four medieval 'humours.' Physicians
treating a patient would first cast his horoscope; then combining this with the
positions of the stars when the illness began and when the doctor paid his visit, they
would attempt to heal.

Related to astrology was the pseudo-science of alchemy. Chaucer's yeoman in

TheCanon's Yeoman's Tale knowledgeably refer6 to the four spirits and seven bodies.
The spirits are quicksilver, arsenic, crystalline salt and brimstone and the bodies are
the medieval planets (including the sun and the moon). Thus gold belongs to the sun,
silver to the moon, iron to Mars, quicksilver to Mercury, lead to Saturn, tin to Jupiter
and copper to Venus. Chaucer's contemporary, John Gower, wrote nearly two
hundred lines in the Confessio Amnntison alchemy.

Chaucer's doctor refers to many learned authorities on medicine. Among the classical
sources are Hippocrates and Galen; among the Moslem physicians we find Avicenna
and Averroes. Finally we have English physicians of the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries: Gilbertus, Anglicus, Bernard, Gaddesden. The human body was
believed to have four fluids or 'humours' of which one would always predominate. If
blood was predominant, we would have a 'sanguine' person; if phlegm, a 'phlegmatic'
person, if choler, a choleric person and if black bile, a 'melancholic' person. Chaucer's
Reeve is choleric, Franklin melancholic.,
Humours determined temperament and physical make-up, and the latter was also
shaped by the stars. According to Galen, the doctor had to consider the four elements
of earth, water, air, fire and the four qualities of hot, cold, dry, moist in treating the
body. 'Each of the twelve zodiac signs was related to the elements, qualities and
humours. Not only are the human mind and body thus closely related but man himself
is further related to the larger order in the universe.

Another medieval science in which Chaucer had an interest was the science of dreams.
Here, his source, Macrobius' commentary on The DI-earn of Scipio,lists five types of
dream: the Somnium, the visio, the oraculum, the insomnium, the phantasma or
visium. The somnium is a dream requiring symbolic interpretation by an expert. The
visio reveals a coining event exactly as it will be. In the oraculum a spirit or relative
or an important person appears to the dreamer and announces what is lo happen. By
contrast to these prophetic dreams, the insomnium and the phantasma indicate nothing
apart from the dreamer's physical state. The former may be produced by fear or worry
or digestive disturbances; the latter is a kind of delusion.

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 1.5 LITERARY BACKGROUND

The Middle Ages are usually held to begin in Europe with the sack of Rome, but in
England it begins conventionally with the Norman Conquest (1066-87) and ends with
the Reformation (1533-59). In terms of the literary output, this limespan could be
divided into three periods. In the first period, up to 1250, religious writings
predominate, in the second (1250-1350), romances. In the third period we have
Chaucer, Langland, Gower, the Pearl poet and so on.

In 1066 William, the Duke of Normandy, invaded England claiming the English
throne as the next of kin to Edward the C:onfessor and defeated his rival, Harold, at
the Battle of Hastings. In the next four years, the English nobility was virtually wiped
out, and the new king's French supporters constituted the new aristocracy in England.
Before the Norman Conquest, Latin was the language of divine worship and learning
while English (that is, Old English) was widely used in other spheres. The Normans
introduced the French language into England as the language of the ruling classes.
But the English language continued to be spoken by the uncultivated masses. Thus
the initial effect of the Conquest was no doubt damaging to the vernacular literature.
But it never died out because while AngloNorman French increasingly became a
special and fashionable accomplishment (as in the case of Chaucer's Prioress), the
oral nature of English kept it alive among the largely illiterate people. Understood by
all, it had a clear metrical shape and held the listener's attention by clever appeals to
him and summarising the content from time to time. This non-private character of
Middle English literature fitted neatly into or grew out of crowded communal life in
households and religious communities. Above all, the language survived as the
popular medium of preaching.

After England lost Normandy in 1204 and the nobility was no longer allowed, in
1244, to possess lands in both England and France, the tide turned in favour of English.
After 1250, there is a substantial increase in the number of French words in English,
indicating clearly that a people or class, used to French, was switching over to English.
In fifty years, from 1250 to 1300, the language of the governing classes changes back
to English. Thus ultimately the Norman influence was not wholly negative. The
Normans imported the French literature and literary standards of the twelfth-century
Renaissance: these provided the models for a new native literature of politeness and
urbanity. English vocabulary was enriched with many French words which made the
language more cosmopolitan and literary. Further, the old Teutonic alliterative
measure was largely replaced by French syllabic verse, standard in Europe. Actually
the Conquest resulted in a fusion of Teutonic (northern) and Romance (southern)
traditions. Subsequently, literature in England was written in three languages: Latin,
French and English. The imitation of French works like the Songs of Roland gradually
produced an upper-class.

English literature. Even the British legend of King Arthur reached English romance not directly
from Celtic traditions but through the French romances of Chretien de Troyes and his successors.
8
All medieval literature offers a sharp contrast to modem literature in its impersonality,
religious feeling and didactic content. Much of this literature is in fact anonymous,
and the conditions of publishing and book reproduction (before the printing press)
give it a communal character. The medieval author also did not place value on
originality as we now understand it: an old and authoritative source only heightened
the appeal of literature. As narrative poetry moved out of the mead-hall into the castle,
the presence of women in the audience produced an important stylistic change:
instead of the heroic (Beowulf), we have the courtly (Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight). Even where the writing was not religious, a deep moral concern located the
secular in a sacred framework.

The fertility and variety of literature around Chaucer's time-romance, lyric, drama,
mystical meditation-are evident also in the alliterative revival of the fourteenth
century. This meant primarily the revival of the old four-beat alliterative measure of
Old English poetry, of Beowulf, for instance. The twenty odd poems written in this
older metre in Middle English mostly came from the north and the north-west of
England, although Piers Plowman originated in the west Midlands. From the west
also came four poems in the north-western dialect contained in a single manuscript.
Originally untitled, they are now identified in the order in which they appear, as Pear,
Purify, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The similarities among them suggest some common ground, perhaps even a common
author. Pearl is the important religious poem in the collection, describing in elevated
mystical language the vision of a father whose child has died. Even if the poem is not
taken in autobiographical terms, the allegory of the pearl reveals an ethical concern
for purity. The poem handles the theme of salvation in the framework of a personal
elegy, using time-honoured medieval conventions of dream and debate. What strikes
the modem reader is the deep personal feeling and sensuous description controlled
with artistic restraint by considerable metrical skill. Purity shows similar ethical
preoccupations with uncleanness and grace, and Patience tells the story of Jonah and
the whale in realistic detail.

SirGawain is perhaps the most complex verse romance in Middle English literature.
Courtly in tone, it is the finest Arthurian romance in English dealing without didactic
considerations the theme of knightly courage and truth. It combines two stories '
found separately either in Celtic or Old French romances:
a) Gawain's encounter with the Green Knight and the three blows exchanged with the
latter, b) the three temptations held out by the host's wife at Bercilak's castle. The
three blows match the three temptations, and the plot is well-knit. But the modem
reader is moved by the colour, energy and vivid detail that make it a veritable tapestry.
The freshness of observation is reflected in dialogue (between Gawain and the lady
of the castle) and above all we are given a sense of multiple actions moving
simultaneously. The Gawain poet belongs to the north-west Midlands, probably south
Lancashire as indicated by the landscape and local allusions. He has a good
knowledge of moral and theological problems and his vocabulary contains a large
French element.

The alliterative revival is marked by poems of social and moral protest: they respond
actively to the unrest of the period. The anti-establishment satire is appropriately
9
presented in alliterative verse and not in the conventional courtly measure. The
outstanding poem in this respect is The Vision ofWilliam Concerning Piers the
Plowman. The multiple extant manuscripts show that it was a popular work, and the
author's keen interest in the text is revealed in his three versions. The earliest version
or A-text is short (2579 lines) and consists of a prologue and eleven passus (or cantos).
The B-text is a revision with a prologue and twenty passus (7241 lines). The C-text
revises further (7353 lines) and is divided into twenty-three passus. Beginning with a
vision on the Malvern Hills in the west of England of a 'field full of folk,' it develops
into a comprehensive portrait of fourteenth-century life. Although the multiple
visions include familiar allegories like the Seven Deadly Sins, the poem's strength
does lie in the narrative. Lacking in orderliness and logical plan, digressive in
impulse, the poem, especially in its Aand B texts, offers a powerful contrast to the
ironic detachment of Chaucer. Its realistic and biting satire often reaches the visionary
intensity of Dante. Its religious and political message is inseparable from its
sanctification of honest labour.

Among the other contemporaries of Chaucer, Gower's earnestness is conventional and

unrelieved by humour; he also lacks Langland's intensity. But in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, Gower was considered equal to Chaucer. His Speculum
Meditantis is in French, Vox Clamantis, which has a vivid account of the Peasant's
Revolt, is in Latin, and Confessio Amantis is in English. In the last poem Gower goes
beyond mere didactic content to write of love asan unrewarded servant of Venus. But
even here the framework of the stories is the seven deadly sins since he confesses to
a priest (Genius, the priest of Venus).

Chaucer had many imitators in his time or a little after. Among these, Thomas
Hoccleve and John Lydgate, despite the latter's Fall of Princes (which anticipates the
sixteenth-century Mirror for Magistrates) are not half as successful as the Scottish
Chaucerians: the Scottish king, James I, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin
Douglas. The Kingis Quhair of James celebrates love and its fulfillment through trials
and adversities. Dunbar's Twa Mariit Wemen and the
Wedo was influenced by Chaucer's Wife of Bath’s Prologue, while Douglas's The
Palice of Honour shows a debt to Chaucer's Hous of Fame. Henryson came closest to
Chaucer, first in his Fables, but he added a moral. Later he borrowed again from
Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde in The Testament ofCresseid. His Cresseid, deserted
by Diomede, curses the gods and is punished with leprosy. Deeply ashamed, she
withdraws into confinement. Here one day Troilus gives her alms without recognising
her. She recognises Troilus, however, and condemns her own infidelity. Henryson's
vision is grim and sombre in comparison to Chaucer's forgiving humanity.

As a mature poet Chaucer was able to combine the courtly and bourgeois conventions
of literature. The aristocratic, secularised literature, imported from twelfth-century
France, is built around the themes of courtly love, courtesy and chivalry. Marvellous
adventure becomes the hall-mark of romance, which is written in a new verse form,
the octosyllabic couplet. The heroine is traditionally desirable and difficult, and the
knight-errant moves through trial to the happiness of requited love. Apart from the
refining and chastening test of love, the knight often has to fight dragons and demons.
The elements of adventure is soon minimised or rather turned inward as in Roman de
la Rose of Guilladme de Lorris: here the allegory takes over and captures the
movements of the soul. The setting is often exotic and unworldly. Allegory makes the
10
springtime garden in Roman de la Rose, a conventional setting for courtly love, an
earthly paradise.

Allegory is of course a distinctive technique of medieval literature common to courtly

romance, alliterative satire and the Miracles and Moralities. A human figure may
stand for a vice (Gluttony, Lechery, Idleness and so on in the Seven Deadly Sins) or
for an institution like the Church, a thing like a pearl can mean purity and so on. In
Chaucer's Nuns ' Priest's Tale or Parliament of Fowls, animals represent in secular
allegories human beings or social classes. The allegorical habit began perhaps from
interpreting the Bible for a wide variety of people: this produced the many levels of
meaning. Gradually, the literal meaning became a kind of disguise which had to be
removed in order to reveal the higher meaning.

In the idealised courtly romances, background, character, speech and action are all
static and formal. The ideal courtly lady, for example, has blond hair, white smooth
forehead, soft skin, arched eyebrows, grey eyes, a small, round full mouth, dimpled
chin and so on. These devices are an aid to idealisation, to the movement away from
the specifically individual to the abstract idea. Love for a woman is exalted to divine
love. No wonder that Dante had been able to combine courtly eroticism with religious
ecstasy. What Dante's Beatrice achieves is paralleled in the Arthurian romance where
the comparatively secular search for personal perfection becomes the quest for the
Holy Grail.

Gradually the courtly style learnt to include within it its opposite, the realistic style:
Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales represent this amalgam.
The realistic style can be related to the emergence of the new middle classes. Its
commonest genre is the fabliau, the short, humorous verse tale often marked by
coarseness; others include the mime, the beast epic, the fable and so on. The fabliau
is characterised by a certain animal vitality and grotesque exaggeration: it is impolite,
irreverent, often vulgar and obscene. The fabliau setting is economical and precise.
Its world contains peasants and bourgeois, clerks, priests, nuns, jugglers, some
knights and ladies. There are some stock formulae, as for example the triangle of the
unimaginative, jealous husband, sensual wife and lecherous priest or clever clerk.
There is a pattern even to their portraits, although the typical portrait is suddenly
brought alive through individual detail of speech, dress and physiognomy, as in The
Canterbury Tales.

3.6 THE ARTS

As in literature, so in architecture, England gradually tried to work out a native version

of the complex and glorious French Gothic style. The Gothic was a characteristic
mode of the Middle Ages bringing together the flippant and the serious, the grotesque
and the sublime, copiousness and ascetic control. Such a heterogeneous and
hospitable mode not only accommodated an attention to minute and elaborate detail
but subordinated the abundance to the angular simplicity of the spire. One of the most

11
important buildings of the thirteenth century Henry III's Westminster Abbey-was
directly inspired by French work. By the second half of the fourteenth century,
however, the so-called 'perpendicular' style spread over England, because it was
cheaper and less extravagant. The Hundred Years' War introduced French brickwork
and a French type of castle built on a simple quadrangular plan.

While medieval houses were overcrowded and their furniture scanty, the hangings,
covers and cushions provided all the splendour. Tapestry and embroidery were aided
by the English cloth industry, Embroidery designs were closely linked to
'illuminated'. books and manuscripts. 'Illumination' was the technique of decorating
the letters of a text (often the initial letter) with gold, silver and bright colours.
Common people who could not afford illuminated manuscripts had to be satisfied
with wall-painting and sculpture inside churches. The taste for portraiture, as in the
picture of Richard II, indicates a growing interest in the individual away from the
idealised types of religious painting in the thirteenth century. The vast improvement
in craftsmanship resulted in a more refined, polite and decorative style but the older
monumental and somewhat heroic stateliness was lost.

1.6 LET US SUM UP

In this unit you have learnt about the age of Chaucer, a transitional one. Although the
focus has been historical, ultimately you have learnt about the growth of towns,
decline of chivalry, gender relations, people's beliefs, the condition of the poor and
varying literary ideals. In other words, you have acquired some idea of the life and
values of the people at that time

1.7 EXERCISES

1. Describe the effect on fourteenth-century life and literature of the following: I) the Hundred
Years' War, ii) the Peasants' Revolt, iii) the Black Death. (You will find your answer mainly
in 1.2.The war destroyed chivalry and depleted the government's resources. The Revolt and
the condition of the poor. The rise of the English people and its effect on literature. The
Black Death and the weakening of feudal tenure. Farm-hands in great demand. Many
vacancies for the clergy who support the poor.)

2. Write short notes on:

Courtly love, chivalry, women and marriage. (See 1.3)

3. What is the relationship between astrology and medicine in Chaucer's time? (See I
12
 .4)

4. Write short notes on:

The courtly romances, the NormanConquest, allegory, the alliterative revival. (See
1.5)

UNIT- 2 CHAUCER’S STYLE AND DICTION

Structure

4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Life of Chaucer
4.3 Chaucer's Poetry 1370-80
4.4 Chaucer's Poetry 1380-86 .
4.5 Chaucer 's Poetry 1387-1400
4.6 Chaucer's Comic Vision
4.7 Chaucer's Language and Metre
4.8 Let Us Sum Up
4.9 Exercises

4.10 Suggested Reading

2.0
OBJECTIVES

13
Since in the previous unit you have been given a general introduction to the age of
Chaucer, this unit will focus on Chaucer as a poet. The discussion would include
Chaucer's biography and poetic development with a brief survey of his entire literary
output, his reading and his language and metre. The aim will be to prepare you to read
The CanterburyTales.

2.1
INTRODUCTION

This unit will take you through the life and work of Chaucer to the composition of his
most popular work TheCanterbury Tales. We will tryto come to some kind of an
assessment of Chaucer's poetic contribution and his place in the history of English
literature. The focus will be on his style and comic vision.

2.2 CHAUCER’S LEGACY

Although not much is known of Chaucer's life, official records give us a good idea of
his public career. He was born about 1343-44 to John and Agnes Chaucer in London.
The name Chaucer (French 'Chaussier') suggests that they were a shoemaking family,
but his immediate ancestors were prosperous wine-merchants with some standing at
court. Beginning as a page in the household of Prince Lionel and Elizabeth, Countess
of Ulster, Chaucer went to France in the English army, was taken prisoner near Reims
and ransomed. He seems to have risen to the service of the king, undertaking a series
of diplomatic missions for ten years which exposed him to Continental culture. He
was married probably in 1366 to Philippa, daughter of Sir Payne Roet and sister of
Katherine Swynford, afterwards the third wife of
John of Gaunt. From 1 December 1372 till 23 May 1373, he was once more on the
Continent, his first Italian journey. This visit which took him from Genoa to Florence
had a decisive influence on him. Florence was already a centre of art, architecture and
literature; it brought him into contact with the writing of Dante, Petrarch and
Boccaccio. In other words, the Italian journey took him from the Middle Ages to- the
threshold of the Renaissance.

Shortly before going to Italy, Chaucer wrote The Book of the Duchess, an elegy on
the death of Blanche, the wife of John of Gaunt. His important connections made him
in 1374 Controller of the Customs and Subsidy on Wool, Skins, and Hides in the port
of London. After some fluctuation of fortune, in 1389, when Richard II asserted his
position, Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the King's Works, in charge of the upkeep
of the royal buildings. When he lost his Clerkship he again went through financial
uncertainties until the new King Henry IV gave him an annuity of 40 marks. But the
poet died soon after, in 1400.

14
From this brief sketch it is clear that, despite the cultivated ironic image of himself as
a dreamer withdrawn among his books (as, say, in The Hous of Fame), Chaucer was
an active man of affairs, mixing freely in government and courtly circles. Since love
of French culture was common among such classes, Chaucer's tastes and reading were
also influenced by it. Among his constant reading we must include the Roman de la
Rose, the poems of Machant and the works of Ovid (in Latin). Chaucer's early work
is often referred to as his 'French' period because of the influence of some
contemporary French poets like Deschamps and Froissart. His 'Italian' period begins
with The Hous of Fame. Without rejecting the French and Italian elements, Chaucer
enters his 'English' period with Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales.

2.3 CHAUCER'S POETRY (1370-80)

The Roman de la Rose (or The Romaunt of the Rose in Chaucer's incomplete translation) was
the most popular and influential of all French poems in the Middle
Ages. It was different from earlier narrative poetry like the Chanson de Roland and marks the
new taste for dreams and allegories. Begun around the third decade of the thirteenth century
by Guillaume de Lorris, it ran to about 4000 lines (ending at line 4432 of the English
translation). It became the model for innumerable allegorical love-visions. Closely following
the courtly love conventions, Guillaume, a young poet in the 'service' of a lady, relates a
vision of a beautiful garden where Cupid, the God of Love and his followers were enjoying
themselves. Among the flowers, the poet is shown a Rosebud (the symbol of his lady-love)
which he eagerly desires to possess. An allegorical contest begins at this point. Opposed by
Chastity, Danger (aloofness, disdain), Shame, and Wicked Tongue, the poet is helped by
Franchise (liberty), Pity, and Belaceil (fairwelcoming). Through Venus's intervention,
Belacueil allows the poet to kiss the rose. As a result, however, Belacueil is imprisoned and
the poet-lover exiled from the garden. This is where Guillaume's fragment ends.

Forty years later, the poem was resumed by a different poet in a rather different spirit.
Jean de Meun, a maturer scholar, philosopher, moralist and translator, added about
eighteen thousand lines in which science, theology, social philosophy are all - to be
found within an entertaining style. Love, instead of the courtly conventions, is now
analysed rationalistically in terms of a natural impulse for the propagation of the race.
Jean de Meun is a satirist and his satire is directed at friars, knights, lawyers and
doctors, and the idealised figure of woman in Guillaume's work. Although the story
ends happily with the lover finally gaining possession of his lady-love, the satire
stands out, prompting critics to compare Jean with Voltaire (brilliant eighteenth
century satirist). As must be clear to you by now, Roman de la Rose introduced
Chaucer at once to the opposed styles and conventions of romance and realism: the
two poets combined to form Chaucer's poetic style.

The earliest of Chaucer's original poems of any length is The Book of the Duchess.
We have already seen why Chaucer wrote the elegy. For this poem, he mainly drew
upon the poetry of Guillaume Machaut. It is both an eulogy (formal praise) of Blanche
and a consolation addressed to her bereaved husband. Chaucer accomplishes this
double purpose by adapting the love-vision poem to the elegy. What are the usual
15
features of the love-vision, many of which can be seen in Hous of Fame, Parliament
of Fowls and the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women'? They include discussion
of sleeplessness and dreams, the setting on May-day or in spring, the vision itself, the
guide (often in the form of a helpful animal), the personified abstractions and so on.
Despite the obvious immaturity of the poem, Chaucer's talent for realism is already
evident in the hunting scene. His use of the dream is not merely conventional but
shows a psychological interest.

It is not before ten years that he wrote another long poem, The Hous of Fame. In the
interim period he had been to Italy and his reading of Dante probably gives him the
idea of a journey to unknown regions. Although the device of the lovevision continues
to be used, there is a greater mastery of style and metre. In the poetic development of
Chaucer, this poem has a transitional role. Chaucer draws upon
Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid and other medieval Latin writers. The work lacks in homogeneity partly
because the centre of interest shifts from love to the uncertainties of fame. The poem is in three
books. In the first book, the poet dreams that he is in the temple of Venus where the love-story
of Dido and Aeneas is related. As he steps out, a huge golden eagle seizes him and carries him
to the House of Fame where we are promised but never told the tidings of love's folk. Do they
refer to the marriage of Richard and Anne or the expected betrothal of Philippa, the daughter of
John of Gaunt? What stands out in the poem is the eagle's flight in Book II: the poet's speechless
terror contrasts comically with the friendly talkativeness of the eagle who anticipates the
Chauntecleer of Nun 'S Priest's Tale.

2.4 CHAUCER'S POETRY (1380-86)

In The Parliament of Fowls,we find that the poet has been reading lately a famous
work, the SonmiumScipionis. In this work, the elder Africanus appears to Scipio the
younger in a dream, takes him up into the heavens, where he shows him the mysteries
of the future life. As night falls, the poet stops reading, falls asleep and dreams that
Africanus has come to his bedside. To reward him for the study of his book, the latter
takes him to a beautiful park where he sees the temple of Venus. Then he is taken to
a hillside where all the birds have gathered before the goddess of Nature on St.
Valentine's Day to choose their partners. The royal tercel eagle is given first choice
and selects the beautiful formel eagle on the goddess's hand. But since two other
tercels of lower rank also make the same claim, the dispute is considered by the
general parliament of the birds. Finally Nature rules that the choice should rest with
the formel herself, and she asks for a year's delay before making her decision.

The Parliament is a work of freshness and assimilation. The work may be an allegory
on the betrothal of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia in 1381; the rival suitors were
Friedrich of Meissen and Charles VI of France. Other allegories have been suggested.
But the poem's appeal is independent of allegory. While the lovers' contest or the
parliament of birds is conventional, the social and political satire is a new element. In
contrast to the rival eagles, the other classes of birdsworm-fowl, water-fowl, seed-
fowl-clearly represent the humbler ranks of human society, and their discontent seems

16
to allude to the Peasants' Revolt. While the high-born suitors expound idealised
courtly love, some of the lower representatives have little respect for it. The detached
and dramatic presentation of opposed values and points of view looks forward to The
Canterbury Tales.

Around this time, in the early eighties, Chaucer translated the Consolation of
Philosophy of Boethius. The popularity of this philosophical work is proved by the
fact that in England alone, King Alfred had translated it and centuries later, Queen
Elizabeth undertook another translation. Along with Boccaccio, Boethius dominates
Chaucer's Italian period: most of the longer passages of philosophical reflection in his
poetry can be traced to Boethius. Its influence is particularly noticeable in Palamon
and Arcite (which became the Knight's Tale) and Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer's
prose in this translation, in Astrolabe (1391) and elsewhere compares unfavourably
with his verse.

In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer reaches a stylistic culmination, or he finally finds

his distinctive narrative style, characterisation and verse form. Only the, Knight's Tale
can compare with the sustained narration of Troilus. The immediate sources of both
poems are in Boccaccio and both re-work material from the ancient cycles of
romance. While the main plot of Troilus is based on the Teseida of Boccaccio, the
Troilus story has a more complicated history. There is no mention of it in Homer.
Several great Homeric figures like Achilles, Hector, Priam and Diomedes play minor
roles in Troilus, while Pandarus Criseyde and even Troilus, marginal characters in the
Iliad, become the chief actors. The story appears to have been the invention of the
twelfth-century French poet Benoit de Ste-Maure, the author of the Roman deTroie.
But Benoit begins with the separation of the two lovers while Guido delle Colonne
adds nothing but circulates the story.

It is only with Boccaccio's IlFilostrato that we have the complete story: he invents
the crucial first part of the poem, the wooing and winning of Criseyde. Boccaccio
added the pivotal figure of Pandaro (Pandarus). Chaucer transforms this simple and
passionate story into a psychological novel in verse.

Troilus remains the ideal courtly lover that he is in Boccaccio. But whereas the latter's
Pandaro was Criseyde's cousin and a young companion of Troilus, Chaucer makes
Pandarus much older, Criseyde's uncle. He becomes a rather complicated figure,
friend and philosophical adviser to Troilus, protector of Criseyde. He is a failed, old
courtly lover with his own brand of humorous and disillusioned wisdom. Chaucer's
Criseyde is also a truly complex character, even contradictory in her motives. She is
not conceived in the mould of the heroic, the Amazon; at the same time, she is not the
typically abstract courtly heroine. Her love is sincere and she has a mind of her own,
taking her own decisions. But tender passion cannot cloud her unsentimental and
practical intelligence without which a woman may not be able to survive. She is
somewhat sceptical and disillusioned, a type portrayed again in Pertelote of the Nun's
Priest's Tale. Apart from psychological complexity, the human situation and the
social status of women are unstable. Hence Chaucer is unable to condemn Criseyde's
'betrayal' when she accepts Diomedes's advances in the alien Greek camp. Chaucer
begins with courtly love and moves up the scala amoris or ladder of love through
tolerance to caritas or the Christian notion of charity (love of all humanity, love of
God). The awareness of forces larger and stronger than man provides the
17
philosophical basis for tolerant reconciliation. The influence of Boethius and Dante
can be detected particularly in Troilus‟s speech on predestination in Book IV or
Criseyde's discussion of false felicity in Book III.

The Legend of Good Women was begun, as the prologue says, as a penance imposed
by Queen Alceste for Chaucer's offences against the God of Love and women in
writing the Troilus and the Romaunt of the Rose. The original plan was to write about
Cupid's saints, that is, women who have been faithful to the creed to love. But the
project was abandoned.

2.5 CHAUCER'S POETRY (1387-1400)

Although The Canterbury Tales is Chaucer's most mature work, it includes some of
his earlier writings. The plan of the tales was probably adopted soon after 1386, and
the General Prologue composed in 1387. Chaucer may have himself taken part in a
pilgrimage in April of that year because of the illness of his wife, Philippe, who
probably died soon after. Instead of the original plan of 120 tales, only 24 are told, of
which two are interrupted before the end and two broken off soon after they begin.
The group of pilgrims includes a wide cross-section of English society: a knight and
a squire (his son), professional men like the doctor and the lawyer, a merchant, a
shipman, various representatives of the religious orders like the prioress, the monk,
the friar, the parson, a substantial farmer, a miller, a reeve, a cook, several craftsmen,
and so on.

The General Prologue does not have a real source. Individual portraits of priests or
peasants or knights abound in medieval literature and personified abstractions in
religious and secular allegories are quite common. We also come across description
of the different orders of society and the use of physical and temperamental
characteristics to classify men and women. As typical figures, Chaucer's portraits are
comparable to the formal 'characters' traced back to Theophrastus. But they are so
vividly imagined and individualised that scholars have searched for real life parallels
or sources. Small but closely observed details and peculiarities of dress,
physiognomy, speech and so on make the portraits come alive. But Chaucer's pilgrims
are equally representative of social groups and professions-these figures are
generalised through typical features of character and conduct: the gentle knight, the
corrupt Friar, the hypocritical Pardoner. Even their dress, appearance and
physiognomy have a typical quality. In a large number of cases, the pilgrim described
in the General Prologue relates a tale in keeping with his character and calling.

When the pilgrims have gone a short distance out of London, Harry Bailey asks them
to draw lots. Whether by sheer luck or manipulation, the lot falls to the knight, socially
the noblest in the group, to tell the first tale. He relates the story of the love of two
fiends, Palamon and Arcite, for the same lady. His tale receives enthusiastic approval,
and the Host calls upon the Monk to tell the next tale. But social hierarchies are
disrupted when the drunken Miller breaks in and tells an indecent tale about a

18
carpenter. As soon as he finishes, the Reeve, being a carpenter himself, takes revenge
by relating an equally scurrilous story about a miller. Thus, in the first three tales we
are introduced to a basic technique of Chaucer's mature poetry and perhaps Gothic art
in general: the courtly and the bourgeois, romance and realism, the serious and the
light are juxtaposed. After the Reeve, as the Cook begins in glee, Chaucer makes the
Host stop his tale, perhaps in order to prevent repetitiveness. There are similar
groupings and dramatic links among the stories but they come as though without any
previous plan, suggesting the openness and movement of the pilgrimage. After a
quarrel between the Friar and the Summoner, they tell stories defaming each other's
calling. The comic device of cutting short a boring story is particularly useful when
the 'tragedies' of the Monk's tale become tedious. It is ironic when Chaucer the poet's
own Tale of Sir Thopas has to be interrupted by the Host.

Some stories are linked together by the problem or theme of marriage. The socalled
marriage group begins with the Wife of Bath, who has had five husbands and would not
mind a sixth. Her earthy frankness and open policy of dominating husbands are somewhat
unconventional. Although the quarrel between the Friar and the Summoner breaks out after
her tale, the Clerk's tale which follows challenges her position. The story of Griselda
illustrates her patience and submission to her husbands, which is rewarded finally with
happiness. Next comes the Merchant's fabliau about an old man who marries a young wife
and is shamefully deceived by her. The Squire's Tale has nothing to do with marriage. But
the Franklin's Tale returns to the theme, to the married life of Arviragus and Dorigen. Since
it is shown as happy and harmonious because of mutual tolerance, and since it comes at
the end of the marriage group, some scholars have identified the Franklin's views with
those of Chaucer. Gender and class are subtly related in the entire group and indeed in the
Tales, defiant energy and appetite being associated with the rising middle-classes.

As it has been said, The Canterbury Tales is a veritable anthology of medieval

literature. The courtly romance is represented by the Knight's Tale or the fragmentary
Squire's Tale. Sir Thopas is a subtle parody of the more popular type of romance. The
Physician S Tale retells a classical legend. The Wife of Bath'sTale is a folk-tale, while
there are many instances of the fabliau. The Pardoner's Tale is an exemplum, a story
with which preachers would adorn their sermon and point a moral. The sermon or
didactic 'treatise is represented by The Parson's Tale and Chaucer's own Melibeus in
prose. The Nun's Priest's Tale is a memorable example of the *beast-fable, the story
of Chauntecleer and Pertelote.

Chaucer's idea of the pilgrimage as a narrative framework enables him to bring

together the widest possible cross-section of medieval society. What binds this
'sundry folk,' this motley crowd is what gives unity to heterogeneous variety: the
pilgrimage easily relates the material with the spiritual, the mundane with the
religious. It also gives the Tales a dramatic power, especially in the comments,
exchanges and jibes that enact ongoing social relationships in a microcosm. Of
course, the secular and clerical aristocracy is left out as they would not have mingled
with Chaucer's company; similarly, the real poor are excluded as they would not be
able to go on such a pilgrimage.
It has been suggested that the general device of a series of tales within an enclosing
narrative was borrowed by Chaucer from Boccaccio's Decameron. But the enclosing
frame was only too common not only in medieval and classical Europe but in other
parts of the world. Also, Chaucer does not seem to have read Decameron. Another
19
parallel, the Novelle of Giovanni Sercambi, is more convincing because it actually
uses the setting of a pilgrimage. But in every other respect, Chaucer's Tales is a very
different work. It offers a comic pageant of fourteenth-century life with the pilgrims
revealing their habits, moods and private lives indirectly through the stories they tell.

The order and arrangement of The Canterbury Tales, in spite of the links mentioned
above, remains an open question. The tales have come down to us in a series of
fragments in manuscripts of which the Ellesmere manuscript is the basis for modern
editions. Fragment I contains The General Prologue, The Knight's Tale and the tales
of the Miller, the Reeve and the Cook. Fragment II contains The Man of Law's
Prologue and Tale which presents the adventures of Constance, a kind of allegorical
figure of fortitude. The tale shows Chaucer's legal knowledge. In Fragment III we
have The Wifeof Bath's Prologue and Tale followed by the tales, both fabliaux, of the
Friar and the Summoner. The fourth fragment contains The Clerk's Tale and The
Merchant's Tale. In Fragment V we have The Squire's Tale which tells a story of
adventure and enchantment in a distant land. The fragment also has The Franklin's
Tale.

Fragment VI contains The Physician's Tale and The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale.
The former tells an old Roman story taken from the Roman de la Rose with a long,
digression on the character and education of young girls. The Pardoner's memorable
tale embodies in the sermon an exemplum or illustrative example, the old story o €
the three revellers who discover death in a heap of gold. In Fragment VII we have
The Shipman’s Tale, a popular fabliau about a merchant being cheated of his wife's
favours and his money by a monk. The Prioress's Tale which follows is marked by
elegant religious devotion, although the story about a schoolboy murdered by the
Jews betrays Christian bigotry. The Rime of Sir Thopas is a literary and social satire
on the average popular romance, especially involving the bourgeois intruders into
chivalry and knighthood in Flanders. Chaucer's following prose tale, The Tale of
Melibee, seems to be full of dull moral instruction but the Host, who found the former
boring, is enthusiastic. When the Host requests a jovial hunting tale from the Monk
in keeping with his character, the latter relates (The Monk's Tale) a series of boring
tragedies, that is, in the usual medieval sense, tales of the fall of fortunate men.

The next story, The Nun's Priest's Tale, is one of Chaucer's best. Here we have a
character, not sketched in the General Prologue, being brought out vividly through
the tale itself. The beast-fable tells the familiar incident of the cock, seized by a fox,
escaping by tempting his captor to open his mouth to speak. Fragment VIII contains
The Second Nun's Tale and The Canon's Yeoman’s Tale. Like the Prioress, the second
nun relates a Christian legend of the life of the famous Roman martyr, St. Cecilia.
The Canon's Yeoman tells a contemporary anecdote of an alchemist trickster
(possibly the Canon himself). The Yeoman and his master had overtaken the pilgrims
after a mad gallop, but as soon as the Canon fears exposure in the tale, he runs away.
In Fragment IX we have The Manciple's Prologue and Tale. The subject of the story
is the tell-tale bird, famous in popular tradition, in the romance of the Seven Sages,
as also in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The final fragment contains The Parson's'Prologue
and Tale and Chaucer’sRetractation. The Parson delivers a long prose discourse on
the Seven Deadly Sins. This is followed by Chaucer's repudiation of all his writings
on the vanity of romantic love, sparing only his religious and philosophical work. Is

20
Chaucer here in earnest? Is there a sudden change of heart common in the Middle
Ages? It remains a difficult question.

21
2.6 CHAUCER'S COMIC VISION

Chaucer‟s genius, and that of his contemporaries discussed in Unit 1, lies mainly in
narrative verse: he has an arresting story to tell, a vivid description to offer or even
an argument to develop. We must not expect from him the lyrical intensities of the
school of Donne, although he did write some beautiful lyrics. Matthew Arnold's
criticism that Chaucer's poetry lacks in 'high seriousness' may serve to distinguish
his genius from that of Dante in his time, but otherwise his comic vision is attuned
to the ,medieval world.

He was not incapable of sublimity, is may be seen in his Troilus and Criseyde. But
the common point of this courtly masterpiece with the more popular, more modem
Canterbury Tales is an unheroic image of man and his unaided abilities. If we take
even a brief look at the material culture of Chaucer's time we realise that England
had certainly moved out of the dark fears that make Anglo-Saxon or Old English
poetry, religious and secular, so intense, to a more tolerable and sociable, a more
urbane world. Yet man is still far away from the mastery of his environment that
produces in the Renaissance the image of the magus transforming human nature and
the world in which we live. The tragedy of Faustus has no place in the medieval
world. But instead of uncomprehending terror, Chaucer strikes a happy note of
reconciliation and humorous acceptance of limitation. This discovery of humour,
involving a double perspective and a style combining the courtly and bourgeois
traditions, corresponds to the composite nature of man, made up of spirit and flesh,
mind and body. In this sense, TheCanterbury Tales seems to anticipate the
Renaissance.

Although he sometimes directly ridicules social evils and vicious characters,

Chaucer‟s satire is rarely venom us. In fact, he is more of an ironist than a satirist,
engaged in somewhat detached a1 d a mused observation of the gap between the ideal
and the actual in human affairs, Irony as a mode is particularly appropriate to the
transitional world in which Chaucer found himself: settled verities were being
increasingly relativized in the struggle between the old and the new, the religious
andthe worldly. Chaucer's irony has been divided into broader and subtler varieties.
Inthe portraits of the Summoner and the Pardoner, the irony borders upon satire, in
the less vicious characters or the more respectable figures, the ironic exposure is
accompanied by an acknowledgement of earthy energy and resourceful villainy. The
subtler irony can be perceived behind the deference, awe and admiration of Chaucer
the narrator. This is why Chaucer presents this fictional persona as an emerging
bourgeois, middle-of-the-road observer not exceptionally shrewd or discriminating.
Such subtle irony is not only limited to, say, the portrait of the Prioress but extends
to an awareness of the instability and uncertainty of all things human,

2.7 CHAUCER’S LANGUAGE AND VERSIFICATION

22
Because of the condition of orality, Middle English was not standardised, as modern
English is, but an assortment of dialects. Chaucer employed the London speech of
his time, the East Midland dialect. Because of the importance of London, this later
grew into standard English. To be very accurate, Chaucer's language is late Middle
English of the South East Midland type. Its inflections are comparatively simpler;
even the modem reader can understand it easily. But many words retained a syllabic
-e,either final or in the ending -es or -en,which ceased to be pronounced later. The
vowels had in general their present Continental rather than their English sound.
Therefore, Chaucer's metre had a different feel from that of modern English. The
most important difference between Chaucer's English and modern English, In terms
of versification, lies in the many final -e's and other light inflectional endings. Since
these endings are usually pronounced in the verse, they are crucial to the rhythm.

The basic line of Chaucer's verse in The Canterbury Tales is the same as that of
Shakespeare's blank verse or Pope's heroic couplets: the iambic pentameter
consisting of five feet, each foot .made up of an unstressed (x) and a stressed syllable
(/):
x / x / x / x / x /
A Knyght ther was, and that a worthy man
x / x / x / x / x /
AClerk ther was of Oxenford also

As in Shakespeare or Pope, much variation is possible within this basic pattern, like
trocliaic variations (/X)or extra unstressed syllables. While in modern English the
final ein words such as 'name,' 'veine,' and 'ende' is silent, in Chaucer's London, the
situation was fluid. At times Chaucer retains the pronunciation of the final e('Rome'
can rhyme with 'to me') and at times he does not. The general rule is that the final e
ought to be pronounced except where the next word in the line begins with a vowel
or an h.It will also be pronounced in the last word of a line and when a word ending
in e in the singular is made plural (as in 'listes' or 'lokkes').

As we have seen in Unit 1, many French words were taken into English in the second
half of the fourteenth century. This French vocabulary covers mainly the fields of
government and law, the Church, the arts, and social and domestic lifewherever the
interests of the upper classes had spread. Borrowings from Latin belong largely to
theology, the sciences, literature, and so on. As is to be expected,
Chaucer made skilful use of the French, Latin and English elements in his vocabulary,
moving easily from courtly culture to abstract intellectual issues and to fresh, realistic
observation.

23
2.8 LET US SUM UP

In this unit we have sketched Chaucer‟s life and poetic career, with special emphasis
on The Canterbury Tales. After that we have attempted a brief estimate of Chaucer's
vision. Finally, a note on Chaucer's language and versification has been added.

2.9 EXERCISES

1. What are the elements of Chaucer's life that helped his poetry?
(closeness to the nobility, his public office and diplomatic career Journeys to France
and Italy. Chaucer's favourite poets. See 2.2)

2. What kind of an influence did the Roman de la Rosehave on Chaucer's poetry?

(Chaucer learnt courtly conventions from Guillaume de Lorris and realistic satire
about many of those conventions from Jean de Meun. Produced the mixed style
and irony. See 2.3)

3. How is the Parliament of Fowlsa satire?

(It seems to be a courtly allegory involving eagles, but the satirical discontent of the
other birds. See 2.4)

4. How does the Troilus story come to Chaucer?

(The story is not in Homer. It' seems to have been invented in twelfth-century France.
Boccaccio's contribution. See 2.4)

5. Compare Boccaccio's Pandoro with Chaucer's Pandraus.

(Pandoro's old age, uncle to Criseyde in Chaucer. But in Boccaccio, Pandoro's youth,
cousin to Criseyde. See 2.4)

6. What is the source of Criseyde's complexity?

(Her contradictoriness, her instability as a woman, Chaucer's own forgiving attitude.
See 2.4)

7. What use does Chaucer make of the device of pilgrimage?

(Enclosing narrative frame, dramatic quality, spiritual and material elements. see
2.5)

24
8. How are the tales linked to each other?
(Comments, rivalries, dramatic links, theme of marriage. See 2.5)

9. Name the three major sources of Chaucer's vocabulary. What does each source
contribute?
(Latin, French, English. See 2.7)

2.10 SUGGESTED READING

Editions:

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F.N. Robinson. 2nd edition. Boston and London,
1957.

The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. W.W. Skeat, 7 vols. Oxford, 1894-1897.

References:
Bryan, W.F. and Germaine Dempster. Eds. Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales. Chicago, 1940.

Social &'Intellectual Background:

Coulton, C.G. Chaucer and His England. 6th edn. London, 1937. Life in
the Middle Ages. 4 vols. Cambridge, 1928.

Curry, W.C. Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences. 2nd edn. New York and London, 1960.

French, R.D. A Chaucer Handbook. 2nd edn. New York, 1947.

Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages. Trans. F.Hopman. London, 1924.

Lewis, C.S. The Allegory of Love. London, 195 1.

Owst, G.R: Literature and the Pulpit in Medieval England. 2nd edn. Oxford, 1961.

Trevelyan, G.M. England in the Age of Wyclif: 4th edn. London, 1909.

25
Chaucer's World. Compiled by Edith Rickert, ed. Clair C. Olsen and Martin M. Crow.
New York and London, 1948.

-Criticism and Commentary:

Bowden, Muriel. A Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. New
York, 1948.
-- A Reader 's Guide to Geoffrey Chaucer. London, 1965.
Coghill, Nevill. The Poet Chaucer. Oxford, 1949.
Kittredge, G.L. Chaucer and His Poetry. Cambridge, Mass., 1915. Muscaline, Charles.
Chaucer and the French Tradition: A Study in Style and Meaning.

Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1957 .

Root, R.K. The Poetry of Chaucer. 2nd edn. Boston, 1922.

26
UNIT- 3 INTRODUCTIONS TO THE CANTERBURY TALES

Structure

3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Opening Section of the Prologue
3.3 The Portraits
3.4 The Concluding Section of the Prologue
3.5 Let Us Sum Up
3.6 Exercises

3.0 OBJECTIVES

Our aim in this unit is to examine closely The General Prologue to the Canterbury
Tales, since the previous two units have introduced you to the age of Chaucer and to
a general survey of the poetry of Chaucer and his contemporaries. The paraphrase
and annotation in this unit will sensitise you to the skill in characterisation, social
commentary and ironic tone of Chaucer.

3.1 INTRODUCTION

This unit will introduce you to the portraits which are individuals as well as social types.
You will also be given an idea of Chaucer's irony and his use of the narrator.

5.3 THE OPENING SECTION OF THE PROLOGUE

The General Prologuebegins with a memorable description of Spring. The immediate

reason for this is that only with the return of mild weather after winter could people
go on a pilgrimage. Many passages have been suggested as possible sources. Chaucer

27
was clearly dealing with a conventional theme with commonplace features. Such
conventionality was not a weakness but a strength in medieval literature. People in
Chaucer's time passed winter inside dark, draughty, badly heated, smoky huts living
on salted beef, smoked bacon, dried peas, beans, last year's wheat or rye and so on.
The shortage of fresh food resulted in diseases like scurvy in winter. Thus when the
April showers made the grass grow again, both cattle and men were delighted at the
prospect of fresh food and recovery of health. The sweet showers revive Nature and
by implication human nature; the underlying motif is of resurrection or spiritual
renewal. This is the way in which the cycle of seasons is closely related to the cycle
of human life. April provides material occasion and spiritual yearning for going on
pilgrimage. The force of rejuvenating Nature is in the South wind which inspires or
breathes upon the tender twigs to make them grow; it bathes every vein, that is, the
earth and the vessels of sap; it spurs even the small birds to sing all night. The
biological awakening passes easily into spiritual quest, the desire to journey out of
drab, everyday existence to distant holy shrines. The pilgrims come from all corners
of England to visit the shrine of St. Thomas aBecket who was martyred in the
Canterbury cathedral in 1170. The modem poet, T.S. Eliot, wrote a play, Murder
inthe Cathedral, on this event. Eliot's Waste Land also opens with an ironic echo of
Chaucer: "April is the cruellest month."

Chaucer habitually refers to time in the framework of astrology or mythology: he

tells us here that the sun is in the early part of its annual course, just coming out of
Aries, the first sign of the zodiac. This is how astrology'(which also meant
astronomy) links earthly life to the heavenly. The sign of the inn where Chaucer the
narrator is joined by the twenty-nine pilgrims was a tabard or short sleeveless coat,
embroidered with armorial bearings. The fellowship of pilgrims suggests a sense of
community and their varied backgrounds make the description a miniature version
of fourteenth century society.

3.4 THE PORTRAITS

The first portrait of the Knight is an idealised one, a type of chivalry, gentle in speech
and manner, gallant in battles and tournaments, dignified and simple in his soiled
rough tunic and coat of mail. There is perhaps a very light touch of irony in his
maiden-like shy manner and his lack of gaiety or liveliness. Perhaps these last two
details individualise him: he seems a bit out of place in the age of declining chivalry.
His military campaigns are all actual crusades although he could have fought also in
the Hundred Years' War. In the Mediterranean and north Africa he fought against the
Moors and Saracens. He heads the table of honour of the Teutonic knights because
of his campaigns against heathen tribes in Prussia, Lithuania and Russia.

In contrast to his Christian motives, his son, the squire, seems to have joined the
company for pleasure. He is a young courtly lover, an aspirant to Knighthood, whose
chivalric prowess has already brought him much honour. Apart from his handsome
physique, many more details of his costume and appearance are given. His locks
were curled and his gown embroidered like a spring meadow.

28
Fashionable dress was denounced by parish priests as a waste of money that could
have gone to the poor. , His fresh and youthful energy is further brought out in his
sleepless love, and his ability to sing, dance, draw, write, jost and compose songs
anticipates the type of the Renaissance courtier.

The Knight's Yeoman ranked in service just above the groom. Later, yeomen came
to mean small, substantial landholders. His green dress, his horn and the talisman
image of St. Christopher (patron saint of foresters and travellers) show that he was a
game-keeper by profession. Chaucer held the post of deputy forester in the royal
forest of North Petherton for over seven years. Individual details include his
closecropped head and sunburnt face as well as the panache with which he carried
his weapons. The bow ('myghty bowe' could mean the long bow) and arrows,
armguard (of archery), sword, shield and dagger suggest that he may have been
among the yeomen-archers and knifemen who routed French chivalry at Crecy.

The character of the Prioress is very subtly drawn, with due respect to her social rank.
It was more than likely that she came from an upper-class family. Women from the
peasant or artisan classes were easily married because of the dowry they brought of
'labour.' For the nobility, dowry meant money or family connection. But many
knights were impoverished and their unmarried daughters had to take refuge in a
nunnery, where they often spent a life of material comfort and spiritual contentment
since virginity was much admired in the Middle Ages. Thus Chaucer‟s Prioress was
well-bred but in her eagerness to imitate courtly manners given to vanities and
foibles. The Church expressly forbade her to go on a pilgrimage, which meant
coming out of cloistered life, and to possess pets, since the money needed for their
upkeep could be used for the poor.

Against this social situation, Chaucer describes her beauty, dress and dainty table
manners in the style of the romances-even her name and adjectives like 'symple and
coy' fit in. She is given to swearing, though only by St. Eligius, who was also a type
of social aspiration. Details of her sensuous mouth, delicate nose and unveiled, broad
forehead, her dress and jewels (fluted wimple, ornamental rosary and the brooch)
suggest a femininity imperfectly suppressed by her holy vows. Chaucer's gentle irony
at her elegant manners is extended to her skill in the nasal intonation traditionally
used in the recitative portions of the church service. Her French is also gently
satirised since it betrays her aspiration to courtliness: her French could not be that of
Paris but was rather what she could pick up in an English nunnery. But Chaucer does
bring out some laxities in her conduct. Not only did she keep pet dogs against the
rules but fed them roasted meat, milk and wastel-bread (an expensive white bread)-
food that would not be available to most people in England. This moral apathy is
deepened by the false delicacy of her sentimental charity: she was so tender of
conscience that she would weep to see her pets beaten or dead. She would also weep
to see mice trapped, but mice were after all dangerous pests (perhaps even carriers of
the Plague). The tongue-incheek manner continues till the end. Modelled on the
heroine of courtly romance, Madame Eglentyne wears a brooch whose motto-love
conquers all-could mean carnal or divine love.

The Monk usually came of the gentry or noble class since education was expensive
and monks had to be learned. The rules of the monastic order were initially laid down
by St. Augustine (c. 400 A.D.) and then by St. Benedict (c. 700 A.D.). The monks
had to follow the principles of obedience, poverty and celibacy, perform manual

29
labour or pursue the life of a scholar or teacher and generally spend an abstemious
life within the cloister. Their daily activities included praying and glorifying God,
giving alms to the poor and copying manuscripts. As the wealth and administrative
duties of the monastery increased; the monks fell into luxury. The 'outrider' monks
had to supervise the estates and 'cells' or subordinate monasteries and therefore could
not remain cloistered. Chaucer's monk, Daun Piers, is identified with the new world
of wealth, luxury and pleasure. He contemptuously dismisses the Augustinian ideal
of asceticism, renunciation of the world and cloistered learning. Chaucer's attitude is
once again ambiguous: he neither entirely approves nor condemns. Certainly the
Monk's vitality and healthy appetite for life suggest an opening up of the medieval
world, a major social and ideological change. His love of hunting is not untypical,
although physical details, foppish clothes and the bells in his horse's bridle serve to
individualise him. In a sense all his defiant and amoral energy is concentrated in his
eyes indicating a psychological and social tendency.

The Friars had to take the vow of poverty, follow the teachings of Christ, perform
good deeds and preach all around the country. In Chaucer's time, there were four
major Orders of Friars in England: the Dominicans, or Black Friars, the Franciscans,
or Grey Friars, the Carmelites, or White Friars and the Augustinians, or Austin Friars.
They were Mendicant Orders surviving through begging. Soon, however, begging
became a flourishing business and begging rights in specified districts were being
vied for by the friars. Since they could collect ecclesiastical taxes and
hearconfessions, they made a lot of money. In other words, Chaucer's Friar, Hubert,
is an example of the corruption of the mendicant orders much attacked by the
followers of Wyclif. He is a limitour, that is, licensed to beg within a certain limit,
but his income far exceeded what he turned in to the convent. His soft white neck
and habit of lisping are signs of lechery. With the help of gifts and trinkets, latest
songs and blessing of houses (by singing 'In principio,' the opening verses of St.
John's Gospel), he seduced women and later found husbands and dowries for them.
Playing on the piety of people, he shunned the poor and the sick, frequenting taverns
and the houses of the rich where he put on an obsequious attitude. After all, as
Chaucer puts it ironically, people should donate money to the poor friars while it was
neither respectable nor profitable for the latter to deal with the poor. Forbidden to
meddle in civil affairs, the friars nevertheless took an active part on love-days, that
is, on days appointed for settlement of disputes out of court. On such occasions they
were opulently dressed. Like the monk, the friar also expresses a new kind of power
through his eyes.

The Merchant represents a very rich and powerful class in England. There were two
powerful groups of merchants: the Merchant Adventurers who imported English
cloth into foreign cities and the Merchants of the Staple, who lived at home and
exported English wool abroad. Although his general appearance suggested the
confidence of wealth, the Merchant was actually in debt but maintained his financial
reputation and credit by forever boasting about profits and bargains. He is quite
fashionable (witness his neatly clasped boots and forked beard), puts on expensive
though somewhat conservative clothes and his beaver hat links him to the Flemish
trade. Middleburgh was the foreign headquarters of the Merchant Adventurers and
the English port, Orwell, was used by the Merchants of the Staple. Perhaps Chaucer's
Merchant belonged to both groups. He was secretly involved in two major economic
crimes: usury and illegal dealing in foreign exchange.

30
Chaucer's Clerk is a university student preparing for a career in the Church. In
contrast to the many licentious clerks, his is the portrait of the scholar whose
unworldliness kept him poor: both heand his horse were emaciated and his clothes
were threadbare. He has applied himself to the study of logic, the backbone of
medieval university education. He was thus happier to have at his bedside twenty
volumes of Aristotle-whose influence on medieval academic life was pervasivethan
the luxuries of life. Historians tell us that at that time twenty books (produced no
doubt entirely by hand) would have cost the equivalent of two or three burghers'
houses. It is not surprising then that all his expenditure was on books. Chaucer puns
on the word 'philosopher' (which also meant 'alchemist') when he says that the
Clerk‟s philosophy did not give him gold. Needing the charity of benefactors, he
tried to repay them by prayers for their souls. He never displayed unseemly levity in
behaviour and was always brief, to the point and morally educative in his speech.

The Sergeant of the Law was one of the King's legal servants, chosen from barristers
of sixteen years' standing. The judges of the King‟s courts and the chief baron of the
Exchequer also came from their ranks. Chaucer's portrait has a special interest
because of his own legal education and because it comes rather close to Thomas
Pynchbek in real life. The lawyer has been at the Parvys, that is, the porch of St.
Paul's cathedral, where lawyers met their clients for consultation. He has been
appointed a judge by patent, that is, by the King's letters patent making the
appointment as well as by plain commission, that is, by a letter addressed to the
appointee 'giving him jurisdiction over all kinds of cases. Widely experienced and
well versed in all the statutes and cases and judgements since the Conquest, he won
many gifts from his clients. Chaucer's praise of his knowledge and wisdom is
somewhat ironic, for the lawyer put on an air of being busier than he actually was.
Moreover, by buying a lot of land he aimed at becoming a landed gentleman; his
legal expertise helped him to unrestricted possession of property,

The Franklin (or 'free man') usually meant a substantial landholder of free but not noble
birth. His exact social position is a matter of dispute. For some, he ranked below the
gentry and aspired to be included in its ranks; others put him at par with knights, squires
and sergeants of the law. He has certainly held important offices. He has presided at
sessions of the justices of the peace, and has been a member of Parliament. He has also
been a 'shirreve,' or an officer next in rank to the Lord Lieutenant of the shire, and a
'contour,' or special pleader in court. Certainly his dress is indicative of the gentry class.
He was a famous epicure taking great delight in food and wine. His bread, ales, wine
and meat were of excellent quality, and he also kept fat partridges in coops and fish in
private ponds. Changing his diet or menu according to the seasons of the year, the
Franklin was above all renowned for his prodigious hospitality.

The five guildsmen are smartly dressed in clothes befitting their station. Since they
belonged to different crafts, the fraternity of which they all wore the livery must have
been a social and religious guild, a parish guild. The deportment of the men made
them veritable burgesses and aldermen. For they had the requisite property and their
wives were equally ambitious. Their being in a group suggests an emerging class
identity: they are the merchant princes of the future.

The Cook, Roger of Ware, is a culinary artist who is not exactly likeable. This is not
merely because he has a sore on his shin but because the Host later accuses him of
selling stale, unhygienic and contaminated food.

31
The Shipman dresses efficiently like the Yeoman. He was also master of his craft but
thoroughly unscrupulous. Although he was master of a trading ship, 'Maudeleyne,'
he was given to piratical ways and unlawfully attacked other vessels at sea. In these
skirmishes, if he had the upper hand, he drowned his prisonersapparently not an
unusual practice at that time. He would tap the winecasks in midsea when seasickness
had sent the merchant and his men to bed; when the casks would be delivered half-
empty, it was the merchant who would suffer. He roved freely from the south lo the
north, from Spain to Sweden.

In the portrait of the Doctor of Physic, philosophy and science are fused, as they are
in medieval intellectual life: medicine is grounded in astrology. As we have already
seen briefly in the first unit, each of the twelve signs of the zodiac was believed to
control a different part of the body: the theory of the four humours derives from this.
In the portrait of the lawyer, Chaucer showed good knowledge of law; here he shows
an equally good knowledge of medieval medicine. The importance of astrology to
medical practice is also dealt with in Chaucer's Astrolabe. What was the method
followed by the doctor? He watched his patient and chose the astrological hours
which would be most favourable to the treatment; he had the skill for taking the
auspicious time for making talismanic figures. This was natural magic, a legitimate
science, as opposed to black magic or necromancy. The planet known as the lord of
the ascending sign, and also the Moon, must be favourably situated, and the malefic
(or harmful) planets must be in positions where their influence would be negligible.
The doctor used the theory of humours (which was again touched upon in Unit 1)
which comes down to the seventeenth century, to Ben Jonson, for instance. The four
elementary qualities or contraries combined in pairs to produce the four elements:
earth (cold and dry), air (hot and moist), water (cold and moist), fire (hot and dry).
Similarly the fundamental contraries were held to combine in the four humours:
blood (hot and moist), phlegm (cold and moist), yellow bile (hot and dry), black bile
(cold and dry).

The list of eminent authorities in medicine cited by Chaucer begins with the
legendary Aesculapius. Dioscorides, a Greek writer on medicine, flourished around
50 A.D. Rufus of Ephesus lived in the second century. Hippocrates, the founder of
Greek medical science, was born about 460 B.C. Haly is probably the Persian
physician Hali ibn el Abbas (died in 994). Galen was the famous authority of the
second century. Avicenna and Averroes were famous Arabian philosophers and
medieval authorities of the eleventh and twelfth centuries respectively. Serapion
seems to refer to three medical writers of the Levant. Rhazes lived in Baghdad in the
ninth and tenth centuries. Damascien is of less certain identification. Constantyn, a
monk of Carthage, brought Arabian learning to Salerno in the eleventh century. The
three authorities ending the list were all
British, living in the latter part of the thirteenth century and the fourteenth century.

That the doctor read the Bible rarely was not untypical, for doctors, especially if they
followed the Averroist school of opinion, were commonly regarded as sceptical. Not
much is said about his dress but we can make out that he was a stately man of fashion
though somewhat overfond of money. Chaucer seems to b: ironic and equivocal
about' the doctor's love of gold when he puns on gold which was used in medicines.
The irony seems to become sharper as we are told that the doctor has thriftily saved
the income he has made from the Black Death. Chaucer further exposes a corrupt

32
nexus between doctors and druggists (apothecaries). The latter were charged with
foisting incompetent practitioners won patients, and the doctors accused of causing
patients to be imposed upon by their particular druggists. But Chaucer describes the
doctor rather in the manner of the knight, as a 'verray, parfit praktisour'-we have to
be constantly alert about his ironic undertone.

Chaucer's wife of Bath is easily one of the most arresting figures among the pilgrims.
As is often the case, Chaucer mingles literary model with social reality: she is only
partly an imitation of the description of La Vieille in the Roman de laRose. Many of
her characteristics could be traced back to the fact that she was born when Taurus
was in the ascendant and Mars and Venus in conjunction in that sign of the zodiac.
This accounts for her sexual appetite and refusal to be dominated by men in marriage.
She may thus be a successor to an earlier type of the heroic woman, the Amazon
located now in a middle-class milieu where martial qualities were expressed in the
domestic world of gender relations. Among her personal traits, which have prompted
critics to identify her, are her love of travel, her rather unfashionable dress and
equipment, and the fact that she was deaf and her teeth were set wide apart. Chaucer
also gives an accurate statement as to the locality of Bath from which she came.
'Beside Bathe' doubtless refers to the suburban parish of 'St. Michael's juxta Bathon.'

Since the reputation of the cloth woven at Bath was not of the best, Chaucer's claim
that she surpassed the Dutch weavers of Ypres and Ghent in weaving is ironic. Ypres
and Ghent were important centres of the Flemish wool trade and Flemish weavers
emigrated to England in large numbers in the fourteenth century.
It is generally believed that the development of the rural cloth industry was due to
Edward III's invitation to these Flemish weavers. But actually the water-power for
running fulling- mills was largely available in the Cotswolds, the Pennines, and the
Lake District, and by the beginning of the fourteenth century the cloth industry
started moving to these districts. The unorganised village cloth-workers accepted
lower wages than their urban counterparts and their cloth was therefore cheaper.

Like the yeoman, the Wife of Bath is very efficiently and neatly dressed. On
Sundays at home she may wear a ten-pound „coverchief‟ (ahead covering somewhat
like a turban, worn only by the provincial in late fourteenth-century England). On
the pilgrimage she has put on a very broad hat and her hair is neatly covered by a
wimple worn underneath the hat. She wore a protective skirt about her ample hips to
guard against splashes of mud, her hose were tightly and neatly drawn, her shoes
were of expensive soft leather and her spurs sharp.

The Wife took so much pride in her skill in weaving that she demanded first place in
making the offering on Sundays, for the order in which parishioners went up to the
altar to offer alms and oblations was determined by importance in the community.
Such pride was only too common and the Parson specifically preaches against it, The
pride is redeemed by boldness, frankness and vitality in the Wife's portrait. Mixing
easily in male company, she was skilled in the arts of love, for she knew all the cures
of love (which are listed in Ovid's Remedia Amoris). She was a widely-experienced
pilgrim who has been thrice to Jerusalem, to Rome and to other shrines on the
continent. These long pilgrimages were undertaken primarily for pleasure and as such
neither unusual nor inconsistent with her character. They guaranteed safety
andcomfort to travellers much in the way modem conducted tours do. But they were

33
condemned for the temptations they offered to vice. The wife has had five husbands
at the church door. The celebration of marriage at church door was common from the
tenth to the sixteenth century. The service was in two parts, the marriage proper and
the nuptial mass, celebrated afterward at the altar.

The Parson's portrait is an idealised one of a good parish priest. It should not be taken
as alluding to Wyclif or any of his followers, although it praises the virtues and
condemns the abuses that were highlighted by Wycliffites. The Man of
law'sEpilogue, however, makes a contemptuous reference to the Parson as a Lollard.
The poet himself was quite close to some of the important patrons of the movement.
But not only are there differences but Chaucer characteristically captures the
movingspirit behind reform in humble individual existence rather than in political
unrest.

The Parson's poverty and learning recalls the Clerk and like him his wealth was
entirely spiritual. Holy in thought and work, he was devoted to his pastoral
responsibilities. Although he could impose the penalty of excommunication for the
non-payment of tithes (ten per cent tax levied by the Church on every parishioner),
he would not condemn the poor for being genuinely unable to pay the tax. But since
it was his duty to collect the tithes, he would make up the deficit out of his own
meager resources including the voluntary contributions which belonged to him by
right. Benign, patient and diligent, he took no idle pleasures. Even if he was ill, he
would visit on foot, in all kinds of weather, his parish members irrespective of rank
or wealth or the distance of their dwellings. Above all, unlike a large number of the
religious functionaries, he practised what he preached and set an example himself as
a priest in charge of his flock before asking others to follow it. For he knew very well
that he controlled the moral lives of his parish-members and if he was corrupt or
unclean, what would happen to them?

He was totally free from the impulse to acquisitiveness and power which provided
the psychological basis for capitalism and which was magnified by the new money-
economy. Other priests often deserted their parishioners to run off to London for
better-paid and more comfortable offices. There he could have sung mass daily for
the repose of a soul ('chantry') or he could have been retained or engaged for service
by a gild to act as their chaplain. But he remains in the village. He was neither severe
nor arrogant to sinners but always merciful, provided of course they were repentant.
For he would not spare the unrepentant, again irrespective of rank or wealth. His
uncomplicated honesty contrasts subtly with the over-fastidious conscience of the
Prioress, and in his humility he demanded no reverence from his flock.

The Plowman is another idealised figure, a fitting brother to the Parson. He was a
small tenant farmer or a holder of Lammas lands (village lands let out from year to
year). Neither hostile to nor fearful of the upper classes, he is a true representative of
rustic life. He exemplifies the dignity of labour: he carried loads of dung, knew how
to thresh, to dig and to make ditches. The contemporary books on husbandry
emphasised the same duties and Langland's Piers Plowman performed them as well.
Dressed in the unfashionable tabard (a loose tunic without sleeves) which
corresponds to a kind of labourer's smock, he led his life in perfect charity, unruffled
by pleasure and pain, loving God and his neighbours. No wonder he was always
willing to labour for any poor peasant in difficulty without any payment.

34
The Miller's clothes are obviously not important. What is striking in the portrait is
his massive physical strength. His physical characteristics were regularly associated
by physiognomists with the kind of nature he is shown to have. His short-shouldered,
stocky figure, his fat face with red bushy beard, his flat nose with a wart on top-these
variously denoted a shameless, talkative, quarrelsome, and lecherous disposition.
Chaucer may not have actually consulted the learned sources for these ideas as they
had become quite familiar. Able to heave a door out of its hinges or break it with his
head, the Miller's wart with its tuft of hair, his black and flaring nostrils and huge
mouth all indicate a kind of coarseness that reminds us of fabliaux. No wonder he
was a loud, scurrilous talker and ribald jester.

A Miller in the Middle Ages possessed an important monopoly, for all the peasants
under the lord of a manor were obliged to take their grain to the miller of the estate
on which they lived. The miller's rate for grinding was fixed by law, but since his
was the only mill he could easily, like Chaucer's Robin, overcharge and steal some
of the grain as well.

The Manciple was a servant who purchased provisions for a college or an inn of
court. The temple referred to in Chaucer's text would have been the Inner or Middle
Temple near the Strand, both of which were occupied in Chaucer's time by societies
of lawyers. Like the Miller, he was also a cheat and his deceptive powers are
ironically described as wisdom. Chaucer the poet finds it astonishing that, whether
he bought the provisions by payment or on credit (the 'tally' was a stick on which the
amount of a debt was recorded by notches), the learned lawyers were no match for
his craftiness. These extremely capable lawyers were easily fooled by the ignorant
manciple.

The Reeve is a perfect companion and competitor of the Miller, especially in matters
of devious dealing. What was the exact office of the Reeve? The chief manager of an
estate, under the lord of the manor, was the steward (or seneschal). Below him was
the bailiff, and below the bailiff was the provost, who was elected by the peasants
and had immediate care of the stock and grain. Normally the Reeve was subordinate
to the bailiff, but these titles were not rigidly fixed and Oswald, Chaucer's Reeve,
seems superior to a bailiff and even performed some of the steward's duties. Chaucer
represents him as dealing directly with his lord, ruling under bailiffs and hinds,
outwitting auditors, and accumulating property.

The medieval Reeve was a natural rival to the Miller on an estate, since they
competed with each other in cheating the peasants. This is why they quarrel and the
crafty Reeve rides the farthest away from the Miller. As an overseer or manager, the
Reeve's duty was to inspect everything on the estate regularly, to buy needed supplies
and to impose fines on the workers if necessary. He knew all about the storage of
grain, when to sow and when to reap, about the condition of his lord's livestock and
poultry, and he was an expert in keeping accounts. As indicated in passing in Unit 1,
the lord of the manor was probably an absentee landlord, making the Reeve all-
powerful. This is why his dishonesty and cunning make him such a terror to the
peasants. He was so clever that without showing any arrears or losses he was able to
become rich at his lord's expense: a house and a robe at the cost of the lord were
nothing unusual. In fact, he could please his lord by lending him some of the lord's

35
own possessions and obtain thanks and rewards in the bargain. His closely-cropped
head, coat and rusty blade indicate his inferior social position. A slender choleric
man with long, thin, calfless legs, his physiognomy denotes sharpness of wit,
irascibility and wantonness. The reference to his handsome Norfolk dwelling
suggests a real-life figure. What the Miller obtained by loud, outrageous stealing, the
Reeve acquired by meanness, severity and manipulation .of accounts.

If the Miller and Reeve are fellow-rascals, they do not have on us the unpleasant and
repulsive effect of the partners in viciousness, the Summoner and the Pardoner. The
Summoner (or Apparitor) was an officer who cited delinquents to appear before the
ecclesiastical court. Such officials, and even the Archdeacon were corrupt. Some
scholars believe that Chaucer's portrait of the Summoner is more unfavourable than
historical records seem to warrant,. But Chaucer was following literary tradition

The very first physiognomical detail is unsavoury and Chaucer's comparison of his
diseased, fiery face full of eruptions with a cherub's is caustic in its irony. The
Summoner actually suffers from a kind of leprosy, a kind of skin disease brought on
by uncontrolled lechery. His scabby brows and scanty beard made children afraid of
him. All known medicines have been used-mercury, lead compounds, sulphur, borax
and oil of tartar-but no ointment has cleansed his white blotches and pimples and
knobs on his face. His incurable, revolting disease is a picture of his soul. Chaucer's
medical knowledge further told him that the Summoner should not eat garlic, onions
and leeks or drink strong red wine. In his drunken state he has set a huge garland on
his head and carries a flat loaf of bread as a shield. Some scholars think that he was
meant to represent a debauched Bacchus. Given his profession, it is not surprising
that he had picked up like a parrot a few terms in Latin which he would boastfully
repeat when he got drunk. But if anyone should question him further, then his
ignorance would be exposed, although he tried to wriggle out by parroting a legal
formula. If the Summoner found anywhere some rascal in sin, he would encourage
him not to fear the excommunicating curse of the archdeacon since money would set
everything right. Chaucer is perhaps ironic in stating that the curse was worth exactly
asmuch ashis 'assoillyng' of the soul. Assoillyng means either canonical absolution,
that is, the removal of the sentence of excommunication, or the ordinary sacramental
absolution. But Chaucer is not really being a heretic or a Wycliffite; he simply
condemns the abuses of an avaricious clergy. The 'Significavit' refers to the opening
words of a writ remanding an excommunicated person to prison.

The Summoner's portrait becomes sinister when we discover his manipulation of the
private lives of people around him. He would happily excuse a man for keeping a
concubine (a practice common among the celibate priests) for a year, if he was paid
only a quart of wine. He then indulged in the same sin himself. Being sexually
immoral, he probably came to know the unsavoury secrets of other people's lives.
Perhaps this is why he was able to hold the young men and women at his mercy,
under his control. He knew their secrets and acted as their counsel; perhaps he
exploited them as informers against their elders.

Pardoners (or quaestors) were sellers of papal indulgences. Many were forbidden to
preach, and some were even laymen. Many travelling pardoners were wholly
unauthorised, and the tricks and abuses they practised were denounced by the Church.
Perhaps the character of Fals-Semblant in Roman dela Rose gave Chaucer the idea of
the Pardoners' confession before his Tale. Friend and fitting companion to the

36
Summoner, the Pardoner similarly abused his calling. The literature of complaint is
much more severe in its censure of Pardoners because dealing largely with the helpless
and ignorant poor, they did greater harm to the soul than the Summoners. The system
of papal indulgences grew from the fact that medieval men, after proper confession and
repentance, gave money to the Church for 'good deeds' to be performed in their name-
that was believed to guarantee some reduction of time in purgatory and hasten the
progress to paradise. The Pardoners sold indulgences but often they did not insist on
confession and repentance; moreover they tended to pocket the money given to the
Church in exchange for pardons. In order to sell pardons more effectively, the
fourteenthcentury Pardoner sold saints, relics and cultivated the art of preaching. These
relics, as we see in the case of Chaucer's Pardoner, were no relics at all, but bones and
rags.

The song of the Pardoner and the Summoner's vocal support seem to insinuate an
unhealthy relationship between the two. That he was of 'Rouncivalle' is significant,
since the Order of St. Mary Roncevall in London was involved in public scandals
concerning the sale of pardons. Chaucer comically describes the Pardoner freshly
arrived from Rome with his collection of so-called relics. Among these are a pillow
case (claimed to be part of Our Lady's Veil), piece of cloth (exhibited as part of the
sail of St. Peter's boat), a „latoun‟ cross and some pigs‟ bones. With these spurious
relics he cheated the Parson and his poor parishioners, receiving more money in one
day by his preaching than the priest did in two months. His eloquent preaching in the
Church pulpit made him a greater danger since the congregation was moved by the
discourse to make generous offerings to the preacher. Like the Summoner, he was
not distinguished by his dress. He did not wear his hood because he thought it was
the latest fashion to wear only a cap on which he had sewed a 'vernycle,' a miniature
copy of the handkerchief St. Veronica was thought to have given to Christ on the
way to his crucifixion. His physical characteristics are repellent: he had a goat's
voice, he was beardless and his yellow hair fell in thin strips over his shoulders. The
details cumulatively lead to the assertion that he was a gelding or a mare, an
emasculated eunuch. He leaves behind a sense of unhealthiness,-

5.4 THE CONCLUDING SECTION OF THE PROLOGUE

After this portrait gallery, Chaucer returns to the Tabard Inn where the pilgrims had
assembled. But before he proceeds further, he attempts an aesthetic defence of the
coarseness of his „bourgeois‟ style: he has been guided by realistic truth and moral
honesty. The defence is similar to those offered by Jean de Meun and by
Boccaccio. He finds divine support in the honest speech of the Bible and Plato's
Timaeus 29B provides the source for the close relationship between form and content.

We are moved on to a hearty supper presided over by the Host, Harry Bailly. His
hospitality and manly gaiety dispel the effect of the Pardoner's portrait. In his
characteristic playful spirit he suggests after supper that the pilgrims, in order to
lighten the boredom of the long journey on horseback, tell two stories

37
Canterburyward and two homeward. The Host will be the master of ceremonies and
decides to accompany the pilgrims. As the judge, he promises the best story teller a
supper on return, paid for by the pilgrims. Everyone agrees happily to the Host's
proposal and there is already a sense of community among the heterogeneous
company. A distance out of London, by a brook at the second milestone on the Kent
road, the Host invites the pilgrims to draw lots. Whether by chance or by plan, the
lot falls on the Knight who begins the game with pleasure.

Apart from the brief portrait of the Host, there is also the persona of Chaucer the
narrator. Although his two tales give him a clearer shape later, already the somewhat
detached, ironic, self-deprecating bourgeois figure is discernible. He is a little in awe
perhaps of the Knight and the Prioress, familiar and unsentimental about the rising
bourgeois figures, deeply respectful about the humble, devout and unworldly
characters and bitingly satiric about the corrupt and the vicious. As he constructs this
persona of the narrator, he asks forgiveness for any disruption of degree or hierarchy
in his succession of portraits because he does not have a strong intellect.

5.5 LET US SUM LTP

In this unit detailed annotation of the Prologue has been provided so that apart from
Chaucer's skill in characterisation you may also grasp the larger social and
intellectual issues and of course the comic strategies involved.

5.6 EXERCISES

1. Why does the pilgrimage (and the poem) begin in spring? (See 3.2)

2. On the basis of the annotations, attempt an analysis of the portraits of the Prioress,
the Monk, the Friar, the Wife of Bath, the Parson, the Plowman, the Clerk, the
Miller, the Reeve, the Pardoner, the Summoner. (This is only for practice.)

3. Bring out the different shades in Chaucer's irony. (Broad and subtle irony.)

4. What individualises the portraits?

5. What makes them typical? (The individual elements may include physiognomy,
dress, eccentricity but dress and physiognomy are also representative of class or
social group. Actually there is no opposition. Perhaps individuality ultimately comes
from Chaucer's vividness of imagination.

38
UNIT- 4 INTRODUCTION TO NONNES PREESTES TALE

Structure

4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction to the Unit
4.2 Introduction to the Nonne Preestes Tale (NPT)

39
4.3 Notes on the Narrative Art
4.4 Stories and Story-Tellers in the Tale
4.5 The Priest, the Poet, and other Characters in the Tale
4.6 The ironic Structure-Sympathy and Detachment
4.7 The Complex Formal Design: Sermon, Fable, Mock-heroic, Comic, Ironic
4.8 Summing Up

4.0 OBJECTIVES

The objective of this unit is to help you study the text in a critical manner. After reading
this unit you will be able to:

(a) Comprehend and translate the language of the text,

(b) Appreciate its poetic qualities,
(c) (c) Evaluate the Nonne Preestes
Tale,
(d) Know Chaucer as a great narrative poet.

4.1 INTRODUCTION

In this unit we have discussed various aspects of NPT. It is a tale among the tales of
the Canterbury Tale. We have shown how it is related to the context. The other Tales
in CT form that context. We have briefly mentioned the framework of the whole
poem. It consists of (a) The General Prologue (b) The talk on the Road and (c) the
tales.

Two Italian parallels, possible sources, have been mentioned. –

The distinctive quality of the narrative act of Chaucer has been brought out. It has
been shown the story is characteristic of the story teller. The irony and drama of the
story have been brought out. The complex formal design of the tale, we suggest,
should be analysed into the following main elements:

(a) Sermon

40
 (b) Reflection
(c) mock-heroic
(d) comedy
(e) the dream, the dream stories and the debate on dreams
(f) the themes
(g) the tale
Each one of these elements has been briefly discussed.

4.2 INTRODUCTION TO THE NONNE PREESTES TALE

In other units on Chaucer you have learnt about his age, his poetic output. The
Canterbury Tales and the General Prologue. You know that Chaucer is regarded as a
great story-teller in English verse. You are now going to study one of the Canterbury
Tales which is one of the best short stories in English verse.

In the general Prologue (lines 785-800), the Poet makes the Host devise the narrative
plan. This is a dramatic manner of stating the plan, and the fact that the plan turns
out to be too ambitious sheds ironic light on it. The Host's plan is not the poet's.
According to the plan, The Canterbury Tales should have had one hundred and
twenty four stories, but it has only twenty complete and four incomplete ones.
Chaucer has, thus, left the poem incomplete. Moreover, the sequence and grouping
of the tales is determined variously in the Ellesmere and other manuscripts. The poet
had left that undecided. But the poem is an aesthetic whole.

The three main structural units of The Canterbury Tales (CT) are: 1 .- The general
Prologue, 2. The Tales, and 3. The Talk on the Road, linking them and providing a
lively transition from one tale to another.

You studied the general Prologue in detail. It is important to appreciate the value of the
other two structural units-the tales and the Talk on the Road.

NPT is not an isolated tale. It belongs to a series of tales. It is, therefore, useful to
have an idea of the general perspective of the Canterbury Tales. An idea of the other
tales in outline will make you see the place of NPT in the whole scheme better.

The knight, appropriately granted the privilege of telling the first tale, tells a romantic
story in the, heroic manner. His tale of the contest of Palamon and Arcite for the love
of Emily is full of philosophical reflections. Anexample is the following lines from
a speech of Theseus.

The Firste Mover of the cause above

Whan he first made the faire chain of love,

41
 Greet was theffect; and high was his entente,
Well wist he why and what thereof he mente
For with that faire chain of love he bond
- The fire, the air, the water, and the land
In certain boundes that they may not flee.,

After the knight's Tale, we have the Miller's tale of an Oxford carpenter persuaded
by his wife and a clerk to sit all night in a tub, to be ready to row away when Noah's
Flood came again.

The contrast between the romantic and the realistic, the serious and the comic, is
illustrated in the different styles of these first two tales.

The third tale, The Reeve's, answers the miller's ridicule of the old carpenter by a
story ridiculing a miller. Then follows the Cook's unfinished tale. Next we have the
prose tale of Melibee told by the poet himself. This is followed by the man of Law's
Tale. Then we have the shipman‟s Tale in which a merchant is deceived by his wife
and a monk. Thenext tale, the prioress's, is of the little chorister murdered by Jews
for his devotion to the Blessed virgin and of the miracle the virgin wrought for him.
This is followed by Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas, written as a parody of the old
romances of chivalry. Then we have the Monk's Tale of the Fall of Princes:

Our text, NPT, comes, after this tale. The Doctor of Physic's Tale of Appinius and
Virginia follows it. The next tale, the Pardoner's is of the three rioters who went in
quest of Death, and found him in their greed for gold. Next, the wife of Bath's tale of
the condemned knight saved by an old woman who taught him the answer to a riddle.
She had made him promise beforehand to marry her, and, on his marrying her,
became a beautiful girl. Then we have the Friar's tale of a summoner who was seized
by the Devil. The summener retaliates in his tale which follows. Then the clerk's
Tale, which is an old rendering by the poet of Petrarch's Latin story of the Patience
or grisilde. The Merchant's Tale, which follows, answers the clerk with a story of
how a young wife deceived her old husband. .

The squire's Tale of Cambuscan and his fair daughter Canacee, and the magic sword,
minor and ring is followed by the Franklin's Tale of the Truth of Dorigen and the
generosity of a squire and astrologer. Then comes the Second Nun's Tale of St.
Cecilia Next, we have the canon's Yeomans's Tale of how another canon cheated a
priest by pretending to transmute silver into gold. This is followed by the Manciple's
Tale of how Apollo punished a crow for revealing a woman's untruth. The last tale
by the Parson is a prose sermon on the Seven Deadly sins and true Penitence.

Neither an epic nor a single narrative, CT is a unique medley. The tales exemplify
two central themes-the familiar human instincts of sex and acquisitiveness, two of
the seven deadly sins- i.e. lechery and avarice. G.L. Kittredge (1911 - 12) regarded
CT as a kind of human comedy in which the Pilgrims are the dramatic personae, "and
their stories are only speeches that are somewhat longer than common entertaining
in and for themselves (to be sure), but primarily significant, in each case because they
illustrate the speaker's character and opinions, or show the relations of the travelers
to one another in the progressive action of the Pilgrimage". He spoke of "the marriage

42
Act of the Human comedy" in which the wife of Bath is "at or near the centre of the
stage". The famous line spoken by the wife is not unrelated to the cock's infatuation
with the hen in NPT. She exclaimed in the Prologue to her Tale:

Allas! Allas! That ever love was sinne

And the cock adapted a line from the Latin Bible Woman is
mannes joy and all his bliss.

The Talk on the Road-the third structural component - links the tales together, The
Host, who is personally conducting the tour, dominates the talk. He is tactful, alert
and humorous. When he has an exchange of angry abuse with the Pardoner, the
knight intervenes as a peacemaker. Quarrels and disputes in the Talk on the Road,
however, centre round "the age old war of the sexes". Strikingly, there are many
confessions in the Talk - the wife of Bath's, the Pardoner's, the Canon's Yeoman's
and the Merchant's. These confessions give the Talks an air of honesty and sincerity,
a sure sign of spiritual progress. The Poet's Retraction concludes the poem, revealing
the spiritual and symbolic aspects of the realistic pilgrimage:

Of thilke parfit glorious pilgrymage. .

That highte Jerusalem celestial !

It may be suggested that the pilgrimage is a masquerade unmasking the real self of the
pilgrims including the poet.

The Decameron by Boccacio in the Italian language has been held by Chaucer
scholars to be a close parallel to the Canterbury Tales in many respects. "The general
topics of its tales are very similar to those of Chaucer: four of Boccaccio's tales are
analogues to four of Chaucer's; and in Boccaccio's apology for the impropriety of
some of his stories he makes the same defence as that offered by Chaucer for the
same fault (see GP lines 725-46). But the unity, balance, neatness and symmetry of
Boccaccio's plan contrasts with the diversity and lack of plan in

43
CT. In the Decameron, on hundred stories are told in ten day, ten on each day, one
by each member of a group of ten". Another Italian collection of stories, the Novelle
by Giovanni Serccambi of Lucca, an imitation of the Decameron, contains 155
stories. All the tales in this are told by the author himself. The framing story in the
Novelle is a detailed nanative of routine events in contrast with the Human comedy
of Chaucer's CT. Both Boccaccio and Sercambi were contemporaries of Chaucer,
but there is no evidence of Chaucer having met them in course of his visits to Italy.

Check Your Progress I

1. Describe the narrative plan of CT. Who devised it? Refer to the lines in the GP.
Critically examine the author's management of the plan.
....................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................
2. Is CT an unfinished poem? Mention two other famous unfinished poems in English.
....................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................

3. What are the three structural units of CT? How are they related?
....................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................

4. Do the tales have any unifying theme or themes?

....................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................
5. Mention two striking features of the Talk on the Road.
....................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................

6. Attempt a comparison of the following lines:

(a) Allas! Allas! that ever love was sinne.
(b) Woman is mannes joy and all his bliss.
Also refer them to their contexts.
....................................................................................................................................
....................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................

46
4.3 A NOTE ON THE NARRATIVE ART

Recent theories of narrative include both history and fiction in narrative as closely
related forms of "order-giving" and "order-finding", Man has been described as a
fiction-making and symbol-using animal. Language is one of the most useful symbol
systems used by man. Fiction is both fabricated and feigned. This makebelieve is a
fundamental human activity. Role-playing, game-playing, daydreaming and
literature are all included within it. With fiction we investigate, perhaps invent, the
meaning of human life. A story is a way of doing things with words. Words -
language - are more than its medium. Reordering experience or existence by narrative
affirms and reinforces, or creates, the most basic assumptions of a culture about
human existence, about time, destiny, selfhood, heaven, hell etc. The ideology of a
culture is asserted through a story. The story of Rama in Indian culture, for example.
Such stories are endlessly repeated.

Fictional details have been made to reveal such matters as the difficulty of acquiring
self-knowledge, or the near-pervasiveness of self-deception, or the nature of the
struggle against egotistic degradation of love. And in proportion as language is, or is
not, true to experience, it is factual or fictional Narration description, dialogue,
exposition are the major forms or functions of language. Verse narratives appeared
before prose fiction in most literatures.

The narrative art of the tale may be analysed in terms of the Labovian diamond. The
first hundred and twenty lines give the orientation, the next three hundred lines
present the dream and its interpretations by the cock and the hen. The dream of the
event and the event are related like idea and reality. The crisis is resolved through a
play of int. And the morals drawn are what is termed the jaunty coda. .

Narratives, like languages, have their grammars. A story has a setting and an episode
system or plot. The events are linked syntagmatically in a plot. Settings and episodes
have paradigms. Asetting may be state(s) or action(s). An event may be a natural
occurrence, an action, or an internal event. Stories are of various types - e:g.(a)
danger of death stories. NPT belongs to this Type (b) detective stories, (c) crime
stories (d) ghost stories (e) science fiction etc, These types are paradigms of narrative.

4.4 STORIES AND STORY TELLERS

NPT collocates a number of stories. Some of them are dream stories - or stories about
dreams - told by the cock and the priest. The widow, the protagonist of the other story
(Which is the setting for the comic fable of the cock, the hen and the fox), is
contrasted at once with the cock and the nun by implication. The dream stories are
embedded in the fable, the fable in the widow's story, the widow's story in the Priest's,
the Priest's in CT, and CT is Chaucer's story to the primary reader(s). Both oral and
written forms of communication are relevant. You and I are readers reading the tell
anew, and I shall help you interpret it critically. It has become a text which forms

45
part of the Canon of British poetry, and its readers form an elite community which
consists of many groups. Ours is the group of the Indian scholars of English literature.

The cock, the priest and the poet are the three story-tellers of this tale. The first two
are created by the third. Every reader re-creates them all in his mind. Fiction and
history are mixed up in the process. The literary genre of narrative poetry in medieval
Europe and Chaucer's England should be appreciated in the light of an observation
of Northrop Frye : "People don't think up a set of assumptions or beliefs; they think
up a set of stories, and derive the assumptions or beliefs from the stories"

Check Your Progress 2

1. Amplify "order-giving" and "order-finding".

2. How are fiction and symbol related?
3. Is the linguistic symbol "fabricated and feigned"?
4. What is "convention" in language and literature?
5. Describe the functions of fiction.
6. How do stories reorder experience or existence? Give examples.
7. How are ideology and mythology related?
8. Does fiction help us know ourselves and others better ? 9.Are stories like
dreams? Discuss (ten sentences)
10. What is a fable?
11. Analyse the tale in terms of the Labovian diamond.

4.5 THE PRIEST, THE POET AND OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE

TALE

Like Shakespeare, Chaucer did not invent his stories. The closest possible paralled,
or source, of the story of NPT is found in. The Roman de Renart, a 13th century
French collection of satirical fables. The digression on dreams and the reflective
passages are Chaucer's original contribution. The comic, mock-heroic and historical
aspects of the form of the tale are the gifts of Chaucer's genius.

What makes the tale dramatic is that the author does not say a single word directly. In
the Prologue to the Tale, the bight, the Host and the priest talk, and in the main body
the priest, the story-teller, and the characters of the tale talk. The poet is almost unheard
except in phrases like 'quod the knight' and "quod oure Hooste" in the ' Prologue to the
Tale, and in the last couplet of the Epilogue.

The narrator-author identification is, however, apparent in the reflective passages,

particularly, (a) the passage on "necessitee condicioneel" (lines 471 -84) and (b) the
passage on Geoffrey de Vinsauf, author of Poetria Nora, a 12th century treatise of
rhetoric (lines 581-88). The former is serious, while the latter is ironic and

46
seriocomic. The passage on man-woman-relationship (lines 491-500), it has been
suggested, has the tacit support of the author.

The three human characters, the Prioress, the Priest and the widow of the tale - are
all creatures of imagination, and belong to the background of the tale on which the
foreground is occupied by the animal characters. The priest is the narrator detached
from the author. Unlike the wife of bath or the Pardoner, he is not portrayed in the
General Prologue. There, after the portrait of the nun, we have the following couplet:

Another Nonne with here hadde she,

That was her chapeleyne, and prestes thre

Skeat commented: "Chaucer wrote this couplet in forgetfulness of his general

scheme and omitted to reconcile them". It is in this couplet that we have the first
mention of the priest as one of three. He is later identified as Sir John by the Host in
the Prologue to NPT. The Host requests him to tell a merry tale, and he complies
(line 42-54).

His physical features are described by the Host in the Epilogue (lines 689-93). The
Host Jocularly says that if the priest were secular, he would be a cock used for
purposes of breeding. His strong muscles, thick neck and large chest are described.

The poet provides some glimpse into his character. His jade is "foul and lene" (line
467). This suggests his attitude to riches or the rich life of ostentation. He is ironic
enough to hint a subtle similarity between his mistress and the cock on the one hand
and an implicit contrast of the prioress with the widow on the other. Critics have
suggested that the poet presents him as a sly misogynist,

But, above all, he is an excellent story teller. Appropriately a sermon, the story is
mock-heroic and reflects the character of the story-teller who faintly reflects the
author.

The priest is ironically the confessor and spiritual adviser to the Prioress, and at the
same time dependent on her for livelihood. His cautious protest in "I kan noon harm
of no woman divyne (line 500) and his ironic insistence (in lines 441-48) on the truth
of his story (lines 445-46) and comparing it with the women's favourite book of
Launcelot de Lake do all hint a critical attitude to chivalry and romance.

The widow is the only human character in the story who is described at any length,
(see lines 55-80). Her simple life is illustrated in her slender meals (lines 67-80). The
implicit contrast with the Prioress is seen better if affectation and courtly manners of
the Prioress described in the general Prologue are compared with the simple life of
the widow. She is idealised and allegorical, but realistically particularised. Consider
lines 63-66. The number of the daughters, the sows, the kine and the sheep "that
highte Malle” is sufficient concereteness of detail.

Check Your Progress 3

1. Chaucer is at once a pilgrim, an "innocent" reporter and narrator, and the author
of CT. How do you relate these aspects of his art?

47
 2. In what sense the human characters of the tile are in the background?
3. Attempt a character - sketch of the priest.

4.6 THE IRONIC STRUCTURE-SYMPATHY AND DETACHMENT

The English word "irony" is derived from the Greek word "eironeia" which means
"simulated ignorance". Simulation is acting, pretending or feigning. Irony is thus
dramatic. Secondly, the ironic use of language has an inner meaning for the privileged
and an outer for the rest. Dramatic irony is more then merely verbal. It has to do with
situation or event. The classical greek myth of Oedipus is an example of tragic irony.
Moreover, according to classical Indian poetics, the best kind of poetry does not state
but suggests meaning.

The ironic structure of NPTis prominent in the play of wit at the core of the story.
The fox and the cock outwit each other by turns. Consider lines 639-48 which show
how the cock saves himself from a tragic end by befooling the fox. The fox had
flattered, hoodwinked and trapped him. His clever trick would not have worked if
the fox had seen his hidden meaning.

Discretion and politeness, characteristic of the priest, require that his criticism of the
prioress, his immediate target, and of women in general, should be indirect or
ironical. He could not afford to offend his employer. Hence the boldness of the ironist
is the most remarkable aspect of his character as a person and an artist. The subtle
self-expression of the narrator at once identifies him with and detaches him from his
creator, the author. In this context, the priest's ironical reflection (lines 491- 500) is
more revelatory than Chauntecleer's ironical mistranslation of a Latin text (lines 391-
400).

When we consider the narrative structure of the tale, we notice that digressious are
more interesting than the central story. The dream, the discussion about it, and the
character of Pertelote, are all introduced for the purpose, among other things, of
dramatising and reflecting on "the age-old war of the sexes". There is no doubt that
without this digression the story would have lacked its life and colour, but the
superimposition is undeniable. And that impregnates the form of the story with the
spirit of the poet.

Pertelote hates chauntecleer for losing heart in fear (see lines 142-46). She asserts on
behalf of all women the medieval ideal of chivalry and romance (lines 147-51). The
brave knight and the sweet courtier is the hero. But the cock is only sweet and witty,
not brave.

In the debate on dreams, however, she stands for reason and he for vision. Do they
allegories the opposition of cold calculation and rash impulse?

The widow-not the wife's the anti-feminist norm. The Christian moral outlook is
pitted against the romantic. The tension of the two reflects the force of social change
breaking through the poet's conservative temper.

48
The priest confabulates in the following:

My tale is of a cock, as ye may heere,

That took his connseil of his wyf with sorwe,
To walken in the yerd upon that morewe
That he hadde met that dreem that I you tolde.

You will notice that the reflective passage on freewill and predetermination is felt by
the self-conscious priest to be incongruous. Secondly, the cock followed his own free
will, not the advice of his wife. The priest is confused or at least confusing the
audience. A close consideration of the text, particularly lines 48689, and the
reflective passages preceding and following these lines, makes it clear. Tile author's
comic irony does not spare the narrator.

Check Your Progress 4

1. What is irony? How is it different from antithesis and ambiguity?

2. How are irony and wit related? Is irony necessarily devoid of sympathy?
Discuss, with examples.
3. Find two examples of verbal irony in the text.
4. Discuss the ironic structure of NPT.
5. Show that the priest's irony is directed against women.
6. How does Chaucer present the priest ironically?

4.7 THE COMPLEX FORMAL DESIGN: SERMON, FABLE, MOCK-

HEROIC, COMIC, IRONIC

The aspects of the complex form, as given above, are:

(a) Sermon
(b) reflection
(c) mock-heroic
(d) comedy
(e) the dream, the dream - stories and the debate on dreams
(0 The Themes
(g) The Tale

Sermon - Asthe story-taller is a priest, the story is aptly a sermon. The moral of the
sermon is given at the end of the story. It is dramatic rather than didactic orhortatory.
There are three morals drawn respectively by the cock, the fox and the priest. The
cock's experience, which had verged on the tragic, had, by a lucky flash of
49
intelligence, turned comic. And his moral is : One should keep one's eye open. The
fox loses the game, and is served right. He sounds a wiseacre in his moral. The priest's
moral is given in three and a half couplets. The first couplet points to the story. Notice
"such". The priest gives his evaluation of the cock's character in three epithets. In the
second couplet, he turns to his audience. If they hold the tale a folly, they are
requested to take the moral gist and ignore the narrative,

In the next three lines, he appeals to the authority of St. Paul. His view of text is till
valid. Atext is a code to he decoded by the reader-audience. The priest ends his Tale
with a prayer.

The Tale is an exemplum or example illustrating the moral. The "defense" of poetry
has traditionally been that it is both entertainment and edification. The funny tale has
a moral or many moral lessons as a sort of tailpiece. Compare the relation between
the tale and the moral of NPT with that of Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Reflection - The description of the human setting of the fable is reflective or

normative. The widow and her way of life is approved. The cock's reflection on
murder and god's justice (lines 284-91) is conventional, but his reflection on
"woman" (lines 397-400) is much more characteristic and highly ironical.

The priest's reflections on (a) "Truth" in a story (See lines 439-448), (b) free will and
predetermination (468-84), (c) woman's counsel (491-500), (d) flattery (55964), (e)
destiny (line 572) and (f) rhetoric and Geoffrey Vinsauf (581-88) are all functional.
They are meant to help the audience interpret and evaluate the action.

Mock Heroic - NPT is primarily a fable, and a fable is intrinsically mock-heroic, for
it assumes an identity or parallelism between animals and humans. Moreover, the
tale reflects the poet's serio-comic outlook in the use of hyerbole and disproportion.

Chauntecleer, the mockery of a hero, is presented in lines 84-98 which describe his
voice and appearance. The comic exaggeration and the conventional humanization
are remarkable.

The priest explains, tongue-in-cheek:

For thilke tyme, as I have understonde Beestes and

briddes koude speke and synge.

Pertelote's ideal cock is woman's ideal Man. The cock's dream stories have not only
human characters but learned sources in Cicero and Macrobius. His learning and
learned allusious to Christian and classical lore are of course mock-heroic.

The royal cock "looketh as it were a grym leoun" (line 413). The fall of this prince
of a cock is averted by a happy stroke of luck. The cry that the "woful hennes" made
is mock-heroically described as greater than the cries described in heroic epics like
Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aencied. Pertelote shrieked louder than "dide Hasdrubales
wyf'. The hens cried like the senators' wives when Nero burnt Rome. The epic
analogies are unmistakably mock-heroic. The priest's reflections on Adam and Eve,
on free will and predetermination, are all mock-heroic, for the occasion is slight or
comic. The Tale is unique in the tradition of mock-heroic poetry in English, Dryden
50
and Pope wrote, respectively, Mac flacknoe and the Rape of the Lock. But unlike
these poems, NPT deals with low animals. Nor is it allegorical satire like Animal
Farm. It mocks heroism, as Don Quixote mocks heroism, romance and chivalry.
Chaucer's realism is a forerunner of Cervantes's and Shakespeare's 100 comedy.

Comedy: Comedy is the essential aspect of the form of the Tale. It is not mere
sugarcoating for the sermon. The pure fun and humour of the fable is the superficial
comic element, Secondly, the union of the elite appeal of the rhetorical and
philosophical amplifications with the folk tale brings out the comic ineongruity
between high and low poetic styles. Chaucer manipulates the styles to create
seriocomic effects. Moreover, parody, burlesque and farce are used. A comparison
of the first ten couplets of the tale (lines 61-80) with the following sixteen and a half
(lines 81-113) shows how realism and the plain style are mixed with the romantic
and the rhetorical. The ironical angle of the artist transforms the priest's homily into
poetry. The moral stance becomes inseparable from the aesthetic. The cock's story
(in which character is more important than incidents) is interpreted by the priest, and
the poet judges or interprets this interpretation in the wider context of the whole
poem. Poetry, we know, is the criticism of life. A close consideration of the comedy
of the cock's life - his pride, his pedantry, and histwo temptations - (a) woman and
(b) yielding to flattery - shows that the main plot requires only the last trait, i.e.
yielding to flattery, and the other traits belong to the subplot in which the dream and
the hen figure prominently. The two plots (1) the cock - and the fox plot and (2) the
cock, the dream and the hen plot are of course linked but the link is not causal or
rational.

The comedy of the plots lies (a) in the mingling of satire with sympathy and (b) in
the play of wit. The primary plot is realistic and ironical, and the secondary plot
romantic and symbolical. The character of thecock determines the incidents, but the
character of the priest is no less remarkable, Notice how the poet transmutes his
reflection and makes it reflection his self rather than pure reason, what the priest
asserts in the lines 486-500 in general and in particular is confused and confusing. In
the last couplet, he imputes his words and views to the cock. The cock had refuted
his wife's argument about dreams, but forgot to heed the warning of his dream, The
other unexpected turn of events turns the tale into a tragicomedy corresponding to
the serio-comic art and vision of the poet.

The Dream, the Dream Stories, and the Debate on Dreams

The Dream: Fiction is like dream or daydream. The use of dream in fiction is,
therefore, doubly insubstantial. In middle English poetry, the dream is used as a
poetic technique, and suggests vision or imagination, Langland's Piers Plowman and
Chaucer's own.. The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls and Troilus and
Cressida use the device of dreams.

Dreams have always exercised the human mind. The medieval interpretations were
allegorical or analogical. The psychoanalytic interpretation of Freud and Jung have
revolutionized modem thought. The view of the human mind is now radically
different because of the recognition of the role and importance of the unconscious in
human life and activity. Think of the waking dream, ambition or fantasy of people.

51
Chaucer added the dream of Chaunteleer to the traditional story. The conflicting
interpretations by the hen and the cock are highly dramatic. More than one third of
the tale is occupied by this digression or secondary plot.

The dream is presented in lines 116-140. The cock had dreamt of a frightening beast.
It was "lyk an hound, and wolde han maad arrest upon my body, and han had me
deed." In other words the hound-like beast would have seized and killed him. And
so, even after waking.

"yet of his look for fere almost I deye." This fear had made him groan, and frightened
Pertelote.

Chauntecleer interprets his nightmare as warning against a possible danger of death.

The warning prepares him, only partially, for the event, and he is able to save himself
in crisis, for he keeps his wit about him. If he had not dreamt of the event, he could
not have managed the crisis so well as he does. The dream is, thus, an integral part
of' the plot, and not a mere digression.

Dream Stories: Pertelote dismisses dreams as meaningless. She takes the scientific
but unimaginative stand that they are caused by physical disorder. She prescribes
laxatives and herbs as a remedy for bad dreams. She does not tell any stories. But
Chauntecleer tells many stories to prove the truth of his view that dreams are
significant. They provide a vision of the future. Prophecy, vision, imagination are
human faculties which may be described as waking dreams. Arts including the art of
poetry and the narrative art are the collective dream of mankind. They attempt to
connect the ideal and the sensory aspects of experience.

Stories are like dreams. Both reflect experience. Chauntecleer is a dreamer and story
teller. Pertelote's pragmatism yield no room to such functions or behavior.

Chauntecleer's first story is from "oon of the gretteste auctour that men rede." This
unnamed author is Cicero Chaucer's use of learning is remarkably more dramatic
than any other English poet's except Shakespeare‟s.

The story is of two pilgrims who had to part company and put up for the night in
separate lodgings. One of them dreamt about the other that he was in danger of death.
The dream was repeated. But he did not take it seriously, but he could not ignore the
third dream. In the first two dreams, the fellow pilgrim seemed to be making an
appeal for help.

"Now help me, deere brother, or I dye!"

In the third dream, the spirit of the fellow-pilgrim reports that he is slain. "My gold
caused my mordre."

The second theme of the story is: "mordre wol out". a sort of moral drawn. But the
relevant moral is that dreams should not be dismissed as empty and irrelevant. The
second story is about two persons who were to sail to some destination. One of them
dreamt that the voyage should be postponed, and he advised the other fellow to do
so. But the other said: I sette nut a straw by thy dremynges,

52
 For swevenes bean but vanytees and japes;
As expected, the one who sailed was drowned.

The moral is: "no man should been too reccheless of dremes" and some dreams are
to be dreaded. This second story, also from Cicero, ("in the same book I rede Right
in the nexte chapitre after this") is shorter. The old Testament, Homer's liad and
Macrobius, a medieval writer who interpreted and classified dreams, are the other
sources for the reference to some dreams famous in literature. Chaucer rummaged
through Christian and classical literature to find a definite interpretation of dreams
which interested him. Langland was more visionary and his Piers Plowman is in the
form of a dream. Realism was Chaucer's forte, which makes him the father of modern
poetry.

The debate on Dreams: This debate serves two artistic purposes. It presents (a) the
contemporary theories on the subject and (b) the characters of the cock and the hen,
man and wife. The scientific point of view is contrasted with the superstitious or
popular pint of view. Both seem to be half true, and Chaucer perhaps never made up
his mind on the topic. However, the debate gives the presentation of the theories a
human and dramatic context. This is distinctively poetic, and contrasts with the
abstract manner of philosophy.

Let us briefly notice the tonal effect. The hen states her attitude to the cock who has
been frightened by his dream (141 - 156). Then she presents her view of the origin
and cause of dreams. And finally she prescribes the remedy. But the cock is much
more elaborate and pedantic in his presentation. He uses stories, anecdotes and
learned references in support of his point of view. He appears to be a selfcentred
pedant. But he is also the sufferer. She seems to have little sympathy for him, but she
is practical and tales what she regards the necessary steps to help him. Chaucer
manipulated the characters in his serio-comic view. The self pity of the cock is
matched by what ironically looks like the "heartless" attitude of the hen. And the
cock too is made to transcend self-pity by the end. He woos and flatters the hen, acts
the loving husband, and seems to forget his fear of the impending danger of which
the dream was a premonition. After all, destiny works through character, necessity
being conditional, not absolute, in such cases.

Themes: Some major themes of the Tale are the following

1. The simple life and the plain diet. The Christian or religious attitude to poverty and
wealth or ostentation. Poverty has moral approval. Wealth is regarded as sinful.
2. The medico-scientific view of dreams contrasted with the popular superstitious
view.
3. Reflection on murder or homicide.
4. Man-woman relationship.
a. Womman is mannes joye a d a1 his blis
b. Wommannes conseil broghte us first to wo,

And made Adam fro Paradys to go

5. Freewill and predetermination

53
 "symple necessitee" and "necessitte condicioneel"
6. Reflection on flattery and the role of courtier.
7. Rhetoric-Geoffrey de Vinsauf s theory
8. Destiny- inescapable Fortune- Sudden turns
9. (a) Morals drawn
Keep your eyes open and mouth shut

(b) "Taketh the fruyt, and lat the chaf be stille"

The tale: The first two thirds of the tale present an idyllic and romantic atmosphere.
It is like paradise before it was lost. The pace of the story is leisurely. The characters
are introduced - First the widow who led a simple life, then the cock, chauntecleer,
the protagonist, and his hens.

Of which the faireste hewed on her throte

Was cleped faire damoyscle Pertelote

They are man and wife. The cock loved her very much. 14% voice is "murier than the
music orgon" of the church.

Then the dream is presented, and the debate on dreams follows. Chaucer shifted the
focus of interest from Chauntecleer's fate to Chauntecher's dream.

Incident and Character are integrated.

“What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the
illustration of character?" Said Henry James. The debate on dreams illustrates the
characters of the cock and the hen.

The villain, the colfox, enters the scene in the last third of the story. Then the
movement becomes rapid. There is more of action in this part-non-verbal action.
Speeches or dialogues are brief.

The narrator exclaims and reflects after introducing the villain. He manipulates the pace.
Consider lines 460-80, and beyond. He reflects on "wommennes conscil"

Wommanenes conseil brought us first to wo, And made Adam fro Paradys to go:

But he shifts the ground:

. ..for I noot to whom it might displese If I couseil of wommen wolde blame, Pass over,
for I seyde it in my game. The priest is agitated and confused. He reveals his feeling
against women through "the cokkes wordes" and disclaims them. 'I kan noon harme of
no womman divyne".

This sudden turn given to the story is highly interesting.

54
Chauntecleer has deliberately mistranslated the Latin sentence earlier. He is
presented as the courtly and chivalrous flatterer of women. The priest is satirically
outspoken. The two male Views of women-chivalrous and satirical or cynical‟ are
presented. This theme - i.e. the male view of women-is superimposed upon the plot.

Both the debate on dreams and the expression of misogyuist feeling are digressious
skillfully woven into the story. The latter digression is the intrusion of the subjective
feeling of the narrator into the story. Here, the narrator is not differentiated from the
author. One critic pointed to the "deeper simplicity" of Chaucer which reflects
faithfully the paradoxes of personality, the contradictions of experience.

The action is both mental and material and social. Chauntecleer became "was of this
fox that lay ful lowe" as he cast his eye on a butterfly. The fox flatters and cheats the
frightened cock into singing with his eyes shut, and seizes him by the throat. The
lamentation of the hens is followed by the chase of the fox. The chase is lively.

The transitions from the human to the animal, from the serious to the light$, from the
high style to the low are remarkably artistic in the Tale. The narrator reminds the
audience at various points (lines 115,419 486 and 673) that the tale is of a cock etc;
he describes the animal behavior at many points (refer to lines 195201,411418; and
he moves from the low or realistic style to the romantic or rhetorical at many points.
The low style of lines 55-80 is followed by the high style of lines 811 15, the serious
theme of lines 471-484 is interrupted by the reminder (line 486) that the tale is merely
of a cock, and again the serious reflection on woman's counsel and the loss of
paradise is taken up.

The play of wit averts the crisis and turns the plot from a tragic into a comic one.
Morals are drawn by both-the cock and the fox. The priest too draws his moral and
turns to his audience.

The author addressed readers-contemporary and future readers. NPT is an artifactan

important item in the English literary tradition. It has survived all the social and
cultural changes since Chaucer. It has something of a universal appeal. Its poetry has
an eternal freshness.

4.7 THE USE OF LEARNING AND ALLUSION IN NPT

The Tale itself is an adaptation from a French collection of satirical fables, Roman
de Renart. The two dream stories are taken from Cicero, the great Latin prosewriter.
Dionysius Cato on dreams, Macrobius's commentary on the Dream of Scipio, are
refereed to. The dreams of St. Kenelm, Scipio Africanus, Daniel and Joseph of the
Old Testament are mentioned in support of his view by the pedantic cock. All this
reflects Chaucer's interest in the contemporary lore of dreaminterpretation.
55
Analogies and parallels are used to introduce learned allusions to the Iliad, the Greek
epic by Homer. Aeneid, the Latin epic by Virgil, and to an obscure History of the
Trojan war by Dares Phrygius. Allusions to the Christian myth of the loss of paradise,
to the theological debate on free will and predestination, the theory of St. Augustine,
to the consolations of Philosophy by Boethius (which Chaucer had translated), To
Thomas Bradwardine, do all give the tale an atmosphere of learning, reflection and
a philosophical context, appropriate to the narrator who is a priest. The reference to
the Gospel of St. John is important. The cock is made to twist or adapt the quotation.
He mistranslates deliberately. All this illustrates the ironic method of the poet. The
reference (in line 446) to one of the most romantic knights of the Arthurian romances-
Sir Launcelot de Lakeis sly and ironic.

Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus Christ with a kiss. New Ganelon betrayed his master
Charlemague and caused his defact. Sinon was a greek who tricked the Trojans into
admitting the wooden horse into their city. These three traitors in the spheres of
religion, history and myth are compared with the fox, the villain, in the Tale. The
familiar parallel of Adam, Eve and Satan is there too.

Some obscure references for a 20th century reader are there. Amedieval moralizing
treatise on beasts, a Latin bestiary, Physiologus, attributed to Theobaldus, is
mentioned (in line 505) by the Fox. He claims also to have read a song "Daun Bumal
the Asse" (Sir Burnal the Ass) in Nigel Wireker's book.

The author of Poetria Nova, Geoffrey de Viusauf, was regarded in Chaucer's time as
a great authority an rhetoric and poetry. The Priest is made to imitate his rhetorical
manner in lines 581-608. Contrast the rhetorical, hyperbolic style of these lines with
the vivid, realistic description of the chase in the following eight couplets.

Astronomy and astrology were Chaucer's favourite objects. We have some evidence of
that in this tale too. The Peasant's Revolt of 1381- a contemporary historical event- and
one of its leaders- Jack straw- are mentioned in the tale (lines 627-630). The noise that
was made in chasing the fox is compared to the noise made by the crowds in the said
rebellion.

The use of learning by major English poets like the metaphysical poets, particularly
John Donne; John Milton, Alexander Pope and T.S. Eliot is like, and unlike
Chaucer's.

The metaphysical poets wrote for a small circle of readers. Milton too was interested
in finding "fit audience, though few". Besides, he reflects the conflict as well as the
compromise of the Renaissance with the Reformation in his poetry. Classicism and
Christianity were undivided in Chaucer's time, but his humanism has a secular bias,
which is a mark of his originality. The classicism of Dryden and Pope is imitative
and the theme of their poetry is contemporary society, particularly, men of letters and
the state of letters in their time. This is something of a late development in the history
of English poetry. It may be described as the narrowing down of the subject of poetry
to poetry itself- a circularity. The Waste Land by T,S.Eliot was first received as a
very obscure and pedantic poem. Modernism-an amalgam of symbolism, imagism,
romanticism and classicism- appeared with this poem. Chaucer's use of learning is
most creative. Only Shakespeare may be said to have assimilated it better.

56
Chaucer's allusions to the poetic, mythological and philosophical traditions of Europe
show that he is most European of English poets. Dryden and Pope were mere
imitators of the ancients. T.S. Eliot was an American and with him the Trans- Atlantic
modem English poetry had emerged. Milton's Christianity, unlike Dante's, was
sectarian and reflected a spiritual conflict between reason and faith. Byronisrn
idolised Byron. Homer, Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare are perhaps the greatest
European poets, but Shakespeare's "Englishness" is at once more insular and
universal than Chaucer's classical simplicity or Milton's Latinism. Of Chaucer,
Shakespeare and Milton, the last is most exotic, the first is wanting in the depth and
range of Shakespeare. Perhaps the freedom from French influence was not complete.

4.8 SPEECH, DIALOGUE, REFLECTION, NARRATION AND

DESCRIPTION IN NPT

NPT is a dramatic tale. The action here is more verbal than non-verbal. The debate
on dreams, the play of wit between the hero (chauntecleer) and the villain (colfox),
the reflections of the priest, the dramatic story-teller, are all verbal action.

The non-verbal action of of two types here. The dream is a psychic event, hardly
'action'. The only physical action is the fox seizing the cock by the neck and running
to the forest. The 'action' on the part of the hero, apart from his interpretation of
dreams including his own, is wooing, dalliance and enjoyment (see lines 391-437)
and play of wit in resolving a crisis.

Speeches, dialogue and reflection, therefore, are more important in this tale than
'action' of the other type. The tale is, thus, remarkable for psychic and mental action.
It is more literary or linguistic than might appear on the surface.

The speech of the fox addressed to the cock (518-555) is highly rhetorical and full of
dramatic irony. Compare it with Iago's speeches to Othello in the play of that name
by Shakespeare, or Satan's in Milton's Paradise Lost. Evidently, this is a mock-heroic
tale in contrast with the serious tragedy and the solemn epic. The brief dialogue
between the cock and the fox is crucial action. The cock takes his revenge in a speech
of seven lines (three and a half couplets 641-47) and the fox falls in the trap through
a speech of half a line (648).

The morals drawn by the participants in the action state the impo1tanc.e of vision
(one should keep one's eyes open) and silence (one should not talk when one should
hold one's peace). Silence, after all, is golden, while speech is silver. We notice the
use and abuse of language -to conceal and to reveal motive. Truth and falsehord in
verbal behaviour are to be distinguished by intelligence.

In the debate on dreams, the hen is matter of fact and scientific. She uses expository
language or style. Her speech of more than sixty lines (142-203) reflects a skilful
control or organisation of feeling and idea.

57
The cock is long-winded and pedantic in his reply. He is given two hundred lines
(204-405) in which he tells two dream stories and refers to many famous dreams in
scripture and the classics, implying a correspondence between them and his own. He
argues that dreams signify joy or trouble and his own "avision" foretells adversity,
His proud, pedantic and amorous character is adumbrated in his mistranslation of a
Latin sentence from the gospel according to St. .John. He wins the argument but
forgets its purpose. He behaves like a smug fatalist ignoring the warning of the
dream.

The priest is using the tale as an exemplum. His story is a contemplative and didactic
sermon. His reflection on the theological problem of freewill and predetermination
relates this tale to the knight's Tale and to Troilus and Creside. And in all the three
"Chaucer's balance in his just comprehension of tragedy and his gentle sense of
humour" may be seen. Poetry and philosophy are united dramatically. In this respect,
Chaucer is second only to Shakespeare among great English poets.

The priest's reflection on women or man-woman relationship is curiously less '

objective. Consider the passage (421-48) where the transition form a solemn,
rhetorical tone to satiric- ironical is remarkable. The paradisal happiness of the cock
(434-37) before the fox enters the scene is pastoral or romantic. Notice the word
"pasture" used in line 4 19. But the correspondence with the myth of AdamEve- Satan
is coloured with antifeminine feeling. The priest's ironic statement that his story is
"true" as is the book of Launcelot de Lake reveals the subjective feeling of the
narrator author. And a little later he turns again to the topic of woman's counsel to
man. His evasive and timid tone is characteristic and tells the story of his own
dubious love-hate relation with his mistress prioress.

Chaucer's view of rhetoric is reflected in the priest's reference to Geoffrey de Vinsauf,

whose guidance was blindly accepted by poets and rhetoricians of Chaucer's - time.
Chaucer's poetic technique is more remarkable for irony, satire and realism than for
rhetoric and romance. He juxtaposed the plain style with the high style in the tale,
creating an ironic effect. In the description of the paradise of married love dramatilly
rendered (391-420) the poet uses a rhetorical method but not without irony. The
realistic style of the chase (609-635) may be contrasted with it.

Chaucer's narrative art combines description, reflection and narration in an aesthetic

complex. The narrative has all the qualities that a good narrative requires: (a) the
pace and movement of the story, (b) suspense and crisis, (c) Transitions from the
serious to the gay tone and back, (d) drama (e) action, (f)contemplating or reflecting
on the action, and (g) artistic control of the matrial of experience. Tradition and
individual talent are perfectly blended.

Description is poetic at places, e.g. the description of Chauntecleer's voice and

appearance. It is not always so poetic. It is matter-of-fact in tone more frequently.
The use of poetic devices like the simile and rhetorical devices 1ike.exclamalions
may be noticed for particular consideration.

In the use of similes, Chaucer is the supreme English poet, as Shakespeare is in the
use of metaphors. The Homeric similes of Milton are equally remarkable. The
comparisons and similes of lines 85-98 are brilliant. Figure them out. The most
important aspect of Chaucer's style is that the tale is a verse narrative. Modern fiction
is normally written in prose. Verse contrasts with prose in many respects. It is more

58
regular and rhythmic. The verse of Chaucer's poems is radically different from the
traditional alliterative verse of his age. The influence of Chaucer on the later English
poets is immeasurable because they found the syllabic verse pattern introduced by
him more congenial then the old alliterative verse.

The music of the heroic couplets of NPT should be appreciated. The initial difficulty
of middle English pronunciation can be easily overcome. The syllabic structure of
words is somewhat different, especially because the final-e is sounded and adds an
extra syllable to the word in many cases.

Chaucer's diction is not 'poetic' in the way in which, according to Wordsworth, that
of late 18th century English poetry is. In the General Prologue Chaucer defended. His
plain style (lines 725-742). His argument is that rudeness, vulgarity or even obscenity
of speech may be dramatically proper on the ground of realism. Secondly, sincerity
and honesty require that there should be no reserve (or euphesim) and that words
must correspond to action. He mentions both Christ and Plato-the two fountainheads
of European culture-in support of his argument. In all this Chaucer was being only
half serious. His comic and ironic vision is reflected in his poetic manner.

4.9 LEVELS OF MEANING IN NPT

"On the primary level the Nun's priest's Tale is a brilliant and complex exposure of
vanity, self-esteem, and self-indulgence through the mock-heroic treatment of a beast
fable. On the secondary level, the Nun's Priest joins the discussions of the Pilgrims
on poverty (Man of Law, Wife of Bath), women's advice (Merchant), rhetoric (Host
and squire), and marriage. He is also presenting in the contrast between the widow
and Chantecleer a veiled comment on his position vis-a-vis the Prioress. Finally, on
the level of involuntary revelation, be falls into the pedantry that he is ridiculing and
uncovers for a moment in his confusion the feelings of a misogyist dependent on a
woman. In this moment there is revealed a second conflict, the conflict between the
artist, building with the materials of his art a world where his feelings achieve
symbolic and universal expression, and the man, expressing his feelings directly."

4.10 CONTEMPORARY HISTORICAL ALLUSION

A touch-and-go allusion to contemporary historical events and personages is made

in the Tale. J.L. Hotson suggested so in 1924. According to him, Colfox of the Tale
is based on Nicholes Calfox. The real Colfox was one of those who were responsible
for the killing or gloucester, a prince of England and youngest son to Edward III.
Chaucer likens the Colfox to famous traitors. The other historical event to which
Chaucer seems to have referred is the duel at coventry between Henry Bolingbroke,
then Duke of Hereford, and Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk. King Richard
stopped the proceeding just before blows were struck, and exiled the antagonists:
Henry for ten years, and Mowbray for ever. "Such an heroic encounter, ending a bit

59
ingloriously, but without hurt, for both combatants, furnishes an excellent occasion
for a sympathetic, humorous fable, done in a grave and gay mock-heroic style". A
striking similarity between chauntecleer's colours and Henry's arms is noticed. And
the striking likeness between the fable and the duel is brought out.

Check Your Progress 6

1. Write a note on Chauntecleer's use of learning, distinguishing it from the Priest's and
the Poet's.
2. Comment on
a) Chaucer's attitude to rhetoric
b) His use of rhetoric
3. Compare Chaucer as a learned poet with some other English poets.
4. Write a critical note on Chaucer's use of language.
5. Study the essay "Colfox Vs Chanticleer by J. Lesley Hotson included in Chaucer:
Modern Essays in criticism (1959) edited by Edward WAGENKNECHT Do you
find the argument of Hotson convincing or merely curious?
6. How are poetry and history related? Agreat critic suggested that poetry is less
abstract and more concrete than philosophy and less concrete and more abstract than
history. How is this the advantage of poetry?
7. Bring out the poetic features of the style of Chaucer.
8. What makes Chaucer the greatest master of narrative in English verse.
9. Discuss Dryden's description of Chaucer as "the father of English poetry"

4.11 AN OUTLINE SURVEY OF CHAUCER CRITICISM

Chaucer was admired by his contemporaries and imitated by the poets of the
succeeding generations in the fifteenth century A.D. The following eulogy by John
Skeleton is among the first:

O Noble Chaucer, Whos pullissh yd eloquence Oure

Englysshe rude so fresshely hath set out. That
bounde ar we with all dew reverence,
With all our strength that we can bring about,
To owe to you our servye, and more if we mowte.. .

Hoccleve praised Chaucer as "the first finder of the English language". Henry VIII
exempted his works from his ban on "forbidden" books. Ascham approved of him,
and Spenser acknowledged him as "master" from whose "well of English undefyled"

60
he drank deep. Ben Jonson had read Chaucer, and Milton‟s comments on Chaucer
are respectful.

It may be seen that the critical acclaim during the first two centuries after Chaucer
focussed on language. Then the language became old and obscure. The
transformation of English from Middle English to Modem English was complete.

Joseph Addison's lines on Chaucer in the sixth miscellary (1694) show the new attitude
of unfamiliarity with the language."

. . . Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose, And

many a story told in rhyme and prose, But age
has rusted what the poet writ, Worn out his
language and obscur'd his wit.
In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain, And tries
to make his readers laugh in vain.
Alexander Pope said:
Authors, like Coins, grow dear as they grow old; It is
the rust we value, not the gold.
Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote, And
beastly Skelton Heads of Houses quote:

But Dryden was much more balanced. However, the general Tendency of the 18th
century, or the age of neo-classicism, was to dismiss Chaucer's verse and language.
In fact, the unfamiliarity with Chaucer's language continued till
Matthew Arnold,

But Dryden held Chaucer "in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held
Homer, and the Romans Virgil." He called Chaucer" the father of English Poetry"
and described him in a fine phrase as "a perpetual fountain of good sense." In
Chaucer's verse, however, he found only nine syllables in place of the actual ten,
because he did not count the final-e as syllabic in works like "aboute" and "withoute"
in lines 81-2 of our text. They rhyme as well, But his appreciation of Chaucer's art
of characterisation is more than fair.

"Chaucer followed Nature everywhere, but was never sobold to go beyond her... we
have our forefathers and great-grand-dames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's
days: their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England."

Rewriting or translating Chaucer started with Dryden. A Pope and William

Wordsworth also rewrote parts of Chaucer. Nevil Coghill's translation is less free and
closer to the original both in language and spirit.

In the mid- 19th century the Chaucer society was founded, and towards the end of the
century Skeat's edition of Oxford Chaucer started appearing. But Matthew Amold
was, it seems, not aware, of the new wave of Chaucer scholarship. His famour
criticism of Chaucer as lacking in "high seriousness" derived, partly, from his own
lack of humour and, generally, from the romantic aesthetic which regards the artist
as her and takes art more seriously than is done in real life and society.

61
Since the middle of the nineteenth century Chaucer studies have been steadily
growing on both sides of the Atlantic. Some prominent American scholars like
kithedge, Manly, Root, Lowes and John Speirs have contributed much to the revival
of interest in Chaucer's poetry. It is true that Chaucer studies till about 1920 had
strong historical bias. Ever since then Chaucer criticism has emerged and developed
as a special branch of English literary criticism.

The texts of Chaucer's poems have been authoritatively edited by F.N. Robinson,
J.M. Manly, Edith Rickert, and their pioneer W.W. Skeat. A Chaucer Bibliography
with a supplement covering the period 1908-63 and A companion to Chaucer studies
(1 968) are indispensable to scholars and researchers.

Chaucer's Life-Records, Chaucer's World, Five Hundred years of Chaucer Criticism and
Allusion are valuable books of reference.

The outline given above shows that Chaucer has always been accepted as a great
master of English poetry, but during the last three centuries and a half his language
seems to have proved a stumbling block to the reader and the critic.

The emergence of linguistics, particularly Historical linguistics, or Comparative

Philology as it was earlier known, made it possible for scholars to appreciate the
difference of Chaucer's East Midland Dialect of Middle English from the standard
English of today. Secondly, historical scholarship recreated Chaucer's England and
his social and literacy context. The last six decades have seen the publication in books
and journals of studies of Chaucer's verse, language, poetry, style etc. and his place
in the English poetic and literary tradition.

The historical approach of the late 19th century and early 20th century Chaucer
scholarship interpreted fiction as fact, mistaking realism for reality. The latest view
in this respect is that the description of reality in language can only be realistic and
must involve the subjective bias or prejudice of the describer. Secondly, Arnold's
complaint that "high seriousness" was wanting in Chaucer is now seen in its historical
critical perspective. It is accepted that Arnold's view derived partly from his
ignorance of Chaucer's language and unfamiliarity with Chaucer's poetic output as a
whole, and, more important, from the romantic aesthetic which regarded poets as
prophets or legislators of mankind. Poetry, said W.H.Anden, a poet, can make
nothing happen. Miles Burrows, a less known poet talken in a poem of two types of
poets-the arch poet and the minipoet and concluded, in a poem entitled "minipoet"

but most of us prefer the minipoet for the

sort of journeys we make now a days.

In India, however, pilgrimages like the one undertaken by Chaucer's pilgrims in the
Canterbury Tales are still common. Journeys are always of all sorts, but there is of
course a great difference between Chaucer's England and our India.

What is of universal interest in the poetry of Chauer which is illustrated in NPT at its
best is the wealth of experience, the firm grasp of human nature in its great variety,
and above all the easy mastery of the art of poetry and a rare assimilation of the
tradition of learning.

62
4.12 SUGGESTED READINGS

A Criticism of Chaucer as a whole

1.The Canterbury Tales:

A selection of critical Essays J. J. Anderson (ed)

2.A Reader's guide lo Geoflrey Chaucer Muriel Bowden

3.Chaucer in His Time Derek Brewet

4.The poet Chaucer Nevill Coghill

5.Chaucer and His world F.E. Halliday

6.Chaucer and His Poetry G.L. Kittredge

7.Chaucer and the Rhetoricians J.M. Manly

8.Chaucer and the shape of creation R.O. Payne

9.Chaucer’s Prosody Ian Robinson

10.The Poetry of Chaucer R.K. Root

11.Chaucer Criticism Richerd J. Scheeck & Jerome

Taylor(edd)
(2 volumes)

12.Chaucer the Maker John speirs

13.Critics on Chaucer Sheila Sulivan (ed)

14. Chaucer: Modern Essays in Criticism Edward Wagenknecht (ed)

15. On the Sources of the Nun 's Priest's tale K.O. Peterson

Note: Either A.W. Pllard's or F.WRobinson's edition of the text should be used. Nevil
coghill's translation into modem English verse should help the student translate
passages from the text into modem English prose.

Works of Reference

63
1. Sources and Analogues of Chaucer 's
Centerbury Tales W. F. Bryan andGermaine Dempster

2. Chaucer 's Life-Records M.M. Crow and C.C.Olsen (edd)

3. A Bibliography of Chaucer D.D. Griffith

1908-53
(Supplement 1954-63 by W.R.Crawford)

4. Companion to Chaucer Studies Beryl Rowland (ed)

5. Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Caroline F.E. Spurgeon Criticism and Allusion

Notes:
1. A Brief Note on Chaucer' s grammar

The middle English dialect (East Midland) of Chaucer forms the basis of modern
English. Therefore, the vocabulary and grammar of this dialect are far less strange
than those of the other dialects of his time, e.g. that of Langland's Piers Plowman.

The spellings in the text indicate both orthographic and phoretic differences. The
difference in the quality of vowels and some consonants has been partly
reconstructed or1 the basis of the spellings which were far from standardised in
Chaucer's time. The printing press was introduced soon after Chaucer by Caxton who
published Chaucer for the first time.

Word- endings like-e, -en, -n and -es were pronounced in Chaucer's time. The
genitive singular is normally formed in -es, -s: Poules, Goddes, Nonnes. Plurals were
formed in fully sounded -es the -en suffix was also used : eyen, doghtren. Some
plurals had zero inflection: nyght in "seven nyght oold". Adjectives possessed a fully
sounded -e final independent of inflection: "muche fold". "poure estaat" The definite
use of adjectives had an e-final in the singular: the brighte sune, faire Pertelote. His
sweete preest. The indefinite use had no e-final in singular a greet disese. Adjective
in the plural inflection were formed with the final -e, fresshe flowers. The predicative
use had no final -e as in "neither whit no reed" comparatives and superlatives doubled
the final consonants : redder

Adverbs with final -e: faire, poore, aboute.

Pronouns: Here appears as hir or hire, and in the accusative or dative as here. Them
is usually hem and their here but also her and hir. That has its plural tho, the plural
of this is thise. Which is used for all genders, and is inflected when adjectival.

Verbs: Ist singular is formed with a final -e:

I gesse, I seye
rd
3 singular is formed by -eth, -th.

64
The plural of all persons is formed in -en, -n or the weakened form -e: men han been .
. . WE all desiren, That werken, dreams been to drede, they been etc.

Strong verb conjugation: ladde, sent, foond, eet, lette, shente, hadde etc. The
imperative present in the plural takes -eth: Beth. Also telle war, redeth etc., dredeth.
Infinitives end in -en,-n, or -e:

To goon, To doon, to telle, to gone, to han, to tellen

Strong verb past participle form, end in -en, -e:fallen, understonde, shente but maad
Weak vers in -ed, -d attamed,

Wakened, mordred, dremed

Both strong and weak verbs frequently have the prefix y-

The most remarkable features of the vocabulary of Chaucer are:

(a) Obsolete words like eek, quod, sooth, clap, wot, noot, woot, mete, somdeel, sweven,
steven, cleped, hight, sikerly, stape, ywis, avantour, mote, gargat, gabbe wlastsom,
biknewe, gladsom etc.

(b) Compounds and Derivatives which are obsolete.

namoore = no more
nevaradeel = never a deal nas = was
not
noot = know not (n+woot)
nere = were it not
n'apoplexie = no apoplexy
thilke = the same
evericlion = every+each+one

(c) Change of form and meaning in certain words

1. Hevinesse = Seriousness, sadness

NOW the word is used in the literal physical sense more than in
this metaphorical sense.

2. Disese = the present-day meaning has narrowed down to "illness"

3. Think = seem, appear in Chaucer's use. Consider the sentence, it

thinketh me= it thinks me= it seems to me

4. lust = Chaucer's meaning "desire" has no sexual connotation.

65
5. recche = reckon, interpret, read

Syntactic features

A. 1. That = What -See line 2

2. for to telle =for telling or to tell for to bewaille = to bewail
3. But for = But because
4. Whan that = When (see line 122)

B. Double negatives - e.g. I noot revere . . .

(line 17) no wyn ne drank seh
(line 76) nas no man in no region
(line 544) Notes to the text

Line 1 The Prologue to NPT links it with the preceding Monk's Tale.
The Knight (Who has the pride of place among the pilgrims)
interrupts the monk. The monk, in his tale, has recounted
universal tragedy - human and superhuman. Lucifer, Adam,
Samson, Hercules, Nero, Alexander and Julius caesar are
some of the great tragic figures presented by the Monk. He
interprets their various tragedies in the light of his faith in
destiny or predetermination.

From a tragic tale to a comic is a transition designed by the poet

whose artand vision are essentially serio-comic.

NPT is followed by the Physician's Tale in which a father kills

his daughter to save her honour.

Line 14 St. Paul's Cathedral in London. At the end, too, (line 675)
there is a reference to St. Paul, This gives the tale some of its
form-rounding off.

Line 16 The phrase "Fortune covered with a clowde" refers to the

Monk's conclusion to his tale as follows:

How fortune, ever fickle, will assail

With the sudden stroke the kingdoms of the proud.
And when men trust in her she than will fail And
cover her bright face as with a cloud . . . (Nevi1
coghill's translation)

Notice the theme of Destiny versus free will is retained in NPT,

but the tone is comic and ironical.

66
Line 90 The equinoctial was a great circle of the heavens in the plane of
the earth's equator. Chaucer's interest in Astronomy is well-
known. According to, medieval astronomy, the equinox made
a complete daily revolution, so that fifteen degree would pass,
or ascend, every hour. The cock knew this instinctively and
would crow precisely every hour.

Notice the unity of time being observed in the tale. The action
starts at dawn with the groaning of the cock. The hen warns
him against going out in the ascending sun, but he goes out at
9 a.m. Later "undren" (line 456) indicates time from 9 am to
12 noon. The rest of the action, particularly the chase, seems
to take place in the afternoon.

Secondly, Astrology, the science of medicine, psychology

(particularly the theory of humours) and astronomy were all
interrelated. Knowledge in Chaucer's time was more general
and interdisciplinary then in our time.

Lines 93-98 The colours of the cock's physical appearance as well as those of
the colfox (lines 136-38) have a poetic and rhetocial effect.
Moreover, they have a historical
connotation, as out by J.L. Hotsun (see suggested Reading
List)

130 The line should be paraphrased: Now may God (make) my dream
mean (read) well.

Line 148-51 The ideal husband of his age of chivalry and romance is mocked by the
poet in a manne reminicscent of Restoration comedy. Compare
this with Millamant mocking the romantic ideal of a husband in
The Way of the World.

Lines 157-72 Notice the connection between the theory of humours classifying
humans into four psychological types, the interpretation of
dreams, and the medical advice given by Pertelote.
Animpressive display of learning as by a court lady: The
comic and mock-heroic tone is apparent.

174 Dionysius Cato, the author of a Latin book of maxims

218 The author is Cicero, the famous Latin author known for his prose style and
learning. Divination and Valericus Maximus are the two books by him both or either
of which may be the
source of the two dream stories of the cock.

344-355 The story of the life of St. Kenelm is told in the Golden Legend translated by
Caxton.

67
 After the death of his father kenulphus in 821 A.D. Kenelm
became the king of Mercia at the age of seven. But his aunt,
Quenedreda got him murdered. Later he was made a saint.

This vision of a stately tree stretching to the stars and with

branches covered with flowers is sublime. The tree was ablaze
with lamps. He saw himself standing on the top, and three
parts of the earth bending towards him reverentially. While he
was appreciating the magnificent spectacle, some of his
relatives cut the tree down. But he was transformed into a little
white bird. The allegorical vision is poetic.

357-58 Macrobius, who interpreted the dream of the worthy scipio of Africa,
confirms that dreams are significant. His classification of
dreams together with philosophical and astrological
explorations attracted medieval readers.The SOMNIUM
SCIPIONIS of Circero, originally a chapter of De Republica,
Book VI was edited with a commentary by Macrobius about
400 A.D.

362 The Book of Daniel in the old Testament of the Bible states Daniel's
belief that dreams are significant.

364 Joseph in the Book of Genesis in the Bible also asserts that dreams are
significant. The dreams of the Egyptian Pharaoh, his baker and
butler were indicators of' coming events.

372-74 Croesus, King of Lydia, dreamt that he was seated on a high tree, where he
was made wet by Jupiter and dried by Phoebus. His daughter,
Fania, interpreted the dream as reaning that he would be
captured and hanged on a cross, where the rain would moisten
him and the sun would dry him. And the dream came true.

375-82 Hector, a Trojan hero, was killed by the greek warrior

Achilles in the war of Tray. This story is taken from the Greek
epic Iliad by Homer. But Homer does not mention any dream
of Andromache, Hector's wife. Chaucer's source for this was
the History of the Trojan war by Dares Phrygius.

All the learned allusions made in the context of the dream lore
have two main sources: (a) Greek and Roman classics and (b)
Christian scripture. Chaucer is fairly representative in his use
of learning in poetry. After the Renaissance, a split between
the Christain and the classical surfaced, most prominently in
Milton's Paradise Lost. Scholars have traced a conflict in
Milton's psyche between conscious and unconscious pulls.
There is no such conflict in Chaucer.

397-400 In Principio are the first words of the Gospel of St. John. Here this Latin phrase
means "as surely as in the beginning"

68
 (when Eve tempted Adam). The Latin sentence means
"woman is man's ruin." But Chauntecleer deliberately
mistranslates it.

421 An implicit reference to a common Hebrew tradition,

according to which creation took place at the time of vernal
equinox B.C. 3761.

424 May 3is the date, because thirty days of April and two days of May had passed.

The time is 9 0' clock in the morning. 117

May 3 is significant in Chaucer's poetry. (a) In the Knight's

Tale, it is soon after midnight on May 3 that Palamon breaks
out of prison. (b) In Troilus and criseyde, after a sleepless
night on May 3, Pandarus urges Criseyde to listen to the suit
of Troilus. It appears that May 3 was traditionally regarded as
an unlucky day. Or was some autobiographical reference
hinted?

428-29 The zodiac is an imaginary circular band found the heavens, and the sun's
annual course is the middle of this band. This band is divided
into twelve signs of the zodiac of which Taurus is the second.
360 degrees of the circle divided by twelve yields 30. This is
how months and days of the year were astronomically
calculated. The sun was supposed to begin its course in the
first sign of Aries on 12th March. 30 days for the thirty degrees
of Aries plus 21 days for the twenty one degrees of Taurus
bring is to 2nd May. "Somewhat more" (line 429) brings us to
the 3rdMay.

430 The cock knew all this by nature or instinct, not by any other
"Iore" orlearning.

433 The daily motion of the sun is referred to. Forty one degrees
and a fraction makes 9 0' clock.

Thus it is nine am on the third of May. The progress of the action

under a unity of time scheme makes it dramatic.

446 Launcelot, a prominent knight of King Arthur's Round

Table in the Arthurian romances. A French version by walter
Map known for its untruthfulness was held by women in great
esteem. Chaucer was referring particularly to this "book."

449 Colfox = coal-black fox. col-here is M.E. col = Coal; a

variety of Sox chiefly distinguished by a geater admixture of
black in its fur.

69
 "Colfox, as a common noun, occurs only in this passage. But
Colfox is also a proper name, a surname; and is found in
England from Chaucer's time to ours". Hotsun (1924).
Nicholas Colfox and Richard Colfox; two contemporaries
known at court, were punished and pardoned by Henry IV.
Nicholas Colfox had been involved in the murder of the Duke
of Gloucester. It was worse than murder; it was treason.

The emphasis on the themes "Mordre wol out" (lines 28491)

and treason (lines 460-63) is interpreted by Hotsun as
reflecting Chaucer's attitude to Nicholas Colfox.

The partial resemblance of Chauntedeer with Henry

Bolingbroke and of Colfox with Nicholas Colfox as well as
Thomas Mowbray is not a complete allegory. But their duel at
Coventrys stopped just before blows were struck is faintly
reflected in the encounter between the cock and the fox.

456 "Undren of the day" is the time from 9 a.m to 12 noon"

461-62 Judas Iscariot betrayed christ with a kiss, new Ganelon was an officer under
Charlemague, and by his treachery caused his master's defeat,
and the death of Roland, for which he was tom to pieces by
horses. Sinon was a Greek who tricked Trojans into admitting
the wooden horse into their city. Thus, these are three traitors
in the spheres of religion,
history and myth.

Apart from a rhetorical mock heroic effect, these lines also have
a historical overtone, as Holsun shows.

474 bulte it to the bren-separate the flour from the chaff, the truth
from falsehood or fiction

475 St. Augustine was regarded as the representative of the

orthodox doctrines on the subject. He
believed in predestination.

476 Boethius (470-525 A.D) treats the topic in De Consolatione

Philosophie in a passage which distinguishes between "simple"
necessity and "conditional" necessity. Chaucer translated the
book into English.

Thomas Bradwardine, lecturer at Oxford and later Arcbitshop

of Canterbury : 1349wrote a Latin book De Causa Dei
defending predestination or predetermination.

70
491 The story of Adam, Eve and the serpent in Paradise is one of the basic myths of
Christianity. The concept of original sin is derived from it.
And the relation between character and destiny depends on it.

505 Physiologus is the title of Latin bestiary, a medieval

moralizing treatise on beasts, attributed to Theobaldus. The
priest refers to it not without humour.

529 Boethius wrote a book on music in T.ain, De Musica. He belonged to the

mathematical school of music of Pythagoras. His music did not
have musch feeling. The comparison is hyperbolic, comic,
mock-heroic and ironical.

546-52 The story here alluded to is found in a poem entitled Burnellus Sen Speculum
Stultoruin written by Nigel Wireker in the time of Richard I.
Master Brunedl the ass, is the hero of the book, a 12th century
satire on the vices and corruption of society in general and of
the religious orders in particular, under the guise of a narrative
of the adventures of the ass who wanted a longer tail. The story
referred to is briefly this: A young man named Gundulfus
broke a cock's leg by flinging a stone at it. The cock took his
revenge by omitting to crow in the morning on the day
when Gundulfus was to be ordained a priest and to receive a
benefice. The result was that Gundulfus and all his family
overslept, he lost the benefice and become a beggar while his
parents died of grief.

575 Friday is a day dedicated to Venus. It is traditionally associated

with bad luck.

581-86 Gaufred was Geoffrey de Vinsauf, author of the Poetria Nova, Which was
long recognised as an authoritative treatise on poetry,
containing instructions for composing poetry in different
styles the passage referred to is an example of lamentation, and
deals with king Richard's death.

Chaucer is somewhat ironic of the plaintive style. He has used

rhetoric in this tale at important points in the action, consider
lines 441-48, 460-64, 527-30 and many other passages.

590-93 Pyrrhus had seized king Priam by the beard and slain him as the Latin epic
Aeneid by virgil tells us. To compare the crisis of the cock
with the fall of Try is mock-heroic

597-602 Hasdrubal was the king of Carthage when the Romans

burnt it in 146 B.C. Hasdrubel slew himself; and his wife and
two sons burnt themselves in despair.

71
604-607 Emperor Nero's burning of the city of Rome was cruel fun. Nero, a Roman
emperor A.D. 54-68, is proverbial for his brutal tyranny. He is
said to have been fiddling while Rome was burning.

628 The reference here is to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Jack straw was one of the
leaders of the revolt. He and his men killed many flemings to
whom the English workers were hostile in selfinterest. He was
subsequently beheaded.

GLOSSARY

72
Abrayde = woke up with a start possession chaf = chaff, husk
accord = musical harmony close = enclosure aright =
accordant = in keeping with actes
rightly asure = azure atones = at once
= records aferd = afraid afright =
frightened ageste = terrified attamed = started, began atte = at the
agayn = toward, back agon = attempree = temperate autorite
gone past anon = at once anyght = authority auctour = author
= at night anoye = annoy
appothe = cane chemist, one aungel= angel avantour =
who sells medicines boaster,braggart aventure = luck,
chance avysion = vision, dream
agrief = unkindly, as a
grevance agu = ague a1 = quite al-be-it
benefice, living beth = plural of be
= although alday = continually
betwixe =between bifel = happened
als = also
bifom = before .
altercation = controversy anhanged
bigyle = beguile, cheat, trick biknewe
= hanged
= acknowledged, confessed biwaille =
bewail, lament biwreye = betray blithe
B Bad=bade, commanded bak = back = merry bole = bull bord = table bour
bane = death, destruction bar = bore, = hall brast = burst bren = bran, husk
conducted battailled = indented like a brend(e) = burnt briddes = birds bulte
castle wall bame = beam, perch bene = separate, sift burned = burnished
= bean, a trifle benedicitee=God bless byde = wait, vide byle=bill, beak
us, a benediction benefice =
centaure = the herb called centaury
C certes = certainly
Cas = case, circumstance, happening
catel = property,
cherl = rustic, peasant colera = choler (one of the four clappe = to
talk humours) clepe = call commune = common clerk = a
scholar, a learned person, a cote = cottage
student of philosophy countrefete = imitate clomben = climb cours
=journey, voyage closs = closed
cronycle = chronicle

D
Damoysele = damsel dissymilour = dissembler dar = dare
divyne = guess daun = sir doghtren = daughters debonaire
= gracious doke = duck

78
dede = deed donge = dung dede = dead drecched = distressed
deel = bit, part dreynt = drowned
deign = please dystaf = stick, clef stick, part of desport = amusement, sport
spinning wheel, distaff deye = dairy woman

E
Ech = each Ech = each equinoxial = celestial equator eeris =
ears er = ere, before eet,ete = eat, ate erst = before eke = also
eschewed = avoided ellebour = hellebore ese = ease
elles = else, otherwise estaat = state, condition endite = compose
evexmo = ever more
engendren = originate expown = expound, make clear engyned = tortured ey =
egg ensample = example eyle = ail, afflict entente = intention, motive

F
Faire - fairly, fair forwytying = fore-knowledge fayn = willingly for = against
felonye = crime fro = from fil= befell, happened fumetere = funitory, the
name of a flaugh = past tense of fly plant fley flew faren = gone, fared
foond = found feend = fiend
fors = count, heed fer = far

79
flatour = flatterer flour = flower
forncast = preordained forslewthn = J
lose by idleness forwoot =
Jade = Poor horse Jolif =
happy, jolly
jangle = chatter,
talk idly jeet =jet
G
Gabbe = boast, speak wildly gape = open the
mouth gentillesse = gentleness, graciousness
gilt = guilt, sin glade = gladden grace = good
fortune greve = grove gan = began
grote=four penny piece gargat = throat
gesse = guess,
suppose
H gladsome =
gladdening gon =
go gaunt = great,
Habundant = abundant many, much gone
= groan
happe = happen harrow = a cry for help
grym=fierce,
(interjection) heeld = held heere = hear, here
grim
heet = heated hele = hide hente = sized
herkneth = harken, listen hewe = hue, colour
hir selven = herself holden = esteem, consider
hostelrie = inn, hotel hoten = command,
promise housbondre = economy hyder = hardy = bold hath =
hither hym = him han has heele = health
heeries = hairs hegge =
= have
hedge hem = them
herbergage =
I harbourage,
accommodation,
lodging
hevyness =
sadness, sorrow
hir, hire = her, hers
hight = called hoo-
In = inn ho-hoold = safe
keeping
Jape = mockery hostlier = inn-
keeper, hotelier
80 housbonde =
husband howp =
foreknows ,, foul = dirty whoot hydous =
fume = vapour hideous
fyn = fine
 iniquitee = iniquity, wickedness
K
Kan = can katapuce = catapuce keep = notice,
take heed kepe = guard, protect koude = could
kyn = cows kynde =nature, instinct, kind (noun)

L
Ladde = led loken = locked, held fast lat = let (v) lorn = lost lawriol
= spurge lawrel Lust = desire lak = lack, shortage leoun = lion latter
= later, final leste = hinder leere = learn leve = leave leme = flame
leye = bet lese = lose liggen = lie in ambush
lette = let lite = little levere = rather lith = Iimb,lies
(v) lif = dear loggyng=
lodging list = please, want wish loove = learning,
advice litel = little losengeour = deceiver, flatterer
logge = lodging lyte = little

M
Mad= made maister = master maisfow = mayest thou maked = made
malencolye = melancholy maner = kind of, sort of mateere = matter
maugree = in spite of maze = muddled thought mente = meant mercy
= thanks mervaille = marvel, wonder
mery = merry, cheerful meschaunce = misfortune meschief = trouble
messe = mass mette = dreamed meynee = crowd, mob
ministre = officer moot = may moralite = moral lesson
mordre = murder mordred =
murdered morwe = morning morwenynge = morning moste =
must muche = much multiply = increase murie = merry myrie =
merry
Myddel = middle myrthe = mirth

N
Namo = no more nat =not narwe =
narrow natureely = naturally
neded = needed natheless = nevertheless nedes (adv) = needs, ne = not, nor
nere = were it not nedely = necessarily nones =
81
occasion necessarily neer = nearer noon = none nought =
not at all
notabilitee = n notable thing nonne = nun noys = noise norice =
nurse nyce = foolish nothyug (adv) = not at all nys = is not
ny = near namoore = no more nygard = niggard, mean
person nas = was not

O
Ofter = ofener ones = once oold = old oonly = only
oother = other orgon = organ orlogge = clock out
(interjection) = come out help outsterte = staded out, rushed
came out outerly = utterly owene = own owle = owl

P
Paramour = lover plesannce = pleasure, will parfit = perfect pleyn =
complain, mourn bewail pardee (interjection) = by god poure = poor passe
= pass on, surpass powpe = to blow, puff Peer =
equal preeve = proof pekke = peck, pick prively =
secretly, privately physik = medicine prime = nine O‟
clock in the morning pees = peace poweer = power
peyne =to take pains preeste = priest pitous = piteous,
pitiable preye = pray plesen = please prow
= benefit point = detail pyne = tormented

Q
Quelle = kill quod = said

R
rage = frenzy rennen = run real = royal, regal
repaire = retire reccheless = reckless, heedless
repleet = over full regardless retor =
rhetor, orator reeke = care, mind revers = reverse,
opposite
roghte = cared rome = ravysshed = delighted roam
roore = roar recche = interpret, reckon
82
head rede = red, read(v) reme = S Saufly = safely see = sea sely = silly,
realm simple, innocent sentence = meaning,
rente = income repleccioun = judgment sewe = pursue, follow seynd
over eating = singed, toasted shende = harm,
punish shoon = shone shrewe =
curse(v) shul = shall signification =
forewarning siker = sure sire = signe = sign sik = sick sikerly =
sir sklendre = slender, frugal certainly sith = since skrike = screech
sleen = slay sly = cunning slepen = sleep snout = muzzle solas =
sodeyn = sudden somdel = comfort, solace somtyme =
somewhat sond = sand sone = occasionally sondry = sundry, various
son soore = sorely soothfastness sonne = sun sooth = truth soothly =
= truth soverayn = sovereign, truly sovereynly= especially sterten =
supreme secree = secret seken = start up stikke = stick stonden = stand
seek, search sente = sent sette = strecche = stretch streyn = strain,
consider worth seyn = say compel substance = ability suffisaunce
shaltow = shalt thou sholde = = sufficience, satisfaction suspecioun
should syn = since = suspicion swerd = sword swich =
such syngen = sing steven = voice
sterte = started stoor = store streit =
T
narrow stynte = stop, end subtiltee =
repletion report = relate reulen = cunning suffre = allow sustre = sister
govern, control rewe = regret swevene = dream
roial = royal roune = ran shortly
= in short shrihte = shrieked
taak = take talking = discourse tarie = wait techen = guide,
teach terciane = tertian , running every third tespye = to espy
day thanne = then thee = prosper therwith = in addition to ther-as =
where thilke = the same therewithal = moreover thise =these thinken
= think thogh = though tho = those thridde = third thre = three
thritty=thirty thyn = thine thurgh = through toon,toos = toes
tiptoon = tiptoes tribulation = sorrow torne = turntyde = time,
hour twies = twice U
undiscreet = taetless undren = time before midday unto
= in addition to upright = face upwards understoden =
understood

83
V
Venym = posion verray = very vers = verse veyn = vain viage =
voyage vileynye = wickedness, evil voys = voice

W
War = aware weylawey(interjection) = alas! wex = grow whatso = whatever
whan = when wheeras = where what though = although whelp = dog
wheither = whether whit = white whilom = formerly wikke = wicked
wight = person wise = manner(n), wise (adj)
wilfully = deliberately wlatsom = loatheome, hateful witying = knowing wode
= wood wo = woe wltestow = wilt thou wol = wish, will woned = lived.
wonder = wonderful, strange wook = woke wont = accustomed wort
= root, cabbage wende = go woot = know wys = certainly

Y Yaf = gave ydoon = done yere

= year yfounde = found yis =
certainly yn = in, down yollen =
yelled ywrite = written ybeen =
been yeerd = yard yeve = give
ygon = gone ymaginacioun =
imagination ynough =
enough ywis = certainly

7.8 SUMMING UP

In this unit, we have concentrated on the study of the text. We have the modern English
verse translation together with the Middle English text in the Appendix. We have learnt
how to translate passages from the text into modern English prose with the help of the
verse translation. We have also tried to understand and interpret the text. The notes and
glossary help us in explaining learned allusions and learning the meanings of obscure
words. We have noticed the use of learning, allusion and rhetoric in the tale. We have
also viewed the tradition of Chaucer criticism and the changing taste of readers and
critics of Chaucer. For further studies, we have a short list of suggested reading material.
We have considered the poetic style of Chaucer and appreciated the dramatic nature of
the narrative.

Check your Progress

1. What are the main themes of NPT?

79
2. Consider the rhetorical features of the tale. Discuss in particular the similes.
3. Discuss Chaucer's art of characterisation.
4. Write a note on the criticism of Chaucer made by (a) Dryden and (b) Matthew
Arnold.
5. What has been the contribution of the twentieth century to Chaucer criticism?
6. Describe the complexity of the form of NPT. (use twenty sentences)
7. Write a note on the mock-heroic aspect of the tale (10 sentences)
8. Do you think the theme of man-woman relationship is irrelevant to the tale?
9. Briefly discuss the function of dreams in life, referring to the interpretations of
dreams by Freud and Jung.
10. Write a note on Chaucer's interpretation of dreams. Do you think Chauntecleer
expresses the poet's point of view?
11. Do you think the use of the dream in the tale in a digression?
12. Write a note on the use of learning and narrative in the debate on dreams.
13. Bring out the dramatic aspect of the debate on dreams.
14. Attempt a critical appreciation of the narrative art of Chaucer with reference to
NPT.
15. How the theme of “necessity conditional” is illustrated in the tale?
16. How are plot and character related in the tale?
17. What, if anything, is shared by the three story-tellers in the tale -i.e. the cock,
the priest and the poet?
18. Write a note on the comedy of the tale, Is it a merry tale? The Host Wanted a
story "as may oure hertes glade "As a reader of the tale, do you find your heart
gladdened? How?

80
BLOCK- 2: SPENSER’S FIRST BOOK OF FAERIE QUEENE

Unit-1 Introduction to Edmund Spenser

Unit- 2 Style and Diction of Edmund Spenser

Unit- 3 Spenserian poetry

Unit- 4 Faerie Queene

81
UNIT- 5 INTRODUCTION TO EDMUND SPENSER

Structure

8.0 Objectives
8.1 Introduction
8.2 The Renaissance
8.2.1 The Continental and the English Renaissance
8.2.2 The Renaissance and the Reformation
8.2.3 Social and Political Circumstances of the Renaissance
8.2.4 Courtier Poets, Court Politics
8.2.5 English Nationalism and the Renaissance
8.3 Let's Sum Up
8.4 Questions for Review
8.5 Additional Reading

5.0 OBJECTIVES

This unit is intended to equip the student with a basic knowledge of the Renaissance and its
broader ramifications. To this end, the unit will

• Help the student distinguish between the different strands of the Renaissance.
• Acquaint the student with the main features and figures of this phenomenon.
• Acquaint the student with some of the significant social and cultural movements that
shaped the Renaissance in England.
• To this end, it will identify the role of the Reformation movement in the Church and
of English nationalism, in the shaping of the English Renaissance.
• Indicate the role of changes in the English court in the production and shaping of
Renaissance English literature.
5.1 INTRODUCTION

Given that the period we refer to as the Renaissance sits at different times in different
countries, and that the English renaissance owes much to its Continental predecessor,
the first unit will explore some of the relations between the two. It will focus on trends
in learning and the arts, on the evolution of English humanism, and on religious and
political movements like the Reformation and their impact on English politics and
society. It will also dwell on the literary, cultural and economic developments (the
inception of British imperial inclinations, for instance) of the period. These will include
issues like the evolution of courtier poetry, the relation of poets and poetry to
Elizabethan court politics and the role of a newly emerging English nationalism in
shaping the arts of the age.

5.2 THE RENAISSANCE

5.2.1 The Continental and the English Renaissance

The social, political, religious and cultural forces that we refer to as the Renaissance
was first evident in continental Europe andbegan to be felt in England only about the
end of the fifteenth century. Perhaps the most important of these forces in the continent
and in England was the spread of the new humanist learning and ideology
 Courtly Love
especially among the upper classes. This leaning is first in evidence in Italy.
Following the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1493, refugees from that city had
brought with them the vast learning and literature - especially of the Greeks – that had
been stored in the libraries of the city. This produced the first great Italian humanists
like Savonarola, Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, who were subsequently to influence
early English humanists like Thomas Linacre (1460-1524), John Colet (1467-1519) and
William Lyly (1468-1522) - visitors to Italy who took back to England the new learning.
It was highly influential in the designing of the new curricula in schools and universities,
especially the work of the great humanist educationist Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536),
but for a long time it remained without impact on the literature and art of England. This
was primarily because the English language was as yet immature, socially and
politically without power. The language of the courts was still predominantly French,
while that of learning remained Latin. There was no real tradition as yet of English
theatre, prose or verse, despite the work of Chaucer in the last. Nor was there a major
school of art that could be influenced by the new learning, as was the case with Italian
artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. It is no coincidence then that the first
full impact of the renaissance in English literature came with the translation of Latin
and Italian verse into English by poets like Wyatt and Surrey, and the consequent
enrichment of the literature in the English vernacular. This in turn was enabled
substantially by the fact that the school and university system had by now produced a
generation of writers literate in the ancient languages and literatures of Latin, Greek and
Hebrew, and brought to English writings the humanism of those works.

The invention of the printing press also played a role in the emergence of the
Renaissance in the continent and in England. It made possible the sudden and immense
popularization of the new learning in Italy, and in the other European countries. It also
contributed substantially to the development and consolidation of national languages
and consequently of national traditions of literature. The classics were translated from
the Latin and Greek originals into the vernacular languages of the different countries
and published widely, allowing greater access to the new, learning. This pattern was
true of England too.

Where the English renaissance differed substantially from its European counterparts
was, firstly, in the kind of impact that the Reformation had on the renaissance in
England. We will study this in greater detail in the next section; for now, let us note that
the spirit of unbounded humanism associated with the continental renaissance, with its
celebration of the human form and intellect, was tempered by the moral vision of a
powerful Puritan imagination, which had already established itself in England by the
time the renaissance took effect there. Secondly, the renaissance in England was never
as profoundly an elitist phenomenon as it was on the continent. Perhaps because of the
distance from Italy, perhaps because of the entrenched popular traditions of theatre and
folk music and poetry, the emergent 1ligll culture that was the renaissance in England
had to deal with and assimilate local, popular and mass forms and traditions of literature
and culture more than, say, the renaissance in France. Because of the spread of
Protestant teachings and of literacy, the English renaissance also had a mass base very
different from its continental counterparts. Thirdly, the direction of politics in the age -
which led to the political distancing of England from both France and Italy - along with
a native resurgence of nationalistic sentiments, and ambitions to rival the Greeks and
the Romans in their cultural achievements, led to an involution of the spirit of the
renaissance that was specifically English in character, and distinct from its European
counterparts. The poetry of Edmund Spenser in many ways typifies this character, as
we shall seeshortly.

5.2.2 The Renaissance and the Reformation

As we noted above, the English renaissance was crucially influenced by another

veryimportant historical phenomenon, which differentiated it substantially from its
continental predecessor: the Reformation. In essence, the 'Reformation' refers to the
various and often bloody and violent movements against the Roman Catholic church,
that spread over Continental Europe through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
demanding large scale reforms in its beliefs and ecclesiastical practices. It, too, was in
many ways a consequence of the spread of the new humanist leaning on the continent,
and of the power of the printing press, which permitted the translation and
popularization of the Bible from Latin and Greek into the European vernaculars,
annulling the laities' dependency on the ecclesiastical orders for the interpretation and
mediation of the Bible. It was led by figures like Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John
Calvin (1509-64) but was preceded by reformers like St. Francis, Peter Waldo, John
Huss, and John Wycliffe who repeatedly critiqued the abuses in ecclesiastical practices
from the early thirteenth century onward. They were, however, not inclined to actually
break from the Roman Catholic Church, an extremism that later reformers of the
sixteenth century adopted, resulting in the many breakaway sects that constitute
Protestantism. The conventional date for the beginning of the Reformation then is Oct.
31, 1517, the date that Luther is said to have posted his Ninety-five Theses critiquing
the church on the door of the Castle Church, Wittenberg. It is falsely assumed by many
that Luther had intended to break from the Catholic church, but the fact is that it was
the Catholic church at expelled Luther, against his own desire. Later reformers however,
picked up on Luther's principles of dissent and deliberately broke from the Catholic
church, plunging much Europe into religious and civil strife for the next few centuries.

The reformists spirit had already nude its way to England by the time of Luther,
primarily through the work of John Wycliffe (1330-84), who not only protested against
the excessive worldly power of the Catholic church, but was instrumental in first
translating the Bible into English. Wycliffe's translation of the New Testament was,
however, not very accessible and his followers, the Lollards, did not have much impact
on the religious imagination. Wycliffe's work was furthered by William Tindale (1484-
1536), who wrote and popularized a much more accessible translation of the Bible.
When Henry VIII --- who had initially been a strong defender of Catholic orthodoxy -
broke from the Roman papacy in 1535, the impetus to the Reformation in England
became politically powerful, although tempered by the Icing's desire to form a Church
of England that would learn neither toward Catholicism nor toward the more rigid
versions of Protestantism. The more radical varieties of Protestantism however,
continued to flourish in England, in the form of' sects like the Diggers, the Quakers, the
Presbyterians, etc. and remained influential in shaping the directions or politics as well
as of society and culture. Their impact is felt especially in the tempering of renaissance
humanism and sensualism, through the consistent maintenance of Christian tenets over
classical, especially Platonic, ideals. So even while the Italian influence on the emergent
English literature of the period is strongly evident, it remains harnessed to an essentially
Christian vision, revealing in that literature a tension between a strong fascination for
the former and an equally strong moral condemnation of it.

5.2.3 Social and Political Circumstances of the Renaissance

We have already noted how the permeation of the currents of the renaissance into
English culture was both mediated and tempered by the forces of the reformation that
had already found root in England. Both forces - of the renaissance and of the
reformation - served to substantially reorganize English society. In the 15th century,
England had had primarily an agrarian and feudal socio-economic structure, with much
of the population living in the rural countryside, many as tenants to country squires and
noble lords. However, repeated epidemics of the plague had substantially affected the
population, which as a consequence hardly grew in this period. The shortage of labor
proved a blessing to many peasants, who managed to sell their labor at a premium, and
eventually to rise above their class and form a new class of landed folk called 'yeomen'
or small farmers, Many large landholders converted their land into sheep pasture
because of the lack of labor, leading to land enclosures and the abandonment of many
villages. This in turn led to the dramatic development of the wool industry. The
popularity of the pastoral as a genre and of the figure of the shepherd in renaissance
English poetry then, is not entirely because of either classical influences or of Biblical
ones, but derived from the English social landscape itself But the period also saw the
growth of London as a commercial and political city, with the new classes and the re-
distributed populations seeking employment, commercial gains and political power
gradually settling in the city. A part of the new social constituents were guilds of artisans
and craftspeople whose services were becoming increasingly important in catering to
the needs of the growing populace. The emergence of these mixed social sectors was an
early part of the larger process of the dismantling of the feudal economy that was to
culminate with the consolidation of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century. As
yet though, they were still constrained by the social and economic parameters of that
economy. The migrants to London in this century were thus mainly seeking social and
economic uplift as well as acceptability in a feudal socio-economic system that barely
recognized them They became a ready constituency for proselytizing protestant groups
who not only converted their beliefs, but through promoting literacy, gave them access
to educational possibilities that had remained outside their reach till now. But in doing
so, it also spread the sense of tension that we noted above, between the humanist
education they had access to and the conservative reformist morality of the new
religious movements.

This tension as compounded by monarchical changes and the consequent changes in

affiliations - from Henry VIII's Anglicanism to Edward VI's rigid Protestantism to Mary
Tudor's Catholicism to Elizabeth I's return to Anglicanism and so on. But these vacillations
were substantially defused in their impact on literature and culture primarily because of an
emergent English nationalist spirit. This nationalist sentiment held together at the cultural
level despite the political tensions that arose out of diverse and changing religious affiliations.
It rejected much that was Italianate in the renaissance, promoting an Englishness of vision
and ideals that was aimed at positioning English literature and arts as superior to the rest of
renaissance Europe. (It is no coincidence that many of tile playwrights of the period set their
comedies d satires - whether it was Shakespeare's .Merchant of Venice or Jonson's Volpone
– in Italy, implying to their English audiences that the vices and venalities satirized in the
plays were the illnesses of a specifically Italianate character.) This ideological rejection
permitted the English writers of the period to import forms, genres, styles and themes from
the continent but also to experiment with them freely, nativizing then by fixing them with the
existing traditions of English literature, subjecting them to the specificities of the rapidly
evolving English language, and infusing them with the moral and social vision of English
Anglicanism. Nevertheless, several of the main elements of the European renaissance which
did not conflict with protestant ideals - or even enhanced them - did find their way into, and
become an entrenched part of, the new literature of England. The celebration of the human
spirit and intellect was one such element. Arelated and for us, more pertinent element was a
celebration of the arts, especially of skills in writing and rhetoric, the cultivation of which
was now considered of signal importance especially to the governing classes, into which
Spenser made his way. This was now a part of the education of these classes, and
Spenser too, was to avail of it at his grammar school as well as subsequently, at
Cambridge University. We will now examine briefly how this skill and knowledge in
the arts was an important aspect of court life in renaissance England, and what the
consequent relations were of poets to the monarch and the court.

5.2.4 Courtier poets, Court Politics

Most of the well-known poetry of the period was written by courtiers, or by highly
educated gentlemen, and was rarely published. Poetry was written more for a small
circle of friends and others of similar rank, addressed to a nobleman usually, following
the practice of patronage by the nobility. But it was, aswe have noted, following the
practice of patronage by the nobility. But it was, as we have noted, common practice for
courtiers of the period to lay claims to being poets. There is some controversy about
how important their self-perception as poets was to them, and to the social meanings
and implications of this perception. It is probably true that the poets of the Elizabethan
period - from Thomas Wyatt (1503-42) to Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) and John Davies
(1569-1626) - were first courtiers and then poets. Critics like Richard Helgerson argue
that most of these poets, while projecting the craft of poetry as being of 'divine origin
and advertising its civilizing effect', and the poet as teacher, fflict d , inspirer, etc., to
monarchs, refused to see themselves in these terms (Helgerson: 676). Contrarily, for
most of them poetry was merely an indulgence, about which they remained largely
defensive. The risk of assuming the garb of Poet, as they envisioned the vocation, was
too potentially threatening to their social status, with the possibility of exposing 'its
wearer to ridicule and shame' (Helgerson: 676). Thus while acknowledging the
importance of the figure notionally, according to Helgerson, most of these poets were
unwilling to offer their own work and themselves as worthy of acknowledgement these
terms. They instead invariably offered apologies for their work, blaming it on the
passions of love or a lack of suitable employment, often promising never to repeat their
'pretensions' to poetry again. Their complaints however were riot against their
conceptions of poetry so much as against their actual poetic work, which they felt was
likely to be mocked, and in turn, they themselves as poets.

The picture is however more complicated than it appears here. We must also remember
that, firstly, self-deprecation was part of the poetic conventions of the lime, and need
not be taken as seriously as Helgerson wishes to. Very often poets self reflexively
indicated their art as insufficient to its own ambitions, generating a particularly poetic
tension that was based on the paradox often poem achieving its aims precisely by
denying itself. This may be made clearer through the following lines from Sidney's
Sonnet 34, addressed to his beloved 'Stella':

What idler thing than speak and not be heard?

What harder thing than smart and not to speak'?
Peace, foolish wit! With wit my wit is man'd. Thus
write I, while I doubt to write, and wreak
My harm in ink's poor. Loss….
The basic point being made in the poem and specifically in these lines is that there is an
overwhelming reason to write - the 'smart' or pain of love, in the 2nd line – which is
however hindered by the very passion it seeks to communicate: 'With wit [of passion]
my wit [of poetry] is marr'd'. And in expressing the difficulty of communicating the
passion, the poem achieves its precise aim, which is to project the measure of the passion
as all-consuming.

Once we acknowledge this convention, it becomes clear that the poet's deprecation or
his art was often not so much a matter of placing the vocation of the courtier above that
of the poet, as a matter of fulfilling a demand of the poetry itself. Rut in addition to this,
we must also remember that such a pose - of expressing an inability to complete, of
embarking on a task that is beyond one's powers, of self-deprecation, and so on - was
not confined to the poet or the vocation of poetry but was considered the appropriate
mode of self-presentation for the ideal courtier, and extended to all of his various roles.
This pose was assumed to indicate not so much humility, as moderation and balance on
the part of the courtier. It was an Italian ideal, propounded by Baldasare Castiglione in
his book, The Book of The Courtier (1528), a very influential humanist text on courtiers
of the sixteenth century, not least because it opened the question of whether a courtier
is born one or anyone from outside the nobility could also become one on the basis of
his abilities, accomplishments and learning. It was read by many outside the nobility,
especially from the emerging merchant class, who wished to appear cultivated. This is
an issue of significance for us because, as we shall see, Spenser was not born into the
nobility but nevertheless education and accomplishments Castiglione's book suggested
not only that the ideal courtier was one who was graceful and educated, but that he be
accomplishment and many sided in his personality, and yet remain moderate in his
presentation of his accomplishment For the average Elizabethan courtier this was
extended in its implications to indicate loyalty and subservience to the monarch; it
therefore took the form of self-deprecation and was much practiced, as a means of
displaying one's accomplishment seven as they were belittled as a sign of inferiority
before the queen. Sir Philip Sidney was to become a living ideal of such a courtier; but
for an outsider like Spenser, this was to become a problem. We will discuss some of
these issues in the next unit, when we discuss the life of Spenser. For now, it should be
clear that the writing of poetry, and the practice of self-deprecation were both necessary
dimensions to the politics of the Elizabethan court and the self-presentation of the
courtier there.

5.2.5English Nationalism and the Renaissance

While the nationalist spirit in England is fully in evidence only by around the middle of
the seventeenth century, explicitly on display especially in John Milton's epic Paradise
Lost, the sentiment had been on the rise for more than a century. In some sense a
rudimentary nationalistic spirit is evident ever since the beginning of the battles with
France in the medieval period. But with the sixteenth century, this sentiment begins to
take the shape of a full fledged ideology. We have already hinted at some of the reasons
for this development, like the political distancing of the English from Italy and France.
This in turn was a consequence of the spread of Protestantism in England, leading to the
religious separation from Rome and the establishment of the Anglican Church under
Henry VIII. Thus, English nationalism from its very inception had been closely allied
to religious sentiments, unlike the subsequent emergence of nationalisms the European
countries, which followed, rather than preceded, the process of secularization of society,
and the separation of religion and state. Since the separatist religious agenda of
Protestantism in England was intimate to the formation of a separate English national
identity (or English nationalism) , and since the spread of Protestantism had been
primarily through and among the emergent merchant and trading classes, and in the new
squirarchy, the nationalism that emerged was itself very middle class in its roots. It was
not confined to this class however, and found willing takers in the nobility and
aristocracy, especially those who affiliated themselves to the Anglican Church or other
protestant sects.

The social origins of this nationalism are of some significance. This was the time that
England was growing as a naval and commercial power, and its merchant and trading
ships had traveled all over the know world. English merchant ships were bringing back
wealth from the distant comers of the globe, including from India and China. Along
with the local growth in agriculture, sheep-rearing and the wool and cloth industry,
England was growing into an important economic power in the European region. The
main beneficiaries of this economic growth as we have noted were the new classes of
merchants and traders, and professional artisans. The combination of a specifically
English Protestantism, the burgeoning economy and the emergent economic classes led
to the promotion of a nationalism that sometimes served as a qualification for social
mobility for the emergent classes and professions. It led to the consolidation of a sense
of national identity (albeit as yet nascent) that was able to contain, at least in the
sixteenth century, the social tensions that were unleashed by such a drastic social
change, as well as offer channels for upward inability to those who proclaimed it. This
is evident in Spenser's avowed desire to be a truly English poet. It is then this English
nationalism that spurred him as well as other less able poets to attempt the first truly
English epic - a task that was ironically fulfilled only when that very nationalist ideology
was threatened, in the next century by John Milton. It was the later attempts of the
English monarchy to return to the Catholic fold in the seventeenth century that led to
the tearing of the ideological fabric of nationalism, and a civil war that lasted for two
decades.

5.3 LET'S SUM UP

We have examined some of the main characteristics of the Renaissance as it flowered

in England, and of the impact of the Reformation on it. We identified some of the
consequences of this in terms of distinguishing the English renaissance from its
continental counterparts. This was seen to be as much a matter of the social bases of the
English renaissance as of the political upheavals of the age. We noted how the
combination of a humanist education and a protestant Christian vocation could turn
advantageous to people like Spenser, who sought to use these as means of social and
political advancement. We identified some of the processes by which this historical
change came about in England, and how some of those processes in turn affected the
shape and quality of the renaissance in England. We shall now examine specifically the
impact of these issues on the life and work of Edmund Spenser, in Unit II.

5.4 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. What does the term Renaissance mean? Identify some of the key factors responsible
for the spread of the renaissance in Europe.
2. What was the Reformation? What relations you identify and trace between the
Renaissance and the Reformation?
3. Identify some of the socio-cultul.al factors that shaped the English Renaissance.
4. What was the role of the court in the shaping of English Renaissance Literature?
5. Nationalism and the nationalist spirit played an important role in the shaping of the
Renaissance imagination. Do you agree?

5.5 ADDITIONAL READING

1 Cooper, Helen, Pastoral: Medieval into Renaissance ( Ipswich; D.S.Brewer, 1977)

2 Cullen, Patrick, Spenser, Marvel1, and Renaissance Pastoral (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard
University. Press, 1970)
3 Ellrodt, Robert, Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser (Geneva: Droz, 1960).
4 Grundy, Joan, The Spenserian Poets: A Study inElizabethan and Jacobean Poetry (
London: Edward Arnold, 1969)
5 Helgerson, Richard, 'The New Poet Presents Himself, in Edmund Spenser's Poetry,
Norton Critical Editions, Hugh MacLean and Anne Lake Prescott (eds.) (London: Norton,
1993)
6 Hume, Anthea, Edmund Spenser: Protestant Poet (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984)
7 Loades, D.M., The Tudor Court (London: Batsford, 1986)
8 Rambuss, Richard, Spenser's Secret Career (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993).

UNIT- 6 STYLE AND DICTION OF EDMUND SPENSER

Structure

6.0 Objectives
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Some Theoretical Remarks
6.3 Spenser's Life
9.3.1 The Early Years
9.3.2 The Cambridge Years and After
9.3.3 Ireland
9.3.4 The Last Years
9.3.5 English Nationalism and the Renaissance
6.4 The Politics of Spenser's Life and Poetry
6.5 Let's Sum Up
6.6 Questions for Review
6.7 Additional Reading

6.0 OBJECTIVES

The intent of this unit is to:

• Acquaint the student with some of the theoretical issues involved in examining
literary works through the lens of biography.
• Briefly present the life of Edmund Spenser.
 • Through this, to provide a glimpse of the cultural context within which court poets
like Spenser worked.
• Offer an analysis of the politics of courtier poets and poetry.

6.1 INTRODUCTION

This unit will briefly discuss the significance of biographies and biographical material
in understanding and analysing literature. The unit will then cover the life of Edmund
Spenser to the extent it is known. It will examine some of the literary, political and
personal factors that inflected his writings, specifically the nature of patronage poetry
and the ways in which it influenced his work. It will also look at some personal
dimensions of his life as they bear on his work, as for instance his courtship and marriage
to Elizabeth Boyle, or the impact of the conflicts between his religious training and his
readings in Platonic philosophy.

6.2 SOME THEORETICAL RIEMARKS

Before going into the life of Spenser, it may be worth our while to dwell briefly on why
we should undertake a study of the poet's life. At a certain level, the need to do so may
seem self-evident; after all, what could be more intimate to a writer's work than the life
of the writer itself'? However, it is necessary to examine whether things are indeed so
simple, and for this we shall briefly outline some of the theoretical issues involved in
this question.

The form of criticism known as biographical criticism is a venerable and much practised
one, dating back at least to Samuel Johnson's Livesof the Poets. It gained in popularity
and esteem through the 19th century, and remained considerably influential till the early
part of the 20thcentury, when it was challenged first by the school of New Criticism and
later by Structuralist and Post-Structuralist critics. The basic premise of all biographical
criticism is that the events and experiences of an author's life have a bearing on his/her
literary work, and that therefore a study of the author's life can prove the basis of a useful
explanatory or interpretative commentary on the work. Usually, this extended to
maintaining that the author's intended meaning was the final horizon of meaning that
the text could yield; nothing outside this could be a valid interpretation. The New Critics
and the Structuralist and Post-Structuralist critics, however, challenged this premise.
For the New Critics, like the American critic I. A.Richards, the fundamental object of
criticism was the text, and nothing outside it - including the author - could be of
relevance to it. For Structuralists like the French critic Roland Barthes, the life
(especially as biography) of any author was considered as much a construct as the text
- a construct chat in malting itself sensible, followed conventions and patterns (or
structures) of meaning-making that belong to the larger field of literary enterprise.
Hence, the relevance or otherwise of his or her life or intended meanings to the text
could not be a matter of certainty, and certainly could not conclude the debates on the
meanings of any literary text. Post-Structuralist writers like the influential French
philosophers Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, furthered the debate. Derrida
suggested that the meanings of texts contain within them the logics of their own
disintegration, because texts can be made meaningful only through the consistent
suppression of alternate possible meanings in them. The relevance of the life or intent
of the writer to the text was therefore only one among myriad possible meanings, and
could not be the single conclusive way of interpreting the text. Foucault's contribution
to the author debate was to propose that the idea of the author was itself part of a field
of authoritarian and disciplinary discourses around a text aimed at controlling the
production of meaning in it. To all these thinkers and critics, clearly, there was no self-
evident association between author and text; the latter was to be treated as disengaged
from its producer, whose role in its meanings, subsequent to its production, would be
the same - and have the same validity- as that of any other reader. Auseful,
comprehensive introduction to many of these issues may be found in Terry Eagleton's
Literary Theory (1985).

Given such strong theoretical rejections of author-centred critical practice, the utility of
studying the author's life may well be questioned. However, it must be noted that the
knowledge of the author's life need not serve only as a means to read and interpret the
text. Literary biographies serve us more usefully in other ways. Firstly, even as a textual
construct itself, a literary biography can offer us valuable insights not so much into
individual texts by that particular author as into his/her age. It can provide us with the
means for understanding the circumstances within which the writer wrote: the pressures
and difficulties he/she faced, the literacy levels and reading habits of' his/her age, the
kinds of issues that occupied his/her society, the kinds of issues that he/she chose to
engage with - in short, the available literary, political, social, economic and cultural
influences on his/her. In other words, it is part of the process of locating a writer's work
in its context. Secondly, to the extent that any literary text must in the first instance be
authored, and usually form part of a corpus of work that a writer produces, its links and
relations with the rest of the oeuvre can throw light on the work itself, formally and
substantially, and can usually be traced only through an examination of the author's
literary life. And finally, even if the meaning intended by the author need not serve as a
master-meaning to the literary text, and even if such intended meanings are rarely easily
evident, it is arguably necessary to uncover and engage with them in the firs1 instance,
before deciding on whether or not they are relevant to the text. With these observations
in mind, it is now possible to turn to an examination of Spenser's life, as it relates to his
work.
6.3 SPENSER'S LIFE

6.3.1 The Early Years

Not much is known about Spenser's life. It is reasonably certain that he was born in
London, probably in 1552. Although he himself came of poor stock, he may have been
related to the Midlands noble family of Spencer, who had been made wealthy through
sheep-rearing- which as we saw from the previous unit was a growth
.industry in the sixteenth century. He was entered as a "poor boy" in Merchant
Taylors' grammar school, where he would have studied mainly Latin, with some
Hebrew, Greek, and music. The school was established in 1560 by the guild of tailors
(hence the name) and was one of many founded by similar guilds across England at this
time, following a modern, humanism-oriented education. Spenser matriculated from
this school and joined Pembroke College, in Cambridge University in 1569, as a 'sizar'
or poor scholar. As such, he had to undertake various odd jobs and menial tasks around
the university, in return for the education. This was also the year when his poetry was
first published. These were translations from the Biblical Book of Revelations, four
sonnets of the 16th-century French poet Joachim du Bellay, as well as a translation of a
French version of some epigrams by the Italian poet Petrarch. They prefaced an anti-
Catholic prose tract and were probably commissioned by the chief author of the tract,
the Flemish expatriate Jan van der Noodt. He received his B.A. from Cambridge in
1573, left briefly because of an epidemic in 1574, then returned to take his M.A. in
1576. During his stay in Cambridge he was known to have been befriended by Gabriel
Harvey, a witty, ambitious but somewhat pedantic and devious fellow of Cambridge,
from a similar social background to Spenser. The latter was to later celebrate their
friendship in the figure of Hobbinol in The Shepheardes Calender (1579). What they
shared apart from their literary pursuits was in an atmosphere of social mobility and
opening possibilities - the ambitious expectation that this education would offer them
rank and status.

6.3.2 The Cambridge Years and After

At Cambridge, Spenser picked up Italian, French and past and contemporary English
literature, along with a wide reading in the Greek and Latin classics. Alongside this, he
read much in pagan mythology, divinities, ancient and contemporary philosophy, and
pagan and English legends and folklore. It was a knowledge that provided the
foundation for the kind of fusion of themes, forms 'and generic styles that he attempted
so successfully in his later poetry. He is known to have read Homer's Illiad, Virgil's
Aeneid, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, all of
which probably were formative in the writing of The Faerie Queene. Likewise, the
influence of Virgil's Bucolics and other Italian and French pastoral poetry are evident
in The Shepheardes Calender, just as are the Petrarchan sonnets and canzone form and
other Italian, French and Latin marriage odes evident in the Epithalamion and the
Amoretti Sonnets. Spenser weaves all of these diverse streams of reading and
knowledge together in his poetry, but without losing an essentially Christian orientation.
In fact, much of his reading drew from earlier humanist attempts - like Ficino's De
Amore (1475?) - to reconcile a popular neo-Platonism of the Italian Renaissance with
Christianity, with the central tension very often between the idea of spiritual love and
that of sensual or earthly love. Spenser's poetry thus is haunted by this tension, and
offers a rich tapestry of meanings that draw on diverse and multiple sources, in its quest
for reconciliation. In Spenser's case in fact, the tensions are aggravated by his desire to
establish a specifically English literary discourse, or he spirit of English nationalism that
we noted in the previous unit.

While not much is known about the specificities of Spenser's religious life, it is fairly
certain that religion played an important role in his thinking. Not only was it a central
feature of his school and college education, it was anunavoidable element in the climate
of the times, in the acrimonious debates and struggles between the various
denominations and sects. These were debates that were very much in the air in
Cambridge too, specifically on the question of whether England was right in abandoning
Catholicism and the more radical view of adopting a more stringently Puritan Church
than the Anglican. What Spenser's own position in these debates was is not clear, but
the view earlier held that he was inclined to be a radical Puritan does not have much
evidence to support it. There is some suggestion that Spenser was inclined to take
ecclesiastical orders at this time, when he was appointed secretary to the Bishop of
Rochester in 1578. His first important publication, The Shepheardes Calender (1579 or
1580), deals more extensively than any of his later work, with the bishops and affairs of
the English church. But this was obviously not to be, for in the same year he joined the
service of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and favourite of the queen. This was
probably his first step toward his longer term ambition of serving at the court.

Around 1579-80, when still in service with Leicester, Spenser made the acquaintance of
Sir Philip Sidney, nephew to the earl of Leicester, and joined his circle of literary
friends. He was to remain a faithful and devoted friend to Sidney throughout his life,
often alluding to him in his poetry and mourning his early death in an elegy. It was
probably in this circle that Spenser began making his name as a poet, in fact socially
presenting himself as one. It was also around this time that Spenser got married to a
certain Machabyas Chylde, of whom again little is known, and also began work on The
Faerie Queene. By 1580 he had been appointed secretary to Lord Arthur Grey, lord
deputy of Ireland and a friend of the Sidney family. Already in this we can see how
Spenser's literary connections worked towards the furthering of his career and social
rank.

6.3.3 Ireland

Spenser's relationship with Ireland was in many senses typical of the attitude of the
English toward the Irish in his time. It was treated as a colony by the English, and was
resisted as such by the Irish, not least because of the imposition of the English church
on a predominantly Catholic populace, and because of threats of attacks from Catholic
Spain. Spenser's stay in Ireland as an administrator was therefore not without it's risks.
He however did not treat this stay as an exile; rather, he became deeply involved with
the country and its peoples, fascinated by its landscapes as much as troubled by its
lawlessness. He however followed Lord Grey in imposing stem, almost ruthless
measures, in his efforts to make the Irish accept English rule.

His efforts in Ireland were to be well rewarded. The following year (1581), Spenser
succeeded the poet Lodowick Biyskett as Clerk of the Chancery for Faculties, an office
that channelled the dispensations of the Archbishop of Dublin, and in this sense was a
key political post, He retained this post for several years, until 1588. He, also, gained
other favours, including control over forfeited land, which he may have profited from
through land speculation. On leasing the small properly of New Abbey, County Kildare,
he was first designated "gentleman", but went on to obtain a much larger estate in
Munster. Repopulation of this province, scarred as it was by war and starvation, was a
primary goal for its administrators. Consequently, Spenser Awarded large "plantations"
to English "undertakers", who undertook to make them self sustaining by occupying
them with Englishmen of various trades. In 1586, Spenser was assigned to Munster's
Kilcolman Castle, about 25 miles to the north and west of Cork, with the task of
repopulating it with English immigrants. By 1588 Spenser took over the 3,000-acre
plantation of Kilcolman, and was granted full lease of property in 1590. Through this
Spenser had evidently decided to rise socially and politically in Ireland, effectively a
colonial land of opportunity, rather than seek power and rank in London. His family was
probably with him in Kilcolman t this time, although his wife may have died by then.
She was definitely dead by 1594, when he married Elizabeth Boyle, whom he was to
memorialise in the Amoretti sonnets and the Epithalamion. In his new situation he, like
other undertakers, faced stiff resistance from the local Anglo-Irish aristocracy and did
not have much success with the repopulation scheme.

Nevertheless, it was here and in these conditions that Spenser wrote his greatest poetry.
In 1589 he returned to England with Walter Raleigh, a favourite of the queen, to present
the first three books of The Faerie Queene to the queen herself they were warmly
received and published the following year. His later poem, Colin Clouts Come Home
Againe (completed 1595), records Spenser's sense of being a provincial innocent up
against the sophistications of a centre of power in this visit, and projects his own ideal
of true love as an alternative. Helgerson (1993: 677-9) notes that it is in this poem that
the poet presents himself specifically as Poet, rather than courtier. He is known to have
spent some of this time in 1591 - apart from a quick visit to Ireland - supervising the
publication of his volume of collected poems, Complaints, along with another long
poem, Daphnaida - perhaps to reinforce his claims to being first and foremost a poet.
He returned to Ireland that year with the grant of an annual pension of fifty pounds from
the queen, a princely sum in those days.

6.3.4 The Last Years

In Ireland once more, Spenser continued writing despite the pressures of his various
duties and posts, which were added to in 1594, when he was appointed Queen's Justice
for Cork. This was also the year of his passionate courtship and marriage to Elizabeth
Boyle. The Amoretti and the Epithalamion that celebrate this event are unique in the
sonnets of the English renaissance in celebrating a successful love relationship, rather
than complaining - as was the fashion then - of failed and unrequited ones. Spenser
again travelled to London shortly after, perhaps in hope of greater rewards, now that (as
he may have thought) he was privy to the queen herself, perhaps just to supervise the
publication of a series of poems, including Colin Clout; Astrophel: A Pastoral Elegy
upon the Death of the most Noble and Valorous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney; the Amoretti
sonnets and the Epithalamion. Alongside this was the publication of Books IV, V and
VI of The Faerie Queene, which came out in 1596, with Fowre Hymnes and
Prothalamion , Spenser's second, commissioned marriage song. This was to be the last
burst of publication of his poetry in his lifetime. Two years later, he did publish a prose
tract on the current Irish situation, but in the same year there was an insurrection in
northern and western Ireland which spread to Munster. Kilcolman was attacked and
burned, forcing Spenser to take refuge in Cork. Although he was appointed to the
important post of the sheriff of Cork at this point, he left Ireland for London, bearing
dispatches from the Governor of Munster to the Privy Council, regarding the desperate
situation there. He did not survive this visit, and died the following year in London. He
lies buried in Westminster Abbey, close to the grave of Geoffrey Chaucer.

6.4 THE POLITICS OF SPENSER'S LIFE AND POETRY

From the above discussion of it, it may seem that Spenser's life was devoted less to the
pursuit of poetry and more to the pursuit of rank and acceptability, despite his self-
proclamations as Poet. As we noted in the previous unit, it was not common for courtier
poets to establish the primacy of their roles as poets, the way Spenser did. In fact they
were at pains to denigrate their poetry and themselves as poets. But to equate Spenser,
either as a person or as a poet, or in his intentions and ambitions, with the other poets of
the age would be misconceived. The other poets were mostly from the nobility. They
were also courtiers and held political positions in the court of the monarchs. Spenser on
the other hand did not have any noble antecedents. He was of humble origins and had
moved up the social ladder with the help of education and socially acquired contacts.
While his contemporaries (poets) could take their status and rank for granted, Spenser
had no such luxury. Where other courtiers had personal fortunes to fall back on, in the
event of monarchical disfavour, Spenser had none, and part of his ambition would have
been to accumulate precisely that. Hence, where other courtiers could afford to present
themselves as humbler, or less than able to the demands of poetry, thereby adopting a
conventional even fashionable social and literary gesture, for Spenser, it was in fact
important not to belittle himself.

This is not to suggest that poets like Wyatt and Surrey were merely affecting the sense
of loss and/or anguish and/or humility that pervades their poetry. But while they could
articulate these unreservedly, Spenser perforce had to avoid such articulations of
humility and/or unhappiness, at least overtly, and instead present himself as the herald
of Elizabethan England. Where a Sidney could proclaim is strong Protestant sentiments
through his poetry in terms of its dissatisfaction in the Elizabethan court, and disguise
it as the feelings of an anguished lover, Spenser felt it incumbent on him to celebrate
Elizabeth and her reign, in grander terms than any poet before him. If we put this in
terms of a social 'market', where people must offer themselves as socially necessary or
desirable people, it was necessary for Spenser to carve a niche in the court - create a
demand in the market, so to speak - for his social ware, which was poetry. In other
words, Spenser had to present himself as desirable, rather than denigrate himself or his
poetry. This is not an entirely inappropriate analogy: we must remember, this was the
time when new commodities were beginning to enter England from global trading
routes, opening out a mercantile capitalism that was to fundamentally realign the feudal
socio-economy, So for Spenser to adopt the strategies of the market in relation to his
own life and career is not, after all so surprising.

An essential aspect of this strategy was the presentation of a different, kind of

moderation from the one practised and articulated by his contemporaries. Spenser
probably sought to distinguish himself from them, but without appearing entirely a
maverick and misfit. To this end, he crafted a different tension in his poetry from the
more common one between desire and its lack of fulfillment. This was a more
metaphysical tension, focusing less on situations - and consequently less on his relative
success or failure in love - and more on the problem of desire itself, within a Christian
moral and ethical framework. Within this, sensual desire was seen as debilitating and
misleading from true love, yet an inevitable part of being human. Spenser took recourse
to Platonic notions of love, in which the senses were – or ought to be - governed by the
spirit or the soul, and the mistress or beloved was conceived of as the embodiment of a
spiritual salvation, to acquire which, the lover had to transcend 'sensual desire and focus
only on his beloved's virtues. While it was necessary then to acknowledge the urges of
sexual and sensual passion, the Spenserian lover sought to deal with them through
belittling their importance in the larger dimensions of the relationship. This is especially
evident in the description of Elizabeth Boyle in stanzas 10 (which deals with her
physical beauty in rapturous terms) and 11 (which then denies its significance in the
face of her 'greater' beauty, which is that of her virtuous spirit) of the Epithalamion.
Through this strategy of elevating the terms of the contemporary poetic discourse of the
lover's tension to a Platonic discussion, Spenser sought to remain within the larger
discourse while pushing back its frontiers. It was a strategy that served well in placing
him as a poet of the times, yet as superior to the times.

As such then, Spenser decided on a twofold strategy, one of which was to present
himself as a poet able to the demands of the times, and the other to not compete in the
central arena of power (the court in London) but to consolidate himself professionally
where there was little competition to go, i.e., Ireland. Spenser's celebration of his
beloved in the Amoretti and the Epithalamion is the celebration of a man who has
(socially speaking) arrived. For, by the time of the writing of these poems, Spenser was
already established as a poet. His The Faerie Queenehad been well received and he was
doing well professionally. On the personal front he had engaged in a passionate
relationship that had eventually culminated in marriage. Even the opening passage of
the Prothalamion,
When I whom sullein care,
 Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay
In Princes Court, and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away,
Like empty shaddowes, did aflict my brayne…. (11. 5-9)

- which is often cited as evidence of Spenser's disaffection for the court - or the
despairing vision of stanzas 18 and 19 of the Epithalamion, which seems to suggest that
Spenser may have been afflicted by losses and anxieties that were of a professional
nature, or the sense of being out of his depth in court that we noted earlier in Colin
Clout... - none of these is sufficient to offset the generally optimistic, celebratory tone
of the rest of Spenser's oeuvre.

It is in these terms that we can understand the crucial difference of Spenser's poetry from
his contemporaries. For Spenser, poetry was a means to an end that was not necessarily
the advancement of poetry alone, but personal advancement. In fact, we may even argue
that it was precisely by advancing the frontiers of English poetry that Spenser hoped to
achieve a unique distinction, and thereby also personal advancement. The personal, as
so often is true, came together with the political.

6.5 LET'S SUM UP

In this unit, we discussed some of the key issues in biographical criticism, and the need
to examine the lives of writers. We then examined the life of Spenser, such as is known
to us, in the context of the literary and political climate of his times. We studied how he
put to use his educational background as well as the personal and social contacts he
acquired to create the image of a Poet, a social location from which he was able to meet
and match the measure of others his superior in rank and status. We noted how he
adapted the events of his life to his advantage, turning a relatively undesirable posting
to Ireland into an opportunity to gain the status of a gentleman of means, and then
subsequently presenting himself as a Poet who could and would address not individual
concerns but national ones. We examined the poetic and personal strategies that were
put into play in realising this ambition. In the following Unit, we will briefly study them
manifestations of some of these issues in his shorter poems.
6.6 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How important, in your opinion, is biographical material in the examination of a

writer's work?
2. What do you understand to be the most influential factors shaping Spenser's
career as a poet? Would you consider him an opportunist?

6.7 ADDITIONAL READING

1. Burrow, Colin, EdmundSpenser(Plymouth.: Northcote House, 1996)

2. Cummings, R.M., ed., Spenser T he Critical Heritage(London: Routledge &

Kegan Paul, 1971) -- up to 1715

3. Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory (London: Blackwell, 1985).

4. Judson, Alexander, The Life ofEdmund Spenser(Baltimore: John Hopkins

Press, 1945)

5. Maley, Willy, A Spenser Chronology(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994)

6. Helgerson, Richard, 'The New Poet Presents Himself, in EdmundSpenser 's

Poetry, Norton Critical Editions, Hugh MacLean and Anne Lake Prescott (eds.)
(London: Norton, 1993)

7. Hume, Anthea, Edmund Spenser: Protestant Poet (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1984)

8. Loades, D.M., The Tudor Court (London: Batsford, 1986)

9. Rambuss, Richard, Spenser's Secret Career(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993).

UNIT- 7 SPENSERIAN POETRY AND THE FAIRIE QUEENE

Structure

7.0 Objectives
7.1 Introduction
10.1.1 The Sonnet
10.1.2 The Courtly Love Tradition and Poetry
7.2 The Amoretti Sonnets
10.2.1 Sonnet 34
10.2.2 Sonnet 67
10.2.3 Sonnet 77
7.3 Let's Sum Up
7.4 Questions for Review
7.5 Additional Reading

7.0 OBJECTIVES
The intent of this unit is to:

• Provide the student with a brief idea about the Amoretti sonnets in general.
• Familiarize the student with a select few of Spenser's sonnets, specifically from the
Amoretti sonnets.
• Indicate seine ways of analysing the sonnets that the student may want to take further,
through a combination of formal and substantial elements.
• Explore the relations between the formal and the substantial elements in a poem.

Read in conjunction with the poems, this unit should provide the student with some
ways of opening them out analytically, and with a sense of the importance of the formal
dimensions of a poem to the overall meanings it generates.

7 .1 INTRODUCTION

This unit will attempt to offer an overview of Spenser's well known sonnet sequence,
the Amoretti sonnets, focusing primarily on formal elements and literary influences. It
will offer analyses of three sonnets from the Amoretti. The influence in particular of
Italian court poets like Petrarch, and the reworking of the sonnet will be explored.
The earlier mentioned conflict between the Christian and Platonic visions especially of
love and eroticism will be touched upon. To begin with, in what follows immediately,
we will examine some aspects of the sonnet and of the courtly love tradition, which
Spenser was part of.

7.1.1 The Sonnet

An important point to remember while reading the poems and the following notes is that
the sonnet is fundamentally a short lyric, a stylised fourteen line poem that developed in
Italy in the Middle Ages. There are broadly three styles of sonnets: the Petrarchan, which
is the most common, consisting of an octave and a sestet; the Spenserian, which has four
quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab bcbc cdcd ee; and the Shakespearian, which
follows the Spenserian line scheme of four quatrains and a couplet, but differs in its
rhyme scheme (abab cdcd efef gg). The sonnet became popular in Italian poetry
primarily as a vehicle for the expression of love and sensuality, a heritage that it carried
with it into its English versions. Petrarch was the Italian poet most well-known for this
practice, and his Conzoniere - a collection of love sonnets - is a sort of literary
compendium the passions of the lover. The sonnet is in many ways the most appropriate
form for the articulation and expression of the kind of sentiments that came to be
characterised as courtly love. Its brevity prevents excessive sentiment from becoming
sententious, and forcing such sentiment to be articulated through intense imagery and
condensed rhythm. At the same time its internal organisation allows the poet a degree of
flexibility and innovativeness in terms of constructing the poem as a dramatic movement
or series of movements that mirrored the movements of his own passions and feelings.
One of the important virtues of any courtier (as we earlier noted in Unit 8), according to
the influential Italian writer Castiglione in The Book of The Courtier (which served as a
conduct Book of sorts for many Elizabethan courtiers) was moderation (or sprezzatura).
We can see how important the sonnet was as a form of the lyric that held in moderation
even as it hinted at - the overwhelming passions of the courtly lover. Perhaps most
significantly, it allowed the poet to represent love as an intense yet elusive, almost
ephemeral and trans-worldly feeling - an ideology of love that characterised the poetry
of the courtly love tradition. In this sense, the sonnet was the ideal form for the
articulation of this dominant conception of love in the Renaissance. Let us briefly
examine this phenomenon.

7.1.2 The Courtly Love Tradition and Poetry

When Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey translated Petrarch's work into English
in the 16th century, it was to prove tremendously influential. The sonnets initiated a way
of thinking and writing about love in English poetry that was fundamentally chivalric,
based on feudal themes and ideas, and centred on the figure of the beloved as mistress
of the poet. This way of thinking about love, or ideology of love, was first formed in the
troubadour poetry of Aquitaine and Provence in southern France toward the end of the
11th century, from where its influence spread to Italy and the rest of Europe. One may
describe its basic tenets as the following: the celebration of adultery; the near-deification
of the mistress; the lover as very often unrequited in his love; and somewhat
paradoxically, the celebration of faithful service to the beloved. There were several
reasons for the emergence of this particular ideology of love. Medieval Europe in the
early part of the last millennium was controlled by feuding war-lords, protected and
surrounded yd armies of knights who owed allegiance entirely to their respective barons.
One means of forming alliances amongst these lords was through marriages between
their houses. These marriages of convenience meant that the lady of the castle was often
not very close to the lord, and even neglected by her husband. Since the castle
populations were predominantly male, with few women, the lady inevitably came to be
the recipient of the amorous attention of the many knights and courtiers. The passions
thus evoked were thus often tom by the opposite demands of fidelity to the lord and
desire for the beloved. Equally important were the roles of the Catholic imagination of
the Virgin Mary on the one hand and the pre-Christian tribal conception of women as
powerful beings, on the other: they led to the beloved, because of her social
inaccessibility, often being represented as quasi-divine, especially in poetry. It is from
this peculiar conjunction of social and historical factors that the poetry of courtly love
carries the paradoxical discourses of adultery and fidelity, intense physical passion
celebrated in an idealized, almost spiritualized fashion. Poets in particular had few
predecessors to turn to, to chart this new mixture of emotions, although the Latin' poet
Ovid, in his Ars Amatoria (which pictured the lover as the slave of his passion and
therefore of his beloved), was to prove singularly influential. The poetry that emerged
from this context spread swiftly through medieval Europe; C SLewis' old but classic
study, The Allegory of love, is worth exploring for a more detailed understanding of this
phenomenon. However, by tile time it reached England in the 16th century, several other
factors came to play a decisive role in changing its characteristic features.

Poets like Sidney and Surrey continued in the vein of the old courtly love poetry,
particularly with the arrival of Elizabeth to the throne of England. She epitomised the
type of the inaccessible mistress even more sharply than the figures of the beloveds in
earlier poetry, and inspired the same kind of mixed and paradoxical fervour. The
beloved in the courtier poetry of the time was thus frequently compared in her
inaccessibility to the queen herself. The important difference was that Elizabeth, as
queen, besides being truly unattainable, was also functionally both 'lord' and lady: tile
courtier owed allegiance as well as fidelity. This resulted in an intensification of the
language of deification in the English poets. It is only in Spenser's verse that a new
language is forged, fusing the amorous with the divine ill a way that liberated both from
the contradictory pull of the other. We have noted ill the earlier units some of the reasons
for the emergence of Spenser as a new kind of poet. What we need to note here is that
spread of a strict Protestant moral code' contributed substantially to the malting of
Spenser's poetry. This code broke with the deification of the beloved in the mould of
the Virgin Mary, rendered her more this-worldly, thereby enhancing her desirability
while simultaneously insisting on the importance of maintaining sexuality and desire
within conjugal bounds. It must be noted here that such a language of restraint was
already available in the more Platonic conception of love to be found in Petrarch; but
Spenser's genius lay in aligning that language with a more Protestant stress on the
importance of marriage for sexuality. hl this sense, the language of love that we will see
in the Amoretti sonnets and in the Epithalarnion later, display the shift from the earlier
codes of courtly love to a more celebratory, this-worldly, and therefore realizable love,
that nevertheless emphasises the sanctity of the love itself. Let us now examine the three
sonnets of the Amoretti chosen for study, in this light,

7.2 THE AMORETTI SONNETS

'The Amoretti sonnets share many of the typical characteristics of the court poetry of
sixteenth century Renaissance England. Apart from its use of the sonnet form, which
was very fashionable by the time Spenser was writing, it also shares for instance the
fashion of incorporating classical and Biblical allusions and mythology. Another very
popular idea that these sonnets share with their contemporaries is that of the avowed
intent of immortalising their subjects - in this instance, Elizabeth Boyle. While Spenser
owes some of his imagery in particular to continental writers like the Italian poet Tasso
and the French poet Ronsard, these sonnets are essentially variations on the Petrarchan
sonnet, which Spenser was familiar with given the popularity of Petrarchan poetry in
Elizabethan England, and through his own translations of Petrarch. The Petrarchan
sonnet, like all sonnets, has fourteen lines and is usually divisible into two parts, the
octave (eight lines) with the rhyme scheme abbaabba, and sestet (six lines) with the
rhyme cdecde, or its variants like cdccdc. Typically the Petrarchan sonnet also employs
the Petrarchan conceit of the beautiful, yet unresponding, cruel and distant
mistress/beloved, the object of the sonnet's address. This figure was picked up and
reworked by Elizabethan sonneteers, in translations of Petrarch and in original poems,
till it became almost hackneyed. But the Petrarch of the Elizabethan imagination is the
early Petrarch, obsessed by the instability of his passions, manifested in his poetry
through the common device of the oxymoron. The later Petrarch, who seeks absolution
from such mutability, is picked up only by Spenser among the Elizabethans.

In Spenser's versions therefore, the mistress is amuch more accessible and responsive
figure than the Elizabethan type or the early Petrarch. The entire sonnet sequence may
be split roughly into three movements, or phases of passion. The first section (sonnets
1-36) is largely in h e mode of complaint, and sees the mistress as tyrannical and his
own love as oppressive. The second section (sonnets 37-69) refigures the lover and his
mistress in more exploratory, and therefore more conciliatory terms, with the lover
appearing more aware of his mistress as herself a feeling, thinking and speaking subject
of passion. The last section (sonnets 70-87) is a reversal of the first phase: it sees the
poet-lover as successful in his amorous enterprise, and the terms of relation change,
toward the subordination of the mistress to the desire and will of the lover. It must be
noted that, like a finely composed piece of music, the three movements cannot, in
actuality, be so easily separated: there are overlaps and seepages in the themes identified
above, between the different phases, and the scheme suggested here is arguably not
watertight. However, it has the advantage of providing us with a convenient handle on
the complex sentiments and attitudes expressed in this sonnet sequence. The three
sonnets chosen for study in this unit may be seen as belonging respectively, one to each
of the three movements identified above. Spenser also experiments with the line and
rhyme schemes of the sonnet, splitting it into three linked quatrains and a couplet. We
shall study the effects of this in our analyses of the poems.

7.2.1 Sonnet 34

This sonnet, as you may have noticed, is indicative of' several of the preoccupations of
the first movement -- in its tone 'of complaint, its sense of confusion and despondency,
its depiction of the beloved as a remote, almost inaccessible figure and in its overall
sense of subjugation. It essentially follows the Petrarchan trope, first popularized by
Wyatt in his translation of the Italian poet, of the lover as a stormtossed ship, caught in
the grip of his passions. However, Spenser introduces the idea of the beloved as a star
that guide him through the seas of life. In storm (or the troubles of' life) however, her
light is hidden from him by clouds, leaving him to 'wander now in darknesse and dismay'
(11. 5-7). Further, unlike the other Elizabethan versions of this trope, Spenser does not
attribute the storm to his beloved, implying thereby that it is a storm of unquenched
sires; contrarily, he hopes ‘that when this storme is past', she will shine again as his
guiding star (11. 9-12). The sonnet, though apparently diverging from the Petrarchan
form in its organization into three quatrains and a couplet, may nevertheless still be split
into an octave of two quatrains, and a sestet with a quatrain and a couplet, thematically:
the first eight lines present the poet's current situation of feeling lost in a sea of trouble,
without guidance or solace.
The first quatrain here lays out the analogy while the second applies it to the speaking
subject himself. 'The next six lines reverse this downward mood, to anticipate release
from the 'perils' and a renewed access to his beloved. The sestet in turn may be split into
the quatrain and the couplet, with the latter returning to touch upon the poet's sense of
grief and anxiety, with which the poem then closes.

The sonnet employs the typical Spenserian sonnet form, with the rhyme scheme abab
bcbc cdcd ee. The interesting effect this achieves is the continuity between the different
quatrains but a discontinuity with the couplet. In terms of reading the poem, this has one
possible effect: the three quatrains reflect a total experience (of trouble and care), in
which the hope and anticipation of relief from the experience becomes a part of it, rather
than distinct from it; the final couplet then functions as a reflective commentary, distinct
from the experience, and in fact almost objectively rendering the experience as a total
and continuing one.

7.2.2 Sonnet 67

This sonnet too picks up a trope common to both Petrarchan sonnets and to other
Elizabethan versions of them: the setting of the hunt, with the beloved as a deer being
hunted by the poet as huntsman. Again, unlike its typical treatment in Elizabethan
sonnets, in Spenser's version the huntsman catches his prey. In fact, Spenser's is a radical
exception to this convention, for he not only wins the chase but presents the victory over
the beloved, or the conquest of the prey, as being by her own will, i.e., as of her own
desire (11. 11-12). The ambiguity of line 9, ‘There she beholding me with mylder
looke’, makes it unclear who makes the conquest possible by becoming milder, the
hunter or the hunted, but line 11 suggests that the beloved remains nervous about the
prospects of marriage, belying the last lines of the poem. It would be very instructive
for the student to compare this poem with Sir Thomas Wyatt's ' poem 'Whoso list to
hunt...', a sonnet with similar themes and imagery, but in the traditional Petrarchan
mould In Wyatt's poem the deer, or beloved, is ultimately unattainable, and the poem
ends with the line 'Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am' (the Latin phrase meaning 'do not
touch me'), which are the words inscribed on the collar around the deer's neck. In
contrast, there is no Caesar, or competing lord, to whom the beloved is bound in
Spenser's poem. In her very availability she thus becomes the site of a transforming
discourse of love and desire in Spenser's poetry - a discourse 'in which the beloved is
not just transformed from a remote and unrealisable object of desire, but, with a new
mutuality and reciprocity hat probably originates in Protestant thought, is hinted at as
being herself a desiring subject.

This sonnet too uses the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee, using the same three
quatrains plus a couplet scheme, but unlike sonnet 34, it resists a thematic split into an
octave and a sestet. Instead, being a poem less about a condition than an event, it lays
out the movements of the event in three steps - the three quatrains - followed by a
commenting couplet. The reversal typical to the Spenserian sonnet happens in the
second quatrain itself, with the return of the 'deer', and her eventual willingness to be
captured.

7.2.3 Sonnet 77

This sonnet borrows not from Petrarch but from another Italian poet who was also
inspired by Petrarch, Torquato Tasso (1544-95), specifically his sonnet 'Non son si
belli'. Tasso describes his beloved's breasts through two analogies – autumnal fruits and
the legendary golden apples - but Spenser picks on only one of these in this sonnet,
devoting another sonnet entirely (sonnet 76) to the other. In both 76 and 77, Spenser's
intentions are not to describe physical beauty for its own sake, or as sexually stimulating
and erotic, but to forge a connection between physical beauty and spiritual virtue,
linking the erotic with the spiritual and the sacred. That is, he wishes to suggest that the
beloved is so full of virtue and religious and moral purity, that even the sight of her
breasts can only arouse in him an appreciation of these, qualities in her, rather than
simple physical desire. Hence the description of her breasts as

Exceeding sweet, yet voyd of sinfull vice, That many

sought yet none could euer taste, sweet fruit of
pleasure brought from paradice: By loue himselfe
and in his garden plaste. [11. 9-12]

The reference to paradicel is multi-leveled, referring to the original sin and the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge (of sexuality), as well as suggesting that his beloved is Paradise
itself embodied, with the understanding of Paradise here as that original state of 'man'
when the sensual and the spiritual were not separate but fused. In this Spenser is
deliberately attempting a fusion of the Platonic ideal (of ultimate beauty as lying beyond
sensual perception), and Christian myths and values (such that the Platonic Ideal of
beauty may be perceived in the physical world by one sufficiently spiritual to not be
overwhelmed by its sensual seductions). Spenser seems to be applying Reformation
celebrations of conjugal sexuality as superior to celibacy, to the less strictly marriage-
oriented Petrarchan frame of sensuality. The reference in the final couplet to the
thoughts as guests at the table of his beloved is intended to communicate this detachment
from the vagaries or an uncontrolled sensuality.

Like the other two sonnets, this sonnet too follows the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd
ee. There is a false rhyme between lines 4 and 5, for 'yvory' and 'roialty' are not true
rhymes for 'ly' and 'by'. This may suggest a dissonance between the quatrains, but it
would not be true. Firstly, the overwhelming theme of the sonnet pre-empts any such
dissonance, holding the poem together on the unlikely comparison of the beloved's
breasts to a table laden with delicacies. Secondly, we must remember that such rhyme
patterns were intended to provide a totality of linked and related experiences. As such,
false rhymes were a permitted poetic liberty, basing the rhyme on spelling rather than
sound. We may therefore treat the rhymes as true ones and regard the three quatrains as
part of a single experience, fusing the sensual and the spiritual or religious, rather than
as discrete and disconnected parts of one event. Like sonnet 34, this one too describes a
condition rather than an event (as in sonnet 67). However, more like sonnet 67, this
sonnet too cannot therefore be split into an octave and a sestet.

7.3 LET'S SUM UP

In this unit we have looked at some important aspects of the sonnet form and the
traditions of courtly love poetry that influenced Spenser. We noted how the sonnet was
in many ways the aptest literary vehicle for the articulation of a new conception of love
that owed much to the Italian courtly love poets. Some of the important aspects of the
courtly love tradition and their transformation in Spenser's poetry, along with the
historical reasons for this, were also touched upon. We then examined some of Spenser's
shorter poems in this light. We saw how they draw upon and yet diverge substantially
from, earlier traditions of love poetry, especially the Petrarchan. We saw how they serve
to illustrate not just the poet's unusual poetic skills and originality, but also the peculiar
movement in the quality of passion in the sonnet sequence, from despair to
comprehension to celebration. The formal analyses of the sonnets also revealed the ways
in which Spenser managed to forge a new kind of English lyrical form. In the next unit
we will examine two longer poems by Spenser, the Epithalamion and the Prothalamion

7.4 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. The courtly love tradition was in many' ways formative of the poetry that was
to follow the Renaissance poets, even if it was substantially modified by them.
Do you agree?
2. In the three sonnets from the Amoretti by Spenser that you have read, what do
you consider are the specifically Petrarchan elements? How does Spenser
rework them, if at all?
3. The Amoretti sonnets by Spenser are replete with images of sensuality, What,
in your opinion, do these communicate about (a) the poet; (b) his beloved; and
(c) the age?
4. In sonnets 34, 67 and 77 of the Amoretti, Spenser explores a vision of love that
is at odds with both the Christian and the Classical. Do you agree?

7.5 ADDITIONAL READING

1. Burrow, Colin, Edmund Spenser (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1996)

2. Cooper, Helen, Pastoral: Medieval into Renaissance (Ipswich; D.S. Brewer, 1977)
3. Dasenbrock, Reed Way, 'The Petrarchan Context of Spenser's Amoretti'. PMLA 100, l
(1985)
4. Ellrodt, Robert, Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser (Geneva: Droz, 1960) Lewis, C
S,The Allegory of Love.
5. Johnson, William C., Spenser of Amoretti: Analogies of Love (Lewisburg: Bucknell
University Press, 1990).

UNIT- 8 THE FAIRIE QUEENE

The Epithalamion:

The Epithalamion is carefully crafted yet exuberant song celebrating the poet's love for
and marriage to Elizabeth Boyle. It appears to have been written as the culmination to
the courtship described and embodied in the Amoretti sonnets Like the Amoretti
sonnets, it too celebrates a legitimate form of sexual desire, that between bride and
groom, husband and wife. According to the envoy at the end of the poem, i.e, the brief
stanza 24, it is intended to be an ornament 'in lieu of many ornaments', and an 'endlesse
moniment' to the beloved herself. It therefore carries multiple functions - as celebration
of the wedding, as celebration of the beloved, as celebration of legitimate passion, as
ornament to the beloved and as monument to her. In this it matches the multiple roles
that Spenser gives himself in the poem - as poet, lover, bridegroom, master of
ceremonies of the wedding and as eventual husband. Spenser envisages the poem's
functions not separately but as extensions of each other, and to this extent they reinforce
each other. In comparison to the Prothalamion, Spenser's other wedding song, the
integration of the multiple functions of the poem is therefore more successful in the
Epithalamion. Even the curtailed last stanza of the poem does not detract from this sense
of an integral whole; indeed, it may be seen as specific to maintaining the sense of
wholeness of the poem.

The poem is in 24 stanzas, representing the hours of the day, with a total of 365 long
lines of five feet or more (in prosodic terms), representing the days of the year. In this
sense, the apparent curtailment of the poem with the envoy is no coincidence or 'hasty
accident' as the poet would have us believe, but a deliberate effect. It serves to
simultaneously accentuate the senses of immediacy and of a longer duration, as if the
one gives rise to the other. At the same time, the poem draws together the universal and
the temporal, the idea of a love that is divine and transcendental with a more earthly,
sensual love. Following the consistent Spenserian strategy of reconciling the Platonic
and the Christian perspectives, the poem seeks to celebrate the eternal in the temporal,
the divine in the mortal. In other words, Spenser's conception of love is firmly located in
time, even as it is proffered as lasting and undetermined by time. The element of time or
temporality is therefore central to the crafting of the poem, not just in its formal aspects
but at the level of the theme of love and its treatment as well. An essential aspect of this
temporal element is the refrain of the stanzas, which are variations on the last line of the
first stanza: 'The woods shall to me answer and my Eccho ring.' Through the refrain and
its variations, the poet manages to suggest continuity as well as change, a suggestion that
is borne out in the very images that are repeated, of the woods and the echo. For, woods
undergo a long-term set of changes that belie the sense of permanence that is associated
with them, just as an echo bears the promise to prolong a sound, bit must inevitably die
too. Further, the refrain itself changes qualitatively from stanza 17 onward, when it
becomes negative: 'The woods no more shal answere, nor your echo ring.' The allocation
of sixteen stanzas with a positive refrain and eight with a negative one is again not
coincidental, but matches the number of hours of daylight and dark, respectively. The
sense of balance that is achieved is reinforced by the offsetting of the celebratory tone ill
the poem with passages of deep anxiety and worry in stanzas 18 and 19.

The poem begins with the traditional invocation to the muses. The muses are then
invited to participate in the wedding as bridesmaids, along with the 'fayre houres' and
the three Graces or the 'handmayds of the Cyprian Queene' (stanza 6). The pastoral
setting of the poem is made clear in stanza 5, partly in adherence to poetic convention
and partly to permit the orgiastic celebrations that take place after the wedding (stanzas
14 and 15), Further, this setting permits the dramatic dimension of the poem to be
enacted more vividly, than if the poem had been a simply descriptive one. The poem
itself has approximately five movements, in terms of dramatic action. The first is from
stanza 1 to stanza 8, which set out the poems purpose, its means of accomplishing it and
the pastoral setting of the event; the second is from stanza 9 to stanza 13, which eulogise
his beloved's beauty as she wakes up, is adorned arid then enters the 'temple' or church
for the wedding and the wedding itself:, the third is from stanza 14 to stanza 17, which
are about the celebrations after the wedding and the poet-bridegroom's impatience to be
alone with his bride; the fifth is from stanza 18 to stanza 24, which express the poet-
bridegroom's fears and anxieties and then seek the blessings of all the gods for their
union. These five movements culminate in the envoy of the last stanza, and are
explicated by it.
Despite the evident eulogising of the beloved in and through these movements however,
what must be noted about the poem is that, like the Amoretti sonnets before it, the poet's
conception of his beloved remains peculiarly external and voyeuristic. While she is
celebrated in all her beauty, both physical and spiritual, she remains absent as a person
with a degree of autonomy and agency. Stanzas 10 and 11 in particular objectify her so
completely that we may picture her, but we find it difficult to apprehend her as a person.
This sense of objectification is intensified by the fragmenting of the body of the bride
into its 'attractive' or seductive parts:

Her goodly eyes lyke Saphyres shining bright, Her

forehead yuory white,
Her cheekes lyke apples which the sun hath rudded,
Her lips lyke cherryes charming men to byte, Her
brest like to a bowle of creame vncrudded,. Her
paps lyke lyllies budded,
Her snowie necke lyke to a marble towre,
And all her body like a pallace fayre,
Ascending vppe with many a stately stayre, To
honors seat and chastities sweet bowre.

The analogy of the palace is extended in the next stanza to eulogize his beloved's virtues:

There dwels sweet loue and constant chastity,

Vnspotted fayth and comely womanhood,
Regard of honour and mild modesty, There
vertue raynes as Queene in royal throne, And
giueth lawes alone.
The which the base affections doe obay,
And yeeld theyr seruices vnto her will
Ne thought of thing vncomely euer may
Thereto approch to tempt her mind to ill.

These are praised as being superior to the physical beauty described in the previous
stanza, and the analogy is a typically feudal one, employing metaphors of the virtues as
a queen unto whose service the 'base affections' or sensual desires are turned. Again, as
we saw with the Amoretti sonnets, the poet's attempt h to reconcile two opposed
conceptions of love, the spiritual and the physical, the latter being offered as a path to
the former, rather than as something to be either overwhelmed by or to be rejected. But
in order to serve the demands of this Reformist-Protestant morality by which a
legitimate desire may be inscribed into the poem, the poet has to render his own beloved
almost sex-less, or lacking in desire herself. Given that the poem is a celebration of the
wedding and of the nuptial union, such an erasure of feminine desire suggests that the
poet does not see his beloved as a subjective individual with her own feelings and
emotions that would be different from his own, or even from his 'perception of them,
but as an object, desirable and to be acquired. It is then again, no coincidence that the
social setting invoked in the poem is not the princes and the nobility but commerce and
trade, as implied by the invocation of the merchants daughters' in the first line of stanza
10. This is sense is furthered when we recall phrases like 'usury of long delight' (stanza
2) being used in regard to the relationship, implying a contractual arrangement that is
not confined to an emotional and spiritual attachment or commitment but is underwritten
by money.

Epithalamion is nevertheless a poem that is unique in the poetry of the sixteenth century,
not least because it is probably the first English wedding poem to announce itself
explicitly as one. In its poetic craft, it offers a rich tapestry of sensual imagery that
borrows as much from classical legends and myths as from Christian ideas and beliefs
and local folklore (see for instance the description of the fears of the night as haunted
by goblins, spirits, etc, in stanza 19). It is this fusion that it achieves of diverse poetic
traditions, and of almost oppositional religious beliefs - in terms of invoking pagan gods
and yet retaining a strongly Reformist-Christian sensibility - that is in many ways
unprecedented on this scale in English literature. Spenser was to go on to expand the
scale many times over in The Faerie Queene, but somewhat unsuccessfully. This poem
may then be considered his most successful fusion of these diverse poetic traditions and
styles.

8.1 THE PROTHALAMION

The term 'prothalamion' as we have already noted, is a Spenserian neologism, invented

to signify a preliminary nuptial song. The poem was written on the occasion of the
wedding of Elizabeth and Catherine Somerset, daughters of Edward Somerset, the Earl
of Worcester, on 8 November 1596. The wedding was formalised at the Strand in
London, in Essex House. Spenser was once sponsored by the Earl of Essex, a relative
of the Somersets, hence the writing of this poem. But this poem is vastly different from
Spenser's own nuptial song. Where the Epithalamion is exuberantly sensual and
consistent throughout its length in its themes, the Prothalamion shorter, more pensive,
and almost sedate in its pace.

The Prothalamion too uses some of the devices of the earlier poem in its structure.
For instance, it too uses a pastoral setting - specifically here, the bank of the river
Thames - and it too employs a couplet at the end of the first stanza that is reworked into
a refrain at the end of each subsequent stanza: 'Against the Brydale day, which is not
long:/ Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.' Again, like the Epithalamion,
the Prothalamion too eventually invokes pagan gods to bless the couples and guard them
from all ills:

Ioy may you haue and gentle hearts content Of your

loues couplement
 And let faire Venus, that is Queene of loue,
With her heart-quelling Sonne vpon you smile,
Whose smile they say, hath vertue to remoue
All Loues dislike, and friendships faultie guile
For euer to assoile. (stanza 6)

But there the resemblance ends. The later poem makes no attempt to elaborate on the
wedding, or the festivities that follow, or the wedding night, as did the Epithalamion.
Even the invocation cited above is barely a few lines in one stanza, unlike in the
Epithalamion. Instead it confines itself to describing the bridal procession down the
river Thames, leading up to Essex House where the wedding will be solemnized. The
refrain, such as it is, shows far less variation than in the Epithalamion, rendering the
poem somewhat stilted and wooden. In terms of the passage of time, it is little more
than a few hours of the morning that are encapsulated by the poem, and therefore the
poem has none of the profound integration of temporality and theme that the
Epithalamion weaves. What it does have is an elaborate allegorical structure, in which
the two brides are likened to beautiful swans that sail down the river. The allusion is to
the Roman classical myth of Jove and Leda, but it is used to suggest that the two
daughters of Somerset were in fact more beautiful than Jove and Leda too.

The real significance of the poem, unlike the Epithalamion lies less in its poetic
achievements d more in its biographical value, as reflective of some of the pressures
that Spenser the outsider to court politics must have had to Face. The lines,

When I whom sullein care,

Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay
In Princes Court, and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away,
Like empty shaddowes, did aflict my brayne,
Walkt forth to ease my payne (stanza 1)

are unexpected as an opening to what is ostensibly a celebratory wedding song. Their

very presence in a poem written in honour of his patron's friend suggest the anger and
rejection that Spenser must have felt toward the entire system of patronage that was so
important for a poet’s - and in fact a courtier's - survival in the Elizabethan court. This
sense of unhappiness arising out of unsatisfied career prospects is repeated again in
stanza 8, as if the poet is unable to restrain himself

Next whereunto there standes a stately place, Where

oft I gayned giftes and goodly grace Of that great
Lord, which therein wont to dwell, Whose want too
well, now feeles my friendless case:
But Ah here fits not well
Olde woes, but ioyes to tell
The lord being referred to is of course, the late Earl of Leicester, Spenser's patron for
many years. This reference suggests that it is the impersonality of the patronage system,
in which one patron can and should replace another, that most bothers Spenser, and not
perhaps the system itself. Whatever the truth, it is clear from these lines that the poem
is as much about the poet's sense of unhappiness as it is about the wedding - in fact, the
latter becoming a means and an occasion to air the former.

8.2 THE FAIRIE QUEENE

INTRODUCTION

The Faerie Queene was published in 1590; sixty years earlier, a series of
Parliamentary acts initiated by Henry VIII would begin the English Reformation, a
move away from the Catholic Church and into a national, Protestant faith with the
monarch as the head of the church. This profound change had direct influence on
Edmund Spenser and his most famous work. During the renaissance period, there was
a return to Greek and Roman ideals in the arts which had a lasting impact on cultural
expression at a time when literature was becoming more accessible to the masses.
Though Anglicanism was the official religion by the end of the sixteenth century,
many people at the time, including Spencer, thought the Roman Catholic church still
had too much power and this power was being abused (Mullan and Shrimpton). The
shift toward Protestant Christianity also occurred because people believed that God
offered a free gift of grace. This was different than the idea that you got to heaven
through good works and status in the Catholic Church. Spencer was taught by
humanist teachers at the Merchant Taylors school (“Edmund Spenser”) which
influenced his perspective on the church and of politics at the time. It was said that he
wrote the Faerie Queene for Queen Elizabeth with political intentions to praise her for
what she had done for the country and as an ideal, Protestant monarch.

8.3 SUMMARY

In Book I, the main characters, the Redcrosse Knight and Una, travel to defeat a
dragon that is holding Una’s parents hostage. They are met with many challenges
culminating with the battle against the dragon which is often thought to symbolize
evil or Satan. These conflicts cause them to question their choices, sometimes making
the wrong ones, but continuing on toward self-improvement and holiness. Redcrosse
knight first encounters a dragon, Errour, after taking shelter with Una, in the
“Wandering Wood” where the monster makes his home. He kills this serpent and the
two continue to travel. Stopping to spend the night, they encounter a hermit who terms
out to be a sorcerer in disguise: Archimago. Archimago makes Redcrosse knight
believe that Una is not innocent and pure, separating the two of them. When Una
wakes up and Redcrosse knight is no longer there, she leaves to go look for him.
Meanwhile, Redcrosse encounters Duessa (“duplicity”), a beautiful woman who he
agrees to defend and protect in Canto II. In Canto III, Una is nearly killed by a lion
who then vows to protect her due to her virtue; Archimago, disguised now as
Redcrosse, approaches her but is killed and his true identity revealed by Sansloy who
plans to keep Una and have his way with her until she yells for help. Hybrid animals
(half human, half animal) come out of the woods to help her and Sansloy runs away.
Una escapes and continues her travels. Meanwhile, Duessa has taken Redcrosse to the
House of Pride where he meets the seven deadly sins; there he successfully duels
Sansjoy. As he makes his way back through the forest with Duessa, they consummate
their relationship and thus weakened, he is captured by a giant, Orgoglio and locked in
a dungeon. His dwarf assistant escapes to find Una; once she hears of the situation,
she prepares to go find and rescue him and gets the help of another knight who is
actually king Arthur. Arthur fights the giant and Una is able to rescue
Redcrosse. After connecting with Arthur, they learn that he has been searching for his
love, the Queen of the fairies. When Una and Redcrosse knight continue to Una’s
parents, they run into a man called Despair. Despair encourages Redcross to take his
own life and Una now needs to find him help. They go to the house of holiness where
three daughters, who represent faith, hope, and charity help him reconnect with his faith
and heal his mind. Then, charitable men help to heal his wounds. Now that his body
and spirit are then fully recovered, Redcrosse and Una finally go to her castle where he
battles and defeats the dragon. Redcrosse is now viewed as a better man and he and
Una become engaged to one another after her parents watch him defeat the dragon. The
Redcross Knight is eventually revealed to be “George” and the reader learns that he is
indeed St. George, destined to become the patron saint of England (“Redcrosse
Knight”).

8.4 THEMES

The main theme of Book I is holiness. The Redcrosse Knight is the character that
represents this throughout the book, discovering new aspects of holiness along the
way. Redcrosse learns to trust in God for his strength instead of being prideful. The
three sisters Faith, Hope, and Charity that he meets when he is in despair represent
virtues a holy Christian should have. Being grounded in his faith again, Redcrosse is
finally able to battle the dragon, this may be representative of battling demons in daily
life. In a way, the virtues of the Redcrosse knight are revitalized by his journey
helping him feel more in touch with God by the end of the story.

8.5 STYLE
 The Faerie Queene is a long poem written in the Spenserian stanza (“The Faerie
Queene by Edmund Spenser, 1590”). This type of stanza has eight iambic
pentameters and an alexandrine. So, the rhyming scheme of this long poem is
ababbcbcc (Mullan and Shrimpton). This poem is also an epic, allegorical poem. An
epic poem is “a long narrative poem in elevated style recounting the deeds of a
legendary or historical hero” as defined in the dictionary (“Epic”). An allegorical
poem is one” that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or
political one” (“Allegory”).

Works Cited

“The Faerie Queen Summary.” SparkNotes,

SparkNotes, www.sparknotes.com/poetry/fqueen/section1/.
“Allegory.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster,
www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/allegory.

“Edmund Spenser.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation,

www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edmund-spenser.

“Epic.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/epic.

“The Faerie Queen Summary.” SparkNotes,

SparkNotes, www.sparknotes.com/poetry/fqueen/section1/.

Mullan, John, and Nicholas Shrimpton. “English Literature.” Encyclopædia Britannica,

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 4 Feb. 2019, www.britannica.com/art/Englishliterature/The-
Renaissance-period-1550-1660.

Spenser, Edmund. “From The Faerie Queene: Book I, Canto I by Edmund

Spenser.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation,
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45192/the-faerie-queene-book-i-canto-i.

“Redcrosse Knight.” Oxford Reference, 16 June 2017,

www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100408884.

“The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, 1590.” The British Library, The British
Library, 20 Nov. 2015, www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-faerie-queene-by-
edmundspenser-1590.

8.6 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How do you think history or the time period this poem was written influenced the
authors’ views?

2. What or who do you think Una could represent? What does she overcome throughout
the poem?
 3. What is the conflict represented within each Canto?
4. What or where is Faerie Land?
5. Since this is an allegorical poem, what allegories stand out to you the most? Are these
allegories timeless and representative of the human experience, or are they specific to
the time period they were written in?

6. How do you think Spencer’s view of the Bible influenced this poem?

8.7 FURTHER RESOURCES

A youtube video from Crash Course that further explains the Catholic Reformation
around the time this piece was written.
A podcast that lets you listen to the book one Canto at a time, as this is a long read.
This is the link to apple podcast s but this channel is available through other devices
as well.
The Poetry Foundation provides more insight on Edmund Spenser himself to help
understand his background and how that influenced his writing.
Sparknotes summary broken up by cantos to help understand the allegories of this
long poem and what the characters represented.

8.8 READING: THE FAERIE QUEENE (BOOK I)

TO THE RIGHT NOBLE AND VALOROUS

SIR WALTER RALEIGH, KNIGHT.

SIR,

Knowing how doubtfully all Allegories may be constructed, and this booke of mine,
which I have entituled The Faery Queene, being a continued Allegorie, or darke
conceit, I have thought good, as well for avoyding of jealous opinions and
misconstructions, as also for your better light in reading thereof, (being so, by you
commanded) to discover unto you the generall intention and meaning, which in the
whole course thereof I have fashioned, without expressing of any particular purposes,
or by-accidents therein occasioned. The generall end therefore of all the booke, is to
fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline. Which for that I
conceived shoulde be most plausible and pleasing, beeing coloured with an historicall
fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, rather for varietie of matter
than for profit of the ensample: I chose the historie of king Arthure, as most fit for the
excellencie of his person, beeing made famous by many mens former workes, and also
furthest from the danger of envie, and suspicion of present time. In which I have
followed all the antique poets historicall: first Homer, who in the persons of
Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governour and a vertuous man, the
one in his Ilias, the other in his Odysseis: then Virgil, whose like intention was to doe
in the person of Æneas: after him Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando: and
lately Tasso dissevered them againe, and formed both parts in two persons, namely,
that part which they in philosophy call Ethice, or vertues of a private man, coloured in
hisRinaldo: the other named Politice, in his Godfredo. By ensample of which
excellent Poets, I laboure to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a
brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised:
which if I find to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encoraged to frame the other part
of pollitike vertues in his person, after he came to bee king.

To some I know this Methode will seem displeasant, which had rather have good
discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they use, then
thus clowdily enwrapped in Allegoricall devises. But such, mee seeme, should be satisfied
with the use of these dayes, seeing all things accounted by their showes, and nothing
esteemed of, that is not delightfull and pleasing to common sense. For this cause is
Xenophon preferred before Plato, for that the one, in the exquisite depth of his judgement,
formed a Commune-wealth, such as it should be; but the other, in the person of Cyrus and
the Persians, fashioned a government, such as might best be: So much more profitable and
gracious is doctrine by ensample then by rule. So have I laboured to do in the person of
Arthure: whom I conceive, after his long education by Timon (to whom he was by Merlin
delivered to be brought up, so soone as he was borne of the Lady Igrayne) to have seen in
a dreame or vision the Faerie Queene, with whose excellent beautie ravished, hee
awaking, resolved to seek her out: and so, being by Merlin armed, and by Timon
throughly instructed, he went to seeke her forth in Faery land. In that Faery Queene I
mean Glory in my generall intention: but in my particular I conceive the most excellent
and glorious person of our soveraine the Queene, and her kingdome in Faery land. And
yet, in some places else, I doe otherwise shadow her. For considering shee beareth two
persons, the one of a most royall Queene or Empresse, the other of a most vertuous and
beautifull lady, this latter part in some places I doe expresse in Belphoebe, fashioning her
name according to your owne excellent conceipt of Cynthia,2 (Phoebe and Cynthia being
both names of Diana). So in the person of Prince Arthure I sette forth magnificence in
particular, which vertue, for that (according to Aristotle and the rest) it is the perfection of
all the rest, and containeth in it them all, therefore in the whole course I mention the deeds
of Arthure appliable to the vertue, which I write of in that booke. But of the twelve other
vertues I make XII other knights the patrons, for the more varietie of the historic: Of
which these three bookes containe three. The first, of the Knight of the Red crosse, in
whom I expresse Holinesse: the second of Sir Guyon, in whome I set foorth Temperance:
the third of Britomartis, a Lady knight, in whom I picture Chastitie. But because the
beginning of the whole worke seemeth abrupt and as depending upon other antecedents, it
needs that yee know the occasion of these three knights severall adventures. For the
Methode of a Poet historicall is not such as of an Historiographer. For an Historiographer
discourseth of affaires orderly as they were done, accounting as well the times as the
actions; but a Poet thrusteth into the middest, even where it most concerneth him, and
there recoursing to the things forepast, and divining of things to come, maketh a pleasing
analysis of all. The beginning therefore of my historie, if it were to be told by an
Historiographer, should be the twelfth booke, which is the last; where I devise that the
Faery Queene kept her annuall feast twelve daies; uppon which twelve severall dayes, the
occasions of the twelve severall adventures hapned, which being undertaken by XII
severall knights, are in these twelve books severally handled and discoursed.

The first was this. In the beginning of the feast, there presented him selfe a tall
clownish younge man, who falling before the Queene of Faeries desired a boone (as
the manner then was) which during that feast she might not refuse: which was that hee
might have the atchievement of any adventure, which during that feast should happen;
that being granted, he rested him selfe on the fioore, unfit through his rusticitie for a
better place. Soone after entred a faire Ladie in mourning weedes, riding on a white
Asse, with a dwarfe behind her leading a warlike steed, that bore the Armes of a
knight, and his speare in the dwarfes hand. She falling before the Queene of Faeries,
complayned that her father and mother, an ancient King and Queene, had bene by an
huge dragon many yeers shut up in a brazen Castle, who thence suffered them not to
issew: and therefore besought the Faery Queene to assigne her some one of her
knights to take on him that exployt. Presently that clownish person upstarting, desired
that adventure; whereat the Queene much wondering, and the Lady much gaine-
saying, yet he earnestly importuned his desire. In the end the Lady told him, that
unlesse that armour which she brought would serve him (that is, the armour of a
Christian man specified by Saint Paul, V. Ephes.) that he could not succeed in that
enterprise: which being forth with put upon him with due furnitures thereunto, he
seemed the goodliest man in al that company, and was well liked of the Lady. And
eftesoones taking on him knighthood, and mounting on that straunge Courser, he went
forth with her on that adventure: where beginneth the first booke, viz. A gentle knight
was pricking on the playne, etc.

The second day there came in a Palmer bearing an Infant with bloody hands, whose
Parents he complained to have bene slaine by an enchauntresse called Acrasia: and
therefore craved of the Faery Queene, to appoint him some knight to performe that
adventure, which being assigned to Sir Guyon, he presently went foorth with the same
Palmer: which is the beginning of the second booke and the whole subject thereof. The
third day there came in a Groome, who complained before the Faery Queene, that a
vile Enchaunter, called Busirane, had in hand a most faire Lady, called Amoretta,
whom he kept in most grevious torment. Whereupon Sir Scudamour, the lover of that
Lady, presently tooke on him that adventure. But beeing unable to performe it by
reason of the hard Enchauntments, after long sorrow, in the end met with Britomartis,
who succoured him, and reskewed his love.

But by occasion hereof, many other adventures are intermedled; but rather as accidents
then intendments. As the love of Britomart, the overthrow of Marinell, the miserie of
Florimell, the vertuousness of Belphoebe; and many the like.

Thus much, Sir, I have briefly-over-run to direct your understanding to the wel-head
of the History, that from thence gathering the whole intention of the conceit, ye may as
in a handfull gripe all the discourse, which otherwise may happely seem tedious and
confused. So humbly craving the continuance of your honourable favour towards me,
and th’ eternall establishment of your happines, I humbly take leave.

Yours most humbly affectionate, EDM.

SPENSER.
23 Januarie, 1589.

8.9 LET'S SUM UP FOR UNIT 7 & 8

In the above unit, we studied two of Spenser's longer poems, the Epithalamion and the
Prothalamion. We examined not only the various poetic and cultural influences that
went into the writing of these poems, but also how they come to reflect various aspects
of his personal life, as much as aspects of Elizabethan England. We noted how Spenser
establishes his uniqueness in blending Christian, classical and pre- Christian tribal lores
in his poetry. This, as we noted, in many ways served as the training ground for the more
ambitious fusions that Spenser was to attempt in his unfinished magnum opus, The
Faerie Queene. In particular, we noted the way these poems, the Prothalamion in
particular, indexes the role of patronage and politics in the writings of the Renaissance
English poets.

From our studies it is clear that the Spenserian period in English literature was a
pioneering and formative one for it. Spenser's ability to fuse diverse poetic and
discursive traditions brought into the corpus of English literature a set of possibilities
that it was left to later poets to exploit and further - and this you will see especially in
the study of John Milton's work.

8.10 OUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. In the Epithalamion, Spenser celebrates not just his wedding, but the aspirations arid
imagination of an entirely new class of people. Discuss.

2. Analyse, with reference to Spenser's Epithalamion , the fusion of classical and

English mythology and legends. Do they, in your opinion, enhance the intention and
effectiveness of the poem or distract the reader? Give reasons for your answer.

3. Compare and contrast the Epithalamion and the Prothalamion as wedding songs.
 4. The Prothalamion by Spenser is less a wedding song aid more a complaint by the
poet. Do you agree? Respond with specific reference to the poet's political and
personal life.

5. Analyse the use of time and temporality in Spenser's Epithalamion and Prothalamion.

8.11 ADDITIONAL READING

1. Ellrodt, Robert, Neoplatonism in the Poetry) of Spenser (Geneva: Droz, 1960).

2. Hamilton, A.C., et al, eds, The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: University of London
Press, 1990)

3. Hieatt, A. Kent, Short Time's Endless Monument: The symbolism of the numbers in
Edmund Spenser's 'Epithalamion' (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1960)

4. Loades, D.M., The Tudor Court (London: Batsford, 1986).
UNIT- 9 POETRY AND SOCIETY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
(PRERESTORATION)

Structure

9.0 Objectives
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Historical Background
Thirty Years' war
9.3 Cultural Background
12.3.1 The Visual Arts
12.3.2 Mannerism
12.3.3 The Baroque
9.4 Science
12.4.1 The Astronomical Revolution
12.4.2 the Mechanical Philosophy
9.5 The Spenserians
12.5.1 Phineas Fletcher
12.5.2 Giles Fletcher
12.5.3 George Wither
12.5.4 William Browne
9.6 The Cavalier Poets
12.6.1 Herrick
12.6.2 Carew
12.6.3 Suckling
12.6.4 Lovelace
9.7 The Metaphysical Poets
12.7.1 Vaughan
12.7.2 Crawshaw
12.7.3 Traherne
9.8 The Early Augustans

3
 12.8.1 Waller
12.8.2 Davenant
12.8.3 Denham
12.8.4 Cowley
9.9 Let Us Sum Up
9.10 Answers to Exercises
9. 11 Bibliography

9.0 OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit you will be able to have

• A comprehensive idea of the complicated British Mileu political, religious, scientific,

aesthetic and philosophic - in the period under discussion, and
• A close acquaintance with the distinct traits of the different modes of poetry in vogue at
the time.

9.1 INTRODUCTION

In England the seventeenth century is a period of great upheavals in almost all spheres of life -
social, political, religious, philosophical and scientific. These developments have their impact on
the poetry of the time which is noted for innovations in content and techniques. The main current
of the poetry is metaphysics (The details about it you will have later in the block). Close to this
current there are flowing other currents as well. These are the Spenserians, the Ben Jonsonians and
the Early Augustans. The Spenserians remain uninfluenced by the dominant mode of Donne and
work as a link between Spenser and Milton. The Ben Jonsonians try to emulate the classical model
of Ben Jonson. They also present sustained arguments and scholarly images in the vein of Donne.
The Early Augustans show a definite sign of change in their perception and their technique.

Each important development in the life and poetry of the time has been elaborately explained in
the course of the discussion.

4
9.2 THIRTY YEARS' WAR (1618-48)

You will read about the Civil War in England in unit 22. Like the British Civil War, this war, too,
was politico-religious in nature. But while the Civil War was a British affair, this war spread over
the whole of the continent and the key fighters in this war were France, Germany and Spain. British
involvement in it was limited. The continent at the time was sharply divided into two hostile
religious groups. France and Poland were Catholics, while Britain, Holland and Scandinavia were
Protestants.

In Germany both faiths were in conflict. But this conflict was sought to be kept in abeyance by the
Treaty Ansberg. Under the treaty, the religions of the reigning Prince was to be the religion of the
place. Emperor Ferdinand of Germany was a Catholic and Catholic princes were more powerful
than the Protestant ones. Ferdinand was a cousin of the king of Spain, and in league with Spain,
he thought of gaining control over the whole of the Central Europe. Meanwhile, Henry IV of
France aligned himself with the Protestant elements in Germany. But he was murdered by a
Catholic fanatic.
King James of England wanted to be an arbiter. He also wanted marital ties between his family
and the families or some Catholic States. But ironically enough, it is his son-in-law Elector
Frederick, who proved to be the cause of this Thirty Years' War. The inhabitants of Bohemia
invited Elector Frederick to be their ruler, but the Sermon Emperor did not agree to this
arrangement. Frederick was defeated by the forces of the German emperor at the battle of White
Mountain near Prague in 1620. Palatine, the kingdom of Frederick, too, was captured by Spanish
Catholic forces. For want of support from the Parliament, and due to the fragile economic position
of England, King James could not do anything significant in favour of his son-in-law.

In short, a lot of blood was split in this long drawn and widely spread war. Ultimately this war
came to an end in the peace of Westphalia. In fact, neither the Protestants nor Catholics won this
war. The faith of the people in religion was greatly shaken by this religious war. The effect was
accentuated by the British Civil War. People thought of thinking freely even in matters concerning
the fundamentals. This tendency got further fillips through the Renaissance and the developments
in the field of science, particularly astronomy.

EXERCISE-4

1. Name three main fighters in the Thirty Years' War.

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5
__________________________________________________________________

2. What was the period of the Thirty Years' War?

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3. Which two religious groups were involved in this war?

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4. Tell the main difference between the Thirty Years' War and the Civil War.
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____________
5. Name two countries that were dominated by' the Protestants.
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____________

6. Name two countries that were dominated by the Catholics.

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____________

7. Was England one of the main fighters in The Thirty Years' War?
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6
__________________________________________________________________
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____________

8. Give the location of the place called White Mountain. When was the battle of White Mountain
fought? Who won this battle?
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____________

9.3 CULTURAL BACKGROUND

9.3.1 The Visual Arts

With a view to appreciating in full the cultural milieu of our period (the seventeenth century), we
have to make ourselves aware of the aesthetic preoccupations of the time. The accession of Charles
I in 1625 was propitious for many-fold increase in aesthetic activities, especially in the sphere of
visual arts. Despite financial difficulties, Charles spent a lot of money on collection of artobjects.
The Earl of Arundel embarked on an art-collecting spree and he had full support of the king. The
king and his courtiers were fond of their portraits drawn by painters. Van Dyck's portraits of the
king and his courtiers are memorable. The king sent his men all over the Continent in search of
beautiful paintings. The missions of papal representatives came to Charles with gifts including a
"Titian" and a burst of Charles by Bernini. (From Donne to Marvell) The interest of
Charles in visual arts had its impact on the application of this art to architecture and carpentry and
other related fields. This fact is reported among others by G.M. Trevelyan: "Framed pictures and
marble sculptures were becoming common, after the example set by the art-loving Charles I and
his great subject, the Earl of Arunde1. Rubens, Van Dyck and the homelier Duch painters did much
work for English patrons. The plaster work of the ceilings was elaborately decorative... The trestle
table was giving place to solid tables with ornamental legs. Many magnificently carved bed and
cupboards...still survive in their grandeur..." (English Social History)

This craze for visual arts imperceptibly passed into the poetry of the time, especially the
Spenserians. The pastorals of these poets are full of scenic paintings.

7
9.3.2 Mannerism

The word "mannerism" means the angularity of speech or behaviour, particularly a habitual trait
peculiar to a person. It also implies an excessive use of a distinctive manner in literature. In the
context of the seventeenth century literature, it means a particular trait of the period that has been
made use of over much. The Metaphysical poets are fond of using witty and ingenious analogies.
Such analogies in Metaphysical poetry is often expressed through conceits. (The word 'conceit' has
been elaborately explained in Unit 13). The moment a conceit becomes a forced explication of an
image to the furthest point to which ingenuity can carry it, it becomes a bad conceit. This is caused
because of the sheer love of the poets for mannerism. In one of his elegies, John Donne, by a series
of ingenious analogies, advocates the preposterous proposition that an old and ugly woman will
make a better wife than a young and handsome one. This indulgence in sheer wit smacks of
mannerism.

Poems of the fourties and the fifties of the seventeenth century abound in conceits running to
fantastic extravagance. Even a major poet like Marvel1 indulges in this mannerism. R.G. Cox
rightly affirms:

... the wit of Marvell himself sometimes misfires, as with his Salmonfishers who 'like
Antipodes in Shoes', have shod their Heads in their Canoes. (Pelican Guide to English
Literature, Vol-3)

John Cleveland in his poetry make wit a game and the imaginative pressure is not there to back it
up. Consequently, he is liable to Johnson's charge that the attempts of the Metaphysicals are
analytic (one that splits) and that they are deficient in the poetic power to make a synthesis of the
heterogeneity of materials. In the third stanza of the poem, To the state of Love Cleveland dilates
at length on his clasping of his beloved. Cleveland's use of wit is a hangover of the Metaphysical
heritage and does not have anything to do with the newness of perception.

9.3.3 The baroque

The term 'baroque' has been derived from the Spanish and Portuguese name for a pearl that is rough
and irregular in shape, It has become a pet word for ad historians in their description of a style of
architecture, sculpture and painting in Italy In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It later
spreads to German; and other countries in Europe. Initially it was a term of disapprobation, but
with the passage of time the derogatory meaning is lost. This term is also applied to literature. It
has assumed the signification of any elaborately formal and magniloquent style in verse or prose,
for example, some verse passages in "Paradise Lost" and Thomas De quincery's description of his
dreams in Confessions of Et~glishO piurn Eczter. It took the implication of a stock-in-trade word
designed for the post-Renaissance literature 011 the Continent. Besides, it is a catch-word
frequently applied to elal3orate verses and extravagant conceits of poets like Marino and Gongara
in Italy, St. Amant in France and Crashaw in England. The poems of Donne, especially some of
his divine poems in which he contemplates the apocalyptic vision, are labelled as baroques. This

8
tern1 also suggests the religious emotionalism of poets like Crashaw. In the continental context,
the term, 'baroque', refers to the crisis of sensibility in the late Renaissance.

The Renaissance in initial years generates remarkable self-confidence and buoyancy of spirit. The
pagan world that comes into being with the Renaissance clashes with medieval ethic, and there
ensures a war between body and soul. So long as the balance of the two is there, the picture is
ordered and 'coherent. But as time goes by the schism in the psyche gets pronounced. This results
into pessimism, chaos and violence. The scenario is perceptible in the Jacobean drama and the
Metaphysical poetry, more conspicuous in the former than in the later. The baroque thus helps the
poets to present and surmount the chaotic state prevailing in the Continent. Some poets who want
to come to grips with the conflict between the body and the spirit harness their senses in the service
of God. This phenomenon is noticeable in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyala, the Emblem
Books of Jesuit poets like Southwell and the poetry of Crashaw.

The baroque sensibility works in two different ways. In the poetry of Crashaw it works in terms of
rich sensuous images in adoration of the Divine. Drops of blood became rubies an4 tears because
pearls in his poetry. In his poems, the experience of suffering undergoes a glittering
metamorphosis, and the end product is the emergence of a world of tenderness and joy. In most of
the continental poets, the picture is macabre and the dance of death is horrifying. The taste for the
macabre is perceptible in the French drama as well. The life in the contemporary literature looks
tortured, restless and tense. The scenario is full of skeletons, bones and shrouds. Poems of
Theophile, St. Amant, Gongara and Marini replace the living world by a series of correspondences
(resemblances). The recurrent motifs are tears, wounds, flaming hearts, the turtle dove, the
phoenix, the grave and the nest. But some of the baroque poets conjure up a rich sensuous world.
By doing so they want to transcend the ugly and horrifying world where things are out of joint.
H.J.C Grierson rightly remarks of Crashaw's resplendent world that steals a march over the world
of suffering :

- .Crashaw‟s long odes give the impression at the first reading of soring rockets scattering
balls of coloured Sire, the 'happy fireworks' to which he compares St. Teresa's Writing.
(Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century)

Grierson, too, describes Crashaw's style in a baroque language. The baroque poetry has an affinity
with the continental mode. It abounds in conceits that have the continental lineage. Grierson
discovers that in Crashaw's The Weeper and The Hymn to St. Teresa conceits

. . .are more after the confectionery manner of the Italians than the scholastic or homely manner of
the followers of Donne.

Let us see an example of Crashaw's baroque conceit in the following lines:

O cheekes! Beds of chaste loves,

9
 By your own showers seasonably dash't, Eyes! nests of milkie
Doves In your own wells decently washt.
0 wit of love that thus could place, Fountaine and Garden in
one face!
(The Weeper)

The fountain and the garden are in the face of the repentant sinner, Magdalene. Tears dropping
from her eyes refresh plants in the bed of her cheeks. This copresence of the fountain and the
garden is a matter of great joy. She has the feeling that tears shall be welling up in her eyes all the
time. At another place in the same poem the poet compares the tear-splashing eyes to two portable
baths and, again, to contracted oceans. They are imagined to be oceans because the reservoir of
water is not likely to be depleted:

Two walking Baths, two weeping motions; portable and compendious Oceans.

EXERCISE-11

1. Name the earl who took lead in art-collection during the reign of Charles I
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2. Name two painters of the time.

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3. Define the word 'mannerism'.

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4. What is meant by the 'baroque'?

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10
__________________________________________________________________
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5. Name an English poet who writes baroque poems.

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6. Name a baroque poem that you have read.

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7. Which class of the English drama may be nick named the 'baroque drama'?
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8. Are the baroque writers generally optimistic or pessimistic?

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9.4 SCIENCE: AN INTRODUCTION

With the end of the Elizabethan world-picture around 1590s new assumptions about life come into
being. These assumption spring from the emergence of the empirical science that relies solely on
experiment. The medieval world order which, was based on faith faces a challenge. The territory
of faith shrinks, leaving the rest to reason. Our period witnesses spectacular triumphs in diverse

11
scientific fields. The EIizabethan world-order based on Ptolemaic astronomy as a vast system of
the concentric sphere with the earth at the centre receives a shattering blow from three eminent
astronomers: Copernicus, Kepler and Gilileo and the notable physicist, Newton. The sun replaces
the earth as the centre of the universe. The role of the astronomical theories is causing an upheaval
in the minds of the people find an apt description in Donne's poem Anniversary I

And now Philosophy calls all in doubt

The Element of fire is quite put out,
The Sun is lost, and th' earth, and no man's wit
Can well direct him where to look for it

9.4.1 The Astronomical Revolution

Let us have a brief discussion on the contemporary scientists and their contributions.

i). Copernicus (1473-1543): Copernicus's book titled Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies that is
concerned with the revolution of planets also brings about a revolution in the world-view of the
time. Copernicus believes that the sun is at the centre of the universe and that the earth moves
round the sun. He also discovered that the earth has two sorts of motions: diurnal and annual. Thus
the Copernicus theory displaces the earth from its geographical pre-eminence. It also makes man
skeptical about the cosmic importance attached to him in the Christian theology. It challenges the
medieval belief that the universe is an affair between God and man.

Copernicus himself is apprehensive of church inquisition and withholds the publication of his book
till near his death time in 1543. The Legend goes that he holds the first copy in his hands on his
death - bed. Luther to whom he communicates his theory feels completely upset. He looks upon
Copernicus as a fool malting a vein bid to reverse the established astronomical belief. Calvin, too
has his gibe at Copernicus takes him to be rash and impetuous in placing his theory above the holy
spirit of God.

ii). Tycho Brahe (1546-1601): Brahe holds an important position in the evolution of the
astronomical science. His theories are partially correct. He holds that the sun and the moon go
round the earth, but the planets go round the sun. He contradicts Aristotle's idea that everything
above moon is unchanging. He makes a star catalogue and takes down the details of the movements
of the stars. His study is of great use to Kepler.

iii). Kepler: Kepler takes the heliocentric theory of Copernicus and makes a lot or improvement
on it. Kepler finds three laws to describe the motions of the planets. His theories of astronomy are
published in 1609 and 1619. He maintains that the paths or the planets are elliptical, not circular.
His second law relates to the varying speed at which a planet travels along its ellipse. The third
law relates to the movement of a planet towards another planet.

12
iv). Galileo (1564 - 1642): Galileo adopts the heliocentric system of Copernicus and Kepler. He
invents a telescope and makes a member of discoveries. He discovers the phases of Venus and the
satellites of Jupiter. So far there were believed to be only seven heavenly bodies: the five planets,
the sun and the moon. So the number of seven was regarded sacred. This myth is now exploded
with the addition of the four moons of Jupiter the number comes to eleven. His discoveries
generates a lot of heat in the society and considerable hatred against him. Bertrand Russell points
out that ".

. .the traditionalists denounced the telescope, refused to look through it, and maintained
that it revealed only disaster.. ."
(An Outline of Western Philosophy)

Russell adds that even the professors of philosophy were members of the ignorant 'mob'.

v). Isaac Newton (1642-1727): Newton believes that the heavenly bodies attract one another with
a force. This force is directly proportional to the product of their masses. It is in inverse ratio to
the squire of distance between them. His ideas about the motions of planets and their satellites, the
orbits of comets and the tides are deduced from his laws of motions. He makes an improvement
upon Kepler's three laws and discovers the law of gravitation. Most of these discoveries thus come
in conflict with the established religious belief.

9.4.2 The Mechanical Philosophy

Our period is marked by a spectacular advancement in the scientific thought. The work of
individuals like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Harvey, Gilbert, Descarts and Boyle and the
Royal Society creates a climate of opinion that is enimical to the belief in the supernatural and the
occult. Now the universe comes more and more to be

. . .regarded as the great machine working by rigidly determined laws of material causation.
(Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background).

Descards gives a picture of the universe that moves according to fixed mathematical laws. Galileo
plays an important role in establishing the primary of the physical universe. According to Aristotle,
heavier objects fell faster than the light ones. But Galileo established that both heavy and light
objects fall in a like manner. He also contradicts Aristotle's principle that an arrow is kept in flight
only so long as the air pushes it. He holds that a moving object remains in motion until some force
stops it. Galiteo's stress on experiment is evident from his letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of
Tuscany written in 1615:

"Methinks that in the discussion of natural problems we ought not to begin at the authority
of places of scripture, but sensible experiments and necessary demonstrations".

13
 Cited in J. Bronowski and Bruce Mazlish, The Western Intellectual Tradition).

Galileo does not believe in the blind following of the established philosophical principles; he rather
believes in the deduction of philosophical laws from the book of nature. To put it in his own words,

philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes – I mean the
universe.. . This book is written in the mathematical language and the symbols are triangles,
circles... without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it..
.
(cited in the book just referred to)

Another important agent of this scientific movement is Francis Bacon. In his book, The
Advancement of Learning (1605) he talks of the scientific method which involves the making of
experiments, the drawing of general conclusion from them and the testing of these generalization
in further experiments. He is a champion of the inductive method in science. This inductive method
receives a boost with the establishment of the Royal Society in 1660.

Newton who becomes the President of the Royal Society after Hooker's death in 1703 conceives
the universe as a machine. He contradicts Aristotle's belief that nature can be explained from self-
evident principles. He does not rely on those self-evident principles and establishes notions which
match the facts of experience.

Hobbes and Locke are also eminent scientific thinkers of the time. They were not practising
scientists, but their ideas were scientific. Locke was also a member of the Royal Society. Hobbes's
contribution to the theory of mechanism and causality is significant. He turned Galileo's physics
into a Metaphysics. He regarded mind as simply another body in motion. He enunciates the basic
postulates of the mechanical philosophy in the following words :

For seeing life is but a motion of limbs.. .all automata have an artificial life? For what is a
heart but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels,
giving motion to the whole body.
(Cited in The Western Intellectual Tradition)

The late seventeenth century poetry is an artistic reflection of the mechanical philosophy. We find
a primacy of reason in the poems of Cowley, Denham and Waller. You will have the details in the
section on the early Augustans.

EXERCISE-III

1. Describe the following adjectives : Heliocentric homocentric and concentric.

14
__________________________________________________________________
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2. Name three astronomers of the time.

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3. Write a few words on Copernicus.

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4. Who wrote the following :

a) Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies
b) The Advancement of Learning

15
__________________________________________________________________
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5. Which poets of the seventeenth century are influenced by the mechanical philosophy?
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6. Name a poet who reflects the contemporary conflict between religion and science.
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_
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7. Name two scientific thinkers who were associated with the Royal Society.
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8. In which year did Copernicus die?

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important scientific philosophers of the time.
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__________________________________________________________________ 10. Which
eminent scientist became the President of the Royal Society in 1703?
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 16

9.5 THE SPENSERIANS

The period under discussion is dominated by the Metaphysicals. Brit some poets of the time still
write in Spenser's vein. This poetry makes a deification of love. In it we find an exaltation of virtue.
The poetic tone is generally solemn and serious. The questioning spirit of the Metaphysicals is
generally absent from this poetry. Like the poetry of Spenser, the Sperserian poetry is generally
allegorical, pastoral and pictorial. There are four important poets in the group: Phineas Fletcher,
Giles Fletcher, George Wither and William Browne. They have the significance of being a living
link between Spenser and Milton and work as a conduit for passing the Spenserian legacy to Milton,
who, too, takes to the allegorical mode.

9.5.1 Phineas Fletcher (1 582-1650)

Phineas Fletcher, a clergy by profession, is noted for his allegorical poem, The Purple Island. An
allegory is a narrative in the guise of something that is suggestively similar. It also has a moral
bearing. The Purple Island is also pastoral in character and has an affinity with Spenser's Shepherd's
Calendar. In a pastoral we have an enchanting world of peace and harmony. It may have a tail of
chivalry and love. In a pastoral allegory the shephers act as agents. But in this poem we have a
fisherman who talks about love and religion. Here we find a pictorial description of the beauty of
mountains, meadows, brooks and dales. It also looks like an anatomy of human body. This provides
a battleground to virtues and vices. The poem has an echo of Book II, Canto 911 of The Faerie
Queen by Spenser. Sir Guyon comes to the castle of Alms and falls into the trap of sensual
enticement and struggles with them. The poem has a didactic design. The poet is also influenced
by the notable Protestant poet of the time, dubartas. In this poem we have a remarkable religious
fervor reminiscent of Bunyan's allegories. The poem has influence on Milton's Morning of Christ's
Nativity in point of sensuousness and mythological embellishment. Fletcher's diatribe against the
Jesuits in his poem, The Locusts, too, has its bearing on Milton's mind. The Jesuits are abominable
because in league with infernal powers they hatch a conspiracy against the godly people :.

The Porter to th'infernal gate is sin, A shapeless shape, a foule

deformed thing, Nor nothing, nor a substance.. .

9.5.2 Giles Fletcher (1585-1 623)

He, too, was a clergyman. Apart from the influence of Spenser, the Influence of the Stalian poet of
Counter Reformation is also perceptible on him. His poems are allegorical. They are marked by
paradox His fondness for paradoxes and sensuousness is attributed to the influence of the Stalian
writers. In his love for paradoxes he is also akin to Catholic poets like Southwell and

17
Crashaw. His well- known poem, Christ 's Victorie and Triumph (1610) relates to the Fall, the
Incarnation, the Redemption and the Ascension. The poem is in the Spenserian vein. The end of
the poem is remarkable. The poem ends with a vision of the marriage of the divine, groom and his
mystical Bride, the Church. The description of paradise is rapturous. The poem is suffused with the
benign and forgiving spirit of the Gospel. The Sensuousness and paradoxical wits infuse the
elements of the baroque into the poem. But the carping consciousness of Puritan poets like Milton
and Bunyan is absent from this poem.

9.5.3 Wither (1588-1667)

Unlike the Fletcher brothers, Wither is a Puritan. But he is in the habit of changing sides in politics.
He is now a Royalist and now a Parliamentarian. The Royalists imprison him.

The Puritanical strain in him makes him unrelenting in his antipathy to vices. His poetry sometimes
has a satiric edge. In his captivity he writes a number of poems. This comes at in the form of an
anthology titled Juvenalia(1622). His other notable poems are The Shepherd's Hunting (1615),
Fidelia (1615) and Faire Virtue (1624). His poems are pastoral and religious. He has a deep love
for the countryside. EIe believes in the healing power of nature and is believed to have anticipated
Wordsworth. His Christmas is a poem of naive and pure delights. But his poems experience a
Puritan interference from the poet. He inserts moral maxims in them and thus prevents them from
being natural,

9.5.4 William Browne (1591-1643)

Unlike George Wither, Browne had got a sweet temper. He is suffused with a Chaucerian spirit and
lets himself go in his description of jollity and mirth in the lap of nature. His poem, The Shepherd's
Pipe gives us simple and pure delights of nature in the Chaucerian vein without the interposition
of any moral speculation. This poem also has the sweetness that we discover in Spenser's Bower
of Bliss (in The Faerie Queen). The allegorical strain of Spenser is noticeable in his poem
Britannia’s Pastorals. This poem also calls to mind Sidney's Arcadia. The account of song birds
singing their melifluous songs, the scenic beauty of dawn breaking over a village and the lively and
vibrant picture of huntsman dovetails with the patriotic subject. The poet relates the chivalrous acts
of Knights who fight for the glory of the country.

EXERCISE-IV

1. Describe in a few words the main traits of the Spenserian poetry in the seventeenth century.
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18
__________________________________________________________________

2. Name the poets who are called the Spenserians

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In which sense are these poets important?

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3. Name the poets who wrote the following:

a. The Purple Island, b. The Locusts,
b. Christs' Victoria and Triumphs
c. Juvenalia, e. The Shepherd 's Hunting,
f. Fidelia, g. Faire Virtue, h. Christmas,
i. The Shepherds' Pipe.
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4. Write a note on Phineas Fletcher.

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9.6 THE CAVALIER POETS

The expression, 'The Tribe of Ben' needs elucidation. It has two key words: 'Ben' and 'Tribe'. 'Ben'
cryptically, stands for Ben Jonson. 'Tribe' means a cohesive group under a chief. Here the leader is
Ben Jonson in the realm of literary art for a number of younger poets of the time. Usually the word

19
'Tribe' is used contemptuously. But here it does not have any pejorative meaning. They, no doubt,
seek inspiration from Ben Jonson and like to call themselves his 'sons' (Pelican Guide to English
Literature, vol. 3). Still they are distinctively individual in their perception. All these poets were
associated with the Court of Charles I. They were also known as Cavalier Poets. The cavaliers were
Royalists and were pitted against the Round heads who were supporters of Cromwell. The faith of
the cavaliers was Anglican and they aligned with the squires. The Roundheads were Puritans and
were confined to the industrial and commercial centres. It is worth noting that the Tribe of Ben was
a part of the cavalier group. All cavalier poets did not belong to the tribe. This discussion confines
itself to Ben's tribe only.

Let us first have an idea of the basic qualities of Ben Jonson's poetry. Ben Jonson's poetry is a blend
of classical discipline and sturdy native inspiration. Ben Jonson is prized for poise, maturity and
civilized grace in his non-dramatic poetry. In his poetry the stress is on the centre of emotion: but
control does not mean the suppression of genuine feelings. He wants a critical control of emotional
experience.

The cavalier poets thus seek to fashion their poetry after Ben Jonson. They, sometimes, also present
a sustained argument in the vein of Donne, and again like Donne, they present the feelings in terms
of images called not from classical mythology as was wont with the early Elizabethans but from
different - branches of knowledge, such as theology, philosophy and natural science. Thus the two
veins of Ben Jonson and John Donne mingle in this poetry in various proportions. It is because of
this that Geoffrey Walton calls this poetry an "aristocratic synthesis" of Ben Jonson and Donne
(The Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol.3). In this poetry we have the upper-class culture of
pre-Commonwealth
England. It is an eminently English poetry, but it, especially in the poems of Suckling and Lovelace,
also embraces the Continental literary traits exemplified by poets like Marino. In the poetry of the
Tribe the elements of elegance and sophistication are tinged with naivety. When emotional
discipline flags, it becomes boisterous and it verges on obscenity. As a result of the slackening of
the classical grip, some of these poems become uneven, awkward and slipshod.

The quintessence of the poetry of the Tribe thus summed up finds its manifestation in various
proportions in four principal talents : Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, John Suckling and Richard
Lovelace.

9.6.1 Robbert Herrick (1591-1674)

Robert Herrick : Herrick's poetry falls into three groups : anatomy poems, religious poems and
epigrams. The last group is insignificant and so our study of Herrick's poetry will center round his
erotic and divine poetry only. In his love poem, To Anthea, he adores his mistress in the Petrarchan
vein:

Bid me to live, and I will live, They

Protestant to be ... Or bid me die, and I will
dare E'en Death, to die for thee.
20
The poet has the singleness of mood of veneration for his lady-love. Though he proclaims himself
to be the 'Son of Ben', he does not appear to possess the Jonsonian attribute of control over emotion.
The typical classical pose and maturity Jonson exhibits in the subtle ordering of emotions is sadly
lacking in this sentimental outpouring of the poet for wooing Anthea. It is a tender and playful
paraphrasing of the simple and unalloyed amorousess of the poet. In his poem on Julia he waxes
lyrical over the silk costume of his beloved, and in an ecstatic ardour breaks forth into

... how quickly flows

That liquefaction of her clothes.

It is the naivety and unpretentiousness of a lover who shows abject servility to his mistress. In this
respect he is close to the Elizabethan songsters. In the poem, The Poetry of Dress, he gives us a
picture of the bewitching beauty of his beloved. The beauty here does not lie in the impeccable
arrangement of the garment the lady is attired. The poet notices with a remarkable effusion of
abounding joy:

A winning wave, deserving note,

In the tempestuous petticoat,

This discovery of beauty in wild civility is not in tune with Ben Jonson's concern for form and
emotional discipline.

Herrick's poem, To Dianeme ushers the reader in a different world suffused with the wit that
tempers Ben Jonson. Here the poet initiates us into a world that is different from the world of
adoration. In this sense he is close to Donne. He wants to confront the beloved on an equal footing
:

Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes which starlike sparkle in their
skies.

He drives the point home to his beloved that all her world of beauty is gone and that she has no
armour against this ineluctable law of change, decay and death. In this poem the poet strikes an
anti-Petrarchan note. Herrick is remembered for his of quoted poem, Corina's going a- Maying. In
this poem, love assumes a greater dimension. It is in this sense that love is depicted in the backdrop
of the greater rhythms of nature involving the sun in its splendid radiance at a dawn. We have
pictures of dew-spangled herbs, trees and many-hewed flowers. Nature is in jollity and it is unwise
to stay indoors. The poet says that to remain unresponsive to the beautious rhythm of nature is an
act of impiety:

'tis sin,
Nay, profanation to keep in,

21
 When as a thousand Virgins on this day
Spring, sooner than the Lark, to fetch in May.

In this poem Herrick moves away from his master, Ben Jonson and goes in for romanticism that
puts a premium on the indissoluble bond of man and nature. It is a celebration of paganism. Here
the poet shakes off the shackle of rules and prescriptions.

Though Herrick in many a lyric is preoccupied with the theme of Carpe diem (i.e. making hay
while the sun shines), he is also aware of the transience and brevity of all, earthly things. This
awareness becomes an obsession with the poet, and it is articulated in poems like To Daffodils and
The Funeral Ribs of Rose. In To Daffodils be says,

Fair daffodils, we weep to see you haste away . .

so soon:

This awareness of the transiehce of life is a prelude to his religious poetry, such as A Thanksgiving
to God for his House and Litanie to the Holy Spirit. Herrick's religious poetry is a simple invocation
to God's grace. He looks upon God as his saviour. He gets succour from God in the moments of
distress. In his religious poetry we do not have conflict between sin and redemption. Elis simple
and naive love for God is depicted in the following lines of the poem, Litanie to the Holy Spirit:

When (God knows) I'm lost about

Either with despair, or doubt Yet before the glasse
be out, Sweet Spirit comfort me.

9.6.2 Thomas Carew (1 594-1639)

Carew may not have the freshness and spontaneity of Herrick, but he outstrips him in point of
workmanship. He has two poetic masters - Ben Jonson and Donne. The debt to Donne lies in the
sustained argumentative evolution of his lyrics and the flexibility of his lines and the influence of
Ben Jonhon is perceptible in matters of grace, urbanity and poise. His love lyrics do not have the
languorousness of Herrick's erotic poetry, but they present a dry intellectual analysis of the
experience of love. Sir Herbert Grierson rightly affirms :

... the poetic ornament of that court of Thomas Carew. This young
careless liver was a careful artist with a deeper vein of thought and feeling
in his temperament than a first reading suggests.

Hazlitt dubs him as an "elegant court triflex" (cited in Crompton - Rickett's History of English
Literature). But F.R. Leavis has all praise for him :

22
 Carew, it seems to me, has claims to more distinction than that
he is commonly accorded. (THE REVALUATION)

In his love poetry Carew, sometimes, comes under the sway of Petrarch as Donne does in his poem,
The Canonization. In the poem, Song, in a vein of adoration, he finds the ever smiling rose (an
impossibility) in the beauty of his beloved. In the last stanza he compares the fragrant bosom of his
beloved to a spicy nest in which the phoenix comes, at last, to die. In the poem, To my inconstant
Mistris, he writes in the way Donne does in his poem, The Flea,. He wants to win the love of the
lady who has broken faith with him. But unlike Donne, Carew is not outrageous and lyrical in his
anti-Petrarchan poems. He is suffused with the court culture and cannot have the raffishness of
Donne. The urbanity of time may also be attributed to the influence of Ben Jonson. Carew uses
religious vocabulary, such as "poor excommunicate",, 'stray faith' and "glory crowned". The poet
has banished the lady from his charmed circle of joy, because she deserted him. Meanwhile he has
found another beloved and finds a great pleasure in the company of the new beloved. He says that
now the former beloved would envy his happy lot and will like to return to him. But now he will
not accept her. Some lines of the poem are double-edged. For example, we may see the following
:

And to my soule, a soule more pure Than thine.. .

If the lover is under an impression that he has a right to label her 'excommunicate' and 'apostate',
he too deserves the same labels. The ironical expression implicit in the expression, "a soule more
pure than thine" is an unwitting acknowledgement of the fact that he, too, is inconstant. This play
of critical intelligence is Carew's indebtedness to Jonson-Donne heritage.

Carew's poem, Maria Wentworth, is a fine elegy. It, perhaps foreshadows the elegy of Thomas
Grey on Richard West and Samuel Johnson's elegy on Dr Levet. It is in many ways superior to
Grey's elegy which at many places tends to sentimentality. Carew's elegy is suffused with the
double strains of Jonson and Donne. The image of Virgin as a bride justifying a chaste poligamy is
a Metaphysical wit. The following lines reflect the civilizing grace of Ben Jonson :

Good to the Poor, to kindred dear, To servants kind, to

friendship clear, To nothing but herself severe.

9.6.3 Sir John Suckling (1609-42)

Like Thomas Carew, Suckling is a court poet. But he is far less urbane and polished than Carew.
However, he is witty and generous. He disarms people by his witty sallies. He is mercurial and
volatile. He has the proten quality of changing his stance in lovemaking.

In the poem, Song, poet is wooing his lady-love who is pale, wan and mute. The poet feels
exasperated when his entreaties fall flat on her. He feels vexed and annoyed and fails to keep his
cool. In sheer rage, he breaks into imprecations:
23
 If of her self she will Love, Nothing can make
her; The Devil1 take her.

In the poem, Sonnet, the poet is love-sick. His mind is so revetted on love that he does not care a
hang for any other consideration:

Make me but mad enough, give me good store Of love. ..

He is in a state of frenzy and says that beauty is a misnomer and a cheat. These expressions are
indicative of the poet's cynical attitude to love. He does not know of any sacred bond subsisting
between the lover and the beloved and in the vein of a typical Retoration rake or gallant arrogates
himself the powers to invent to himself his own concept of beauty and love. In the last stanza the
poet becomes a downright sensualist and uses raw imagery:

'Tis not the meat, but it is the appetite makes

eating a delight,

Thus he loses control over his emotion and does not follow the Jonsonian principle of restraint.

The poem, My dearest Rival is a sustained piece from beginning to end. The poet shows his
argumentative development of' his emotional experience. He has got a rival in love-making. He
lists on an ingenious plan to curb the eccentricity of the beloved and to foil the game of his rival.
He has an understanding with the beloved that they make a joint endeavour to praise the beloved.
They vie with each other in extolling the beauty of the beloved. They continue with this venture till
death knocks at their door. He says to his rival that if he dies before him he will make a will
bequeathing the lady-love to him, and if he outlives the pact he will relinquish his claim to the rival.
He says,

For no one stock can ever serve To

love so much as shee' l deserve.

This poem has a singular place in Suckling's canon of love poetry. This poem is marked by classical
restraint. Here the poet forbears using coarse and brutal expressions. The interlocutor in Dryden's
Essay on Dramatic Poesie says that Suckling uses the language of a gentleman. Probably the
interlocutor has this poem in mind.

9.6.4 Richard Lovelace (161 8-58)

Lovelace is a poet of finer sensibility than Suckling. His indulgence into vulgarity is only casual.
He makes an unbridled use of emotion in his poem, The Scrutinie. He suffers no qualms of
24
conscience in snapping his relation with his lady-love at his sweet will. He took a vow to his
beloved hat he would be constant in lovemaking. But just as the day ended he revoked his
commitment. This forsaking of the pledge 1s wanton and comes within the purview of perjury. But
the poet wants to go scot-free and is not in the least ashamed of riding rough shopover the feelings
of the beloved :

Have I not lov'd thee much and long, A tedious twelve houres
space?. . .
Could I still dote upon thy Face'?

But in his poems like To Lucasta, Going beyond the Seas, To Lucasta, Going to the Warres, and
To Althea, from Prison, Loveless is quite a different poet. In his poem, To Lucasta, Going beyond
the Seas, he speaks of a complete union with his beloved, even at the moments of separation,
reminding us of the two legs of the compasses in Donne's poem A Valediction forbidding mourning.
To Lucusta, Going to the warres is also an affirmation of true love to the beloved. The image of
"the nunnery" is suggestive of the elevated character of love. To Althea, from Prison breaths the
rarefied atmosphere of the Italian poet, "Marino". The poet conjures up the picture of Althea. She
comes to him in prison, riding the wings of poesy. His union with her in the realm of imagination
is ecstatic. The poet shows himself transcending the confinement of the temporal world and
discover bliss in the arms of love.

EXERCISE-V

1. What is meant by the term, "The Tribe of Ben?"

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2. Name the poet who belong to the Tribe of Ben.
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3. Which of the two group is bigger the Tribe of Ben or the cavalier poets
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4. What were the main traits of Ben Jonson's poetry? Confine your answer to twenty words.
25
 _______________________________________________________________
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5. Which sense the poets of the Tribe are similar to John Donne?
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6. Name two poems by Herrick.

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7. Name a poem in which Herrick appears like a romantic poet?

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8. Name four religious poems by Herrick.

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9. Name a poem by Carew in which we have the adoration of the beloved in the petrarchan vein.
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10. Name four poems by Suckling.

26
 _______________________________________________________________
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11. Name four poems by Lovalace.

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12. Write a few words on the poem, My dearest Rival.

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13. Which of the four important members of the Tribe seems to be most uncourtly and vulgar?
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9.7 THE METAPHYSICAL POETS

Seventeenth century in English literature witnesses the emergence of a host of religious poets. They
are Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Marvell, Vaughan and Traherne in their chronological sequence.

You will have long discussions on Donne, Herbert and Marvell later in the block.

9.7.1 Henry Vaughan (1621/22-95)

Vaughan was born at Newton St. Bridget, Brecknockshire in 1621/22. He was the elder of the twins.
His father came of an illustrious Welsh family. The preeminence of the family lay in the chivalry
of one of its members, Sir Thomas Vaughan. Sir Thomas Vaughan fought gallantly in the battle of
Agincourt. He fell a victim to Richard III. He was commemorated by Shakespeare. Very little is
known about his mother. Henry Vaughan had the privilege of passing the early years of his life in
a singularly beautiful and picturesque country. This opportunity of being nurtured in a lovely place
was denied to major Metaphysical poets, such as Donne, Herbert and Crashaw. Herbert saw the
country-life only when be became matured. The urban Donne and the scholastic Crashaw missed
the healing touch of nature.
27
Henry Vaughan had been to Oxford along with his brother, Thomas. Thomas got his B.A. from
oxford, but Henry did not get his B.A. degree. He studied law and medicine, too. He was a Royalist
and participated in the Civil War. He had the experience of being wounded in battle and also of
imprisonment. He felt peat disappointment when he found that the Royalists lost the battle to the
Parliamentarians. He also felt that his prospect of becoming a lawyer was belied. His frustration
mounted all the more when two of his close friends died in military operations. His suffering was
exacerbated with the untimely death of his brother and he also became vulnerable to illness,
references to which are there in many a poem. All these facts of his private life- soldiering,
protracted illness, the death of his brother and the failure of the Royalist cause - were the shaping
spirit of his imagination. He got a very disappointing picture of life, violent and unjust. This resulted
into an indignant contemplation of life, the manifestation of which is noticeable in the recurrent
account of the fall of man from the state of grace in his poetry. It is this experience of
disenchantment with the ways of man that is at the root of his moral preoccupation. His saddening
experiences changed the course of his life. The Henry Vaughan of early days who mixed with the
gay Cavaliers and bacchanalian wits found himself moving in a new direction. His gait became
different, he became sober and charted a new path for himself. This change in him was further
reinforced by a lot of literary activities he did from 1647 to 1650. This period is the watershed in
his life. During this period he makes a lot of translations of classics. These translations hasten the
spiritual change in him. He makes a translation of two very substantial essays by Plutarch one of
which relates to the diseases of the mind and the body. He develops a stoic point of view with a
good deal of warmth and shrewdness. He translates Guevara's The Praise and
Happiness of the Country-life. In keeping with the incipient mood, he translates Flores Solitudes
by Nierembergins. This relates to the theme of solitude and retirement. Through the translation of
Anslen's Man and Glory he offers a sterner fare. This book deals with the theme of temptation of
the world. He also translates the book titled The World Condemned. This, too, deals with the
religious theme of guilt and salvation. He also makes a translation of Nolius's Hermetical Physick.
This book is metaphysical in character and tells us about the relation of God, nature and man. His
long contact with the theological works has a chastening effect in him. He feels himself roused into
a new life of bounding spiritual energy. With his new frame of mind, he beseeches his readers not
to read his works written prior to 1647. There are at least ten passages in his poetry that suggest a
consciousness that he has been looking for truth in, a wrong place, i.e, in the paths of magic:

And my false Magic, which I did believe Any mystic Lyes to

Saturn I do give.

We may divide Henry Vaughan's poetic career into three phases. The first phase is that of gay and
elegant love lyrics which were published in 1646. The second phase is the core of Vaughan's poetry
stretching from 1647 to 1650. This group of poems is labelled Silex Scintillans. This anthology is
enlarged in 1655 with the poet's preface to it. The third phase is known as "Thalia Redeviva". This
was published in 1678. This group is considered to be of little value. This volume also includes
some erotic poems which were written in the first phase. The poems of the first group owe their
origin to the poetic fashion of the time. Vaughan seems to have drunk with the wits and Swaggered
down the streets with some of his bohemian friends. These poems are in the vein of Donne's early
love lyrics devoted to the wooing of the mistress in an outrageous and cynical manner. The poem,

28
To Amoret gone from him is a fine specimen of the lover trying to woo his beloved by cogent
resoning. The poet seems to attempt an imitation of Donne's amatory verses. The poems of this
phase are marked by playful tenderness without the sensuous immediacy and rawness of Donne's
poetry. But later Vaughan is convinced of the meaninglessness of these poems. So he discards the
fashion of amorous verses and goes in for real poetry that comes out in the form of Silex Scintillans.
1t 'is in this, phase of poetry that the poet finds his voice and discovers a poetic medium for making
articulate the vision incubating in his psyche. The kind of experience that the poems depicts is
control to his Muse. The poems generally present Vaughan's meditation on nature or on right or
eternity or death or the presence of God in His Creation. In the preface to the enlarged edition of
Silex Scintillans, Vaughan acknowledges his debt to Herbert in no uncertain terms and attributes
the change in his poetic course to Herbert :

The first, that with any effectual success attempted a diversion of this foul
and overflowing stream (i.e. of 'witty' amatory verse), was the blessed man,
Mr. George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained many pious Converts
(of whom I am the least) and gave the first check to a most . flourishing wit
of his time. (cited in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vo1.3)

This candid statement of Vaughan prejudices the minds of many a critic of Vaughan who, on the
basis of some poetic expressions of Vaughan having resemblance with Herbert's, try to establish
that Vaughan's poetry is derivative. They maintain that Vaughan chooses the themes and titles of
Herbert's poetry portrayed in a tame manner, makes a rehash of what Herbert does in his poetry. A
critic like Hutchinson goes to the extent of remarking that he finds no other example of a poet who
has so extensively borrowed from his model. (Cited in Boris Ford's (ed.), From Donne to Marvell)
"Borrowing" is not the right word here, because Vaughan is not a plagiarist who steals lines from
a passages 'from others and calls them his own. There is a kinship between Vaughan and Herbert
in point of moral concern for taking a lesson from nature for the refashioning-of man in the moral
mould. This is the meeting point between the two poets. Soon-after they part company and chart
their ways of coming to grips with their vision in their own distinctive ways. Herbert's propensity
is towards classical exactness and he does not have the flair for the intuitive apprehension of
mystery that resides at the care of the universe as Vaughan does. Vaughan's concern is much more
for the restoration of the commerce of heaven and earth that man has snapped willfully. In this
restoration of the salutary intercourse of heaven and earth, his love of the picturesque native country
comes to his resque.

Vaughan's view of nature is difficult to understand without an acquaintance with his view of man.
In the poem, Man he talks about the unstable character of man:

He hath no root, nor to one place is ty'd,

But ever restless and Irregular
About this Earth doth run and ride,

It is painful to contemplate the spectacle of the rebelliousness of man, his stubbornness to hearken
to God's commandments and his proclivity to chase strange gods of fleshly appetite. This wanton
defiance of man sunk in the mire of vile passions the poet puts against the process of nature which
29
has a regularity and constancy about it. The first stanza of the poem, Man is about the steadfastness
of the ordinary things of nature, such as birds which are like "watchful clocks" dividing time in a
noiseless and imperceptible manner, the bees that '"get home and hive" at night and the flowers that
"rise with the sun". The poet longs for the steadfastness of' the objects of nature that will have a
beneficial influence on man by arresting his straying from the path of moral rectitude. He says,

I would (said I) my God would give

The staidness of these things to man!‟ for these
To his divine appointments ever cleave,

The spectacle is both sublime and pathetic. It is sublime in the sense that the Creator has set man
above all the rest of the creation, and it is pathetic in the sense that man becomes oblivious of his
glorious destiny that he knocks at all doors, strays and roams.

In the poem, Cock-crowing, the poet in the vein of the German mystic, Boehme, talks about the
unbreakable continuum subsisting between heaven and earth. Vaughan does not share the belief of
a Christian Platonist who believes in the theory of ascension from the little world of man to the
world of divinity. His is a conception of grace in descending order, meaning thereby that God's
benedictions shower down from the top and the poem, Cock-crowing is a fine embodiment of the
spark of divinity transfiguring in the ordinary cock. In this poem the poet presents the quintessence
of his vision which in its capacious fold contains a remarkable intermingling of the terrestrial and
.the supernatural. At the outset the poet talks about the divine magnatism that works in the cock all
night and makes him dream of Paradise and light. The cock remains undaunted in the night and its
entire attention is riveted on the coming of the dawn in all its splendour and glory. It has an undying
knack for anticipating the coming of the day in all its radiance, and this sense of having a
premonition of the coming down has come to him from the Lord who is the Father of lights:

Father of lights.‟ What Sunnie seeds,

What glance of the day hast thou confin‟d Into this bird?

In the life of the cock the rapport with the Lord of Creation is intact, but the tragedy with the world
of man is that a veil keeps off the grandeur of God from him, and consequently, for want of divine
emanation, his life remains folded in darkness :

Only this veyle which thou hast broke,

And must be broken yet in me,
This veyle, I say, is all the cloke
And cloud which shadows thee from me.

Here Vaughan is very much like the penitent Donne or Herbert ashamed of his willed remoteness
from the Maker. He is also akin to them in invoking divine ministration for his redemption :

30
 O take it off!' Make no delay,
But brush me with light, that I
May shine unto a perfect day,

Henry Vaughan's vision is also perceptible in his distinctive contemplation of death. Generally
death is considered to be a terrible reality of which we are afraid. But for Vaughan death has got a
splendour of its own, and in this treatment of death he is like Donne in some measure in the sense
that Donnet, too, views death as a benign force which enfranchises the captive soul and enables it
to experience felicity. In her book Metaphysical Poets, Helen C. White rightly observes that Henry
Vaughan exhibits the characteristic seventeenth century "Mortuaty splendour" and, in a typical
Metaphysical vein, views death as the gate to the radiance of eternity. In the poem, a Ascension
Hymn, Vaughan hails death as a lovely, beautiful and righteous thing:

Dear, beautious death! the jewel of the just.

In a bid to elaborate the beneficial idea of death the poet gives the image of a sepulchre or tomb
and that of a star. The star is the soul and the tomb is the body. If the star is put into the narrow
confines of a tomb, its light is circumscribed, but if it comes out of the cribbed and confined cell
of the tomb; its light increases. In a similar manner, the soul comes out of the body after death and
finds itself in its full Pre-Restoration glory. But this glorification of death need not be taken as a
morbid preoccupation of a psychopath,, it should rather be viewed as a desire for a richer life of
the spirit. The view of death as the release of the spirit from the bondage of material existence has
hardly anywhere been expressed so glowingly.

Vaughan's is a nature-mysticism. It has some kinship with the Blakian universe as regards mystical
contemplation. This mysticism finds a beautiful account in the poem, The Retreat In this poem,
Vaughan's intuitive perception of eternity in "some gilded cloud, or flowers" unfolds his mystical
vision. In many of his poems he talks about the radical failure of the ratiocinative faculty in man to
comprehend the dynamics of the universe shrouded in mystery. He has an intense desire for
cleansing the dusky and blurred glass of life so that he may have a glimpse of the bright face of
God. In the poem, The Retreat, he imagines the days of purity when the soul was free of all blemish
and he wanted to recapture the primal innocence that animated his soul either in the pre-natal state
or in the state of childhood:

Happy those early dayes! when I Shin'd in my Angellinfancy.

Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,

Vaughan's mystical vision is sometimes supposed to be vague and shadowy. It is thought that his
picture is hazy and there is nothing to clutch at. But Vaughan‟s mysticism is not a flight into the
realm of the inane. In the poem, The Retreat, the lines,

But felt through all this fleshly dresse Bright shoots of everlastingness.
31
Give a lie to the misconception about his mysticism as being sloppy and fluid. The awareness of
eternity here and now is a rebuff to those who take Vaughan's mysticism with a grain of salt.
Compared with an identical experience of 'angel infancy' in Wordsworth's Immortality Ode
Vaughan's contemplation has got definitiveness about it. Wordsworth may be charged with
vagueness and a mental bombast, but Vaughan's The Retreat has got an experience realised in terms
of concrete immediacy in the images of "the bright stroots of everlastingness" and the unsteady gait
of a man inebriated who in his bed to move forward goes two steps backward.

It is generally believed that Vughan's poems have a brilliant beginning and a brilliant ending,
whereas in between the two there is a lack of a sustained development of the idea from the
beginning to the end. Vaughan is supposed to be a poet of flashes, one who sees visions but
miserably fails when the question of incarnating that vision in terms of a concrete situation comes.
The opening line, like the following:

I saw eternity the other night (From The World)

impresses the reader, but the poem does not become a sustained piece. It turns out to be a struggling
one leaving the impression of a curious tameness and flatness on the reader. The vision that flashes
like a wonderful jet in the beginning experiences a swift extinction. But this is not true of all poems
of Vaughan. He distinguishes himself on the plane of sensibility. He is not as good on the reflective
level as he is on the level of sensibility. However, in a few notable poems, such as "Man", "Peace",
“Regeneration", "Cock-crowing", "The Retreat" and "The
Night", he exhibits his capacity for sustaining his inspiration from start to finish. It is not any lack
of faith in ecstasy, nor is it any failure of taste for the heights. It is a matter of Metaphysical heritage
for keeping both heaven and home in sight. Vaughan is also accused of being loose in the texture
of his structure. His poetry has beautiful phrases or purple patches. But he lacks the compression
of Herbert. Compared with the taut and firm lines of Herbert, Vaughan's lines are diffuse and limp.
For example, we may see the following lines from Vughan's "Night" :

Through that pure vision - shrine,

That sacred vail drawn o'r thy glorious noon.
That men might look and live a Glo-worms Shine,

But, at times, Vughan, too, succeeds in presenting lines that are precise and compact. For example,
we may see the under-mentioned lines from Regeneration,

The unthrift Sunne shot vitall gold

Checqur'd with Showie fleeces,
1 The aire was all in spice
And every bush
A garland wore.
32
Like Crashew's, Vaughan's vocabulary is limited and somewhat monotonous. There is a tendency
in both Crashaw and Vaughan to use words like 'herb' and 'star' in a special, almost liturgical
meaning. But the emotional aura is much more extensive.

9.7.2 Richard Crashaw (1612/13-49)

Richard Crashaw was born in England in 1612/13. He was the son of William Crashaw, a famous
Anglican preacher and writer of conspicuous Puritan sympathies. William Crashaw was also noted
for his passionate participation in the acrimonious debate of the time relating to the repugnance to
the papal authority. The initial development of the mind of Richard took place in the scholastic
atmosphere of the family. The foundation of his education was laid in the father's library in White
chapel;. The staunch and sincere crusading spirit of the father affected the sensibility of the son.
The family ambience was afflicted with a series of setbacks, and this had a lasting impact on the
mind of Richard. When he was three or four years old, his mother died. But the step-mother was
there to supplant his mother with tenderness and affection. His father also died a premature death,
leaving Richard under the guardianship of two distinguished lawyers who were the friends of his
father's Temple days. Signor Praz attributes something of his susceptibility to maternal tenderness
to recurrent losses in the family. Crashaw's letter containing the nostalgic expression "my dearest
mother'' and his praises of Teresa of Avila and the Virgin is indicative of his craving for maternal
love. The tragic incidents in the family made him highly sensitive. 'The first turning point in his
life after his father's death was his acceptance for admission to the Charter house in 1629. His stay
at Charterhouse had a lot to do with the formation of his religious sensibility. Sunday exercises
were a part of the curriculum, and as a part of this course, seniors were required to make verses in
Latin and Greek on the Gospel and the Epistle of the day. Richard Crashaw proved his merit by
being elected to the Greek scholarship at the college on October 6,1631. He did matriculation in
the next year as a pensioner at Pembroke College, Cambridge. With a considerable reputation as a
youthful poet he came to the university. He made many contributions to the collections of elegies
in his first year. In the address prefixed to his "Epigrammata Sacra, he makes a declaration of his
objectives in making poetry. He speaks of his unflinching resolve to devote himself to sacred
poetry. He was greatly influenced by Little Gidding. Little Gidding was a circle of like-minded
spirits suffused with religious feelings. It was founded by Nicholas Ferrar. This circle sought to put
a primium on monasticism and religious life in the Protestant England. Nicholas Ferrar was a friend
of Richard's father. Little Gidding also ministered to the spiritual nourishment of George Herbert.
Ferrar was an Anglican, but he was not prejudiced against Chatholics. Like Ferrar, Crashaw was
an Anglican scrupulously refraining from taking upon Pope as Anti- Christ.

The poetry of Crashaw falls into three groups. The first group is called
"Epigrmmata
Sacra". This was published in 1634.

This anthology contains poems that are wholly Latin and wholly sacred. The second anthology
"steps to the Temple" was published in 1646 and was enlarged in 1648. This book is a mixture of
Latin and English poems. Unlike the preceding anthology, this anthology includes both secular and
33
religious poems. The third collection is known as "The Delights of Muses". This is also a mixture
of sacred and prophane themes. The fourth anthology was titled "The Carmen Deo Nostro." It was
published in 1652. The poems in this group re exclusively sacred and English. It is an outcome of
the poet's realisation that his Muse will be mere at home in the vernacular than in Latin. .

A perusal of his sacred poetry gives us an idea that Crashaw's idea of God is different from Donne's
and Herbert's. Donne has got the conception of a wrathful God intent on punishing those who go
against his commandments. Donne suffers from deep anguish resulting from his nagging sense of
sin and is, generally, afraid that the wrathful God will not absolve him of his sins. The sense of sin
is also the prime alienation of man from God in Herbert's poetry. But Crashaw is altogether a
different breed. He is a radiant spirit who feels perfectly assured of his salvation in God. It is
probably in only one poem by Crashaw, i.e. Our Lord in his Circumcision to His Father that God
is wrathful. Crashaw's God is generally the God of love who cannot bear to see the misery of this
Creation. In his poem, Christas Nimia, God, the emblem of love, shows largesse on people
irrespective of their deeds in this world:

Why shoudst thou bow thy awful1 brest to see

Why mine own madnesses have Done with mee (From The steps to Temple).

In the poem, A letter to the Countess Denbigh, Crashaw's all-benign and allforgiving God is ready
to embrass the hesitant man:

Disband dull Fears, give Faith the day:

To save your life, Kill your Delay.
(From The Carmen Deo Nostro)

In his conception of a loving God, Crashaw owes much to Marino, the Spanish poet, who in his
poem, Sospetto D 'Herode (1637), gives an identical conception of God:

That the unmeasur'd God so low should sinke, As prisoner in few

poore Rags to Lye. .

The idea is that God is bountiful even in granting pardons. Crashaw seems to have been highly
impressed by God's forgiveness and His readiness to provide succour to the needy.

In his poem Hymn to St. Teresa the poet presents a highly exalted account of the life of St. Teresa
of Avila. Some critics feel that it is a resume of the great sacrifice of St. Teresa and that it has
nothing to do with the personal predicament of Crashaw. But a careful reading of the poem makes
it manifest that through this account of Teresa's sacrifices for the fulfilment of the lofty ideal of
love and sacrifice, Crashaw is enacting the drama taking place in his own soul. St. Teresa is the
alter ego of Crashaw. We have an idea of the poet's radiant spirit taling about the uplifting
inspiration emanating from St. Teresa. The poet expresses his sense of wonder and delight in a
fellow creature and makes an effort to analyse the sources of power that he has felt in the words of
34
the saint. He has a feeling that Divine love has kindled Teresa's heart and that Teresa's fire has
kindled his heart. In the hymn Crashaw says,

Each heavenly word whose lid flame

Our hard Heart shall strike fire, the same Shall flourish on
thy browes, and be Both fire to us and flame to thee.

Teresa is a persona in the poem enacting the spiritual turmoil in the heart of the poet. Making St.
Teresa the protagonist of the poem is a device used for maintaining an aesthetic distance from the
poet. It is a method for making his personal struggle impersonal in an indirect and oblige manner.
Unlike Donne and Herbert, Crashaw, in his devotional poetry, talks least about his personal agony.
His poetry is fundamentally contemplative and effective. This as put of his poetry gives rise to a
charge against him that his poetry has little intellectual content.

But this charge is not rooted in fact. Crashaw is a profound scholar and is trained in theological
disciplines. His poems are full of religious contemplation and full of intellectual contents. Some
critics see in excess of sentimentality in Crashaw's poetry. But actually it is not so. Crashaw's uses
some poetic devices that presently his poems from being sentimental. The preponderance of
antithetical expression impart a sort of stringency to his poems and neutralize the effects of
emotion. For example, we may see the following:

Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet (From The Weeper) and

Of a sweet and subtle Pain: of intolerable joyes:
(from Hymn to Teresa)
Crashaw's adept handling of paradoxes is a typical metaphysical trait. The line,
Fountain and garden in one face (From The Weeper)

has the intellectual draught breathing dry air into the clammy universe of The
Weeper. Lines like this save Crashaw's poetry from lapsing into a riot of emotions,

One charge against Crashaw's that his poetry abounds in abstractions. This charge seems tenable.
The words Crashaw uses lack the nerve and sinew of the English Language. The forthrightness and
masculinity of Saxon words are absent from his poetry. Some sort of remoteness is there in hearing
in the studied and impersonal diction.

Crashaw has the great gift of he sheer power of music. The little and cadence constitute the secret
of his poetry. His images are not well realized. But it does not mean that the fumbles and gropes in
the realm of uncertainty. What is a lacking in the immediacy and concretness of imagery is made
up by the uplifting and ecstatic rhythm of the life.

35
12.7.3 Thomas Traherne (1637/8 - 74)

Despite extensive researches into the life of Thomas Traherne, very little is known of it definitively.
The place and date of his birth are unknown. However, scanty evidence gleaned from various
sources tell us that Traherne was the soil of a shoemaker of Hereford. His family was connected
with the ancient family of the same name that for three centuries owned Middlecourt, at
Lugwardine, a mile from Hereford. It is also supposed that Traherne had some Welsh blood in him.
Information goes that the Traherne family was well off and prosperous and that Thomas Traherne
had the fortune of having a happy boyhood. On March 1, 1652 he entered Brasenos College,
Oxford, the haunt of the Puritans of the time. He did his B.A. from there in 1567. His stay at Oxford
provided him with a great opportunity for saturating himself with the classics. The subject that
endeared to him was Platonic philosophy. His early interest also centred round Socrates and the
Stoics. On doing his B.A. he came in contact with Annabella, the Dowager Countess of Kent who
offered him the living at Credenhill (supposedly a parish). In his Centuries of Meditations, he tells
us about his setting down in the country with a contented heart. He was satisfied with the austere
and spartan life m the country. He spoke of his firm determination to be content with ten pounds a
year, some leather clothes, bread and water. In this strict regimen, he was in quest of felicity. He
had a Thoreau-like vision. In 1661, he did his M.A. and in 1669 he did Bachelor of Divinity. The
range and kind of scholarship he displayed implied a prolonged sojourne in a well-stocked library
at a parsonage. In the library he read Thomas A.Kemps, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Church Fathers,
especially St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Augustine, St. Anslem, St. Thomas Aquinas and Luther. The
University Note Books tell us about Traherne's readings in Seneca, Plato, Plutarch, Aristotle, Pico,
della, Mirandola and the Hermetic philosophy. The Bible also formed an integral part of his life
and he made use of it in his daily meditation. His books, Roman Forgeries (1673), Christian Ethicks
(1675) and A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation (1699) are suggestive of his wide and extensive
reading not only of religious literature but also of political and social upheaval of the time. In
recognition of his talent, Sir Orlando Bridgman made him chaplain. But unfortunately, Sir
Bridgman himself suffered an eclipse and moved to London, accompanied by Traherne. This was
a blessing in disguise for Treherne who got an opportunity of mixing with the London elite. He
made a mingling of the felicity of the rural retreat with the stark reality he encountered in the
mercantile world. In Christian Ethicks, he is not a dreamer enjoying isolation and solitude, but a
philosopher and critic, intensely aware of and responsive to the intellectual currents of his day. On
Bridgman's retirement in 1672 he accompanied him to Teddington, Middlesex where he died in
1674. He had a row of five houses which he donated to the poor. This act of munificence is
suggestive of certain unworldiness which pervades everything he wrote.

Traherne is one of the most intensely personal poets of the time. In this respect, he surpasses even
Donne. In Donne, we are aware of a tension between his selfconsciousness and his desire to
transcend himself. But in Traherne, the impression is that of a poet who is obsessed with the
compulsive course of selfarticulation in the lyrical form. Traherne is a man of revelation, and the
heart of that revelation is his own experience. He is both, a prophet as well as a poet. Like Henry
Vaughan and Wordsworth, he tells us about the experience of innocence either of childhood or of
the life before birth. This experience is Edenic. His insatiable desire for recapturing the felicity
which has something celestial about it endows his poetry with a mystical dimension. In his poetry,
the reader feels confronted with the overwhelming consciousness of the presence of God in His
Creation. Traherne outdoes Vaughan and Wordsworth in making the reader feel this immanence of
36
God in His Creation with a sense of urgency that is difficult to match. In Vaughan's The Retreat,
the desire to tread the ancient track to catch a glimpse of the shady city of palm trees gets impaired
by the sway of intoxication with sensual pleasures. The see-saw rhythm bodes well for the pilgrim
embarking on the journey to the place of his birth in Paradise. In Wordsworth's Immortality Ode,
shades of the prison house descend on the growing boy and the landscape becomes murky, despite
the realisation that the world of vile passions is not his original home. But in Traherne there is no
uncertainty, no second thought, no succumbing to temptation and no procrastination in the
attainment of felicity. The confident pilgrim in his poem, On News, has fastened his eyes on the
priceless treasure in a foreign country :

My very Joys themselves, my forren Treasure, .

Or els did bear them on their Wings;
With so much Joy they came, with so much Pleasure.

The poet says that the treasures of the temporal world hold no attention for him :

. . .(since nought did please

I knew.) my Bliss did stand.

To him God is the 'Cream', the 'Gem', the 'Diadem' and the 'Ring' enclosing all that belong to the
material world (From On News). He says that the Heavenly Eye (From Centuries of Meditation) is
much wider than the sky and that it oversees everything. There is a joyous acquiescence into God
who is the Alpha and Omega of everything. In the poem, Hosanna, Traherne speaks of the
sovereignty of God :

No more shall Walls, no more shall Walls confine That glorious soul which
in my Flesh doth shine.

Henry Vaughan compares the body to a tomb and the soul to a star and says that the star remains
eclipsed in the tomb. But Traherne's faith in God makes him declare that the walls do not have the
power to keep the soul from sending out light. This shows that the poet's faith in God is unflinching.

To Traherne, all aspects of human experience, apart from the adoration of God, are secondary,
derivative and ancillary. When the commerce of the human soul with the Divine ceases, people
become blind and fall prey to vile passions. In this state of delusion they lake the sham for the real.
Like Bunyan he movingly pictures people groping about in darkness, and says that salvation resides
in God. Traherne's mystical experience gives him a distinctive character. He feels that the joy and
illumination he experiences is not self-regarding. He believes that the joy of this ineffable order
increases by common sharing and does not, like goods of this world, diminish by use. Felicity is to
be reached out to all, because its real value lies in the communal sharing:

The light which on ten thousand faces shine

37
 The Beams which crown ten thousand vines
With Glory and delight, appear
As if they were
Reflected only from there all for me That a Greater Beauty there
might see.
(From Centuries of Meditation)

The poem, Shadows in the water shows the criss-cross pattern of Traheme's self- consciousness in
a typical Donne manner. It is only Donne of all other Metaphysicals who come closer to Traherne
in respect of the adroit playing of one attitude against another. In this poem, the poet is on the brink
of a pool of water and broods over the possibilities of abstruse and bizz are possibilities of life. The
paradoxical play of intithetical ideas is beautifully reflected as in the following :

Beneath the Water People drown'd,

Yet with another Hev'n crown'd,

In the concluding stanza of the poem Traherne's heightened consciousness of nature, the treasure
house of the unknown joy is embodied in his becoming one with the purpling stream. This rapport
with the sweet murmur of the rill is possible when the thin 'Skin' is broken. Earlier in the poem the
poet speaks of the intervening barrier of a film that keeps off the poet from the other world. The
film reminds us of Vaughan's veil that keeps off a man's soul from the Divine.

Traherne is not an accomplished craftsman. Be does not have the native endowment of a poet
consciously manipulating his materials into a design. His poetic genius feels at home in the couplet
form, and when he comes to the composition of spacious stanzas, he fails. Traherne comes towards
the end of the Metaphysical movement when the sensibility of England is moving towards
plainness. So he is also close to Cowley and his disciples whose writings are marked by clearness,
coolness and simplicity. He is good at writing couplets. In respect of musical quality, Traherne is
close to the Caroline poets. The poems that he writes in praise of God are exceedingly moving.

EXERCISE-VI

1. Bring out some points of difference between the religious poetry of Donne and that of Herbert.
_______________________________________________________________
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_______________________________________________________________

2. Which of the two Marvell is closer to ----- Donne or Herbert?

_______________________________________________________________

38
 _______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________

3. When did Henry Vaughan die?

_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
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_______________________________________________________________

4. Name works that Vaughan translated in English.

_______________________________________________________________
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_______________________________________________________________

5. Name two poems by Vaughan

_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
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_______________________________________________________________

6. Who wrote the following

a. Silex Scintillanas
b. Thalia Redeviva.
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7. Give the main idea of the poem, Cockcrowing.

_______________________________________________________________
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8. When was Crashaw born?

_______________________________________________________________
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39
 _______________________________________________________________
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9. In which language was the first anthology of Crashaw written?

_______________________________________________________________
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_______________________________________________________________

10. In which sense Crashaw's idea of God is different from those of Donne and Herbert?
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
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11. Who wrote the following :

a. Centuries of Meditations
b. Shadows in the Water.
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_______________________________________________________________
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9.8 THE EARLY AUGUSTANS

T.S. Eliot states a basic fact of life when he says that sensibility alters from generation to generation.
This change in sensibility necessitates a corresponding change in poetic medium. Probably mid-
seventeenth century poets like Waller, Davenant, Denham and Cowley perceive a change in the
sensibility of the people and makes an artistic reflection of this changed awareness in their poetry.
Their poetry points to a change in favour of order and decorum both literary and social. In their
poetry we have a predominance of reason and this preoccupation with reason becomes the hallmark
of the poetry of the eighteenth century. It is in this sense that these poets are called the precursors
of the Augustan poetry. In the preceding and the contemporary Metaphysical poetry (some
Metaphysical poets were contemporaries with them) the focus is on the inner vibration of man, but
in this poetry the centre of interest shifts towards the social aspect of man. The Metaphysical wit
involving cerebral quibbling gives way to epigrammatic neatness. Instead of the passionate thought
of the Metaphysical we have a polite rationality and a good sense. The eloquent rhetoric of the
40
Metaphysical is replaced by a tone of polite discussion. Things are amenable to rational argument
and wit is regulated by a sense of good form. Unlike the Metaphysicals, these poets do not revel in
ransacking the world for images expressive of their unusual perceptions. They focus their attention
on the general conceptions of life. They take their cue from the experimental philosophy of Bacon.
Abraham Cowley, a leading poet in this group, is a founder member of the Royal Society that lays
emphasis on getting knowledge through observation. Hobbes's rationalism is there as a great assault
on the vagaeries of imagination. This incipient growth of rationalism comes as a great foil to the
playing up of the imaginative faculty that sometimes runs into an excess in the Metaphysical poetry.

9.8.1 Edmund Waller (1605/6-87)

Waller writes lyrics in the vein of the cavaliers like Suckling and Lovelace. But his emotion is not
unrestrained. He puts his emotional experience to scrutiny.

In his poem, The selfe-banished the poet languishes in love for a lady for sometime. But his wooings
evoke no response. His attempt to distance himself from her proves futile. The memories revive
and hurt him. We have an impression that the poet has been wronged by the lady-love, but the
penultimate stanza springs a surprise. The last line,

The vow I made to love you too

brings the cat out of the poet's bag. It is now clear that the poet has affairs also with another
woman.

In the poem, Song, the poet takes a dig at a beauty who is proud of spurning the offer of love.
Unlike the Metaphysicals, he takes the familiar image of rose, and says that a lovely lady who is
unresponsive to lovers is a rose flower blooming in the wilderness of a desert and dying unwept
and unsung. He offers a counsel to the beauties of the world:

Bid her come forth,

Suffer her selfe to bee desir'd,
And not blush so to be admir'd

In the Metaphysical the stress is on the presentation of individual experiences, but in the hands of
poets like Waller the personal experience merges into the experiences of the common people.

Waller also wrote divine poems. His poem, Of the Last Verses, is about the wisdom that comes
with old age. It gives us the story of a man whose passions are spent and whose visions are
unclouded. The man has been compared to a dark cottage, battered and decayed. The chinks in the
door of the cottage admit the rayof the sun. The ray is the light of wisdom that drives out the
darkness of ignorance that was thickened by vile passions. The conclusion of the poem reminds us
of the concluding line of Sophocles's Antigone that have been uttered by the chorus :
41
 We learn when we grow old.

There, we have pride, instead of passions, that clouds the vision of the protagonist.

This poem has been written in complete. The pair of iambic pentameters rhyming together is foil
to the waywardness of emotions. The couplet thus keeps exuberance under check. Thus Waller
earns the credit for reforming the numbers. He can also make the couplet supple by using
enjambment (or run on) as he does in the following:

No Mortal Parts are requisite to raise Her.. .

This reminds us of John Donne who is in the habit of using enjambents (explained in units 13 and
14). This also shows that the co-currents of literature have overlapping boundaries and they are
bound to be affected by each other (or one another), though in some measure only.

9.8.2 Sir William Davenant (1606-68)

Davenant wrote both secular and religious poems.

For the Lady, Olivia Porter is a fine specimen of his love poetry. Endimion Porter has an intense
desire to send a new year's gift to his wife, Olivia Porter. He wants to give her the tribute of a white
''Emline" and orders his men to hunt the ermine. He also sends his men to climb up a rock and bring
a star contracted in a diamond. But he says that the eyes of Olivia outshine the stars. He thinks of
presenting her pearls brought from the sea, but he realises that the tears of his wife are like pearls.
He also realises that his images are hyperbolic and so he comes down to the world of reality :

How I command? How slowly they obey? The churlish

Tartar will not hunt today: Nor will that lazy sallow
Indian strive
To climb the rock, nor that dull Negro dive.

The antithetical statements in the first line of the quotation are played off against each other and,
in a mock-heroic vein bring the poet back to the waking world. The heroic couplets give a compact
form to the riot of emotions the poet indulges himself 1n.

The poem, The Christian's reply to the Philosopher relates to the clash of body and soul, and also
to reason and faith. He says that our body is the seat of passions and passions are like mists that
darken the vision. The poet tries hard to move towards the light of divinity, but the progress is
tardy. At last he looks towards death as A short dark passage to Eternal Light.

42
Allied with this theme of death as the harbinger of a new life is the theme of dry reason made
mellowed by faith.

9. 8.3 Sir John Denhim (1615-69)

Denham is often associated with Waller. Both are regarded as the pioneers of the classical poetry
from Dryden to Johnson. Pope sums of the chief attributes of the two in the following words:

Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness

Like Waller, Denham goes in for correctness and decorum. His primary concern is for common
sense and good form. The measured and deliberate movement of his verse proclaims the advent of
a new era. His poem, Cooper's Hill is a specimen of the careful art involved in the making of the
couplets, the appropriate medium for his controlled feelings. From the vantage point of the summit
of the hill he looks at the landscape. But the painting of the landscape is different from the exuberant
fantasy of either a Sidney or a Spenser. There is a skilful mingling of the descriptive and the
reflective strains. The description of Runnymade brings to mind the historical associations of the
place. During the process of rumination, the matter of kingship also comes. Johnson is full of praise
for Denhams Cooper Hill and looks upon him as the initiator of the new genre of local poetry. The
meticulous care that Denham employees in the fashioning of his couplets is evident from the
following extract from Cooper 's Hill.

Ocould I flow like thee and make thy stream My great example, as it is
my theme!
Though deep, yet clear, though gentle yet not dull Strong without rage, without
overflowing full.

The simple and direct diction is governed by the requirement of sense. The assortment of words
having antithetical meanings are telescoped together in expressions like "though deep yet clear,"
though gentle yet not dull" and "strong without rage”. The couplet becomes a poetic instrument for
describing things with a great precision and conciseness.

9.8.4 Abraham Cowley (1618-67)

Cowley stands at the cross roads of transition, and as such, his poetry shows the traits of both - the
Metaphysical poetry and the Augustan poetry. He has fondness for the Metaphysical conceit of
Donne. He also has a growing taste for physical science and rationalism. He is a great friend of
Hobbes and a great admirer of Bacon. He is one of the founder members of the Royal Society. The
Society aims at the acquisition of scientific knowledge. It also aims at the invention of a style that
is simple, natural, precise and concentrated, bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness
as they can. The language is a common man's language. It is not the language of wits.

43
Though Cowley shows the influence of Donne in him, he does not hesitate in heralding a new order.
This order lays emphasis on Reason, Nature and Truth.

In the poem, Ode: of Wit he presents wit in a manner that is quite different from that of the
Metaphysical. The attributes of wit, according to him are Reason, agreement, harmony and lack of
Discord or confusion. It is a serene and steady contemplation life. In the poem, The Change the
poet gives a realistic picture of love. The poem marked by a genuineness of feelings. Reason and
common sense make their presence felt in the poem. The poet is aware of the pitfalls underlying
the charming surface love. The apparently beautiful beloved is a prisoner of Pride, Malice and
Inconstancy. The case of the lover is completely different. He looks ravaged by despair, grief and
fear, but he harbours profound love in his heart. This critical examination of the theme of love
anticipates the character of Belinda in Pope's The Rape of the Lock.

The classical bent of Cowley is seen in poems like On the Death of Mr Crashaw and On the Death
of Mr. William Hervey. The stateliness of diction in which he pays a tribute to Crashaw is classical
in tone :

Thou from low earth in nobler Flame didst rise And

like Elijah, mount Alive the skies.
Elisha - like (but with a wish much less,
More fit thy Greatness, and my Littleness)

The couplet form saves the elegiac strain from becoming too morose and gloomy. The
magniloquence of diction typical of a neo-classical poem has an uplifting effect

EXERCISE VII

1. Write a brief note on the characteristics of the Early Augustan poetry.

_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________

2. Who wrote the following poems :

a. The selfe-banished
b. Of the Last Verses
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44
3. Write a few lines on the poem, The self-banished.
_______________________________________________________________
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4. In which poem does Waller suggest that wisdom comes with old age.
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5. Name two poems by Davenant.

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6. Give the main idea of the poem, For the Lady, Olivia Porter
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_______________________________________________________________

7. Who wrote Cooper 's Hill?

_______________________________________________________________
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8. In which poem does the following line occur :

“O could I flow like thee and make thy stream"

45
 _______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________

9. In Cowley's poem, The Change we have the prototype of the arch-character in Pope's poem,
The Rape of the Lock. What is the name of this character in Pope's satire?
_______________________________________________________________
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_______________________________________________________________

9.9 LET US SUM UP

Now that you

have had a close look at the multi-faceted life and poetry of the seventeenth century, you may be
able to form your idea of the period. In sum, it is one of the most troubled times in the history of
England. The Civil War between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians took the toll of many a
life. The Thirty Years' War between the two wings of Christianity engulfed almost the whole of
the Continent. The contemporary man is tom between influences and counterinfluences from the
Renaissance, the Reformation, the Ptolemaic theory, the Royal Society, the Bible and so on.
There is a conflict in the mind of man between faith and science and body and soul, and there is
turmoil without. The picture of the horror is best mirrored in the continenta1 baroque and the
Jacobean drama. The Metaphysical poets strike a balance between the ugly and the beautiful, as it
is exemplified by Donne's key image in The Relique: "a bracelet of bright hair about the bone".
Even in his religious poetry Donne brings together the two apparently antagonistic worlds: the
fleshly and the spiritual. In his religious sonnet, Batter my heart he imagines himself to be a bride
wedded to God but being placed under the spell of her worldly seducer. This is the state of the
contemporary man.

But the turmoil is not abiding people have started looking forward to order, decorum, Reason and
Nature. This phenomenon is well reflected in the poetry of Carew that combines the best qualities
of both the worlds. To put it in Emile Legouis's words,

. . . (He) took the highest place in the estimation of his day. He closes the list of the
'metaphysicians' and anticipates the English Classicists. He resembles Donne in his search
for conceits and subtleties, . , .but with a taste for physical science, he is above all an
intellectual.
(A Short History of English Literature)

46
9.10 ANSWERS TO EXERCISES

Note: The answers that are well reflected in the body of the discussion do not find any mention
here

Exercise I

1. France, Germany and Spain

2. 1618 – 1648
3. The Roman Catholics an3 the Protestants.
4. The latter was British affair, while the former was a continental (an European) war. Britain did
not participate in it.
5. Britain and Holland
6. France and Poland
7. No, it did not even participate in it.
8. It is near Prague in Germany.
9. The German emperor won the battle.

Exercise II

1. The Earl of Arundel

5. Crashaw
6. The Jacobean drama
7. Optimistic

Exercise III

1. According to the heliocentric conception the sun is the centre of the universe. The planets move
round it. This theory was propounded by Copernicus.
b. The homocentric theory believes that man is at the centre of the universe. As per the Christian
theology the universe is an affair between God and man.
2. The word 'concentric' means having a common centre with another circle other circles. As per
the Ptolemaic astronomy, there is a vast system of concentric sphere with the earth it the centre.
3. Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo

4. a. Copernicus (b) Francis Bacon

47
5. Cowley, Denham and Waller.
6. John Donne
7. Newton and Locke
8. 1543
10.Newton

Exercise IV

They are important in the sense that they serve as a living link between Spenser and Milton.

Exercise V

3. The Cavalier Poets

14. Suckling

Exercise VI

1. In Donne's religious poetry, there is an exciting argumentative evolution warring impules

culminating in a harmony but in Herbet the conflict is not exciting. In Donne's divine poetry
we never have the feel that the poet tilts the balance in favour of one at the expense of another.
But in Herbert earthly pleasures are played down and heavenly bliss in played up. Herbert tends
towards an austere and ascetic mood, where as Donne plays upon the entire gamut of experience
even in his divine poetry
2. Donne. Like Donne (Marvell) shows a vibrant structure that encompasses within its fold the
deeply moving picture of sensual ecstasy warring with the spiritual ecstasy.
10. Donne thinks God to be wrathful who is intent on punishing those who go against his
commandments. He is afraid that God will not absolve him of his v sins. The sense of sin
alienates man from the God in Herbert's poetry, too. But Crashaw is nearly always assured of
his salvation in God.

9.11 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Helen Gardner, The Metaphysical Poet

2. H.J.C. Grierson, Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century.
3. H.J.C. Grierson Cross Ctlrrents in English Literature of the Seventeenth Century
4. Paul Grave, The Golden Treasury.
5. Boris Ford (ed), From Donne to Marvell 6. B. Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background
7. B. Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background.
8. Bertrand Russell An Outline of Western Philosophy.

48
9. J. Bronowski and Bruce Mazlish, The Western Intellectual Tradition.
10. G.M. Trevelyan, English Social History
11. Arthur Crompton-Rickett, A History of English Literature.
12. Harry Blamires, A Short History of English Literature.
13. Emile Legouis, A Short History of English Literature.
14. Gerald Hamrnond (ed), The Metaphysical Poets.
15. J.B. Leishman, The Monarch of Wit.
16. T.S. Eliot, Selected Prose.
17. F.R. Leavis, Revaluation
18. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets.
19. L.C. Knights, Explorations.

UNIT- 1 HERBERT - THE MAN AND THE POET AND HIS BACKGROUND

Structure

10.0 Objectives
10.1 Introduction
10.2 George Herbert - The Man, The Poet An His Background
10.3 Herbert’s Distinguishing Traits
10.4 The Chrlstian Inspiration
10.5 Poetic Self-Divine And Human Love
10.6 Summing up
10.7 Unit end Questions

1 .1 INTRODUCTION

This unit will briefly introduce the man and the poet George Herbert and place him among other
poets of his time. Do you remember what you read in the unit "Poetry & society in the 17th
49
 10.0 OBJECTIVES

Our aim in this unit is to examine some poems of George Herbert, whose poetry stands in the words
of a great modem poet as "a record of the spiritual struggles of a man of intellectual and emotional
integrity, who gave much toil to perfecting his verses"

Having read the unit on Donne, you have some concept of metaphysical poetry. Reading Herbert
together will enlarge and deepen your concept of metaphysical poetry. . .

You will compare different styles of writing poetry used by the two poets. You will explore where
Herbert stands among other religious poets of his time

Century"? What are the four groups of poets mentioned ? If you do not remember it may be a good
idea to revise that unit before starting on this one.

This will be followed by a discussion of some of his better known poems, their text and the intent
of the poet, the techniques used by him and the impact of these on the reader.

The critical appreciation of these particular poems will also take into consideration the genre of
devotional poems and how Herbert's poetry carries his own individual genius as distinct from other
metaphysical poets of his time.

We will discover together the themes and the development of meaning and their close relationship.
By the end of this unit we may begin to see how the effect of grace and simplicity of Herbert's
poems is achieved by a very careful and deliberate use of language.

Through such analysis we may appreciate how poets learn from each other and yet have their
individual styles.

We need also to look at how critics' attitudes and their interpretation of George Herbert's Poetry
has changed.

10.2 GEORGE HERBERT - THE MAN, THE POET AN HIS BACKGROUND

Background

50
The metaphysical poets were writing in a time of turbulence, change and conflict. All over Europe
there were frequent wars and civil wars. These wars were not entirely political and there was a
continuous religious controversy feeding these wars. In 1570
Elizabeth I was excommunicated by the Pope and later in England there was the Gunpowder plot
which was aimed at James I . As today, in the 17th Century men were ready to kill and die for their
religion. English History of the time is stained with the blood of many martyrs.

Poets and writers were uneasy about the underlying motives and morality of human - behavior.
Both Donne and Herbert comment on man's impulses which destroy him. As today we are
concerned about AIDS and sexual immorality so was Donne concerned about the new disease,
Syphilis which had appeared in Europe in the 15th Century. Read Donne's "An Anatomy of the
World" in which he writes of man ' trying to undo all creation and making war on himself with the
new disease.

There were new discoveries in Science, Astronomy and Geography which disturbed the established
World View. Innovators and thinkers had trouble as did Galileo with the Roman Catholic Church.
Earth was no longer at the center of a spherical universe which was symbolic of harmony and
perfection, but as Donne puts it "the new philosophy calls in doubt". Despite new discoveries
Platonic ideas continue to dominate the world, An idea that is found in all metaphysical poets is
that of the physical world being a copy of the spiritual ideal universe and this was further mixed
with the Christian idea of an imperfect man on earth and a perfect God in heaven. Read Vaughan's
poem which begins " I saw Eternity the other night" where he describes the two realities the perfect
and the imperfect and describes how foolish men take shadows to be real and turn their backs to
true reality. This refers to Plato's description of men in caves. Herbert's poetry although Christian
in inspiration has the same Platonic idea of men in caves who mistake shadows cast by fire while
the sun and heaven are outside. Herbert's also puns on Sun and 'Sunne' of God. Platonic ideas
moved the poets to think in analogies and analogies are crucial to metaphysical styles.

51
Art and Music of this time developed with the growth in Literature and Literature especially poetry
was influenced by the development of art. A tradition of setting lyrics to music is too well know to
need much elaboration; composers like Campion wrote both words and music of their poems. This
had its impact on the facility with which the metaphysical poets versify. It is most evident in the
artful structure and the musical verification of George Hebert. As we know from Issac Walton's
'Life of George Herbert' "his chiefest recreation was in music, in which heavenly art he was a .most
excellent master, and did himself compose many divine hymns and anthems , which he set and
sung to his lute or viol"

The metaphysical poets were also greatly influenced by their predecessors especially the two giants
Shakespeare and Milton. We can see that Shakespeare's writing changed the very nature of poetry
making it more dramatic and alive to the psychological complexities of man. In Herbert there is
reflection of Milton's concern with the nature of the original Sin, Man's Fall and Redemption.

10.2.1 George Herbert (1593 - 1633)

His contemporaries regarded him as a pious and saintly man. His life was not without drama
judging by his poems which depict the agony of a poet who struggled to be humble. Do you find
Drama in Donne's poetry? Was Donne humble? George Herbert was born in an aristocratic family.
He was educated at Cambridge and was the Universities Public Orator. He could have gone on to
hold a political office but he chose to be a parson and a poet. Unlike Donne he was not self- centred
and yet there was some conflict as he admits in a poem

" My birth and spirit rather took

The way that takes the town"

His poems reflect his spiritual conflicts: "Such Spiritual conflicts as none can think, but only those
that have endured them".

Q1. Which of Herbert's poems according to you illustrates this inner conflict most clearly?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

The metaphysical style in the religious poetry of Herbert owes much to Donne with whom he had
early contact: Herbert's mother being one od Donne's friends and patroness. Yet in spirit his poetry
is totally different from the egocentric poetry of Donne; it is marked by grace, artlessness and
simplicity. You remember how Donne displays self in his highly personal diction, phrasing and
tone. Herbert shows a plainer diction, simpler phrasing and more subduced tone although he is not
without pide in his workmanship.

52
The question you may ask is what can account for Herbert's influence in his own time on poets like
Crashaw and Vaughan and Why does Herbert continue to influence later poets like G.M. Hopkins
and Emily Dickinson? What according to you justifies Colridge's judgement of "the great general
merit of his poems which are for these most part exquisite in their kind" or T.S. Eliot's praise that
Herbert "may justly be called a major poet"

Keeping these in mind read once again the poems in AppendixI and put down your immediate
response. '

Q2. Do you agree with Coldridge and Eliot?

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__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q3. What is the first thing that strikes you?

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Yes, his poems are lucid and easier to understand than Donne's. Critics have also talked of the
terrifying lucidity of his poems. His simple diction and the habit of understatement clearly indicate
a deep influence of the Bible and the psalms. Herbert's fondness for the Book of Proverbs and
Parables gives his poetry those many concrete pictures and keeps the metaphysical abstractions at
bay.

Herbert's poetry possesses a complexity dormant within the apparent simplicity, Similarly his
varied range of tones is a direct result of his training as an orator. For example when he writes "My
God thou art all love" There is no one and final interpretation of such a line.

Q4. What do you think the poet means? Is it a discovery, longing, surprise or realisation?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

53
There are many such lines in his poems for example in 'Redemption' the last line is "Who straight
you suit is granted said and died "

Q5. What do Herbert's last lines do? Collect some examples to support your 'argument?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

10.3 HERBERT’S DISTINGUISHING TRAITS

Herbert, as you must have noticed when reading the poems included in this unit, stands apart from
other poets of his time. His poems are lucid. ?'his overall impression of simplicity hides a great
deal of technical skill. Like Milton, Herbert can manipulate his verse to reflect the thematic pattern.
Like Andrew Marvell - a metaphysical poet of his time Herbert‟s lines suggest much more than
the lucid textured poem seems to state. You exemplified such lines in 3.3 above.
Herbert‟s diction that appears to be simple and limited expands outwards in accordance with the
given context of the poem. Take for example the title of his well known poem "The Pulley'. In this
poem God bestows on man all gifts holding back only one, of peace so what it may become the
pulley to draw man back to the divine breast. You must have read this poem either at school or at
college. But if you haven't it is found in all anthalogies and is included in the appendix for easy
reference.

What do we think of when we hear the phrase metaphysical poetry? After reading Units 1&2 in
this Block. You will think of metaphysical poetry as passionate in tones, scholastic in philosophy,
rich in wit and arguments and in attitude aggressive and unconventional. Herbert's poetry is very
far from this. His language is courtly and urbane, he uses varied and musical verse forms, there is
a neatness and poise about his verse suggesting greater influence of Ben Jonson than Donne. At
this point you may wish to revise the Introductory unit to this block.

Yes, Herbert is a devotional poet and usually when we think of a devotional poet we think of
someone who goes into ectasy and often loses sight of his poetic craft. Such devotional poetry
makes us feel uncomfortable and is far from tidy. Herbert does not belong to this type of devotional
poets. He may speak with a gentle voice but his is one of the strongest poetic personality and he is
a masterful craftsman. There is no need to be apologetic about him.

Q6. After reading his poems what picture of the poet you arrive at?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________
54
Herbert describes man as a secretary of God's praise but like a good secretary he is cool and in
control, he does not lose himself in ectasy, he is exact, methodical, honest and modest. He is in
noway dull for he does argue with God. His poems are about man's rebellion against God. But they
end in reconcilation. The poems are marked by complaints followed by resolution. This dramatic
contrast is reflected in the outward shape of his poems, long sweeping lines followed by short
pointed ones.

Read through the poems looking for such contrast in the use of lines.
Read the poem entitled Affliction (1)
Answer the following questions

Q7. Who is the poem addressed to ?

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q8. What did the poet forget to think of ?

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__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q9. How does the poet contrast his youth with old age ?
__________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________
____________

Q10. To what does the poet compare himself in the sixth stanza? –
__________________________________________________________________
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____________

Q11. What tells you that the poet was born in an aristocatic family?

55
__________________________________________________________________
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____________

Q12. How do you know that the poet was a scholar?

__________________________________________________________________
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____________

Q13. Why does the poet wish to be a tree?

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____________

Q14. Does the poet really intend to give up his service of God?
__________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q15. Is the poet really dissatisfied with God or with himself for lacking perserverence.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Read the poem a second time using the glossary or a dictionary. Study the structure of the poem. It
is built up in contrast.

Q16. Write a note about how the poet contrasts his early joy without thought and his discovery of
pain ?
__________________________________________________________________

56
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q17. Why do you think the poet complaints about God pushing him into new ways of life?
__________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q18. Although the poet argues with God does he want change'?
__________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Note the vocabulary used in this poem. It is drawn from the game of bowling. Compare the
vocabulary used in the poem "Redemption' It is from the discourse of law - tenant, lease, suit etc.
Both poems use the same principle of contrast. In 'Redemption' the contrast comes only in the last
two lines. After studying the two poems you will understand Herbert's mastery of suiting the form
to the thought of the poem.

What Herbert thought of Poetic invention he can find in his poem entitled 'Jordan (II)' which was
originally titled 'Invention'.

'Jordan' (II)

When first my lines of heav'nly joys made mention Such was their lustre, they
did excell.
That I sought out quaint words and trim invention. My thoughts began
to burnish, sprout and swell, Curling with metaphors a plain
intention. !
Decking the sense, as if it were to sell. Thousands of nations in my
brain did runne Off‟ring their service, if I were not sped:
I often blotted what I had begunne;
This was not quick enough, and that was dead.
Nothing could seem too rich to clothe the sunne, Much lesse those
joys which trample on his head. As flames do works and winde
when they ascend So did I weave myself into the sense. But while
I bustled, I might hear a friend Whisper, How wide is all this long

57
pretence. There is in love a sweemesse readie penn'd Copie out
only that, and save expense.

Later we find an echo in Traherne's promise 'No curling metaphoris that gild the service nor pictures
here, nor painted EIognence; No Florid streams of superficial Gems, But real Crowns and Thrones
and Diadems!
(Author to the Critical Peruser! 11-14)

In the poems "Jordon I" and "Jordon II" Herbert makes his choice among Contemporary poetic
styles. In Jordon II Herbert shows that he is aware of the many pitfalls especially of egoism and of
the duplicity. The restless revisings of the poet craftsman are fired by religious devotion and yet
their lurks the danger of subtle egoism. The question that George Herbert raises is fundamental,
does the egoism involved in writing poetry hinder the dedication? It is a question that Herbert has
to resolve for himself. As Donald Davie in his introduction to the new
Oxford Book of Christian Verse says “ When a poet chooses a style, or chooses between styles he
is making a choice in which is whole self involved, including, if he is a Christian poet, that part of
himself which is most earnestly and devoutly Christain. The question is, for him what sort of
language is most appropriate when I would speak of, or to my God. And it is not only the puritans
among the poets who appear to have decided that the only language proper for such purposes is a
language stripeed of all ornament.

10.4 THE CHRlSTIAN INSPIRATION

'It is important to remember that Herbert's poems were like his very private meditations which he
showed to a few friends and were published by his friends only after his death, as they may help
others in facing similar spiritual problems. Herbert was steeped in Christian idealogy. His
collection of poems was called "The Temple" and various poems bear titles like " The Porch" "The
Window", etc. Herbert is predominantly a Christain poet and for him each Christian ritual is highly
significant. We can read the poem. "The Collar" to illustrate how for Herbert the ritual of the
Eucharist* was a visible symbol of the invisible grace. For Herbert Grace involves first a full
awareness of the chaotic state of the fallen man and a firm belief in the unconditional and free
omnipresence of grace. According to Herbert god's grace anticipates man's behaviour and all man's
complaints. Herbert with a devastating irony in the poem "The Collar" puts all complaints in the
vocabulary of Christ passion i.e. the Crucification. There is a reference to a crown, to a thorn, to
blood. Before you can understand the poem it may be necessary to read another poem of Herbert's
"The Sacrifice" in which Christ says

"on my head a crown of thorns I wear and especially :

"my blood (is) the only way and cordiall left to repair mans decay".

58
So when the poet in the "The collar" slips the collar and gives vent to his choler or anger the he
uses the same terminology- the sighs dry up the wine and tears drown the corn which could be the
bread and the wine representing the sacrifice of Christ!

"The Collar" like all other poems in the collection. "The Temple" avers to as Eliot puts it :

"The absolute paternal care "

That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere Herbert's poetry celebrates the grace of grace
but is dominated by the love of love.

As modem readers do you find this exclusive Christian and sacred burden of the "The Temple" is
a stubling block ? Keats said that "We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us! How can we
respond to Herbert's poetry when he clearly states his aim.

"A verse may find him, who a sermon flies, and turn delight into sacrifice"

Luckily Herbert is less of an orator or a preacher and more of a dramatist and you as other readers
have will discover in Herbert's poetry many voices and experiences so that you can identify with
the "I" of the poems and find yourself in the centre of the action. So far you have read some of the
wide, range of voices, from the Christ in, "The Sacrifice" to courtier in "The Pearl"; the detached
narrator, in the "The Pulley", the participant in the "The Collar".

Q.19 Make a list of the Speakening Voices. Who is the speaker in each of Herbert's poems you
have read so far ?
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__________________________________________________________________ ____________

10.5 RAPPORT WITH THE RELIGIOUS POET

You may wonder whether as Christian religious poetry does Herbert's poetry present a problem to
the modem reader. Indian readers do not find it difficult to accept belief in a personal god and the
poet's personal relationship with Him, there is a great deal of this in Indian literacy tradition. So the
readers do not have to be Christians to appreciate Herbert's poetry. There is no doubt that the poet
believed seriously in the Bible and the basic doctrines of the Church ? Here once again you want
to revise Unit 1 in this Block III to understand how religion was a part of daily life, social
intercourse and politics. What is expected of the reader is the readiness to grasp what moved the
poet to record his many spiritual struggles. If you can imaginatively sympathise with the faith of

59
the poet his poems become a source of permanent joy. v In his collection "The Temple" the poet
depicts the progress of the soul from the first spiritual awakening and delight through many
struggles and conflicts to find acceptance and hope of a peaceful union with God.

Q.20 Why do you think Herbert called his book of poems "The Temple" ?
__________________________________________________________________
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Q.21 If the body is the temple who is god who dwells within according to Herbert?
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Q.22 How does this remind you of the Scholastic doctrine of the microcosm and the macrocosm?
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Q.23 Do you think Herbert is aware of both the distance between the human and the divine and of
the golden thread that binds the two? In Herbert's poetry the architecture of the church plays
an important role.
__________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q.24 Does this mean that the congregational aspect of religion is as important to him as the spiritual
?
__________________________________________________________________
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Q.25 Do you find that other metaphysical poets like Donne are interested in the Church and its
architechture?

60
 __________________________________________________________________
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Q.26 What does Herbert regard as windows which open on Gags love?
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Q.27 List Herbert's poems which by their title symbalise soul's progress towards the divine.
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Q.28 Read "Easter Wings" "Aaron" and "The Windows" . Write a note on the unity of thought and
the form (or shape) in these poems.
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__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

10.6 POETIC SELF-DIVINE AND HUMAN LOVE

You will recall that the focus in 17th Century love poetry was on the poetic self. In Herbert's poetry
the focus is on the love of the God or Grace. In Donne's poetry these is a dialogue between the
poet's self and god, the dialogue depicts conflicts logically. Herbert's poems are of a pastor and not
of a preacher, there is no argument, no hortatory discourse is., no "you must not tell lies" kind of
morality. Herbert's emphasis is on the general implication of the traditional truths of Christianity.
For him the Church is important and so are congregational rituals.

What do you think inspires Herbert?

It is the poet's feeling for the vital importance of love and charity. He is concerned with how god's
grace operates on earth. He is more earth directed. What then do you think is the main theme of
61
Herbert's poetry? It is how man's life, everyday life on earth can be transformed by god's, mercy.
Now this poems, the images are concrete and substantial. The poem "Love (3) is an excellent
example of earthy vocabulary used by Herbert. Be speaks of most sacred things in the simplest
language and makes homeliest of comparisons as in

"Both heaven and Earth.

Paid me my wages in a world-of-mirth
Prayer is
"Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
, n e Milky way, the bird of paradise"

Divine grace in the sacramental elements

"Knoweth the ready way, and hath the privey key

Op'ning the man's most subtle rooms; Whilst those, to spirits
refined, at door attend.
Dispatches from their friend.
Night is 'God's ebony box' in which
Thou dast inclose us till the day
Put our amendment in our way,
And give new wheels to our disordered clocks.

At his best feeling and natural image are imaginatively and completely merged in one another.
And in age I bud again
After so many deaths I live and write
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.

Q.29 Do you appreciate Herbert's sincere and sensitive poetry? Read the selected poems or others
in anthologies and make a list of concrete images like the ones illustrated above.
Metaphysical poetry invites the reader to participate in the intimate passionate intercourse
between human lovers and in intimate passionate moments of conversations between the
human and divine as in Herbert's poetry e.g. in the poem "Love". The readers are like
eavesdroppers. This is the stamps of Herbert's poetry which forces us to approach it with
reverence. Do you agree? But our awe is soon dispelled by his simple diction and the
distance between the readers and the poet is bridged.

62
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q.30 Now read the poems once again and make a list of phrases that are homely, simple and direct
in their appeal and help you in almost forgetting that Herbert is a solemn poet.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

The opening lines of Herbert's poems show how he adopted the direct approach which he learnt
from Donne and yet his sensibility is very different. Compare any two poems of Donne and Herbert.
Note in what way their beginnings are different.

10.7 FORM AND MEANING IN HERBERT AND DONNE

As by now you must have observed each period of literature is distinguished by the way in which
it conveys meaning. In the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century this relationship between form and
meaning was close; what the writer is communicating determines the form. Form is shaped by each
writer in different ways. Milton looking for dignified language for his epic chose blank verse.
Another poet like Nathaniel Richards wrote a poem on Christ's Crucification in the shape of a cross.
As Helen Gardner remarks in her introduction to "The Metaphysical Poets".

"The metaphysical poets favoured either very simple verse forms, octosyllabic couplets or
quartrains or else stanzas created for the particular poem in which length of line and rhyme scheme
artfully enforced the sense".

Both Donne and Herbert show an outstanding degree of boldness in choice of forms and yet in such
an individual way that by a look at the shape of the poem, almost at a glance you can decide,
whether a poem is by Donne or Herbert. In Donne the page is more packed than in Herbert since
Donne uses longer 1ines.Herbert uses longer lines only in his few sonnets but you will have noticed
that he prefers the short line.

The variety of form in Herbert's poems is striking: he seldom uses the same pattern twice. When
you read his poems do you not get the feeling that here is a poet who delights in his skill at
versifying- his technical virtuosity.

63
The most well known case where Herbert's intention is transparently clear is the poem "Easter
Wings". Once again look at this poem which is deliberately written in a shape and devising of the
shape has not been left to the printer. The poet makes use of the idea of wings throughout the poem.
Man's loss by fall (from Eden) is portrayed by lessening length of lines.

Q.31 Which are the shortest lines? Yes 'most poore' and "Most thinne"?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q.32 Why do lines grow longer after these?

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Yes, because the poet wants to represent rising and flight.

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Read the poem to observe how thought and shape are

closely united.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
____________

Read the poem "Denial" to see how the disorder of thought is reflected in discord in metre and lack
of rhyme.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Turn to the poem "The Collar" and count the syllables in the first four lines.
64
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Did you count ten, four eight, and ten ?

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Did you observe and wonder that there seemed to be no overall pattern, no rhymes?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Why do you think Herbert chose this way of expressing his apparent rebellion?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Now let us read the last four lines at what point does all rebellion end ?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Right at the word child? What is the poet's meek answer in the last line?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q.33 Read the poem titled "Aaron" Note the words at the ends of lines in the two verses.
__________________________________________________________________

65
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q.34 How many times are the four words 'head' 'dead' 'rest' 'drest' repeated ?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q.35 Is there a change of meaning in the five repetitions ?

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Write down your reaction to how Herbert shows the transformation of the human into
Christ and reinforces the meaning with the skillful use of form. Is Herbert both devout
and playful ? Does his technique at any time intrude on your attention? Are the poems an
organic whole ?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q.36 Comment on how Herbert's poems are part of his spiritual autobiography his experience of
prayer and how they spring out of his realisation of the
gulf between the human unworthiness and divine grace. Quote lines from his poems to
support your argument.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q.37 Which according to you is the most moving poem of Herbert. Why do you find it so moving?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________
66
10.8 A SUMMING UP

You have already studied Donne's poetry so by comparing Dome and Herbert's religious poetry
you can begin to understand the individuality of the two poets and something of the place of religion
in the social and the psychological life of men in the Seventeenth Century.

Donne's religious poetry is also a record of his belief. God not only exists for Donne but the
immediacy and intensity of this presence in Donne's poetry is overwhelming. Is he the same loving
god of Herbert ? No he is more the God of Old Testament stem and strong like the God of
Hebrews. Do you find in Donne the gentle love and serenity which you discover in Herbert ?
Donne the poet, is more aware of God's sterne wrath and pleads, sets out reasons and occasionally
picking up courage flusters.

So I say to thee.
To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assigned. This beanteous forme assures a piteous mind. (Holy
Sonnets XIII).

Donne does not doubt God's existence but he has fears about God's nature, he does not put himself
in God's hands with trust as Herbert does. As Donne says he has a sinne of Feare that when I have
spunne / My last thread I shall perish on the 'shore' (A hymn to God the father) Donne lacks
Herbert's faith in God's grace, Reread 'Love (3)'.

The mediation and the serenity arising from meditations does not characterize Donne's poetry as it
does Herberts. Would you agree with this statement and could you illustrate it?

On the other hand if you compare Donne's love poetry with his religious poetry you find they are
more alike. They are marked by a sense of insecurity or instability. The tears and hesitations spring
from Donne's life and beliefs. He was born a Catholic and converted to Anglicanism with anguish
for secular reasons. However Donne seems to be more of a Protestant in his preference for 'private
holiness at home' whereas both Catholism and Anglicanism stress more the congregational and say
true worship is when the whole congregration together with one heart and one mouth hymns.
Protestanism plays down collective rituals and stresses the sermon, the individual prayer and study
of the Bible. One of the great products of this type of Protestant religious was spiritual
autobiography and Donne's religious poetry steins from this kind religious thought. There is no
impression of a congregration in his poems, rather we have the awareness of a solitary figure in
dialogue with a God of power and awe, The poet argues with and questions his God looking for
certainty or promise of salvation but scarcely finding what he was looking for. Donne's imagination
responds vividly to Crucification and feels within himself the pain and the humiliation but his
imagination lags behind when he depicts Resurrection. In the words of Bunyan, whose "Pilgrim's
67
Progress" is an excellent: spiritual autobiography. Donne makes Christians spiritual journey but he
never finds the Heavenly City.

Do you find that looking at Donne's life and poetry is a way of understanding how religion played
a major role in the psychological environment of the men of his times? His poems reflect the search
for true meaning of religions and God in the Seventeenth Century. Men like Donne show not only
sincerity and urgency but also were engaged in examination of themselves and of the nature of the
divine self. This is characteristic of the period and its serious commitment to religion. Donne, while
he may illustrate some trends in Seventeenth Century religious poetry, does not represent it because
he is far too individualistic as a poet. Because he is so distinguished far too often he is equated with
Seventeenth Century religious poetry which is fair to neither Donne nor the other poets.

Herbert, who learnt a great deal from Donne, was a very different kind of person as you saw in
earlier sections. What Herbert learnt from Donne were technical skills e.g. his opening lines that
reach out to the heart of the matter.

Q.38 List the opening lines of the poems you've read so far, begin with 'The Collar'.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Look at some more such effective opening lines. Why

do I languish thus, drooping and dull
As if I mere all earth (Dulnesse)

Ah my dear angry Lord

Since thou dost love, yet strike (Bitter-Sweet)
Broken in pieces all asunder
Lord, hurt me not,
A thing forgot (Affliction (IV)

Perhaps Herbert's use of the first person owes something Donne and his imagery taken from the
everyday world which we examined in an earlier section may also on something to Donne and yet
you saw that Herbert speaks with a distinctive style all his own. His collection is entitled 'The
Temple' sacred poems and Private Ejaculations showing a blend of the congregational religious
experience coupled with spiritual autobiography. The poems are both part of the age and
expressions of individual meditations. Herbert more than Donne represents his age, the poet does
not take the centre stage, his humility is that of a sage.

68
It is interesting that while both Donne and Herbert are fascinated by the Crucification their
responses are totally different. Herbert thinks of Christ with total concentration to the exculsion of
his poetic self whereas Donne is lost in fearful fascination. Both Donne and Herbert are painfully
aware of the distance between man and God but Herbert is confident of God's mercy.

Yet by confession will I come

Into the conquest. Though I can do nought.
Against thee, in thee I will overcome.
The man who once against thee faught.
(The Reprisall)

This unshakable faith and hope is what distinguishes Herbert's poetry. He is original in that he
conveys the feelings of Christ a man's blindness to his mercy and sacrifice. The emphasis is on the
Divine self and not on the human self as in Donne's poetry.

Is there anything like a sermon in Herbert's poetry? Through his experience is privet and individual
the reader is very subly urged to partake of God's grace but dramatic emphasis is on individual
conflict and self image. Herbert's modesty holds him back as in the poem 'Love'. This makes the
poems all together human and absolutely sincere. The traditional worship in the Church and the
ritual are there in support of the quaking individual self. The poetry holds out hope to everyman
and in this way the poet is like a pastor caring and, loving to all who come seeking light and solace.

Q.39 Does Herbert at any time appear to you as a sentimental poet who makes up for mediocore
performance by heavy religious cover ?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Q.40 As you read in Unit I the Seventeenth Century was a period of religious controversy. Do you
find such controversy reflected in the poetry of Herbert? Does he keep himself above such
controversies?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

What picture of George Herbert do you have in your mind after reading his poems. Does he not
sound like a person who cares for others and like a loving pastor who makes sure that none from
his congregation strays.

69
He also appears to have been selective. He does not deal with obscure philosophy or doctrine but
takes his themes from what is spiritually significant namely indisputable love of god.

In literary criticism sophistication has been associated with Donne and Herbert's apparent
simplicity has mislead most critics to think that his was purely personal poetry of priestly piety.
When you read criticism do keep this in mind and decide for yourself whether Herbert does not
show finess in his versification and in his themes which show a blend of the personal and the topical
coloured with penetrating meditations.

Donne has so dominated metaphysical poetry that critics have also tended to ' overemphasize
Herbert's dept to Donne it is often forgotten that there was a variety of religious verse written in
this period.

Herbert criticism has grown in the last twenty years, earlier critics like Grierson looke on him as a
devotional poet and a minor one. Today this view no longer holds and some modem critics think
Herbert is a major poet with subtle workmanship and deep self awareness, Shifts in Eliot's
judgement are indicative of this change: in his 1951 Review of Georgian Poetry in Athenaneum
and in "Selected Essays" he found him a minor poet' with a special but limited awareness however
later in "George Herbert" in 1962 Eliot values Herbert for his restless exploration of variety and a
kind of gaiety of spirit, a joy in composition.

J.H.Summersls "George Herbert : His Religion and Art" came out in 1954 and was the first all
round study and survey. In the first three chapters he describes how the response to Herbert the
poet has changed over the years. The most remarkable are the next three chapters which discuss
Herbert's use of form and his use of hieroglyphs which he defines as a figure, device or sign having
same hidden meaning. Too often Herbert's hierographic poems like the "The Alter" or "Easter
Wings" have been regarded as mere curiosities. In the final chapters Summer also draws attention
to poetic voices in "The Temple" and how Herbert infused new life into traditional modes and
traditional forms. Herbert's word play and textual revisions were studied critically by M.E.Rickey.
For detailed reading of individual poems one has to turn to Helen Vendler. She says one of the
particular virtues of Herbert's poetry is its provisional quality. Her work is a study of what she calls
the reinvented poems. Fish in his studies of Herbert asks the question where is the poem on the
page or in the reader's experience of it. Fie suggests that the relationship of Herbert the poet to his
readers is like a Christian teacher catechising his pupils in such a way that they find the answers to
the questions he asks themselves. Incidentally in this Unit we have tried to use the same technique.
The studies of Martz relate Herbert to mediaral liturgy. Tuve urges readers to put Herbert in the
context of traditions on which he draws- the traditions of church rituals and typology. More recently
Bloch (1 985) has concentrated on Herbert's distinctive way of drawing inspiration from the Bible.

We can sum up Herbert's work by a quotation by Wallace Stevens as Donald Mackenzie does.

He is the transparence of the place

In which he is and his poems we find peace.
70
10.9 FURTHER READING

EDITIONS

The following editions are not only cheap and easily available but good. Patrides has an interesting
introduction and brief notes.

Patrides, C.A.(ed.), The English Poems of George Herbert, J.M. Dent, 1974. Reprinted with
corrections 1977, 1978, 1981 and 1984. Follows the i633 edition and includes valuable notes and
useful bibilography.

Wall, John N. Jr. (ed.), George Herbert: The Country Parson,

The Temple, Paulist Press, 1981. Reprinted with corrections 1985. Modernised texts with useful
introduction, especially on spiritual background.

BIOGRAPHY

Novarr, David, The making of Walton's lives, Cornell University Press 1958.

Charles, Amy M., A Life of George Herbert, Cornell University Press, 1977.

Bottrall Margaret, George Herbert, 1954. Combines Biography and critical study,

Critical Studies

This brief list is a starting point. There is much material however there is nothing like detailed study
of the poems.

Bennett, Joan, Five Metaphysical Poets, Cambridge University Press 1963. A good introductory
study.

Eliot, T.S., George Herbert, Longmans, 1962.

Gardener, Helen, Religion and Literature, Oxford University Press, 1971.

W.R.Keast (ed.), Seventeenth Century English poetry Oxford University Press 1962- a collection
of essays by well known critics.
71
Knights, LC., 'George Herbert' in Explorations, Chatto & Windus, 1946. An established critical
study,

Mahood, M.M., 'Something Understood‟: The Nature of Herbert's Wit' in

Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer (eds.), Metaphysical Poetry, Stratford-upon- Avon
Studies II, Edward Arnold 1970,

Patrides, C.A.(ed,), George Herbert: The Critical Heritage, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983,

Taylor,Mark, The soul in Paraphrase : George Herbert's Poetics, Mouton,1974.

Vendler, Helen, The poetry of George Herbert, Harvard University Press, 1975.

White, Helen C., The Metaphysical Poets: A study in Religious Experience, Macmillan, 1936.

Other Reading

Dr Johnson - Life of Cowley for his comments on Metaphysical poetry, William Empson Seven
Types of Ambignity ( Chatto & Windus) 1950, reissued as Pengiun 1973)

Book of Common Prayer to get the feel of religious use of language.

UNIT 11- ANDREW MAWVELL:A STUDY OF HIS POEMS

72
Structure

10.0 Objectives
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Historical Background
10.3 Metaphysical Poetry
10.4 To His Coy Mistress'
10.5 'The Garden'
10.5.1 Discussion
10.6 'Horation Ode'
10.6.1 Discussion
10.7 Let Us Sum Up
10.8 Suggested Reading

10.0 OBJECTIVES

The objective
of this unit is to provide you with a close understanding of the lifetime and works of Andrew
Marvell, You will also be able to write on the theme, style, structure, tone, imagery and other
related issues of his poetry,

10.1 INTRODUCTION

The structure of
this unit may not be the best possible methodology for the student to follow while reading.
He/she is advised to read the text of the poems first as given in the Appendix at the end of the
unit, It is always advisable to first approach the text without any preconceived notions on
background information and see how much of the poem you can understand and appreciate on
your own. After having given the text a through reading you should then read the historical,
bibliographical information provided and the discussion of the text. This reading may now
enhance your understanding of the poem and provide new insights into the poem. In other
words, start at the end and work your way backwards.

73
10.2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The works of
Andrew Marvell exercise biographer and critic alike for it is evident that conflicting demands of
self and the world which in one guise or another inform many of his celebrated poems need to be
seen not only in relation to his own enigmatic personality, but also in the context of what one
historian has dubbed the 'Century of Revolutions',

The facts of Marvell's life can be quickly rehearsed. He was born on 31st March, 1621 in Yorkshire
where his father was a rector but later moved to Hull in 1624. He graduated from Trinity College,
Cambridge in 1633. After some years spent in business and in travelling, he entered public life in
1659 when he was elected M.P. for Hull, a position he was to retain till 1661. During his long
career in the House of Commons he sat on various committees and also supported Charles II's
attempts to extend toleration towards religious dissenters in the work for which he was the most
renowned in his own lifetime, The Rehearsal Transpros'd.

Marvell grew up in an age which Abraham Cowley was later to describe as 'a warlike, various and
a tragical age'. It was an age which saw radical changes in the institutions of the Church and the
State and the questioning of many fundamental beliefs about the nature of man and society and the
universe he inhabits.

Neither the church of England nor the Monarchy survived the revolutionary decade of the 1640s.
Already the conviction was gaining ground that the process of reformation had not gone far enough,
which was strengthened by the ecclesiastical policy of Charles I and ruthlessly implemented by
William Laud, first as Bishop of London and then as Archbishop of Canterbury. The Long
Parliament of 1640 imprisoned Laud and he was eventually tried and beheaded in
1645. The grievances against the King now burst upon him and given the obstinacy of his character
and the zeal of his opponents, an armed conflict was inevitable. The civil war which began in 1642
culminated in victory for Parliament in 1645 under Fairfax and Cromwell. The King was tried and
executed on 30th January 1649. Monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished in March and a
74
new Commonwealth was established of which Cromwell became the Protector in 1653. After his
death in September 1658 followed by a period of confusion caused by the abdication of the new
Protector, his son Richard Cromwell, order was restored in the person of Charles II who landed at
Dover in May 1660.

The protracted battles for power between the supporters of uniformity and freedom of conscience
in the Church and between absolutism and constitutional parliamentary governance in the State
where naturally accompanied by an ideological war of words and ideas. Thomas Hobbe's
systematic analysis of the nature of man and state – The Great Leviathan - swept aside older notions
of natural or divine rights. Advances in physical sciences and the growing spirit of scepticism
promoted fundamental changes in man's conception of the universe and his place in it through the
works of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. But while seventeenth century inventions of
telescope and microscope were extending the range of human perception and knowledge, they were
also underlining the deceptiveness of appearances and elusiveness of truth. Both the life and
writings of Andrew Marvell can be interpreted as the responses of an intelligent and sceptical mind
to the need to find new bearings amid the confusions and challenges to inherited assumptions of a
period of revolutionary change.

10.3 METAPHYSICAL POETRY

It is customary
to refer to one group of poets in the first half of the seventeenth century as Metaphysical. The
connotations of this term, which is perhaps more meaningful than some other literary labels, have
been neatly summarised by professor Grierson - "It lays stress, he says, on the right things . . ...
the more intellectual, less verbal character of their wit compared with the conceits of the
Elizabethans; the finer psychology of which their conceits are often the expression; their learned
imagery; the argumentative, subtle evolution of their lyrics; above all the peculiar blend of
passion and thought, feeling and ratiocination which is their greatest achievement."

John Dryden said in his Discourse of Satire (1693) that Donne in his poetry "affects the
metaphysics" (meaning that Donne applies the terminology and abstruse arguments of medieval
scholastic philosophers. In Life of Cowley (1779), Dr. Johnson extended the term Metaphysical
from Donne to a group of poets. The name is now applied to a group of poets who were directly or
indirectly influenced by Donne, employed similar poetic procedures and imagery, both in secular
(Marvell, Cowley) and religious poetry (Herbert, Vaughan, Cowley).

Exercises

How is the socio-political background of the age important for Marvell's poetry? Give the
characteristics of Metaphysical Poetry.

75
10.4 TO HIS COY MISTRESS:

The poem is in
the form of an invitation to an unnamed lady for more active participation in the game of courtship.
The conditional terms of the first line 'Had we but World enough, and time, casts a mockingly
regretful tone over the hyperboles of the first paragraph

1 Had we but World enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down
and think which way To walk, and pass our long Love's
Day.
Though by the Indian Ganges ' side
Should'st Rubies find : I by the Tide
Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten
years before the Flood : And you should if you please
refuse Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than Empires, and more slow
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to
adore each Breast : But thirty thousand for the rest.
An Age at least to every part,
And the last Age should show your Heart :
For, Lady, you deserve this state; Nor would I love you at
lower rate.

The opening strikes the keynote straight away – if only they were not subject to the inexorable laws
of space and time, they could play out the fantasy of a love which slowly expands over the face of
the earth like an empire and which lasts right through human history, from Noah's Flood to the
Second Coming of Christ, heralded by the Conversion of the Jews, Such fantasies are among the
devices human art has invented to cope imaginatively with the facts of time and mortality. If time
did not make the project patently ridiculous, the lover would gladly play the conventional game of
protracted courtesy - tune his sorrowful complaint beside the native Humber, while the lady
gathered jewels from the more exotic banks of the Ganges. The linking of the two rivers, with the
difference in sophistication implied between the travelled lady, and the provincial lover, begins the
teasing which culminates in the suggestion that the 'last age' before the end of the world prophesised
in the Revelation of St. John would 'show' the secret of her heart. The lover's jesting however is not
incompatible with a serious undertone of resentment and regret at times defeat of human idealism.
76
 For, Lady, you deserve this state; Nar would I love you at
lower rate.

This elegant compliment prepares us for the next stage of the syllogism, introduced by the „but‟
that has been looming ever since the conditional verb of the opening line-

But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near : And yonder all before us
lye
Deserts of Vast Eternity ,
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing sang : then
worms shall try That long preserved virginity :
And your quaint Honour him to dust;
And into ashes all my lust,
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace

Instead of a fantasy courtship stretching through millennia, the chilling prospect of a bleak
and sterile eternity opens up and the future tense takes over from the conditional. Bodily
perfection will vanish from the earth and even the poet's record of his devotion will
eventually be lost. This however is the reverse of another poetic tradition which finds
consolation for the losses inflicted on human beauty in the thought that it would survive in
an
"echoing song" -
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand
(Shakespeare Sonnet 60)

Marvell however denies this dream. Neither singer nor song will outlast the 'marble vault' whatever
the poets may assert on the contrary -

Not marble, not the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme
(Shakespeare Sonnet 55)

One way or another, the ravening hunger, of Nature will overcome the lady, try whatever she may
to keep herself intact during her life, With a final sardonic couplet the lover leads into the third
stage of his syllogistic assignment -
77
 Now, therefore while the youthful hew
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant Fires
Now let us part while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey, Rather at once
our time devour, Than languish in his slow-chapt
pow'r. Let us roll all our strength, and all Our
sweetness up into one Ball :
And tear our pleasures with rough strife,
Through the iron gates of life Thus though we
cannot make our Sun Stand still, yet we will make
him run.

To appreciate this poem it has to be read against other examples of the 'carpe diem' lyric (this will
be discussed later). There is a physical immediacy and a desperate recklessness which eschews any
sentimental evasions.

The urgently repeated "'Now" and the imperative verb forms sweep the Lady towards the physical
consumation that is the lover's goal. The dramatic scene of her sexual arousal (34-36) excites the
lover to images of brutal forthrightness. Instead of the conventional images of loving or adoring
gaze, here there is the devouring of two "amorous birds of prey" and the tearing of pleasures "with
rough strife". Lines 41-46 have been open to many interpretations and some think that behind them
lie the kind of hyperboles that Donne restored to in order to embody his highest vision of reciprocal
love (e.g. The Good Morrow, The Canonization). The rolling of sweetness and strength into a single
ball is the celebration of the perfect union of lovers. The final couplet may contain an allusion to
the feat of the Biblical hero Joshua who made the sun stand still while he took revenge on Israel's
enemies. It can also be an ironic comment on Donne's The Anniversary where he claims that though
the sun which makes time, as they pass, itself grows older, his love "no tomorrow hath, nor
yesterday/ Running it never runs from us away"; or at his favourite command in The Rising Sun
that the sun should start its journey over him and his mistress. If Donne's poetry is meant to be
brought to mind here, it is a final instance of the speaker's way of undercutting of the ingenuity
with which the human imagination avoids the stark facts of lust and time.

Whatever the specific allusions behind these images what is unquestionable is the unsentimental
realism with which Marvell‟s lover concludes his appeal. The consumation he invites her to share
with him takes on the air of a contest, in which he and his coy mistress pit themselves against a
harsh world. He urges her not to subunit to him but to join him to overcome, even if only
temporarily, the united forces of time and space.

Exercises

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1. Why is there a touch of regret in the first stanza?
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2. Why can't the lovers indulge in a prolonged courtship?

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3. What are the ways of outwitting time?

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As a carpe diem lyric (literally "sieze the day" or "enjoy life before it is too late"), To His Coy
Mistress needs to be read against other examples of the same kind. Perhaps the best known example
is a song by Robert Herrick published in his Hesprides (1648) :

Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may, Old time is still a flying

:
And this same flower that smiles today, Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the sun The higher

he's a getting : The sooner will his race be run, And
nearer he's to getting.

Closer in tone to Marvell‟s poem are lines from the final stanza of Corina 's Going a Maying, also
from the Hesprides :

Come, let us go, while we are in our prime;

And take the harmless folly of the time We shall grow
old apace, and die Before we know our liberty Our life
is short; our days are run As fast away as does the sun.
And as vapour, or a drop of rain Once lost, can never be
found again.

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Ben Jonson's song To Celia and the lines of the Roman poet Catullus on which it is based, seem to
lie even nearer the heart of Marvell's inspiration –

Come my Celia, let us prove, While we may, the sports

of love; Time will not be ours, for ever :
He, at length, our good will sever. Spend not then his
gifts in vain Suns, that set, may rise again :
But if once we lose this light, Tis, with us, perpetual night.

To His Coy Mistress however has a tone of urgency and recklessness in contrast to the sentimental
evasions of gathering "Rose-buds" and enjoying "harmless folly".

Seventeenth century love poets differ from their predecessors in that human love is no longer an
issue between sense and spirit and hence does not confront a lover with the inherent depravity of
the senses or the unreality of the sensible world. There is neither an obligation to renounce nor to
transcend human capacities but to recover and realize them fully. A yearning for lost innocence
pervades seventeenth century lyric poetry with undertones of guilt or wistfulness. Comparing
personable young girls with short-lived flowers is one way of playing off innocence against blasting
lust; another is to pose an innocent affection which has now matured into desire :

Ah! Chloris! That I now could sit

As unconcerned as when
Your infant beauty could beget No pleasure, nor no
pain.
(Sedley, 'To Chloris')
Versions of interaction between a young girl and an older admirer run from the delicate to the
perverse, from bold warnings to nostalgia and poignancy.

The equivocal standing of passion in the affairs of Adam and Eve doesn't compel us to mark off
love from sexual desire. Seventeenth century poets didn't distinguish between high love or low
love, but put forward an individual sexual impulse which pulls two ways -to innocence and life but
also to corruptness and death. Lovers offer no choice of course and no conflict; indeed to choose
would be naive for we cannot alter our condition. Short of abandoning society altogether our only
reasonable response must be a working accommodation with ourselves and others, so as to gain
what we can without relinquishing too much.

The reality designated in metaphorical terms is the fact of the Fall. As a datable historical event it
is nowhere expressly formulated in Marvell's poetry; but as an ever-present human experience it is
never absent from his consciousness. Death brought into the world by the luckless apple casts is
maleficent shadow over a number of poems - Young Love, The Match, The Unfortunate Lover, The
Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun and of course To His Coy Mistress where an initially

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light hearted variation on a common enough theme (carpe diem) advances rapidly along unforseen
tracts to an alarming apprehension of the ravenous nature of time and death.

There is a recurrence in Marvell of the linked themes of liberty and necessity of innocence crushed
by external violence by the pressures of time or passion inevitably giving rising to tyranny and war
once the garden state of childhood is over. There are varied ways in which time can be outwitted -
"Thus, though we cannot make our sun/stand still, yet we will make him run"; or by contemplative
withdrawal ('The Garden').

A continuous presence in Marvell's poetry is the predicament of restriction – the condition of being
thwarted, confined or enmeshed. The persistent lover in To His Coy Mistress is a living proof of
being thwarted. Given world and time enough his courtship would continue for thirty thousand
years. But he is trapped in a paradox – if he gains his end and wins the lady, he will only increase
time's speed, the faster you run away from time the faster you use up time.

This poem about the lady's reticence, is a mockery of this reticence, a recommendation to inhabit a
world of reality rather than one of conventional and an acknowledgement that reality might be
barbarous were it not for the civilising force of convention. This is the characteristic Marvell tone,
subverting what it alleges and at the same time questioning its own subversion.

Marvell starts with a convention and then proceeds to dismantle it before making his approach to
another convention. The carpe diem injunction notwithstanding, the poem confronts us with the
destructive forces that loom behind all ceremonies whether of sophistication or innocence. Space
is a desert now, instead of a fertile land of compliments. Yet we have to ask what is implied by a
situation in which honour and lust are alike exposed to mortality and in which lust is declared as
the probable driving force behind an earlier zeal for compliment. The Biblical echoes of dust and
ashes provide no sanction for the satisfying of desire. It is the triumph of time, a triumph which
cannot be thwarted. All that can be done is to retrieve a moment from it and intensify the meaning
of the moment. A convention has been set up to be dismantled and the one that has replaced it is
not any more sacrosanct. To devour time maybe to turn on one's tormentor, but it is also to become
the enemy. To actively "devour" rather than to passively "languish" is not to escape the end but
only hasten its arrival. To His Coy Mistress is probably Marvell's most destructive poem. Its
strength is that having turned against itself in the expected manner of ironic poems, it then turns
against its own internal objections, leaving us with the desert that is the poem's centre.

The poem laments the remorseless grinding of Time's jaws and sensitively explains every change
of mood and turn of thought. The movement of the poem has great urgency, there is a forward
impulse in the three part syllogistic argument, The traditional plea to give up coyness is given a
syllogistic form - "Had we but Time enough"; "But at my back I always hear ..."; "NOW therefore..
.." The three divisions are precisely weighed. The speaker's willingness to practice almost eternal
gallantry is emphasised by the twenty lines that it requires; but the necessities of time and morality
neatly balance that movement in only twelve lines. The final fourteen lines of the resolution both
prove firmly conclusive for the immediate moment also suggest costs and values beyond that
moment.

81
The tone of To His Coy Mistress marvellously catches a complex human attitude. Marvell's
dialectical attitude implies a metaphysic - "Had we . ..", "But . . .", Now therefore . . ...". What
really counts here is the urbanity with which issues arc pushed to their universal consequel1ces.
The wit, so precise in its hold on the complexities of our being, is no less precisely pitched to catch
the human attitude to them. With exquisite delicacy of ironic understatement Marvell rises the bleak
prospect of death, corruption, and an empty eternity (lines 25-32). These haunted and haunting
conceits would be simply macabre if they were less elegantly or less self-mockingly delivered.

Marvell delicately plays on the myth of an original innocence lost within the terms of pastoral or
celebratory love. His concern with innocence is at once tender and subtle; he can be warm in
sympathy while allowing that innocence is an equivocal quality in this world. Much of the power
of the poem comes from the concreteness with which universal issues arc realized or imaginatively
experienced and from the grace with which the limitations of our state are entertained and mastered.

The poem's structure itself is an evidence of the grounding in dialectics acquired by Marvell (and
other seventeenth century poets). In the first section the leading image is of "vegetable love”, an
attack on Romantic love which grows slowly, and thus requires endless time and world. The lady
could then search for jewels by the Ganges and the lover complains by the tide of the Humber.

In the second section the key image is of Time's winged chariot and the corresponding intensity of
terror produced by it. Based on Luther's predictions it was believed in Marvell's time that the world
would shortly come to an end (in 1560). So Marvell's preoccupation with time is not surprising.

"Morning dew" and "fire" occur in the next section. The invitation to the sexual act is expressed in
three independent images - the lovers as amorous birds of prey devouring time (38-40), the
pomander, a union of male energy and female tenderness (41-42) reminiscent of Donne's image in
The Canonization where the lovers are symbolised by the eagle (strength) and dove (sweetness);
the third image is of the gates of life before which the sexual strife is waged. Metallic images
reinforce the predicament of restriction. The lovers must tear pressure through life's "Iron gates".
There is obviously a pun in the concluding couplet - through the 'son' the lovers can outwit the 'sun'.
Images of "devour", "tear", "roll" find justification in a poem - dealing with time, death and waste
and Marvell is adept at giving unexpected treatment to a stock situation.

Exercises

1. What other 'carpe diem' poems do you b o w beside To His Coy Mistress?
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2. How is the seventeenth century concept of love different from the sixteenth century concept of
love?
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3. What are the main ideas under discussion in the poem?

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What is typical of this poem is the translation of personal experience, without loss into a conscious
play with literary traditions. The altered status of love ill the seventeenth century invites not moral
decision but placing. Thus love poetry lost much of its dynamic character and became a realization
of the way things are with us. It is haunted art, because it balances the one prospect against the
other and holds both in play by way of heightening our apprehension of how far love is bound by
time. There was in Marvell's age a heightened apprehension of where our world and we stand in
time. Reading nature aright one may in the present age get a glimpse of the original state. The
seventeenth century efforts to see things as they really are was a search for the condition of our lost
Eden, an attempt to explore how we can accept the way things stand with us and yet go on living
in Society at the same time.

Glossary

Noah's Flood : refers to Genesis 7

The Second Coming of Christ : refers to The Revelation to John

10.5 THE GARDEN

The next poem

under discussion is one of his most famous, namely The Garden. It should not be read as an
autobiography. What was the state of Marvell's mind as he wandered in Fairfax's Yorkshire
garden? This kind of pseudo biographical criticism is both wasteful and deceptive. It diverts
attention from the real issues in the text.

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"We cannot err in following nature" said Montaigne. This is a useful guide to the thought of the
late Renaissance which here concerns us. Nature is to be distinguished from custom -natural
inclinations are good and sensual gratifications are not so dangerous as other more orthodox
philosophies hold them to be. Sense and instinct find their own balance without the interference of
reason. It is good to satisfy natural appetite. As is obvious here the platonic concept of love is being
rejected.' This genre of poetry described the sensuality of a natural Eden and a specialized kind
concentrated on sexual gratifications as innocent and the subject of unreasonable - interference
from Honour. There was great flexibility within this genre. Poets who stated the extreme sensualist
case were quite capable of refuting it (e.g. Saint - Amant). One might call this refutation "anti-
genre". The Garden is a poem of the anti-genre of the naturalist paradise. Marvell could pass with
ease from the libertine garden to the garden of platonic solitaire. The poem uses the language and
"norms" of a genre in a formal refutation of the genre.

The Garden is a poem rich in symbolism. The gardens to which Marvell most directly allures in
his poem are the Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, and that garden to which the Stoic and
Epicurean3, as well as the Platonist retire for solace or mediation. A word is needed about the
garden of the solitary thinker, which
Marvel1 uses in his argument against the libertine garden of innocent sexuality. The libertines use
the innocence of self to exact sensuality and to propose the abolition of the Honour, meaning mainly
female chastity. This is the situation of jouissance petry which was fashionable in France (Saint -
Amant ) and England ( Carew, Lovelace, Randolph). The garden, the place of unfallen innocence
is identified with a naturalist glorification of sensuality. The garden which is formally opposed to
this one by Andrew Marvell is the garden where sense is controlled by reason and intellect can
contemplate not beauty but heavenly beauty. It was Montaigne in his stoic role who gave currency
to the pleasures of solitary seclusion. The relevant ideas and attitudes were developed into a poetic
genre. This is the poetry of the meditative garden. There is of course a play of the senses in which
the woman has no part. The true end of the garden is 'quietness withdrawing from the world,
meditation'. True ecstasy is in being rapt by intellect, not by sex. To the naturalist jouissance,
Marvell opposes the meditative solitude. The Garden is, however, not a contribution to philosophy
nor the direct account of a contemplative act.

Exercises

1. What is the difference between the Jouissance and Solitude genres of poetry? To which genre
does Marvell belong?
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The poem begins by establishing that of all the possible gardens, it is dealing with that of retirement,
with the garden of the contemplative man who shuns action.
Man vainly runs after Palm (is for victors), Oak (for rulers) and Bayes (is for poets) but retired life
is quantitatively superior. If you appraise action in terms of plants you get single plants, whereas
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retirement offers you the solace of not one but all plants. The first stanza then is a witty dispraise
of active life, though it has nothing to distinguish it sharply from other kinds of garden poetry such
as Libertine or Epicurean.

The innocence of the second stanza again does not distinguish it from other garden poets, for
innocence is a sort of feature of the Libertine as well as Epicurean garden. Your sacred plants, he
says addressing Quite and Innocence, are unlike the palm and oak and bay in that if you find them
anywhere on earth it will be among plants of a garden. The others you can find in "busy companies"
of man. The inference is that Innocence may be found only in the green shade. Society is all but
rude (unpolished by comparison with solitude, which at first appears to lack the virtues society
possesses, but which actually possesses them in a greater measure).

This prepares the ground for a clearer rejection of libertine innocence. Female beauty is reduced to
its emblematic colours (red and white) and unfavourably compared with the green of the garden,
as a dispenser of sensual delight. A foolish failure to understand the superiority of green, causes
lovers to insult trees by carving on them the names of women. Since it is the green garden and not
women that the poet chooses to regard as amorous, it would be farcically logical for him to carve
on the trees their own names. This garden is natural and amorous in quite a different way from the
libertine garden.

Love enters this garden, but only when the pursuit of the white and red is done, and we are without
appetite, (love is here both pursued and the pursuer). Weary with the race and exertion, 'it' makes
a retreat to the garden. The place of retreat has therefore love but not women; they are
metamorphosed into trees. Even the gods have been misunderstood, they pursue women not as
women but as potential trees. And hence the usefulness of the myths of Apollo and Daphne4 and
Syrinx. The sensuous appeal of this garden then is not sexual, as it is in the libertines.

The garden has nonetheless, all the enchantment of Earthly Paradise, and all its innocence; this is
the topic of the fifth stanza. The trees and the plants press their fruit upon him. The fruits of green,
and not red and white are offered in abundance, everything is by nature lush and fertile. The
difference between this Paradise and one containing a woman is that here a Fall is of light
consequence and without any tragic significance. In this garden both man and nature are unfallen.
It is therefore not a trap for virtue but a paradise of perfect innocence - the fall is innocent and the
sensuous allurements of the trees are harmless.

The sixth stanza begins with a typical puritan ambivalence - "from pleasures less". It can mean any
one of the following - i) reduced by pleasure, ii) the mind retires because it experiences less pleasure
than the senses, iii) that it retires from lesser pleasure to the greater. The second meaning establishes
a relation between mind and sense which is obviously relevant to the theme. The third meaning is
the one most closely associated with this interpretation - the mind withdraws from sensual
gratification in order to enjoy a happiness of the imagination. This doubt gives grandeur to the next
line - a reference to the then commonly held belief that all species found on land have their
counterparts in the sea. The idea here is that the forms exist in the mind of man as they do in the
mind of God. By the virtue of the imagination the mind can create worlds, and seas too which have
nothing to do with the world which is reported by the senses. It is a common place of the
85
Renaissance poetic process that God is poet. It is conceivable that Marvell in his suggestion of the
mind's ability to create refers to modem psychology with its roots in the Renaissance, but with new
emphasis. The other worlds are thoughts in the mind of man as the world is a thought in the mind
of God. William Empson is of the opinion that streigth means 'packed together' as well as 'at once'.
The mind contains everything undiminished by the deficiencies of sense. The mind's newly created
worlds are in the strict sense phantasms, and without substance : and since they have the same
mental status as the created world, it is fair to say that "all that's made" is being annihilated, reduced
to a thought. The transition here is from the correspondences of thought with fact to those of thought
with thought, to find which is to be creative. This leads to the idea that not only does the mind
transcend the world it mirrors, but a sea, by similar transition, transcends both land and sea. "Green
thought" presents a great bogey. Surely the thought is green because the solitude is green. Hence
the contextual significance of green is in accord with what is after all a common enough notion -
green for innocence. Frank Kermode stakes that green has no very extensive symbolic intention -
green is still opposed to red and white; this is possible only when women are absent and the senses
are innocently engaged. The stanza thus alludes to the favourable conditions which enable the mind
to apply itself to contemplation. The process is wittily described and the platonic touches should
not be taken too seriously.

The seventh stanza has also been the subject of much ingenious speculation. As the poet allows his
mind to contemplate, his soul begins a platonic ascent. Here the influences of English mystic
philosophy and of Platonism is stronger. The fountain is here a symbol of purity and the bird is an
emblem of the soul. It "waves its plumes the various light " - we are reminded that the ascent
towards the pure source of light cannot be achieved, but that it is a product of solitude, not of
jouissance and that it is an alternative to libertine behaviour in gardens. It is the ecstasy not of
beauty but of heavenly beauty.

The eighth stanza makes this theme explicit. This is a special solitude, which can only exist in the
absence of women, the agents of temptation. This has been implied throughout but is clearly stated
here in the first clear reference to Eden. The notion that Adam would have been happier without a
mate is of course not new. This is . another way of saying the same thing - that women offer the
wrong kind of beauty and love, the red and white, instead of the green. Eve deprived Adam of
solitude and gave him an inferior joy. Her absence would be equivalent to the gift of a paradise. In
the last stanza, the temperate quiet of the garden is once more asserted, by way of conclusion. The
time, for us as well as for the bee is sweet and rewarding. Hours of innocence are conveyed by a
dial of herbs and flowers. The sun is „milder’ because here heat is substituted by fragrance. The
time computed is likewise spent in fragrant rather than hot pursuits. This is solitude, not jouissance,
the garden is of the solitaire whose soul rises towards divine beauty, not that of the voluptuary who
voluntarily surrenders to the delights of the senses.

16.5.1 Discussion

Marvell unlike most of his modem readers thought it possible to recover the lost harmony with
Nature, which before the Fall, man had possessed in the garden. The themes of alienature, harmony
Nature and Art are present in the poem. His intentions were those of a moralist to put matters in

86
proper perspective - so that salvation can be attained, so that the lost innocence, the paradisical
integrity of Nature might be reconstructed with the aid of literary Art in the garden of the mind.

The chief point of the poem is to contrast and reconcile conscious and unconscious states, the
intuitive and intellectual modes of apprehension. Yet this distinction is never made explicitly,
Marvell's thoughts implied by his metaphors. The poem combines the idea of the conscious mind
including everything because understanding it and the unconscious animal nature including
everything being in harmony with it. The point is not that: these two are essentially different, but
that they must cease to be different so far as either is to be known.

Exercises

1. What does the garden signify?

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2. Why is the colour of green important? What is green contrasted to?

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3. Point out two ambivalent lines from the poem.

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4. Why is the mind powerful?

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5. What are the chief points of the poem?

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87
__________________________________________________________________
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Glossary

1 For Plato's theory of love, read Symposium

2 and 3 - Schools of Philosophy
4 To save herself from the pursuit of Apollo Daphne turned herself into a laurel tree.

16.6 ‘HORATIAN ODE’

Marvell is usually known as a writer of philosophical and love poetry, Lesser known aspect of him
(outlined in 16.2) was his active involvement in the contemporary political scene of
England. He had written numerous satires and poems of political content which are not so well
known. As our third poem of this unit we have chosen one such lesser known poem An Horatian
Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650).

The easiest error into which critics fall is to define critical studies by historical facts. They try to
understand the 'ode' by historical evidence - by letters and documents - what Marvell really thought
of Cromwell at different times and then neatly fit the ode into a particular stage of Marvell's
developing opinion of Cromwell. This is not only a coarse method but positively perilous; for to
ascertain what Marvell the man thought of Cromwell and even to ascertain what Marvell the poet
consciously intended to say in his poem, will not prove that the poem actually says this, or all this,
or merely this.

So let us review the situation briefly. Hard upon the composition of the 'ode' in
1650, Marvell had in 1649 written poems in which the Royalist bias was perfectly explicit - To his
Noble Friend Mr Richard Lovelace, Upon the Death of Lord Hastings, Elegy upon the Death of
My Lord Francis Villiers. As Margoliouth (Marvell's biographer) put it : "If (the elegy on Villiers)
is Marvell's, it is his one unequivocal royalist utterance; it throws into strong relief the transition
character of "An Horatian Ode" where royalist principles and admiration for Cromwell the great
man exist side by side." But this transition of views again cannot be graphed as steadily rising curve
when we take into account Marvell's next poem Tonz May's Death in which he seemed to attack
Parliamentary forces.

What then does the Horation Ode say? Legouis sees in it a complete impartiality, which is the
product of Marvell's non-participation in the wars. But the Ode though it may be a monument of
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impartiality is not a monument of indifference. On the contrary there is a passionate interest in the
issues at hand, an interest which is manifested elsewhere in the poem.

From the historical evidence alone we can be sure that the attitude towards Cromwell in this poem
will be a complex one. This complexity is reflected in the ambiguity of the compliments paid to
him. This becomes clear in the very second word of the poem. 'Forward' may mean 'highspirited',
'ambitious', but it can also mean 'presumptuous', 'pushing'. The forward youth must forsake
shadows and muses and become a man of action. ,

The speaker does not identify Cromwell as the forward youth or directly say that Cromwell's career
has been motivated by a striving for fame. But the implications are clear enough. There is the
important word 'so' to relate Cromwell to these stanzas - "So restless Cromwell could not cease . .
. ." Restless may mean 'scorning indolence' but can also mean 'to take rest'. Cromwell's high courage
will not allow him to rest 'in the inglorious Arts of Peace'. This thirst for glory merely hinted at by
these negatives is further developed in the ninth stanza -

"Could by industrious valour climbe

To mine the great work of Time . . ..."

'Climbe' denotes aggressiveness and his courage is too high to brook a rival (lines 17-20). But the
speaker is careful to use the word "could not cease" - for Cromwell it is not a question of will, but
of a deeper compulsion. Restless Cromwell could not cease even if he wanted to.

Indeed the lines that follow extend the suggestion that Cromwell is like an elemental force (1316).
The last two lines refer to Cromwell's struggle after the battle of Marston Moor with the leaders of
the Parliamentary Party. Here we have to be fully alive to the force of the metaphor. The lightning
is conceived as tearing through the side of his own body - the cloud. Metaphorically then, Cromwell
has not spared his own body; there is therefore no reason to be surprised that he has not spared the
body of Charles. If nature will not tolerate a power vacuum, nor will it allow two bodies ("spirits")
to occupy the same space. Two spirits must jostle one another, and one must give way : Cromwell's
is therefore not a vulgar ambition. If his valour is an "industrious valour" it contains plain valour
too, of a kind perfectly capable of being recognised by any Cavalier (45-46). If the driving force is
a desire for glory, it is glory of that kind which allows a man to become dedicated and even selfless
in his pursuit of it. Moreover the desire for such glory can become so much a compulsion that the
man does not appear to act by his own will (11-12). Cromwell is then a marked man, a man of
destiny, but he is not merely governed by his star. Active though it be, he cannot remain passive,
he is not merely urged by it, but himself urges it' on.

So what does this say about Charles? Does it mean that Charles has angered heaven and thus
merited his destruction. In the lines there is nothing to suggest that Charles had angered the heavens,
or that Justice which complains against his fate is anything less than justice (37-38).

While Cromwell has been established as an elemental force, the poet does not forget that he is a
man too - that 'the force of angry Heavens flame' is embodied in a human being (27-28). The lines
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that follow praise that manliness, strength, valdur and cunning (wiser-art) which resulted in Charles
I flight from Hampton Court in November 1647 to take refuge in Carisbrooke which was regarded
as the King's fatal error. Modern historians however do not find any evidence that Cromwell
cunningly induced the King to flee by playing on his fears.

But the ends served by these powers are not commendable. Marvell insists that
Cromwell was deaf to the complaint of justice and that the power achieved by Cromwell is a 'forced
pow'r' (66). But the speaker is a realist who knows that a kingdom cannot be held by 'merely
pleading - 'ancient rights' (39-40).

The more closely we look at the Ode the more clearly we realise that the speaker chooses to
emphasize Cromwell's virtues as a man and likewise those of Charles as man. The poem does not
debate which of the two was right, for that issue is not even in question. The portraits of the two
men beautifully supplement each other. Cromwell -to use Aristotle's terms -the man of character,
the man of action, who both acts and knows, acted upon by his star but not passive.

Charles on the other hand the man of passion, the man who is acted upon, who knows how to suffer.
The contrast is pointed out in half a dozen different ways. In the celebrated stanzas on the execution,
there is ironic realism as well as admission – he is the "Royal Actor" who knows his assigned part
and performs it with dignity. He truly adorned the "Tragick Scaffold" (53-64). What is being
applauded in lines 56- 66? Cromwell's resolution in bringing the king to a deserved death? Or the
king's dignity on the scaffold as he has suffered death? Marvell was too good a poet to resolve the
ambiguity.

The second half of the poem begins with the reference to

. . . .. that memorable Hour which first
assured the forced Pow'r.

Cromwell is henceforth seen as the agent of the new state that has been erected upon the dead body
of the king. The thunderbolt simile of the first part of the poem, gives way to the falcon simile in
the second part of the poem. The latter figure revives and qualifies the former. It repeats the
suggestion of ruthless energy and power. Cromwell now falls from the sky not as a thunderbolt,
but as the hunting hawk. The trained falcon is not a wanton destroyer, nor an irresponsible one. It
knows its master; it is perfectly disciplined (93-94). The speaker's admiration for Cromwell
culminates in lines 81-82 -the emphasis is on the fact that he need not obey, yet does, that his
homage is not forced but voluntary.

What about the Republic which Cromwell so ruthlessly serves? What is the speaker's attitude
towards it? The speaker recognises the fact that its foundation rests upon the bleeding head of
Charles, and hence the allusion to the Roman analogy, Yet the speaker does not confirm that the
bleeding head is a happy augury.(71-72). The speaker is not willing to prophesise peace but is
willing to predict that England under "Cromwell will be powerful in war and will strike fear into
the surrounding states (97-100). Specifically he predicts a crushing victory over the Scots.
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What of the compliments to Cromwell on his ruthlessly effective campaign against the Irish? Does
Marvell the Englishman for once succumb to biased patriotism (lines 73-80). This must be read
with some grim irony and the earlier stanzas sanction that reading. Cromwell's activity, bravery,
resolution, his efficiency come in for praise not his gentleness or his mercy and the Irish themselves
are best able to affirm this for they have been blasted by the force of angry Heaven's flame. The
third quality which the speaker couples with goodness and justice is fitness "for highest Trust" and
the goodness and justice of Cromwell culminate in this fitness. The recommendation to trust here
refers not to the Irish but to the English state. The passage fits into the poem - a poem which is no
panegyric on Cromwell but an unflinching analysis of his, character.

The Irish have been tamed and now the Piet will no longer be able to shelter under his particoloured
mind. It is the hour of decision and the particoloured mind affords no protection against the man
who "does both act and know". In Cromwell's mind there is no conflict. His is not only an
"industrious valour" but also a "sad valour". "Sad" may mean steady but can also mean what Virgil
had made it mean - sad fear, the fear that made the Trojans sad. Cromwell's valour is sad in that the
Scots will have occasion to rue it:

So far the speaker has been content to view Cromwell from a distance, against the background of
recent history and refer to him in the third person - but in the last two stanzas he addresses Cromwell
directly, He salutes him as "the wars and Fortunes Son", in that he is the master of battle. It can
also mean that he is a creature of wars and the product of fortune. The earlier references to
Cromwell as a natural phenomena certainly lend support to this reading - power has come to him
through wars in troubled times and he has no sanction for his power in "ancient Rights". These
readings are not mutually exclusive, rather they support each other. Cromwell is urged to march
"indefatigably on". If he could not cease "in the inglorious Arts of Peace", one cannot conceive of
his ceasing now in the hour of danger (115-118). It is not merely against the spirits of the bight that
Cromwell will have to fight. He will have to use his steel against bodies less diaphanous than spirits.
If there is any doubt about his last point, the concluding lines (119- 120) put it forward explicitly
and powerhlly.

Exercises

1. What images are used in the poems to describe Cromwell?

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

2. What is the speaker's attitude towards Cromwell?

__________________________________________________________________

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__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

3. What does the speaker say about Charles?

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

10.6.1 Discussion

The stanza form used by Marvell in the Horatian Ode was used only once by Marvell (in his poem)
and does not seem to occur in English poet@ prior to Marvell. Margoliouth and Legouis think that
the stanza was Marvell's invention.
But Cleanth Brooks insists that Marvell borrowed the form from Sir Richard
Fanshawe, Marvell's
Royalist associate and also a translation of Horace's odes.

Hunting metaphors pervade the poem and it has an overall Roman cast. Marvell makes specifically
no Christian references in the poem. Charles is Caesar, Cromwell is Hannibal. On the scaffold
Charles refuses to call not on God but on 'the Gods'. The poem progresses in two movements and
the celebrated stanzas on Charles' execution divide the poem into two distinct parts - first,
Cromwell's rise to power; and second Cromwell's wielding of that supreme power.

10.7 LET US SUM UP

Even after all this discussion the question can still arise - what is the final attitude towards
Cromwell? Is it ultimately one of approval or disapproval? These questions bring to mind
Shakespearean tragedies (this is not to imply that Marvell had Shakespearean tragedies in mind
while writing this poem). What for example is our attitude towards Macbeth? We assume his guilt,
but there are qualities which emerge from his guilt which excite admiration. They do not
compensate for his guilt, but they force us to exalt him in the same breath as we condemn him.
Similarly the insight into Cromwell is as heavily freighted with admiration as it is with
condemnation. But the admiration and the condemnation do not cancel each other. They define
each other; and because there is responsible definition, they reinforce each other. The summation
can be neatly done in the words of Mr. Margoliouth - "The Ode is the utterance of a constitutional
monarchist whose sympathies have been with the king, but who yet believes more in men than in
parties or principles, and whose hopes are fixed now on Cromwell, seeing in him both the civic

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ideal of a ruler without personal ambition, and the man of destiny moved by and yet himself driving
a power which is above justice".

10.8 SUGGESTED READINGS

The Metaphysical Poets - ed. By Helen Gardner (read the introduction)

Marvell -Modern Judgements - ed. By Michael Wilding (important articles by
T.S. Eliot, William Empson, Frank Kermode, Cleanth Brooks etc.)

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UNIT- 12 A STUDY OF JOHN DONNE AND HIS WORKS

Structure

12.0 Objectives
12.1 Introduction
12.2 John Donne : The Man and the Poet
13.3 John Donne in Relation to the Petrarchans
13.3.1 John Donne and Poetic Medium
13.3.2 John Donne and His Detractors
13.3.3 John Donne's Versification
13.3.4 Conceit in Donne's Poetry
12.4 "The Flea"
12.5 "Twicknam Garden"
12.6 "The Good - morrow"
12.7 "The Extasie"
12.8 Let's sum up
13.9 Answers to Exercises

12.0 OBJECTIVES

After going
through this unit you will be able to critically appreciate John Donne's love poems, and to present
John Donne as a catalyst, making significant alterations in the course of the preceding
Elizabethan poetry.

12.1
INTRODUCTION

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This unit introduces you to John Donne, the pioneer of the metaphysical movement in English
literature in the first half of the 17th century. His poetry is expressive of intense personal emotions
in a conversational idiom with detachment. But critics of the school of Samuel Johnson look
askance at Donne's poetry whereas his poetry has received approbation from such modernists as
T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis. Unit 12 has already given you a picture of the mileu: social, intellectual
and religious that forms the groundswell of the kind of poetry that Donne writes. In this unit you
will read about Donne the man and also about the salient features of his poetry. This unit also
undertakes a close textual reading of four major poems of John Donne, the first two of which deal
with the poet's favourite theme of anti-courtly or anti-Petrarchan love and the remaining two tell us
about his metaphysic of love, the implication of which inheres in a close interdependence of body
and spirit.

12.2 JOHN DONNE.: THE MAN AND THE POET

John Donne (1572-1631) was the son of a prosperous London ironmonger and his mother was the
daughter of John Heywood, the epigrammist. His parents were Catholics. When he was only three
or four years old, his father died. The task of schooling him falls on the shoulders of the mother
who trains him on the basic tenets of Catholicism. At the age of twelve he with his brother, Henry,
goes upto
Oxford. He matriculates from Hart Hall in October, 1584. His biographer, Izaak Walton says that
at the age of fourteen, he moves from Oxford to Cambridge and that he remains there until his
seventeenth year. But Sir Richard Baker, a contemporary of John Donne at Hart Hall gives the
clinching evidence of John Donne's having been at Oxford only.

In 1591 he becomes a law student at Thavis Inn and from there he goes to
Lincoln‟s Inn in 1592. In the interregnum, from 1582 to 1591, he travels on the Continent,
especially Italy and Spain. There is a difference of opinion amongst Donne critics as to the period
of his travel during this phase. But documentary evidence shows that the travel occurs between
1588 and 1591. From 1592 to 1596 he has been more or less in continuous residence at Lincoln's
Inn. He studies law and divinity and mingles with the wits of his time at the mermaid writing verses,
going to plays, making amorous advances to his mistress and falling out with them, too, in the same
strain. This portrait of the man need not create the impression that he is a bohemian. His is a
paradoxical personality. This 'visitor of ladies' and 'frequenter of plays' is also a painstaking reader.
He has a "hydroptique immoderate desire" (Donne's phrase from a letter cited in (The Monarch of
Wit) of learning. From four to ten in the morning he is seen lost in the realm of books. Though he
is a voracious reader, he fails to have a University degree. The fact of his being a Catholic was
looked upon as a disability and for fear of maltreatment Catholic parents avoided sending their
wards to the University. However, John Donne engages himself in a profound study of doctrinal
differences between Anglican Church and the Roman Church. He witnesses the tragic death of his
brother, Henry, in August 1593. Henry had invited the wrath of the ruling class for harbouring a
seminary priest and had to undergo imprisonment. He dies in captivity. In 1596 under Essex he
goes on Cadiz expedition. This is followed by Island's expedition in 1597.
95
On his return from Island's expedition in 1597 he becomes Secretary to Thomas Egerton. In 1601
he in elected one of the members of Parliament for Brackley, a constituency controlled by Egerton.
These achievements give him a sense of fulfilment and, in a mood of elation, he brands
Catholicism as 'corrupt' and forsakes it. But the sense of satisfaction that he gets from rising by
'winding stair' (Monarch of Wit) wears thin very soon. It is owing to his clandestine marriage with
Anne More (the first name is also written as 'Ann') in l60l that he loses the secretaryship in 1602.
Anne's father, George More, even manoeuvres for his as well as his associates' imprisonment. All
this means disaster for him and he writes to his wife: John Donne, Anne Donne, VN-done (cited in
Monarch of Wit)

These acts of injustice also leave a scar on his psyche that is difficult to heal. However, his love for
his wife remains constant. Probably it provides him with an escape from worldly tension. This fact
finds a poetic rendition in his poem, "The Canonization" which will be discussed in Unit 14.

Donne's dismissal from Egerton's employment marks the end of what J. B. Leishman calls the First
Act of Donne's life. After his d.ismissa1 he goes to the house of Anne's cousin, Sir Francis Woolley,
at Pitford in Surrey. He studies Canon and Civil Law there. In moving to Pitford his slim is to be
near London with his eye on the prospect of preferment in store for him. He then moves, first, to
Camberwell and, then, to Mitcham. At Mitcham he generally leaves his wife at home and moves
into the charmed circle of his friends in or about London. The situation is similar to the one
expressed in his poem. "A Valediction : forbidding mourning" through the image of a pair of
compasses. The desire for secular preferment is overpowering in him and goads him on
peregrinations. In course of this intense search for a job he gets considerable assistance from one
of King James's most favoured chaplains, Thomas Morton. With Thomas Morton, Donne embarks
upon the task of converting the English Roman Catholics to Protestantism in 1607. Both Thomas
Morton and King James think Donne to be a great theologian especially made for the service of the
Church and fries to persuade Donne to take orders. But Donne is still inclined to have an
employment in State and declines the offer. In l611 he finds a patron in Sir Robert Drury and goes
on a visit to the Continent with him. In 1614 he becomes a Member of Parliament for the second
time. But this proves to be a short lived affair, because the Parliament is dissolved at a premature
age of two months only. The dissolution of the Parliament marks the end of what Leishman would
call the Second Act of his dramatic life. In this period he is virtually "an actor without a part
(Monarch of Wit). Like Hamlet, he broods over the meaninglessness of life. Though he is not
rebelliuns like Hamlet, he feels caged in this life, like a 'Prince in prison' (The Extasie). Probably
this state of imprisonment in life also finds expression in "The Second Anniversarie" in which he
talks about the imprisonment of the soul in body. J. B. Leishman seems right to a great extent when
he says that

. . .during the thirteen years that followed his dismissal from Egerton's service in 1602 until
his ordination in 161 5 he was without a part.

Donne takes orders in 1615 and in 1621 he becomes the Dean of St Paul's. He dies in 1631. The
period from 1615 to 1631 that shows him mainly as a preacher may be said to be the third phase or

96
the Third Act of his life. Leishman is probably right to remark that the part which was allotted to
him, proved to be peculiarly suited to his temperament.

From the above chronicle of Donne's life we may also have the image of John Donne the poet. He
is a man who vacillates between two masters within him. The one pulls him to the life of sensual
pleasures and the other leads him to disenchantment and detachment, His sufferings and religious
training make him brood over the idea of the relative importance of body and soul, leading to their
interminable dialogue in his major poems. His early poems like "The Flea" and "Go and Catch the
Falling Star" are impudent and outrageous and seem to reflect the poet's early life. His life as a
preacher has been given a dramatic expression in poems like Litanie and his Divine poems. Thus
the life of the poet has a definite bearing on his poems. .

Exercise- 1

1. What prevents John Donne from taking a University degree? Is it an incompetence on his part
or a matter of some constraint implicit in his birth?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

2. Who was responsible for John Donne's schooling in boyhood? Was he left free to develop
himself as he wanted to do so or was he made to have some particular religious training?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

3. What evidence is there to set at rest the controversy that John Donne got his education at Oxford
and not at Cambridge? Is the issue alive or dead?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

4. How far do you agree to a reading of John Donne as a man about town, a man in search of the
delights of life?
__________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________ ____________
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5. How do you reconcile John Donne the bohemian, a visitor of ladies and a frequenter of plays
with John Donne brooding over the ephemeral character of the world?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

12.3 JOHN DONNE IN RELATION TO THE PETRARCHANS

John Donne's
poetry falls broadly into three groups: Satires, Elegies and Verse letters, Songs and Sonnets and
Divine Poems. These three groups have an underlying impulse, the impulse to break away from
the shackles of the conventions of poetry reigning in English literature just before his advent on
the literary scene. The dominant convention has been set by Spenser. But Spenser patterned his
poems after Petrarch, the Italian poet: The Spensarian universe in his Amoretti sonnet – sequence
is devoted to the adoration of his lady-love. Spenser invests his lady-love with heavenly
attributes. However, he is not alone in writing poetry of this type. Some other poets are also there
piping in the same strain. Sidney in his "Astrophel and Stella ", Thomas Lodge in his "Scillaes
Metamorphosis" and Michael Drayton in his "Endimion and Phoebe "make a goddess of their
love, exempt from the ravages 01 Time.

To John Donne this mood of abject acquiescence to lady love is something quite repulsive, because
he feels that it runs counter to the psychology of man, man composed of diverse emotions and
feelings. If adoration is an impulse in man, scorn is also there, contending with it and negating it,
or setting it at naught. John Donne, who is aware of the intricacies of human heart in which
contradictory impulses pull in different directions, cannot reconcile himself without any demur to
a lop-sided rendering of the theme of love. John Donne, with his penchant for extensive reading in
law, theology and contemporary science, cannot be a mute spectator to what Spenser and his tribe
was doing by extolling the lady-love and also transforming her into a deity. John Donne begins
with a sedulous and unrelenting campaign against the ruling convention of the love poetry of the
time wedded to idealization. He has a sharp analytical mind, and dissects the manyhued aspects of
life and contemplates experiences with scepticism and detachment. In short, the distinctive flavour
of Donnes' poetry lies in his reaction against lavishing praise on the object of love indiscriminately,
and with cool objectivity, subjects even personal experiences to vigorous scrutiny, and thus John
Donne breaks new grounds in poetry by launching a persistent and unflinchingattack on the
ascendancy of poets just alluded to and fond of idealizing things. The scepticism and self-
consciousness of the poet made him view the sugared sonnets of poets, such as Sidney and Spenser
as well as the composers of madrigals weaving a tapestry of delectable romance, with a grain of
salt. Though the attack on the highfalutin love is also there in Shakespeare's sonnets relating to

98
Dark Lady and in Jacobean playwrights with their poetry of blood and revenge, Donne steals the
show, because he is the singular poet, who with the zeal of' a crusader, debunks the sublime and
elevated strain unrelated to the lowly and mean impulses in man.

This impulse to probe and scrutinize is at work in different ways in his secular poetry of the first
two groups of "Elegies and Satyrs" and "Songs and Sonnets" and Divine poems. The mood of
debunking is not applicable to religious poetry in the manner it is applicable to the first two groups.
In Divine poems the mood of questioning is there, but there is no attempt to deny the authority of
God. The poet is seeking grace and redemption. Even in his secular poetry he takes the stuff of the
Petrarchan mode of idealization for granted, but his mood of enquiry enables him to re-work the
Petrarchan motif in a manner that the result is quite startling and the fond idea of the "Impossible
She", claiming a blind allegiance from lovers of all hues, is subjected to scrutiny, and consequently
the sham from the real in love-malting is sifted and winnowed.

Exercise - I1

1. Write a note on the reigning love conventions in the early 17th century lyrics. How does John
Donne differ from the Petrarchans ?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

2. Bring out the main difference between the love poems of the Petrarchan poets and those of John
Donne.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

3. Write a note on the "Impossible She"

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

4. What is Petrarchan model of love? Name the English poets whose poetry is patterned after
Petrarch.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________ ____________

5. How does Spenser become the presiding deity of poets writing in the Petrarchan vein?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

6. Do you recall the famous sonnet sequence of Spenser drawing inspiration from Petrarch ?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

7. Try to correlate Spenser's Amoretti sonnet-sequence with Shakespeare's first 25 sonnets that
are known as sugared sonnets.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

Note : The answers are placed at the end of the unit.

12.3.1 John Donne and poetic medium

Apart from John Donne's thematic innovations just referred to in the preceding subsection, there is
a point worth noting in respect of the poet. It is that John Donne forges a poetic medium
commensurate with his theme. In-his poetry emotions have their intellectual counterparts. Joan
Bennett makes a very illuminating comment that emotions are a grist to the intellectual mill of the
mind. (Joan Bennett, Five Metaphysical poets). The implication is that an emotion is analysed in
the context of a wide range of thought, and out of this analysis develops a pattern of thought utterly
different from the primacy of one thought. John Donne knows that reality is 'diverse, and unless
there is an attempt at comprehending the varied facets of reality, the poetry will lack fidelity to
thought and experience. A refusal to grapple with the complex living of man results in a poem that
presents only a partial perception of the truth of life. In order to overcome this failing, John Donne
wants his poetry to go the whole hog in recapturing the variety that composes the intricate pattern
of life. T, S. Eliot, too, is full of admiration for John Donne for devising a medium that devours
experiences of all sorts, right from adoration to brutality, with all intermediate shades of feeling in
between, and with this amalgam of diverse experiences, he makes a pattern, rich and satisfying. A
romantic poet is besotted with an agreeable experience and makes a flight into the empyrean

100
domain oblivious of the stark reality. But John Donne digests the disperate facts of life and weaves
a unity out of steady contemplation. Thus metaphysical poetry is primarily a style which provides
the poet with a tool that places emotions in the wider matrix of life and also perceives a correlation
between one emotion and the other, Basil Willey in his book, Seventeenth Century Background,
rightly avers that the metaphysical sensibility means the capacity for living in divided and
distinguished worlds and also for perceiving correspondences between the diverse worlds one lives
through. John Donne exhibits this capacity for taking on realities of different sorts with a searching
mind and makes a pattern out of them. It is a conception of poetry in which the genesis is, no doubt,
in private emotions of the poet, but the private emotion is judged and evaluated in a bigger pattern;
and in John Donne's poetics, the poet has to be gifted with two attributes: one is sensibility and the
other is judgement. This blend of emotion and thought in the making of poetry is reminiscent of
what Coleridge says about the union of feeling and ratiocination: " Judgement ever awake and
steady self -possession with enthusiasm or feeling profound or vehement" (From Joan Bennett.,
Five Metaphysical Poets, Chapter
III).

Exercise - III

1. We would like to prize John Donne's poetry not for the idea, but for the manner in which the
idea is presented. Discuss.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

2. Write a note on John Donne's poetic medium.

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

12.3.2 John Donne and his detractors

The novelty in Donne's style is taken with a pinch of salt by his contemporaries like Burton. Burton,
in the Preface to The Anatomy of Melancholy, satirises Donne's poetry in a hyperbolic tone and
remarks that his poetry is strong-lined, abounding in hyperboles and allegories. (From Helen
Gardner, The Metaphysical Poets. “Introduction”).

Soon the expression, 'strong-lines' (From Helen Gardner, The Metaphysical Poets, "Introduction")
assumed the character of a slang against Donne's poetry. This depreciatory evaluation of Burton in
point of Donne's poetry gets added strength from Dryden, remarking that ". . . he affects the
101
metaphysics not in his satires but in his amorous verses where nature only should reign." (John
Dryden, Dedication to Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire). Later Dr.
Johnson comes with his damaging observation on the metaphysicals, saying that they "may be
termed the metaphysical poets". (Samuel Johnson, "Life of Cowley ", Lives of the Poets). He adds
that the metaphysical poets were men of learning and to show learning was their whole endeavour.
Johnson again launches a devastating assault on the metaphysicals, when he comments that in their
poetry "heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together". Dryden, in conjunction with Johnson,
is responsible, in a large measure, for putting antipathy into the mind of the reader towards the
metaphysicals. However, a sensitive reading of Donne's poetry, without any pre-possession, nails
the charge that his poetry is a mere cerebral exercise and a cross-word puzzle. Donne's poetry is
endowed with certain elements that are typical not only of his poetry, but all good or great poetry
is supposed to have those attributes. It is a fact that disparate ideas find a place in his poetry, but
the unity of experience is not a forced one. The unity comes into being under the intensity of artistic
process.

In every good or great poet dissimilar ideas are seen not as a welter of facts, not a motley assortment
of unrelated ideas, but a harmonious whole comes into being, when the poet contemplates them
and perceives the inter-relationships amongst them. It is an indubitable fact that John Donne
becomes outrageous and impudent in making far-fetched comparisons, as he finds a pair of
compass for a pair of lovers and the image of marriage temple for the flea, that swells and pampers
with the blood sucked from the lover and the beloved. The images in question may sound far-
fetched or ingenious, but they have their justification in the context of the experience that is
consistently developed in both poems - "Valediction : forbidding mourning" and "The Flea". To
John Donne, or to any metaphysical poet, there is no segregation of experience into water-tight
compartments of the sublime and the repulsive. The whole of life is grist to the mill of the
imagination of the poet, and John Donne admits of no distinction between the poetical and the
unpoetical. The concept or the image that illustrates his emotion comes into poetry.

Exercise - IV

1. On what ground does Dryden attack the Metaphysical Poets?

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________

2. Do you really think that in Donne's poetry the resemblance between two objects are effected
forcibly and unnaturally ? Write only 'yes' or 'no' in your answer.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ____________
102
3. Is Johnson's statement that metaphysical poetry is simply a yoking of heterogeneous ideas by
violence together (a) a reasoned one or (b) a matter of prejudice ? Write your answer in only
'a' or 'b'
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________ ___________

12.3.3 Donne's versification

Unless there is a careful consideration of some deep seated prejudices centring round Donne's
versification, we fail to have a right estimate of the consummate management of his verses. Ben
Jonson and Samuel Johnson are, in a large measure, responsible for vitiating the correct
understanding of Donne's versification, Ben Jonson observes that for not keeping of accent, Donne
deserves hanging (cited in John Bennet's Five Metaphysical Poets, Chapter III). Samuel Johnson
remarks that Donne's verses are rugged and harsh (Lives of the poet, "Life of Cowley"). He further
says that in Donne's verses " the modulation was so imperfect that they were only found to be verses
by counting the syllables". Apart from the misconception as to Donne's versification fostered by
the above two critics, the songsters of the Elizabethan England also share the blame for this. The
lyrics of these songsters are sung to the accompaniment of music. Donne's verses appear alien to
the conventional mode and cause annoyance to the protagonists of the songsters' verbal melody
typified by Campion. T. S. Eliot and F. R. Leavis, in their different ways, have successfully
countered the misconception about Donne's versification. They refute the remark of Samuel
Johnson, T. S. Eliot, in his book, On Poetry and Poets, draws a distinction between a 'limited
sensibility' and a 'defective sensibility'. He says that Johnson's sensibility is limited aid not
defective. Johnson is nurtured in the ethos of his time and is responsive to the subtle nuanced of
the heroic couplet. When the question of being sensitive to the harmonies of Donne's verses comes
he fails. F. R. Leavis concurs with Eliot when he observes that Johnson is conditioned by the needs
of his time and is limited in point of his sensitivity to Donne's versification. (F. R. Leavis, Anna
Karenina and Other Essays). Ben Jonson's remark is also circumscribed by his classical
temperament which adheres to rules already laid down. F. R. Leavis rightly remarks that Donne
writes in complete dissociation from music of the time and writes in a stanza form that 'proclaims
a union of poetry and music' (Revaluation, Chapter I). Every sensitive reader whose ears are attuned
to Donne's music finds that he successfully bends and breaks up the metrical pattern to
accommodate with a remarkable fidelity the fluidity of his moods. In keeping with his meaning he
distributes pauses and emphases. It is a tight rope walking in which the poet is treading the tense
curve of the verse.

The subtle artistry that goes into the making of Donne's verses will be better appreciated when we
take a passage and see how the poet fashions his verse. Let us examine the first five lines of "The
Sunne Rising" (You will have an easy access to an analytical discussion of this poem in
Understanding Poetry, EEG06 Course) and see for ourselves how meaning and rhythm become
active partners in the enactment of the experience :

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 Busie old foole, uilruly Sunne,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us ? Must to thy
motions lovers season run? Saucie pedantique wretch, goe chide Late
School boyes, and sowre prentices.

The experience rendered in this passage (and the poem) relates to the wounded feelings of a lover
who is in no mood to brook any interference with love-making. In his mood of anger he knows of
no norms of decorum and propriety and he makes his verse an effective instrument of feelings, raw
and elemental.

The first line of the passage is a string of invectives. The trochaic beginning in 'busie' arrests the
attention of the reader who cannot help witnessing the poet heaping indignity on the mighty and
widely respected sun. It is followed by a spondaic foot in
"old fool". This stressing of both the syllables recaptures the mounting scorn of the poet. It is an
off hand and contemptuous treatment of the sun. The manner is blatant and brazen.

It is through rhythm that the poet flings his barb at the sun who is uncivil and impudent and pokes
his nose into the affairs of the lovers. The brusque and the intemperate in the poet-lover embodied
in the movement of the verse shows that the poet is full of disrespect for the sun who is widely
respected. The movement of the verse indicates impatience and impertinence. Thus the movement
is in keeping with the emotion and experience that the poet wants to communicate. The angry poet
fashions pungent shafts and hurls them at his adversary, the sun. The use of the pause after 'fool'
and 'sun' in the first line is indicative of the fact that the poet, in a calm mood quite possessed with
himself, breaks the sun into smithereens. The scornful mood plays against the rhythm of the line
and thereby heightens his anger and disdain.

The poet also varies the length of the line as per the demand of versification, scrupulously reflecting
feelings and thoughts, as they arise in his heart. It has got naturalness and directness typical of
dramatic blank verse. In a dramatic verse gesture, intonation, pause and emphasis work in unison.
These elements taken together compose the movement of this poem and the poem, from the
beginning, manipulates tone and gesture, because it is through them that much of the meaning
comes to the reader. The first two lines are short whereas the third one is long with the doubling of
expressions such as 'Through windowes' and 'through curtaines'. The second line is a run-on
entering into the syntactical pattern of the third line. The auxiliary 'dost' is separated from the main
verb, 'call' by the expression, 'through windowes and through curtaines'. It is a device for putting
emphasis on the invasion of the bed-chamber in a clandestine manner. The length of the third line
in its iambic measure is expressive of the rays of the sun in the form of a peeping Tom. The
interrogative structure of the fourth line is in the form of a challenge to the sun. The use of the
auxiliary 'must' with its note of compulsion and inevitability in the interrogative structure is
designed for making a mockery of the pretentious such who is supposed to rule over the world. The
preponderance of sibilants from line number one to line number four coupled with alliteration and
assonance are meant for increasing the intensity of the venomous feeling against the sun. He is on
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a mocking - spree and does not refrain even from calling names like 'saucie' and 'pedantique' These
adjectives are used also to heighten the negative effect by degrees.

From the above example it is manifest that the lines in Donne's verse are freely divided and are of
varied lengths. It approximates to the speaking voice and have the vigour of colloquial speech. It
is not the solemn and dignified march of verse associated with Spenser in Amoretti sequence.
Spenser mounts a perch and does not know how to descend from it. His versification is in an
elevated key and lines are of equal length. This regularity of mood and line is an anathema to
Donne. It is because Donne has a realistic perception of man caught in the web of the intricacy of
human heart. This perception is to be presented in a verse medium which catches the fleeting
nuances of feelings and thoughts and embodies them in the tone, gesture and movement of the
speaking voice.

A scansion of a Dome passage will help you to see his art of versification even more vividly. Let
us scan the first stanza of "The Good Morrow”:

I won/der by / my troth/, what than /, and I /

Did, till / we lov'd / ? Were we / not wean'd /till then ?
But suck'd / on coun/trery ple/asures, chilldishly ? /
Or snor/ted we / ithe sea/ven slee/pers den ? /
'Twas so / ; But this / , allplea/sures fa/ncies bee. /
If e/ver a/ny bea/uty I / did see, / which I / desir'd /, and got / was but / a drea/me
of thee /.

1st line - Iambic Pentameter

2nd d line - Iambic Pentameter with a variation in the first foot which is a trochee,
3rd Line - Iambic Pentameter
4th Line - Iambic Pentameter with a variation in the third foot which is an anapaest.
5th Line - Iambic Pentameter with a variation in the third foot which is a spondee.
6th Line - Iambic Pentameter
7th Line - Iambic Hexameter

Exercise - V

1. Point out the basic difference between John Donne and his predecessors as regards versification.
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2. What prompted Ben Jonson and Samuel Johnson to castigate Donne for writing verses that are
unmetrical.
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3. 'John Donne argues in verse', Comment on this statement.

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4. Try to show that John Donne is a great metical mister.

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5. 'John Donne's verse has been affected by his being a frequenter of plays'. Justify.
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12.3.4 Conceit in Donne's poetry

You see the term, 'conceit' recun3ng in Donne criticism as a refrain.

Helen Gardner defines conceit as

... a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness, or, at least, is more immediately
striking.

The impulse to discover likeness in things unlike is typical of us and this discovery is a simile or a
metaphor. But this comparison becomes a conceit, when we are made to see the likeness, while
being greatly conscious of its incongruity. In Donne's poem, "A Valediction: of weeping" a tear is
compared to a globe. The quantity of tears grows into an amazing proportion and it takes the form
of a deluge. The incongruity is patent and the reader finds it difficult to see the similarity between
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the things dissimilar. However, an alert reader is able to perceive the similarity on the emotive
plane, and thus the apparent incongruity is condoned. Still the fact of apparent unlikeness is difficult
to brush aside. Sometimes an element of fallacy is also introduced in an extended conceit. But 'the
poet tries his best to present the fallacy as truth through some ingenious methods. The dialogue of
souls in Donne's "The Extasie" is witnessed by a third person, and through the quantitative
technique the poet adopts, he is able to "multiply his evidence in order to hammer home his
conviction. ('Leo Spitzer, "The Extasie ". Gerald Hamond's ed. "The metaphysical Poets: A
Selection of Critical Essays). Normally a poet presents his conceit in an argumentative way. S.L.
Bethell maintains that "the perfect conceit must necessarily take an argumentative form ("The
Nature of Metaphysical Wit"). The poet sometimes also builds up an allegory to convince his
readers. The similarity presented through a conceit is not always literal, it is sometimes purely
notional. But the most important element in a conceit is its apparent incongruity. Though critics
like Dr. Johnson disapprove of this fashion of using "false conceit" (Lives of the poets., "Life of
Cowley”), the critics of our generation generally think it a natural way of presenting similarities
between things apparently unlike. This idea is echoed in the following lines of Rosemund Tuve :

Much has been made of his (Donne's) harsh, violent, or displeasing images. It seems to me
an error to call these images dissonant or audaciously discordant. They are not
disharmonious with the subjects he chose... they are sometimes inharmonious with a giver
reader's preconceived notion of what .kind of subject the contemplation of Love' or
'Woman' or 'The Soul' ought to lead one to propound.
(Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery, ' m e Criterion of Decorum")

Tuve goes on :
Donne's subjects are audacious and so is his unabashed importation of the strictness of
logic into the poetic genres he preferred.

In "A Valediction : forbidding mourning" a pair of lovers becomes the stiff legs of a geometrical
compass. To a reader with a preconceived notion (and most of us have such notions) this
comparison leaves an impression that it is a recondite and learned image, ill at ease with the softness
and tenderness of love. Such images, though justified, are called conceits because of the incongruity
being apparent in it. The element of incongruity is writ large on the surface of the poem, "The
Flea". Herein the poet discovers likeness between the flea and the marriage bed as well as the flea
and the temple, and obliterates the separate identities of the lover and the girl he is wooing by
merging them into one. All these examples illustrate the fact that conceits are the products of the
ingenuity of the poet discovering likeness between things hitherto thought to be unlike.

A conceit differs from its mother (Enanuele Tesaurio defines Metaphor in the following way: "And
this is the Metaphor, mother of poetry, of conceits, of ingenius notions, symbols and imprese".
(cited in) S. L. Bethell's essay "The Nature of Metaphysical Wits.") metaphor, in the sense that

. .normally metaphor and simile allow and invite the mind to stray beyond the immediate
point of resemblance, and in the extended or epic simile, which is the dismetrically opposite

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 of the conceit, the poet himself expatiate freely, making the point of comparison a point of
departure.
(Helen Gardner, The Metaphysical Poets)

But in an extended conceit the poet forces upon us new points of likeness, through the
reinforcement of fresh images. Sometimes the central image in an extended conceit is encircled by
a series of supporting images. This helps the poet to convince his readers. This happens in Donne's
poem, "The Extasie".

In short, the elements of conceit are incongruity, concentration, tight logic and argumentative and
dialectical tenor. It is an instrument designed for defining the meaning of the poem or used for
persuading the reader to come round to the point of view developed in the poem.

Exercise – VI

1. What does a conceit mean?

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2. Cite the example of a conceit from Donne's poetry and explain it?
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3. Do you think then John Donne's conceits are lacking in a sense of propriety? Write either 'yes'
or 'no' only.
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4. Which of the two is the basic ingredient of a conceit - likeness or incongruity? Write your
answer in one word only.
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Note : Compare your answers with the one given at the end of the unit.

12.4 "THE FLEA"

John Donne's "The Flea" IS one of the most admired poems occurring in the section titled Songs
and Sonnets. It is evident from its appearance at the beginning of the 1635 edition of Donne's poem.
A Dutch poet, Huyghens translated some 19 poems of John Donne with "The Flea" coming at the
top, and some Dutch correspondents of Huyghens selected this poem for special commendation.
Sir Grierson looks upon "The Flea" as a masterpiece of wit in England and Holland. J.B. Leishman,
too, in his book, Monarch of Wit lavishes praise on "The Flea".

Donne had performed a kind of miracle, had almost succeeded in triumphing over the laws
of nature - had, as it were, made a fire without sticks, built a house without
bricks, created something out of nothing, or next to nothing.

Though "The Flea" is somewhat deficient in high seriousness, it offers unrivalled opportunities for
the display of the author's wit. The astonishing fact about the poem is that the poet writes three
stanzas of twenty seven lines, of close-knit and consecutive argument on an apparently unpromising
subject as a flea-bite. The ancestry of writing poetry on a despicable subject such as the flea goes
back to antiquity when Virgil writes on a gnat, and Ovid on a flea. In the 16th century the Florentine
poet, Berni (1535) had earned notoriety for his witty poems in praise of the plague, fleas, gluttons
being in debt, urinals and the like. Thus the subject of poetry may be trivial, but the skill of the poet
may transmute the ugly material into something engrossing, and John Donne's "The Flea" engages
the mind of the reader by the brilliance of his wit.

Like the poem, "The Dampe", "The Flea" is provocatively anti-courtly, and deflationary of the high
pretensions of the religion of love. "The Flea" is meant to intimate emblematically that it is not the
Petrarchan posture of abject servility which is in view, but the quite uncourtly objective of marriage.
The hallowed properties of the Petrarchan mode - disdain, honour and constancy - are to be
exorcised brutally. It is the naked pursuit of love's war on equal terms, instead of the one-sided
devotion to the lady-love, deified and exalted.

The poem begins with a rhetorical assault on a maiden, and the flea becomes a medium for the poet
for outsmarting her in the game of love The poet peremptorily asks the girl to marl' the flea which
has ravished her. This audacious charge of the violation of the chastity of the girl is stunning for
her. But the rhetorical flourish of the poet is such that reels out a consistent argument in defence of
the accusation he has hurled at her. The argument is specious, and appears to be well reasoned out,
and on account of this sly sophistry, he affects a seeming suspension of disbelief. The poet wants
to disarm the girl when he says:
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 Mee it suck'd first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee

The flea sucked the blood of the poet first and then that of the girl and consequently the two bloods
become one. To the poet this mingling of bloods has nothing wrong about it, though the wrong is
quite palpable and manifest in the sense that the mingling of bloods signifies a mating of man and
woman. The poet, with a shrug of his shoulders, turns to the girl and wants to wrest her assent to
his reading of the situation :

Confess it, this cannot be said

A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead.

The poet says that the supposed union of the poet and the girl in the flea has been effected without
any courtship. The poet further says that the wedding was consecrated in a church and the flea is
both the church where the marriage was solemnised and the marriage-bed. The battery of sophistry
is so unrelenting that the girl is shown to be acquiescing into his rhetoric. The poet further adds that
she need not inadvertantly kill the flea in a moment of annoyance. If she does so, she would be
liable to be committing sinful acts. First, through the killing of the flea, she kills him, secondly she
kills herself and thirdly she desecrates the church where the marriage took place. This appears to
be bizarre and outlandish to argue so, judged by the conventional norms. But there is the semblance
of reality backed up by the intense feeling of the poet. The poet here mocks the conventional
morality typified by the parents of the girl as well as the girl herself. The poet calls the girl cruel
and unfeeling, because her hand is stained with the innocent blood of the flea which has committed
no wrong. The poet completely absolves the flea of any guilt in doing any harm to the girl, saying
:

In what could this flea guilty bee,

Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?
The poet in a tone of raillery makes the girl a butt of ridicule by saying that there is no loss of
honour or chastity involved in their affair with the flea. In a subtle and imperceptible manner the
poet through his cogent reasoning has outwitted the girl. The subtle casuistry of the poet enables
him to tear to shreds the conventional ethic of love that makes the girl coy and bashful and thereby
impedes the possibility of a union of the poet and his supposed mistress. In undermining the fort of
the traditional norm of prudence and circumspection, sustaining the lifestyle of the girl the poet is
wooing, the rhythm used by the poet plays a significant part. Donne's rhythms arrest the attention
of the reader and goad him along a desired line. They - force him to pause here and rush there,
governing paces and emphasises so as to bring out the full force of the meaning. Such shifts are as
integral to Donne's particular mode of poetic statement as sensuous imagery is to Keats's. The
opening line, "Marke but this flea, and marke in this" with its repetitive rhythm with a slight change
is in the imperative mood, intended to wean the girl from all other distractions for focusing herself
on the flea which is emblematic. The expression, 'confess it' is perhaps in the tone of admonition,
the tone of rather forcibly wriggling out an approval, if the girl disagrees. Sometimes the poet
speaks in a tone of urbanity and sophistication, dispensing with any overbearing tone :
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 This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met, And cloysterd in these
living walls of Jet.

The rhythm is successful in evoking an intense dramatic circumstance from the outset by the pitch
of the address. The scene is called up, peopled and tensed by the single speaking voice, and the
poem goes on as though an action unforeseen at the start were revolving there and then. The reader
follows through a spontaneous commentary on it spoken by one of the participants. It is the method
of these poems (poems uncourtly) to present one side of a dramatic dialogue in which attack and
tune are relied upon to evoke the other party. It is also designed for controlling the distance between
persons, telling us implicitly how they stand towards each other.

This is a fiction which does much to give Donne's lyrics their peculiar immediacy as well as their
intensity. When the piece is set, he varies and adjusts with a sensitive precision. The means are
often unobtrusively slight.

Exercise - VII

1. What makes the poet ask the girl to mark the flea?
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2. On what basis does the poet say that he himself and the.gir1 become one in the flea?
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3. What according to the poet is their marriage bed and marriage temple? Write your answer in
one word only.
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4. Do the girl's parents approve of the supposed marriage? Write only 'Yes' or 'NO' as the answer.
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__________________________________________________________________
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5. How does the poet argue that in killing the flea the girl commits triple murder?
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6. Is there any loss of honour and chastity involved in the type of love the poet celebrates in "The
Flea". Give your answer in one word only.
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7. Attempt a critical appreciation of the poem, "The Flea".

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8. Write a note on the arguments advanced by the poet in favour of the supposed marriage.
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9. Explain three important images in the poem, "The Flea".

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10. Consider "The Flea" as an anti-Petrarchan poem.

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__________________________________________________________________
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Note : Compare your answers with those placed at the end of the unit.

12.5 "TWICKNAM GARDEN"

John Donne's "Twicknam Garden" begins with his personal predicament. The poet is writhing with
agony and his lacerated self finds a succinct summing-up in the first two lines of the poem :

Blasted with sighs, and surrounded with tears, Hither I come to seeke the
spring.

'The poet feels so shrivelled and disconcerted that he decides in his mind to find something soothing
for his afflicted nerves, and he comes into a garden, perhaps the garden of his patroness, Duchess
of Bedford. The specific garden of his patroness to whom he has paid handsome tributes in many
a poem, in no way sheds any significant light on the poet's anguish that has unhinged him. The
garden is not the garden of Marvel1 with multiple layers of meaning. In this poem Donne's garden
is simply a place, luxurious and delighting to the tortured self of the poet. The poet hopes to get the
bliss of paradise and in the last line of the first stanza he uses the expression, "True Paradise" for
the garden. He believes that the garden has magical property because he will receive such balms
"as else cure everything". The panacea the poet presumes to discover is of no avail because in the
last line of the stanza he says, "I have the serpent brought". The image of the serpent has to be
viewed in connection with the image of "spider love" in the sixth line of the poem. These two
images: the image of the serpent and that of the spider love, have something diabolical about them.
The serpent in relation to paradise is the cause of the primal sin in the garden of Eden, making
Adam an exile into the world, condemned to live by the sweat of brow. The serpent is symbolic of
the original sin bringing a life of travail for people. Spider love signifies something that is base and
vile because the spider feeds on filth and dirt. In Donne's poem, "Love's Exchange" we find a
similar low image for love :

Love, any devill else but you

Would for a given Soule give something too.

In short, the deceitful nature of love impels the poet to bring in the two images: serpent and spider.
The poet has at the back of his mind the disdain and indignity heaped on him by his ladylove and
this unceremonious treatment at the hands of his lady-love is the cause of his disturbed state of
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mind. The poet lays blame at the door. of love (love embodied in the mistress), and he adds another
dimension to the treatment of the idea of love which has become the cause of his undoing. The
lines

The Spider love, which transubstantiates all,

And can convert Manna to gall

have three keywords, 'transubstantiates', 'Manna', and 'gall'. The first two words impart scriptural
reverberations to the poem. Transubstantiation is the doctrine in Eucharist church which means that
bread is the flesh of Christ and wine is His blood. It is an important ritual in church. The partaking
of bread and wine recalls to mind the crucifixion of Christ and Judas, one of Christ's disciples
instrumental in putting Christ on the cross. This is nothing but betrayal of love. Manna is food
provided by God for Israelites during their long stay in the desert, when love and trust are not there
sustaining the bond subsisting between man and man. John Donne's poem begins with his private
emotion of grief, but the sensibility of the poet is such that instead of luxuriating himself in sorrow,
he contemplates the idea of suffering with a genesis in love in a wider perspective. In Donne, there
is an affirmation of cool detachment and self-possession in the face of something that upsets him.
He shows a stand against a commitment to one's woes which disturb normal poise and variety of
response and congeals at worst into cold selfrighteousness. Donne's wit exhibits a cool sanity and
a wary openness which goes much beyond the refusal of facile commitment or sardonic amusement
at the way the world goes. He probes and sifts experiences aid analyses with remarkable candour
the various in a given situation without aligning himself summarily with a soft option of acceptance
or rejection. In the first stanza of "Twicknam Garden" the poet who is lovesick and is sunk in the
slough of despondency keeps his wits about himself and contemplates the reality of love in multiple
facets : the love that is naive, the love that is pure and immaculate, and the love that has a seamy
side. The telescoping of images in the brief compass of the first stanza - the images of spring, balm,
paradise, serpent, spider and transubstiation roll into unity under the intensity of artistic process.
giving - the impression of the ruin wrought by love that works in an unbridled way and knows no
moderation.

The second stanza presents an awful prospect staring the poet in the face. The poet who came to
the garden in search of balm finds that his expectations are shattered and the garden becomes a
menace with a sinister design, and he, therefore, wants that the garden be folded in darkness :

'Twere wholsomer for mee, that winter did Benight

the glory of this place

The poet wants to be some senseless piece of the garden. He wants to be a mandrake or stone
fountain, and this impulse of regression to the world of rocks and plants is prompted by something
in the poet that he fails to come to grips with. He finds that the trees glistening with bright foliage
mock him and the poet makes a very despairing disclosure:

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 But that I may not this disgrace Indure, nor leave this garden..
.

This is a galling experience in the sense that the poet finds himself in impasse and does not know
how to overcome it. He does not feel anger towards the lady-love who is not responsive to hiss
amorous advances. He wants self-effacement by merging himself into nature without giving vent
to pent-up anger to his mistress.

Here this state of mind of the poet has kinship with the Astrophel of Sidney's sonnet sequence, like
many other Petrarchans and Petrarch himself reflecting the grim plight they are in, and thus
powerless to amend it. In this universe of lovers, anger is not consonant with the attitude of the
poet-lover. The response is nearer to simple human respect than to reverence or hatred. However,
it is certainly not genuflection before a semi-deity in the form of a lady-love. The point worth noting
in respect of Donne's treatment of the disdainful attitude of the mistress to him is that Donne deals
in all the battery of sighs and tears supposed to be flimsy stock-in-trade of the Petrarchan mode of
idealizing the 'Impossible She'. Donne's distinctive merit lies in a finely discriminated fidelity to
natural experience, and he refrains himself from the Petrarchan adulation of lady-love.

The third stanza is an intensification of the probing and analytic mind of Donne making an
inquisition on the experience of frustration in love. This stanza abounds in hyperbole when he says
that lovers with crystal vials would come to him for collecting his tears with the injunction from
the poet to compare his tears with the tears of their mistresses at home. The poet cannot forbear
himself going into high - falutin utterances that tears of all are false that taste not just like his. He
indulges himself in making extravagant claims of being pure and steadfast in love and makes a
brutal exposure of sham and pretence underneath the veneer of naivete :

Alas, hearts do not in eyes shine,

Nor can you more judge woman's thoughts
Than by her shadow, what she by tears, wears,

Though the poet appears to have spared his Lady-love the ignominy he has heaped on the rest of
woman folk, he, in fact, with a remarkable sleight of hand brings his mistress in the net of
wideranging censure of women when he says, "O perverse sexe". The expression, 'perverse sexe'
is also a severe idictment of the capricious tyranny of his lady-love. The poet is broken-hearted,
dying of her hardheartedness and scorn, and this contemptuous mien of his lady-love offers an
affront to him. She is a pervert because she has outraged the first primal state of nature in which
love for love is an innate condition of life.

In short, the poet wants the naturalness of impulses seeking their fruition without, in the least, being
impaired and warped by the massive indifference and nonchalance of the lady-love. On the surface
"Twicknam Garden" appears to share the strain of idealization in the Petrarchan mode in the light
of the over ceremonious gravity of manner. But there is no denying the fact that there are continual
deflating touches of hard realism perceptible in the images of selftraitor, spider love,
transubstantiation, Manna and gall, and it makes the poem a huge, high, comic hyperbole. Like
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Donne's poem "Love's Deitie", flouting the accepted pieties and denying the basis of courtly
servitude of the Petrarchan mode, "Twicknam Garden", too, asserts that an unreciprocated love is
no love, and, therefore, he breaks into the damning exclamation, "O perverse sexe".

Exercise - VIII

1. Write a critical appreciation of the poem, "Twicknam Garden".

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2. Consider "Twicknam Garden" as an anti-Petrarchan poem,

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____________

3. Try to discover the Petrarchan influence in Twicknam Garden. Write your answer in two or
three lines only.
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4. Why is the poet in search of the spring? Where does he hope to find it?
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5. What does the poet mean by the expression, "perverse sexe".

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6. Name a few conventional image used in the poem, "Twicknam Garden".

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__________________________________________________________________
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Note : Compare your answer with the ones given at the end of the unit;

12.6 "THE GOOD-MORROW"

John Donne's "The Good-Morrow" is a poem that stands at the threshold of a new love universe.
To Donne the experience that goes into the making of the poem, "The Good-Morrow" is like
awakening from a nightmare. The nightmarish experience from which the poet comes out is
begotten by fear and jealousy that rule the roost in the mind of lovers. The canker of fear and
jealousy eats into the tender emotion of love and makes a veritable hell of life for lovers. This
happens when love rests on the fickle foundation of sensual delights, the thirst for which remain
unslaked for a woman-hunter. But in this phase of writing poetry the need for watchful jealousy
passes, and a sense of serenity comes to the poet who finds himself in perfect rapport with his lady-
love. "The Good-Morrow" is one of a number of poems composed by John Donne which celebrate
that rare love in which the senses are but vehicles and mating is a marriage of true minds. That this
poem has behind it the groundswell of John Donne's mood of calmness in respect of love is evident
from the letter he wrote to Anne More :

We had not one another at so cheap a rate as that We should even be

weary of one another.
(Cited in Joan Bennett's Five Metaphysical poets)

This welcome to serenity is the counterpart of his former distrust, both of his own and of his
mistress's constancy, and in the poem, "The Good-Morrow", he presents the love that is serene, and
the equipoise reaches the culmination. The mood of happiness and security in love-making that the
peom exalts is not done in the Petrarchan mode of making an abject surrender. The poem begins in
a highly dramatic manner with a disconcerting question directed not only to his lady love but also
to himself. The mode is perhaps that of looking into one's past record, and in a mood of stock-
taking the poet asks,

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I

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 Did, till we lov'd? Were we not wean'd till then?

The poet wants to scrutinize their doings just before they have pledged themselves to each other.
Both have a sense of lurking fear that their past record is not blameless. They may have many twists
and turns in their amorous relationship, and now is the time for reckoning and making a new
beginning.

The meaning of Donne's poems lies far more in the interplay between their logical structure and
their rhythm and cadences than in their occasional illustrative imagery. The desire for a new life is
a noble start, no doubt, but it bristles with some pitfalls when the memories of the past revive. The
poet has a feeling of amazement not only at himself but also at the lady-love when he thinks of
their mutual life in restrospect, and this looking into the past with a sense of wonderment has been
admirably recaptured in the distribution of the pauses and emphasises reflective of the mental state
nagging at him. In the first line the pauses are after ' troth' and 'thou'. The pause is deliberately put
there, because he puts emphasis on 'wonder' and 'thou', 'thou' referring to the lady-love. The
emphasis is not only put on 'thou' because he not only suspects the lady love, he also has doubt
about himself and the syntactical construction of the first line runs into the second when he says,
'and I did'. The intonation is controlled here and the stress is got on 'did'. The second line goes on
and its second part runs, 'were we not wean'd till then?' Here the stress is on the word 'wean'd',
which implies a big question mark pertaining to whether both of them have not turned away from
their indulgence in pleasures elsewhere. The consummate control of utterance, gesture, intonation
and larger rhythm in the first two lines bring the point home to the reader that the adroit
management of rhythm is designed for bringing out the meaning in all its emphasis at the right
place. John Donne breaks the even tenor of verse: he bends and cracks up the line, and he takes
liberty with the stanza form, and all these are designed for conveying the meaning through
inflexion, pause and emphasis. The poet wanted to elicit from his beloved whether they still
suffered from vacillation or irresolution and went their wonted way of sucking country pleasures
childishly. The poet voices the doubts and uncertainties about their commitment to a new life, but
their commitment to the new venture suffers from a momentary wavering, and they very soon feel
galvanized into the new life they have elected for themselves :

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

The poet allays all misgivings and fears marring their relationship, and he then comes out with a
firm resolve that he has no lady-love save and except herself. This is an unambiguous statement
pledging complete fidelity and trust, but this life of trust, is born out of a conflict in his mind.

In the second stanza the poet says that they have awakened to a new life and in this life fear gets
banished and there is complete sovereignty of love: love which is the union of mind and soul,
reminiscent of Donne's poem, "The Extasie" :

For love, all love of other sights controules,

And makes one little roome, an every where.
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Here the experience approximates to the Platonic archetype of which all earthly beauties are but
dim reflection. The poet brings in some more images from geography and cosmology as illustrative
analogies. He does not want to imitate those who roam about the globe in search of virgin territories
and says,

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let Maps to others, worlds on worlds have showne
Let us possesse our world, each hath one, and is one.

As John Donne in the poem, "The Extasie", observes that lovers discover their selves in the eyes
of each other, the poet in "The Good-Morrow" says,

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares, And true plaine hearts doe
in the faces rest.

The idea expressed here is that the face is an index to the mind. But in "Twicknam Garden" eyes
do not reveal the trouble that is brewing inside, and there is much substance in Shakespeare's line,

There is no art to read mind's

Construction in the face. (Macbeth).

But in this poem, there is a complete union of the poet and his beloved. This union of the two is
again reinforced through the image of the globe with two perfect hemispheres, one the lover and
the other the beloved. This fact of the union of the two finds an analogy in the image drawn from
the world of chemistry. It is the analogy of simple and compound things. Simple or uncompounded
things such as God or soul are incorruptible and compounded elements without contriety are also
not subject to dissolution. But other compound things are perishable. The image is no doubt a
learned one, and some readers may take exception to its not being in consonance with the tenderness
of emotion forming the theme of the poem. Coleridge rightly observes,
"Too good.. . it contains a deep practical truth.. ." (Quoted in Grierson's Metaphysical Poets). The
mathematical image of two becoming one is there expressive of the merging of their separate
identities into a new one and this recalls to mind the making of the new in "The Extasie" which
time cannot invade :

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die

Donne in the poem, "The Good-Morrow" plays on modulations of mood and person as delicately
as a lutenist. This is a dramatic counterpoint complicating the sensitive movement of man's thought.
This complication is done with the interplay of two separate wills. The tonal variations such as
adverse possibilities, momentary resolutions, and sudden certainties give the underpinning of the
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intricacies a popping-up in course of love-making. The rhetoric is sensitive enough to suggest a
concerned affirmation. The affirmations have qualifying asides at their heels.
The variety of moods are carried alive in the diction, The separate identities merge into oneness,
then pulling apart again, and finally, end on the warmth of the homecoming of a prodigal to the life
of the abiding verities of constancy in love. Exercise - IX

1. Justify the title of the poem, "The Good-Morrow"

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2. Attempt a critical appreciation of the poem, "The Good-Morrow"

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3. Explain two important images used in the poem, "The Good-Morrow"

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4. "The Good-Morrow" may be seen as a door to the poet's theme of constancy in love". Explain.
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13.7 "THE EXTASIE"

The poem, "The Extasie" deals with John Donne's metaphysic of love. It presents the communion
of two souls of a loving couple on a grassy turf beside a river, untouched by carnal passions. The
physical aspect of love-making finds no mention here. The lovers are engrossed in the thought of
an abiding union and are animated by the impulse to coalesce and fuse into one :

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 So to engraft our hands, as yet
Was all our meanes to make us one

The poem presents the lovers in a trans-like state when both of them appear to be verging on being
oblivious of their fleshly life.
John Donne's typical method is to present an idea in terms of concrete images. The images become
the emotional equivalent of his thought. Let us see how he presents the unforgettable idea of a
beatific experience through the image of 'extasie' reinforced by a wealth of images culled from
different spheres of life.

There is a pun on the title word, 'extasie'. In the modem sense it refers to the translike state the
lovers have entered into. But the original Greek meaning takes us to the heart of the poem. The
Greek word, 'ekstasis' means 'going forth'. The souls go out of their respective bodies. They have a
dialogue ruminating over their communion, and surprisingly enough, there is a bystander who is
within a convenient distance from there. This third person is no impediment in their lovemaking
on the spiritual plane. He appears to be a device invented by the poet, adding substance to their
highfalutin experience, either by testifying to the veracity of the experience or by also coming under
the spell of their ecstatic vision. Here the poet's mood is serene, probably in keeping with the
sublimity of the experience. The poet presents a romantic background, bringing in the violet, a
conventional image of love, reclining on the pregnant bank, but the pictorial description of the
visual beauty simply enhances the intensity of their love without any romantic gloss, and it is much
in keeping with the mood of the poet. The expression, 'balm' also rightly finds company in the
sweet-smelling violet evoking the right ambience. This image of the violet which has a visual
beauty recurs later in the poem with a changed connotation without any romantic association. Here
we have the botanical expression, 'grafting', as a variation in a different way on the image, 'to
engraft our hands', used at the outset of the poem. The two images: the images of engrafting hands
and transplanting of a violet-work in conjunction with each other. The former implies the removal
of their separateness and their emerging into a single identity and the latter speaks of the
strengthening and enriching of t he weaker breed of the violet in a richer soil. It is symbolic of the
creation of a new soil that is bereft of all weaknesses:

A single violet transplant,

The strength, the colour, and the size, (All which before was
poore, and scant,) Redoubles still, and multiplies.

The poet does a remarkable feat of imagination by finding the image of a jeweler threading pearls
on a string. The lovers are lost in gazing at each other in such a way that there is, perhaps, the
optical illusion of their eyes being on a double string. It appears to be hyperbole that the eyeballs
are on the string, and the only justification for this image is that it is suggestive of their becoming
one. The lovers find themselves on the same emotional wave-length, and from this rapport they
establish it appears that all hostilities cease, and the truce thus effected rests on a lasting foundation.
The pictures of each other reflected in their eyes suggest an addition of pictures. The word
'propagation' apparently suggests an increase in spiritual grandeur.
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The fourth stanza presents the core of the experience of oneness of the lovers. The soul here takes
the lead and the body lies still and inert. The soul is engaged in a mission and accomplishes the
task with a remarkable serenity and aplomb. The image comes to us in an expanded form. It is the
image of two equal Armies, arrayed against each other and awaiting the announcement of victory
in the battlefield by Fate. The expression, 'equal Armies' shows the attitude of the poet towards
lovers in the sense that in the Petrarchan vein there is one-sided lovemaking, that is, the lover adores
the beloved as if the latter were a deity and the former a vassal, but here both are on par with each
other without having an edge over the other. The body becomes quiescent and the soul is resplended
with spiritual ecstasy.

In stanza V we have another elaborate simile that describes the physical condition of the lovers.
They are compared to statues in a tomb from where the soul has gone out.

The image of 'transplant' is picked up in stanza XI in a different manner. The concept here is of
'interinanimation', and this is on physiological as well as metaphysical plane. It is the rejuvenation
of the phoenix-like soul ravaged by loneliness. With this reshaping of the soul in a new mould the
lovers have the feeling that they are beyond the inexorable law of change, decay and death. Time
has no effect on them, because they have reached the state of timelessness. They have passed
beyond the confines of the temporal world and enjoy a state of bliss, and the poet rightly says,
"..whom no change can invade".

But later in the poem there is a transition from the world of timelessness to the mortal coil of life.
The poet talks about the descent of the soul into the body. Many critics take it to be a denouement
that after celebrating the ecstatic union on the spiritual plane the poet talks about their coming back
to the body. It is no anticlimax because in the Donne universe there is no segregation of soul and
body in hermetically sealed boxes. In the poem, "Aire and Angel" the poet deals with an identical
theme. Angels leave their imprint on the air and the air passes on the celestial span into the body,
and this interanimation is a subtle process which invigorates and enriches the life. Without the
incarnation of the beatific vision in the body it remains shadowy, chimerical and ethereal, Stanza
XVI is pregnant with deep physiological implication:

As our blood labours to beget

Spirits, as like soules as it can
Because such fingers need to knit The subtile knot, which
makes us man.

The blood begets spirit, the spirit goes into the brain, the brain gives direction to the muscle and
this gives rise to an interrelated being. This interrelationship brings the image of 'subtile knot'. This
complex character of man envisages a blend of soul and body : "The union of soul and body,
through the working of the spirits 'makes us man'." (Helen Gardner).

Exercise - X

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1. What does the military image stand for in the poem, "The Extasie"?
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2. Do you agree with Donne that love is not sex?

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3. Why does the poet owe thanks to the body?

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4. Who is the great 'Prince in prison'?

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5. Attempt a critical appreciation of the poem, "The Extasie".

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12.8 LET US SUM UP

This unit has initiated you into the poetic art of John Donne who broke with the ruling love
conventions of his tim e and forged a poetic medium expressive of his sensibility. This has also
acquainted you with the biased critical pronouncements against him and has made an attempt at
placing him in the right perspective. The close reading of the four love poems makes it manifest

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that though they fall within the class of love poems, they are not exactly alike in respect of theme,
nor are the poet's mood identical in them.

12.9 ANSWERS TO EXERCISES

Exercise - I

1. John Donne's Catholic faith stands in the way of his taking a University degree. It has nothing
to do with incompetence on his part. The 'disability' is implicit in his birth.

2. It was John Donne's mother who was responsible for his schooling. She trained him in Catholic
faith. He was not free to choose the course of his life.

Note : The rest of the answers are incorporated into the body of unit 13.2.

Exercise - II

1. The dominant love conventions of the time lies in the idealization of love. The lover worships
the beloved as if she were a deity. It is an uncritical acceptance of the attitude that the beloved
is possessed of divine attributes. John Donne reacts against this convention of lovers showing
an abject servility to their lady-love. He looks upon his beloved as a mortal.

2. Petrarchan love consists in the exaltation of the object of love. Love here has a religious unction
and requires an exclusive devotion to the lady love.

Sidney, Thomas Lodge, and Michael Draton are notable English poets drawing on the
Petrarch's adoration of his mistress, Laura.

Note : The rest of the answers can be seen in the body of unit 13.3.1.

Exercise - III

Both the answers are incorporated in the body of unit 13.3.2.

Exercise - IV

1. See the body of unit 13.3.3

2. No
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3. b

Exercise - V

Note : The answers are incorporated in the body of unit 13.3.4

Exercise - VI

3. No
4. Likeness

Note : Answers to questions 1 and 2 are incorporated in Unit 13.3.5

Exercise -VII

1. The flea-bite.
2. The mingling of the blood in the flea.
3. The flea.
3. No
4. See the body of unit 13.4
5. No
6. See the body of unit 1 3.4
7. See the body of unit 13.4
8. See the body of unit 13.4

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Exercise - VIII

3. The poet avoids blaming his mistress directly. He makes an oblique reference to it through the
expression 'perverse sexe'. The Petrarchan poets never blame their mistresses in their lyrics.

4. The poet is love-sick and wants to find spring that would give solace to him. He hopes to find
it in the garden of Lucy, Countess of Bedford.

5. The expression 'perverse sexe' suggests women in general who are not responsive to love.

Note : The rest of the answers may be seen in the body of unit 13.5.

Exercise - IX

The "Good Morrow" suggests a rebeginning in love. The poet wants to forget the past and wants
his beloved to do the same. They both want to make a new beginning. Hence the 'good morrow'.
Thematically, this marks the beginning of a series of poems that would deal with the theme of
constancy in love. In these poems the poet talks of the mating of mind, interdependence of body
and soul and also of union of souls.

Note : The rest of the answers are incorporated in the body of the unit 13.6

Exercise - X

The military image in the poem is illustrative of the nature of love subsisting between lovers. When
two armies are at war, the outcome is not known before hand. In a like manner, it is difficult to
predict the result of a prolonged love making between the lovers. The lovers are like two armies
poised for a victory against each other. It is fate that plays a great role in deciding who the winner
becomes. The prolonged warfare may necessitate the cessation of hostilities and for achieving this
end ambassador o f the warring nation hold parlies and come to some settlement. Likewise the
lovers and beloved are like equal armies, negotiating for a settlement.

Note : The rest of the answers are incorporated into the body of unit 13.7.

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UNIT- 13 AN INTRODUCTION TO JOHN MILTON

Structure
13.0 Objectives
13.1 Introduction
13.2 An Account of Milton's Life
18.2.1 Childhood and University Life
18.2.2 Religion and Propaganda
18.2.3 Public and Political Life
18.2.4 The Restoration and its Impact
13.3 An Appraisal of Milton's Poetic Career
13.4 Let's Sum Up
13.5 Revision Questions
13.6 Additional Reading

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13.0 OBJECTIVES

This unit aims to

• Offer a brief but comprehensive view of the main features and circumstances of
Milton's life.
• Identify the various phases in his life when he wrote the different poems we will study.
• Suggest ways in which some of the main events of Milton's life impinge on his work.
• Present an overview of Milton's poetic career that will bring out some of the salient
features of his work.

13.1 INTRODUCTION

The importance of examining a writer's life is sometimes forgotten in the necessary insistence
on close textual interpretation. We forget that such an interpretation can often gain in richness
from a knowledge of the writer's own life and times. This need not necessarily be through
directly correlating the writer's life and his/her works; it may simply be a matter of bearing
in the back of one's mind the circumstances and events of the writer's life as a sort of
backdrop to the oeuvre. Such a backdrop would draw attention to some of the less easily
evident significations of the oeuvre, and may sometimes serve explanatorily as well. To this
end, this unit will explore the momentous events in Milton's life as the personal and political
stage on which his ambitions toward a poetic career were enacted. It will also glance briefly
at some personal issues from his life in relation to his work, as for instance his marital
relations and his blindness.

From your reading of the previous unit you would already have an idea of the importance of
the historical events that Milton was observer of and participant in. What is of further
significance is that Milton's personality was such that he could not but be a key player in the
events of his day. Even a cursory reading of the accounts of his life is sufficient to confirm
that he was a passionate thinker, committed to the causes he chose to espouse, yet never
determined by them to the extent of becoming rigid in his ideologies. His refusal to follow
any single Protestant school, while maintaining a lifelong commitment to Protestantism is
clear indication also of his individuality of thought and integrity of vision.
We shall now examine some of these in greater detail.

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13.2 AN ACCOUNT OF MILTON'S LIFE

13.2.1 Childhood and University Life

Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608. When his father, John Milton Sr.
wasdisinherited by his Roman Catholic grandfather for turning Protestant, he moved to
London and established himself successfully as a notary and moneylender who paid a great
deal of attention to his son's education. Milton is supposed to have led a rather pampered life
at home. He studied at St. Paul's School, London, from some time between 1615 and 1620
till 1625, when he joined Christ's College, Cambridge. At St. Paul's, he followed the regular
curriculum of Latin, Greek and Hebrew; but he also learnt several modem languages from
private tutors at home. Milton was known to have been an h i d reader, to the extent that it
probably caused the blindness of his later years, and to have decided early inhis life that he
would be a poet and a humanist scholar. He went on to Cambridge and received his Bachelor
of Arts degree in March 1629 and subsequently his Master of Arts in July 1632. Here he was
nicknamed 'the Lady' for his fineness of features; he was by all accounts a handsome youth
who, by his own account, was throughout his younger days drawn to a life of sensuality, but
forswore it in the pursuit of the higher ambition of becoming an epic poet. The chaste Lady
of the masque Comusthat he was soon to write, who refuse to succumb to the temptations
offered by Comus, appears to embody these sentiments to some degree. There is some
suggestion of conflict with his tutor at Cambridge, and of a degree of unpopularity which
later gave way to respect and even reverence among both, his peers and his professors,
indicative of a proud nature that was not given to bending to popular opinion.

His Cambridge years display little love for scholastic logic; he preferred and celebrated
instead the ideas and literatures of Renaissance humanism, blending a ' firmly rooted
Christianity with Platonism. According to him he was first taken up by the sensuality of
Ovidian and other Roman poetry, but later took greater interest in the idealism of Dante,
Petrarch, and Edmund Spenser. This was to lead to a fascination with Platonic philosophy
and finally to the mysticism of the biblical 'Book of Revelations'. During these years he also
honed his poetic craft in Latin, writing poetry that was highly sensuous in style. Two of his
English poems survive from this period: 'On the Death of a Fair Infant' and 'At a Vacation
Exercise', both written in 1628. His first great poem in English, 'On the Morning of Christ's
Nativity' which we will shortly examine in detail, was written in the Christmas season of
1629-30. It reflects the maturation to fullness of his poetical craft and, its innate tendencies,
its religious theme and its hold over form as well as meter anticipating the work of his later
days. 'L'Allegro' and 'II Penseroso' (both written in 1631?) though less ambitious than the
'Nativity' poem and more reflective, in a pastoral vein, continue to reflect this mastery, as we
shall see,

13.2.2 Religion and Propaganda

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On leaving Cambridge, it was assumed he would join the Church, given his scholarly and
literary gifts; but he rejected this outright, staying by his intention to become a poet and
scholar and deprecating the tyranny of the Church. This raised the problem of financial
means, which he solved by staying with his parents, first at Hammersmith and then at Horton,
for six years until 1638. 'Ad Patrem' ('To Father'), is his expression simultaneously of
gratitude to his father and a defense of the career he had chosen: During these six years,
alongside writing Comus(1634) and Lycidas(1637), he was to also study intensely the Greek
and Latin writers and read extensively in diverse disciplines like religion, politics,
philosophy, geography, history, astronomy, mathematics and music - a liberal scholarship
that was unavailable to him in Cambridge and that he was to later deploy even in his poetry
with subtlety and power. Comus was a masque that first dramatized his favoured theme of
the grand conflict between good and evil, while Lycidas, employing the form of the classical
pastoral elegy, may be seen as his first attempt to justify God's ways to 'men'. Following his
mother's death in 1637, a year later Milton travelled to Italy, winning some recognition for
his early Latin poetry. He also visited the imprisoned astronomer Galileo Galilei, a meeting
he considered significant enough to mention in the Areopagitica. News of growing civil and
political strife at home forced him to cut short his tour and return home the next year, to settle
in London and work as a tutor.

Between 1641 and 1645, he was also to write various trenchantly argued tracts on church
reform, divorce and censorship that participated directly and passionately in the debates of
the day. The picture that emerges by this time is that of a poet deeply engaged with and
participating in the major issues of his day with a weighty erudition. By 1660, the
culmination of the civil wars in England, Milton had written at least eighteen major prose
works defending the Puritan rebellion and attacking its enemies, including some supporting
the regicide of Charles I. It was evidently a period when he suspended his poetic ambitions
in order to serve through his prose the Puritan cause in the political upheavals of the time.
The exceptions were the versification of a few psalms and the writing of seventeen sonnets,
ranging in subject from the deeply personal to the political. All of Milton's prose works
reflect a stern and ardent concern with the protection of individual freedom of speech and
dignity, and condemned tyranny of any kind, whether by church or state. He repeatedly and
insistently demanded the separation of the separation of religion from politics (in terms that,
it may be noted, have high relevance to our own current Indian context), advocating a
republicanism and an almost heretical view of the Bible that were highly controversial and
brought both suspicion and notoriety. His Areopagitica, a speech for the liberty of unlicensed
printing, to the parliament of England (1644) is a classic among his writings on these issues,
as also his Doctrine anti Discipline of Divorce (1643) and Of Education (1644), an almost
typically Renaissance humanist text on the ideal Christian education for young boys. The
divorce tract was probably the result of his own disastrous marriage to Mary Powell in 1642.
Mary, half his age, was the uneducated daughter of an Oxfordshire royalist squire who owed
his father money. The incompatibility was evident, and six weeks after the marriage
Marywent back to her family, refusing to return to Milton. For Milton the marriage was
obviously a tragic mistake, and he argued in the Doctrine that the sole existing justification
for divorce - adultery - was perhaps a lesser evil than a fundamental incompatibility that
forced the maintenance of a loveless union. Mary and Milton were reunited in 1645 by
friends. He went on to take in the entire Powell family of ten members for almost a year,
when they were impoverished by the civil war. Before Mary died in 1652, Milton had three
daughters by her. What is of consequence fir us is that this strange union led to a highly
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controversial tract that developed on Milton's own personal crisis and presented it as a
fundamental social issue, framing it in the discourse of the oppressive laws of the church.
But in doing so, he also opened the question of women's role in marriage, proposing an
equality of relation and even the (albeit theoretical) possibility of female superiority, even if
he did not practise this in his own family, in relation to either his wife or his daughters. These
opinions throw a great deal of useful light on the figuring of Eve in Book IX of Paradise
Lost.

13.2.3 Public and Political Life

By 1649, Milton had been invited by Cromwell to be a secretary for foreign languages to the
Council of State. Though it was not a policy making position but rather a public relations
one, in which he was expected to defend and support the government, Milton accepted it,
eager for a more hands on participation in the politics of his time. As part of this task, he
wrote his first defence of regicide, Eikonoklastes, in October 1649 and was to follow it with
several others. The success of these was tempered by the realisation of his failing eyesight,
which turned to complete blindness by the end of 1652, which was also the same year his
wife Mary died. Despite the blindness, he continued to write the political tracts of defence
he was employed to - several of them in Latin, addressing a European audience - although
his duties were substantially reduced. In 1656 he married Katherine Woodcock and had a
daughter by her, only to see them both die in 1658. He was also at this time working on the
important A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, finished some time around 165960, that offers
many of the theological arguments that were to form the core of the debate in Paradise Lost.
Like most Anglicans of that time, Milton was raised in a Calvinist tradition, and considered
himself one for a very long period. By the time of the writing of Paradise Lost however, he
had begun to accept the Arminian doctrine which asserted the salvation of all believers,
unlike popular Calvinism which pronounced the salvation of just a select few, and strove
continuously to reconcile this theologically to the idea of the freedom of the individual to
rational choice. The figuring of Satan in Paradise Lost is a brilliant embodiment of the
ideological tensions of this position. Toward the end of his life he had renounced affiliations
to all Christian sects, claiming a theological independence that was quite radical for the time.

13.2.4 The Restoration and After

The Restoration of 1660 was a deeply disillusioning moment for Milton, although his last
political pamphlet written that year continued, very courageously, to argue for the
Commonwealth form of government that he had so arduously supported, and condemned the
English people for being slavish. With the return of monarchy, Milton's life was in danger,
and he had to go into hiding for some months, The passage of the Act of Oblivion granting
clemency to the supporters of the Commonwealth eventually made it safe for him to emerge,
but even then only with the support and intervention of friends like the poet Andrew Marvel1
and the playwright William Davenant, and probably because his complete blindness
suggested he was now completely harmless too. He lived the years from then till his death in
straitened financial circumstances. From 1660 to 1665, Milton concentrated on further study

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with the aid of his third wife Elizabeth Munshell, whom he married in 1663, and his
daughters, who also took the dictation of his magnum opus, Paradise Lost. It was published
finally in 1667, to be followed in 1671 by the publication of Paradise Regained and Samson
Agonistes, Milton did not survive long after this, and already severely ill, he died on 8
Noven~be1r 674 of gout.

13.3 AN APPRAISAL OF MTLTON'S POETIC CAREER

Milton is considered by many to be the most important and influential poet in the English
language after William Shakespeare. He was to have a lasting impact on the work in
particular of poets like William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley and William Butler Yeats. From
his early precocity in learning and interest in poetry it is evident that he was not only gifted
but aware of his gifts, and willing to hone them through years of reading and writing. It is
also clear that Milton's understanding of the poetic vocation was, from the very beginning,
an exalted one. He saw himself as the true successor of Spenser, in that he wanted to ruse the
classical heritage of the Renaissance with the Christian spirit of the Reformation, while
remaining a quintessentially English poet. It is in this sense that Milton is also an intensely
self reflexive poet, whose poetry is suffused with the awareness of its own ambition and
vocation. When we examine some of the shorter poems, this sense of self-awareness in the
poetry will become clearer, but for immediate reference for the student, it may be worth
looking at Milton's 'Lycidas', a poem in which the poet explicitly poses the question of the
worth of poetry and of the poetic vocation. The important point to note is that the answer for
Milton was always a religious one, in the sense that he saw his poetry as always at the service
of Christianity. In this sense, poetry was a spiritual vocation, divinely inspired by a religious
muse and therefore in continuation with his religious interests, rather than a means of self
aggrandizement. However, it is also clear that for Milton the religious was not divorced from
the political. This political sensibility manifested in several ways: in his intense conviction
in religious autonomy, in his belief that the only true rejoinder to classical literature and
philosophy would have to be an elaborate Christian one, and in the concomitant need to
espouse contemporary Protestant English culture as the true Christian one. The consequence
was inevitably a strongly English-nationalistic sensibility which was worked out in both
humanist and Protestantreligious terms in his poetry.

In addition to the strongly political dimension of his poetic work, almost all of Milton's poetry
is suffused by a musicality that underscores his singular attention to enhancing the poetics of
the English language specifically. That is, the rhymes and rhythms native to English are
explored and exploited with lyrical skill in all his poems, whether in the lighter mode of the
shorter poems or in the more weighty and sonorous tones of Paradise
Lost.The following lines from ‘L’Allegro’ illustrate this point:

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 While the Cock with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darknes thin,
And to the stack, or the Barn dore,
Stoutly struts his Dames before,
Oftlist'ning how the Hounds and horn,
Chearly rouse the slumbring morn,
From the side of som Hoar Hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill. (11.49-56)

This ear for sound and the consequent enhancing of the musical potential of the
English language was one of the lasting legacies of Milton to succeeding poets, many of whom
remained envious of him in these abilities. The musicality of his poetry was sometimes conjoined
with a striking sensuality of imagery, as in the following lines from 'Lycidas' :

That on the green terf suck the honied showres, And

purple all the ground with vernal flowres. Bring the
rathe Primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Gessamine, The
white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat, The
glowing Violet.
The Musk-rose, and the well attir'd Woodbine. With
Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed, And every
flower that sad embroidery wears:'
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed…. [ll. 140-91]

What is interesting is that this was to grow into an important dimension of his poetry
especially after his blindness set in, and is especially in evidence in the early parts of his epic
Paradise Lost.

13.4 LET'S SUM UP

In this unit, we undertook to examine some of the key events and circumstances of the life
of John Milton, beginning with his childhood years and the years as a student in Cambridge,
in which he had an early inclination to a poetic career. We went on to explore in some detail
Milton's involvement in the political and religious turmoil of his age, focusing especially on
the importance of religious politics to his public and personal life. We noted how his poetic
career was temporarily put on hold by his, involvement in the civil war and the twenty year
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Commonwealth reign. We explored the impact of his blindness and his fall from political
favour on his life, and the subsequent return to his original vocation as a poet. We then had
an overview of this vocation and poetic career, examining Milton's chief achievements and
contributions as a poet. We shall now further elaborate on that overview, studying the
matters that came to be of concern to him in both his poetic and prose work, while also
exploring the factors that shaped them at the formal level.

13.5 REVISION QUESTIONS

1. Milton's life is largely a record of conflicts between diverse interests. Do you agree?
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2. Through your readings here and in other sources, give an account of the nature and extent
of the influence of Puritanism in Milton's life. To what extent is this enhanced or
countermanded by his classical learning?
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13.6 ADDITIONAL READING

Brown, Cedric C. john Milton: A Literary Life. New York: St. Martin's, 1995.

Campbell, Gordon. A Milton Chronology New York: Macmillan St. Martin's, 1997.

Danielson, Dennis, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Milton. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
UP, 1989,

Grose, Christopher. Milton and the Sense of Tradition. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988.

Guillory, John. "Milton, Narcissism, Gender: On the Genealogy of Male SelfEsteem."

Critical Essay on John Milton, Edited by Christopher Kendrick. New York: G.K. Hall, 1995, 165-
193.

Hill, Christopher. Milton and the English Revolution. New York, 1977

Lewalski, Barbara K. The Life of John Milton. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

Loewenstein, David. Representing Revolution in Milton and His Contemporaries: Religion,

Politics, und Polemics in Radical Puritanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001.

Low, Lisa Elaine and Anthony John Harding eds. Milton, the Metaphysicals, and Romanticism.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1994.

Miller, David. John Milton: Poetry. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978.

Orgel, Stephen and Jonathan Goldberg, eds. The Oxford Authors John Milton. Oxford: Oxford UP,
1991.

Shawcross, John T. John Milton: The Self' and the World. Lexington, KY: University Press of
Kentucky, 1993.

Spaeth, Sigmund. Milton's Knowledge of Music. Ann ARbor MI: University of Michigan Press,
1963.
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Zagorin, Perez. Milton: Aristocrat &Rebel: The Poet and his Politics. New York: D.S. Brewer,
1992.

UNIT- 14 A BRIEF HISTORY OF MILTON AND HIS WORKS

Structure

14.0 Objectives
14.1 Introduction
19.2 Early Works
19.2.1 'On the Death of a Fair Infant'
19.2.2 'At a Vacation Exercise'
14.3 Major Sources and Influences
14.4 Milton's Poetic Evolution and the Minor Poems
14.5 Milton's Prose
19.5.1 The Old Prose and its Conditions
19.5.2 Milton and the New Prose
14.6 Let's Sum Up
14.7 Revision Questions
14.8 Additional Reading

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14.0 OBJECTIVES

• The unit is intended to familiarize the reader with the few extant early poems of John
Milton. While no extended analysis is offered, the poems are examined in sufficient
detail to enable the student to study them on his/her own.

• It will attempt to identify the main currents that influenced Milton's thought and work
in the early part of his life. It will also identify the literary sources that he picked up
and that were to remain central to all his work.
• It will then move on to examine the next phase, in which his writings were primarily
political and consisted mainly of prose pamphlets. In this, it will explore the relations
between his prose and poetry.

• The overarching intent of this unit is to provide the student with a base from which
s/he can pursue further study of Milton's work, within and outside this block.

14.1 INTRODUCTION

Any poetic career can show a wide variety of tendencies and inclinations. Milton's is no
exception. In the course of this unit, it will become clear that Milton's poetic and literary life
can be broadly divided into three phases: the early phase of idealistic and artistic concerns;
the middle phase of deep involvement in politics and religion, marked in his work by a
dominance of prose; and a late poetic phase, following his blindness, when he dissociated
himself from politics and focused entirely on the writing of the two major epics, Paradise
Lost and Paradise Regained. Despite this wide range of literary activity, all of Milton's work
can be seen to carry some recurrent themes, motifs and styles. In the course of this unit, we
shall attempt to identify and analyze some of these commonalities. Our concern in doing so
is not so much to relate Milton's life to his work in singular correspondences, as to locate and
examine the continuities and discontinuities that mark his literary career, and the implications
of these for our understanding of his work.

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14.2 EARLY WORKS

The date of Milton's decision to become a poet cannot be determined with any accuracy, but
the decision was probably taken early. The verse paraphrases of Psalms 114 and 136 are the
earliest extant poetic pieces and they date from his final year at St Paul's School. They already
show the poetic promise that Milton was to fulfill in later years. These two English
paraphrases, and four epigrams (three Latin and one Greek) which have tentatively been
dated to 1624, are the only surviving pieces from his preCambridge verse. In the subsequent
undergraduate years (February 1625- March 1629) at Cambridge Milton wrote a lot of Latin
poetry, which is not of any immediate relevance to our study. Only two English poems (both
belonging to 1628) remain from this period: Onthe Death of a FairInfant, written after the
death of his little niece in January 1628, and At a Vacation Exercise, written in July or August
of the sane year. Let us briefly examine these two poems, to get a sense of the kind of poetic
temperament the early Milton displayed. We need not study them in any detail to note that
both are already engaging in the lofty themes that characterize Milton's poetry.

14.2.1 'On the Death of a Pair Infant'

'On the Death of a Fair Infant', an Elizabethan-style elegy on the death of his baby niece
Anne Phillips, is the first of Milton's own English poems (as opposed to the paraphrases of
the psalms) still extant, written early in 1628. Addressed formally to the infant for the most
part, the poem follows an already well-established tradition of the allegorizing and
Christianizing of classical myth (Potter, 107). In the poem, Milton allegorises the child's
death as being at the hands of Winter (personified here as a cold being seeking the warmth
of love), who wishes to take her as bride and involuntarily kills her with his touch. The child
herself is transformed into a quasi divine being who, in her death arid in her boundless
innocence, will now serve as medium between a sinful humanity and a wrathful God:

But oh why didst thou not stay here below

To bless us with thy heav'n-lov'd innocence,
To slake his wrath whom sin has made our foe
To tun1 Swift-rushing black perdition hence,
Or drive away the slaughtering pestilence,
To stand 'twixt us and our deserved smart
But thou canst best perform that office where thou art, (11. 64-70)

With that consolation, the poet then turns to address the mother in the last stanza, and
consoles her with the thought that if she bore this loss in this spirit, she would be rewarded
with another child, probably a son, who 'till the world's last-end shall make thy name to live'.
Already in this poem Milton's lofty themes and style are evident, albeit in a somewhat
immature manner (for evidently the original child being mourned disappears under the
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weight of the classicisms that Milton loads the poem with!) and his is true of his other
surviving poem from this period.

14.2.2 ‘At a Vacation Exercise’

In 'At a Vacation Exercise', written in July 1628 he was to affirm his devotion to English, a
style free from eccentricity, and exalted themes concerning nature and humanity. It was also
the first instance when Milton was to make a public declaration of his poetic ambitions. Tile
poem is part of a Latin prose speech hat Milton delivered to the festive assembly marking
the end of the college year. He interrupts the speech with the poem to 'hail [his] native
Language', i.e. English, and goes on to declare how he would use it:

Yet I had rather, if I were to choose,

Thy service in some graver subject use,
Such as may make thee search thy coffers round Before thou
clothe my fancy in fit sound:
Such where the deep transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at heaven's door
Look in, and see each blissful deity
How he before the thunderous throne doth lie,
Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings To the touch
of golden wires, while Hebe brings Immortal nectar to
her kingly sire:
Then passing through the spheres of watchful fire,
And misty regions of wide air next under,
And hills of snow and lofts of piled thunder,
May tell at length how green-eyed Neptune raves,
In heaven's defiance mustering all his waves;
Then sing of secret things that came to pass When
beldame Nature in her cradle was;
And last of kings and queens and heroes old,
Such as the wise Demodocus once told
In solemn songs at king Alcinous' feast,
While sad Ulysses' soul and all the rest Are
held with his melodious harmony In willing
chains and sweet captivity.

What is evident from this passage is the unique poetic vision that was to characterize Milton's
work even in his later and more accomplished verse. He sets forth here the vocation of the
poet that was to prove so highly influential. The unusual occasion which he chose to
announce his decision indicates the importance he gave his intended poetic calling.
Moreover, the patriotic announcement to write in English clearly rejects the humanist
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emphasis on Latin. It also marks an important change in Milton's poetic career, for in 1628
he had, written only three English poems (the two Psalm paraphrases and 'On the Death of a
Fair Infant'), with the majority of his poetry in Latin. In the following decade he wrote mainly
in English, with only three Latin poems and some Italian sonnets. Clearly Milton had
determined to become a serious English poet, electing to follow Spenser and Sidney rather
than Virgil and Buchanan.

14.3 MAJOR SOURCES AND INFLUENCES

From what we have already read of Milton's life and times, it should be clear that, being a
voracious reader, the sources that Milton drew on or alluded to in his work would be many.
Yet what is equally clear is that one lasting source of material for - as well as influence on -
Milton's thought was the Bible, and its imprint is evident directly or indirectly in almost all
his work. In the introduction to this Block, we covered some of the basic narrative and mythic
elements of the Bible that were to emerge in Milton's writings. But for Milton the Bible was
obviously much more than just a storehouse of narratives, it was in fact the single most
important explanation for the existence of humanity. Its presence in his work is thus as much
for its theological as its mythological content, At times, Milton even evokes the style and
tone of the Bible in his work, especially of the Old Testament with which he was particularly
impressed. Biblical motifs and concerns are evident in his lesser poems as well as in the epic
ParadiseLost, as for instance in his first major lyric, 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity'.

Seventeenth century readers would have been intimately familiar with Biblical themes like
the Genesis story of the Fall of Man, which Milton picks up in Paradise Lost. Besides being
part of their religious education, it had already received much attention by earlier writers and
poets. But we tend to forget that part of any school education in the seventeenth century was
also readings in classical literature, including writers like Homer, Ovid, Virgil, Cicero,
Longinus and Horace, allusions to whom would therefore be easily identifiable to Milton's
contemporary readers. But Milton was also often deliberately erudite in his work,
ostentatiously displaying his mastery of western learning and literature beyond that which
would be familiar to the average seventeenth century reader. For, if we add to the usual
education Milton's own voluminous studies in the classics, and in other disciplines like
theology, philosophy, astronomy, history, etc., along with the Bible, we find a monumental
corpus of writers and works that act as source material for Milton's own writings. Milton
drew on these for themes and ideas as much as for models of style: Virgil for instance was
the illode1 for the epic as well as the pastoral, which Milton used in poem like 'Lycidas' and
'L'Allegro', and Cicero provided the illode1 for almost all prose writers of the age. The Greek
Aristotle and the Latin Longinus would have offered Milton strong theories of genre to
negotiate in his work. Likewise, Ovid's Metamorphoses provided Milton with many
allegorical situations and ideas that we will find sprinkled throughout his poetry. But Milton
was also familiar with the work of the more recent sixteenth century poets like Bembo, Della
Casa and Tasso, from whom he may have derived the idea of writing an epic in blank verse.
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Among English writers, Milton himself claimed Edmund Spenser as an important
predecessor, while his sonnets suggest the influence of Shakespeare, whom he celebrated in
his poetry. The influence of the former's The Shepherd's Calendar is especially evident in
Milton's more pastoral poems, while that of the latter may be found in the kinship between
Shakespearean figures like Macbeth and Milton's own Satan. He had however, as we have
noted in the previous Unit, little in common with the poets and poetic fashions of his own
age.

But while these sources and lines of influence are useful in understanding Milton's literary
craft and its context, as well as in tracing points of continuity and originality in relation to a
longer tradition, they cannot explain Milton's unique poetic individuality. What is unique to
Milton's poetic style is more than the simple aggregate of these sources and influences on his
writing. As we noted earlier, perhaps the most remarkable quality of Milton's poetry is the
importance of sound, rhythm and music to the fulfillment of meaning in it, aquality that
distinguishes his verse more than any other. Its intensification in his later poetry may be
partially explained by the fact of his blindness, but its definitive presence even in his early
work is indicative of m affinity to music that precedes this condition, and suggests that Milton
attempted to fill his writing with the more ephemeral effect of music itself, This has led some
critics to remark, rather unkindly, that while Shakespeare's voice is hardly ever evident in his
own work, there is evidence or no other voice but his own in Milton's (Legouis and Cazamian,
1954: 575). At all events, one can identify music as a source and an influence on Milton's
work that remains less easily detectable, yet perhaps more important than it appears.

14.4 MILTON'S POETIC EVOLUTION AND THE MINOR POEMS

We had noted in the previous unit that Milton started his poetic career and had decided to
write an epic fairly early in his life. These ambitions took shape and were realised over a
poetic career that was in fact suspended for many years, during the time of his (official and
unofficial) service to the Commonwealth. We also noted that the first major work in his adult
life asa poet was 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity' (1629-30),when he was twenty-four
years old. The poem is replete with Studying Miltonmany of thethemes and images to be
found in Paradise Lost, written more than forty years later. This in itself is the strongest
indication of the preoccupation with and the continuity of especially Biblical motifs and ideas
in Milton's poetic work. It also initiated a lyricism that was developed and continued in the
twirl poems of 'L'allegro' and 'II Penseroso'. These two poems were the last of the major long
poems that Milton was to write for some time, and his poetic work after this period till the
writing of Paradise Lost is confined to some hymns and sonnets, of which we shall study two,
Sonnets 19 and 23. What is interesting is that in all the variety that Milton displays in his
shorter poetic works, he remains aloof from the 'metaphysical' fashions of his age, with most
of his shorter works serving as sketches toward that final magnum opus, Paradise Lost. But
between the writing of the shorter poems and the two epics, Milton devoted himself to writing

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powerful, polemical and influential prose tracts that concerned themselves with the major
political and social issues of his time.

14.5 MILTON'S PROSE

14.5.1 The Old Prose and its Conditions

The efflorescence of prose in the 17th century is a matter of some interest. While prose as a
style of writing had been popular for some centuries, it received a tremendous boost in the
invention of the mechanical press, the Gutenberg press, in the 15th century. In the succeeding
centuries, this invention was to transform the world. But specifically with regard to prose,
the press facilitated the quick and easy transmission of information, pinion and knowledge.
Besides freeing writers from the patronage system and injecting them directly into a market
system, by which readers buying their books directly supported the writers, by the same
token the mechanical press also permitted writers greater freedom in what they wrote. Under
the patronage system, writers had to submit to the surveillance of their patrons. With the
wide ranging discoveries and concerns of the Renaissance, a host of new knowledges entered
the public domain through this freedom and efficiency offered by the mechanical press. Part
of the new intellectualism was an individualism that was in harmony with the writer's need
to break out of the patronage system; another part of it was a secular and inquiring vision
that demanded a more objective examination of the world, unbounded by the subjective and
highly emotive charges of religious or social affiliations. The quest for alternative political
orders and systems of authority spawned a chaos of styles, and the new styles reflected the
urgency of the quest itself, Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), a compendious
mixture of learning, pseudoscience, and anecdote woven ostensibly into a study of human
psychopathology, is one example of the kind of, prose that marked the early seventeenth
century. In the 1620s with the first corantos, or courants (news books), generated by interest
in the Thirty Years' War, another style emerged, resulting from a dramatic shift from an elite
to a mass readership, and an efflorescence of popular journalism that accompanied the
political confusion of the 1640s. These two kinds of styles may be seen as counterpoints to
each other: the one polite, decent even when highly intellectual and radical, maintaining the
civilities of political debate; and the other, like the tracts of the Levellers, Ranters and
Diggers, scurrilous, populist, breaching every convention of literary taste and often
considered vulgar and obscene.

This dramatic emergence of the genre of prose was not unrelated to the poetry of the period.
We must remember that the school of poetry subsequently referred to as the Metaphysicals
emerged alongside this popularization of prose. It was markedly different from the courtier
poetry of the previous century, characterized by wit, playfulness, erudite and often obscure
allusions, and perhaps most importantly, a vision of the world [hat was broad, more inclusive
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and deeply contemporary. The language was terse, staccato in rhythm, often colloquial and
conversational, and replete with unconventional rind sometimes shocking imagery. The
effects and influence of the popularization of prose is thus evident in this poetry. Milton's
poetic work, while distant from the Metaphysicals, is not without its own resonances of the
new prose styles. While he remained deeply rooted in Renaissance and classical genres and
styles, his poetry too often reflects the new inclusiveness and contemporaneity of the
Metaphysicals. Further, Milton's vision is sweeping, striving to blend the historical with the
mythic, and it is in this perhaps that the influence of the new prose is most evident: for the
attention to contemporary themes is intertwined with a vast erudition of history, politics,
mythology, geography and science, attempting to weave the whole into a total system - a
hallmark of the new prose.

14.5.2 Milton and the New Prose

While this appears to be more in consonance with the work of the more intellectual and
systematic thinkers like Burton and Thomas Hobbes, Milton's own prose work is closer to
the other variety of prose writing - perhaps as much because he wanted to maintain poetry as
a vehicle of the lofty and sublime, as because his concerns in his prose were explicitly
political and polemical. Yet these too are not without bearing for his poetical work. In the
years 1641-60 he was almost wholly devoted in his writings to pamphleteering in the cause
of religious and civil liberty. As his work went on, he was sustained by the conviction that
in his defenses of liberty he was, in another way, fulfilling his epic and patriotic aspirations
His early tracts were attacks on the Episcopal hierarchy of the church, which he found to be
too close to the Roman Catholic Church. But it was in 1643, with the
'Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce' (which was followed by three more tracts in 1644 and 1645
on the same theme) that he emerged as a highly controversial yet influential voice in England. In
these trenchantly argued tracts, Milton contended that adultery might be less valid than
incompatibility as the only reason for divorce. He argued that the coercive bond of a loveless
marriage was destructive of human dignity, and therefore as valid if not more valid a reason for
divorce. Milton's stand on divorce may have been substantially influenced by his own unhappy
marriage; whatever his personal reasons, his open espousal of this new reason for divorce invited
censure and even abuse by royalists and Presbyterians equally, as a libertine stand, Rut what is
significant for us is that the vision of the circumstance of marriage that Milton lays out in these
tracts as a union of love, a divinely gifted blessing, which is to be dutifully yet lovingly honored
and maintained, but not if either of the partners find the union itself intolerable. For Milton, it then
ceases to be a marriage, and is only a mutually destructive bond. This vision of marriage is what
is carried into his poetry and reflected by Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost.

In subsequent tracts like his most famous pamphlets, 'Of Education' and 'Areopagitica',
Milton was to explore other themes that were lo reflect in his epic. The first tract was a
treatise on humanist education in the line of Erasmus. It advocated the study of the ancient
classics, but subordinated to the Bible and Christian teaching - a balance of emphases that is
evident in all his poetry. The second was written in response to a Parliamentary decree
demanding that all published work be licensed by the official licenser. Milton's argument in
this work, characteristically published without a license, was that diverse and conflicting

143
opinions ought to be allowed to debate freely in public space, without the mediation of a
censoring authority. He argued that this was essential for moral and intellectual growth, and
believed that truth would triumph over falsehood in such debates. It is now considered a
classic work in defense of civil liberties, but probably had little impact in its own time. But
the reasoning at the heart of this tract was to pose a serious ideological and theological
problem for Milton in the creation of the figure of Satan in Paradise Lost, Along with the
politics of rebellion against the king and the advocacy of a more egalitarian rule, Satan also
almost comes to represent for Milton the suppressed and censored voice that he writes of in
the 'Areopagitica'. In fact it is arguable that Milton never really manages to resolve
completely the contradictions in the political and religious representations of Satan in this
epic. Another tract that reflects these concerns but from different point of view was the
'Eikonoklastes', written in defense of regicide, following the severe attacks on the
Commonwealth from Catholic quarters, for the execution of King Charles I. It is perhaps
only to be expected that the defense is based less on rational argument and more on
scurrilously attacking critics like Claudius Salmasius, discrediting him through personal
abuse as a monstrous enemy of a sacred cause.

In these years he had also busied himself with a monumental history of Britain and a
Defense of the People of England. 'ATreatise on Christian Doctrine', finished by about 1658-60,
indicated a certain centrality of themes in his work. In this work, he spelt out some of his central
differences from orthodox Christianity, primarily in his rejection of the concept of the holy trinity
and of the doctrine of predestination, and his manifest belief in the humanity, rather than the
divinity, of Christ. He continued to write tracts espousing religious and civil freedom, like 'A
Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes' down to his last political tract, 'The Readie and
Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, published in March 1660. It was a patently a defiant
effort, considering that the tide was changing, and it was already clear that England was returning
to monarchy under Charles II. Milton's prose work may thus be seen as an important bridge
between his early poetic phase, when his concerns were primarily aesthetic and idealistic, and his
later epic phase, when he set about to realize his ambitious project of creating a contemporary
mythology.

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UNIT 15 'ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY'

AND 'LYCPDAS'

Structure

15.0 Objectives
15.1 Introduction
15.2 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity'
15.3 'Lycidas'
15.4 Let's Sum Up
15.5 Revision Questions

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 15.6 Additional Reading

15.0 OBJECTIVES

• This unit, along with the next, will discuss some of Milton's more well known lyrics.
• This particular unit will focus on two poems, 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity' and
'Lycidas'.
• In analyzing these two poems, it will examine the generic forms that Milton employs and
reworks to his own specific ends.
• Among the many complex issues involved, the unit will focus on the relationship between
classical and Christian traditions of thought in Milton's work.
• The unit will also examine in some detail the musicality of Milton's poetry.

15.1 INTRODUCTION

These poems reflect a diversity of concerns and poetical techniques, which complement each
other, as well as reflect many of the concerns and styles that go into the making of Milton's
magnum opus, Paradise Lost. The unit will therefore focus as much on the formal elements
of the poems as on their explication. The first poem, 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity',
explicitly displays Milton's early passion for Christian lore as a source for poetic attention,
as well as his persistent Lendency to cast it as the overriding frame of signification and
meaning in his poetry. While his erudition and intimate familiarity with classical texts and
culture is evident in both the poems, both poems promote the Christian over the classical.
The second of the two poems, 'Lycidas' may also be seen as a struggle within his poetic self
between these two traditions for supremacy. While these issues will come up for discussion
in the course of the unit, we will also examine some formal dimensions to both the poems.

15.2 'ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY' AND PARADISE LOST

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The poem consists of four opening stanzas of seven lines each, followed by the main 'Hymn'
of twenty-seven stanzas of eight lines each, The opening four stanzas follow arhyme scheme
different from the rest of the poem and the rhymes themselves are not very consistently
accurate, nor the meter evenly maintained through the poem.

For the most part the foot remains iambic, swinging between the rather rare trimeter (line
with six syllables alternately stressed) and the hexameter (line with twelve syllables
alternately stressed). The iambic is probably the foot closest to human speech patterns. The
inconsistency of the rhyme and meter, rather than reducing, add to a musicality that is already
evident in this poem, and that emerges with greater clarity and power in the later poems. This
musicality does not, as in Pope's verses for instance, derive from the strict adherence to
rhyme and meter. Rather, the rhythm that Milton achieves have a more integral relation to
the words themselves, as for instance in the following lines (64-8) from stanza V of the
'Hymn':

The Windes, with wonder whist,

Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joyes to the milde Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

The alliterative first line with its line-up of aspirative roundings - 'windes', 'wonder', ‘whist’
- followed by the sibilant 'smoothly' and 'kist', aspire to aurally and tonally connote the sense
of quiet wonder that the lines themselves denote. It must be noted that the poem itself is
substantially about sound and music, with stanzas IX through to XIV specifically about tile
rapturous celestial music that heralds Christ's birth. The swinging, varying lengths of the
lines further serve to 'perform' this music in the reading of the poem itself.

Yet, Milton's thematic intent, it might be said, demanded a discursivity of tone approaching
prose, in almost all his poetic works. Hence the struggle evident in his shorter poems to
follow the dictates of rhyme and meter together. The rhyme scheme of the four introductory
stanzas, with their longer lines, and alternating rhyme scheme, suggest the need to make
extended statements that may not be contained by the same rhyme. The hymn that follows,
because of its affinity to music and its more descriptive and narrative intent, attempts more
successfully to perform a more complex rhyme scheme. Yet even here, the last alexandrine
(iambic hexameter) of each stanza reverts to the discursive tone that Milton appears more
comfortable with. The success of the 'Nativity' poem in embodying the music of its content
was not to be recaptured in those later short poems which were weightier in their subject
matter.
It is only in the writing of the epic later that Milton hit upon the form of the blank verse as
the ideal vehicle for a heavily musical and sonorous style that nevertheless remained
discursive in its intent.

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The Hymn that follows the introductory stanzas and takes up the remaining 23, differs
marginally from them in its stanzaic structure. Where the introductory stanzas are composed
of seven lines each, following an a-b-a-b-b-c-c rhyme scheme, the remaining stanzas are of
eight lines each, using the rhyme scheme a-b-c-c-b-d-d. Further, while the foot (or the
combination of stressed and unstressed syllables) remains more or less the iambic through
the entire poem, the meter scheme in the first four stanzas differs from that in the hymn. The
first four stanzas use the tetrameter (or four stresses) for the first six lines, with the
concluding seventh line of each stanza using six stresses or the hexameter; in contrast, the
meter scheme in the hymn is more complex. There the lines a-a and c-c use the terse trimeter,
the b-b lines use the longer pentameter, while the last d-d lines move from the tetrameter in
the first line to the even longer hexameter, 'The effect is remarkable. The first four stanzas
being introductory and therefore more discursive, the terse but consistent tetrameter serves
the purpose well, of projecting a solemn yet speech-like, almost oratorical effect - as if the
voice were discoursing rather than singing. In contrast, the meter and rhyme scheme of the
hymn achieves a more complex effect: that of the chant or the song. The lines swing between
short, terse stresses and extended statements, with the concluding couplet in particular
concentrating the almost pendulating effect of the preceding lines in its large swing from the
tetrameter to the hexameter of the closing alexandrine, The final result is a lyrical, song-like
quality that attempts to measure up to both the poem's claim to be a hymn and to the
celebratory nature of the subject of the poem. It is fairly safe to say, however, that the hymn
in the poem is, for all its musicality, easier to read than to sing.

The first four stanzas introduce the poem's topic, the birth of Christ, and offer it as a song in
celebration of this event. The third stanza characteristically invokes the 'Heavenly Muse', in
almost epic style, elevating the tone of the poem to suggest an event of epic proportions. The
epic that Milton eventually wrote, Paradise Lost, discarded this event to focus on the prior
event of 'Man's First Fall' from Divine Grace. Yet this earlier poem bears within it many of
the elements of that monumental work. The sweep of the poem, covering the moment of
Creation, leading on to and through the 'pagan' civilisations of the past and looking forward
to the Day of Judgement, the invocation of the Heavenly Muse, the celebration of Christ as
a hero of epic proportions who will defeat Satan, the classical and Biblical allusions and
references - these are all important dimensions of Paradise Lost as well. In particular, the
theme of the old, classical gods being displaced and routed by Christ, so extensively featured
in Book I of Paradise Lost, is prefigured in this poem, as for instance in stanza 22:

Peor, and Baalim,

Forsake their Temples dim,
With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine

In this sense, one may see in the 'Nativity' poem a kind of preliminary sketch of the later epic.
Certainly the poem bears the intent of announcing the superiority of Christianity to classical
legends and beliefs - indeed, of condemning the latter - which is shared and extended by the
later epic.

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15.3 'LYCIDAS'

This poem first appeared in a 1638 collection of elegies entitled Justa EdouardoKing
Naufrago, commemorating the death of Edward King, a college-mate of Milton's at
Cambridge who drowned in a shipwreck in 1637. Milton, who had not been very close to
King, volunteered or was asked to make a contribution to the collection, and used the
occasion to reflect on his own current emotional conflicts, specifically about poetry. King,
who like Milton, had apparently devoted his short life to poetry, becomes the basis for
Milton's searching questions on the worth of such a life, in the face of the unpredictability of
death. The two poets are imagined as shepherds in the poem, following the conventions of
the classical pastoral, tending the arts of poetry, and Milton's lament is that such a profession
is futile if the muses of poetry cannot guard their shepherds.

What boots it with uncessant care

To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade,
And strictly meditate the thankles Muse,
Were it not better don as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? (11. 64-9)

This lament goes on to line 76, when Phoebus interrupts the lament to console the poet, that fame
achieved through poetry lingers beyond the mortal life of the poet.

Phoebus repli'd, and touch'd my trembling ears;

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to th' world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreds aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfet witnes of all judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed. (11. 77-84)

This then becomes the basis for consolation which ends with the poet's celebration of
Lycidas' life and fame. What is significant about the consolation is that it shifts registers,
from classical allusions to Christian mythology - as if Milton deliberately used the former in
the preceding part of the poem to discuss the death and the sorrow that it brings, but finds
life only in the latter:

Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,

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 For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar,
So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his
beams, and with new spangled Ore, Flames in the
forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves (11. 165-73)

The last line here is of course an allusion to the Biblical story of the miracle of Jesus walking
on water. The poem goes on to describe the heavenly bliss that is Lycidas' fortune after death.
Again here we see how Milton is clearly turning to Christianity as the superior and more
convincing form of belief, for the rewards of the after life. Yet even this turn to Christianity
is tightly interwoven with classical elements and allusions. It is important that the moment
of genuine consolation comes only when St. Peter ('The Pilot' of 1. 109) speaks in wrath at
the indulgent ways of those who live life without either religion or poetry. Milton is here
drawing on two traditions of allegorisation of the shepherd: the classical, in which shepherds
are poets, and the Christian, in which shepherds are spiritual and religious leaders. The
shepherds in the poem thus represent both poets and religious guides, and it is in envisioning
the poet as a combination of these roles that Milton is most comfortable. There is nevertheless
a tension between the two allegorical frames, arising from their different discursive and
cultural histories. Milton uses this tension between the two cultures very fruitfully, as ail
index of the tension between worldly, sensual life and a spiritual after-life in the poem,
contrasting the values of a transient worldly existence with that of the immortality and fame
achieved through poetry.

Milton's old preoccupation with fame and the rewards of a poetic vocation are evident here.
This must be understood as a concern, even a struggle, with the possibilities of a poetic
vocation itself, even as it signals Milton's intensifying ambitions. The poem thus weaves
several themes together: mortality as inevitable, the futility of poetic ambitions and the
transience of worldly pleasures in the face of mortality, the guarantee of spiritual immortality
within Christianity, and the need to promote this as asuperior form of immortality to that
offered by classical thought and literature; and yet the persistent impulse in the poem is to
many the two traditions, as if Milton's struggle between the attractions of each was a
perpetually unfinished one. This tension is manifest formally as well, and helps explain the
layered and complex narrative style of the poem.

The complex themes and narrative movement of the poem render its structure somewhat
mysterious. There are two ways of understanding the movements in the poem: one, as being
comprised of two movements with six sections each that seem to mirror each other; and two,
as composed of three movements that run parallel in pattern. We must remember however
that in neither way do we see any clear separation of the Christian and classical. Their
elements are too intertwined to be distinguished as individual structures or even structural
movements in the poem. Yet, some discernible distinctiveness is evident. Each movement
begins with an invocation, then explores the conventions of the classical pastoral, and ends

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with a more or less comprehensively Christian conclusion to the emotional problem that
Milton negotiates in the poem.

Milton's epigram labels Lycidas a 'monody': a lyrical lament for one voice. But the poem has
several voices or personae, including the 'uncouth swain' (the main narrator), who is
'interrupted' first by Phoebus (Apollo), then Camus (the river Cam, or Cambridge University
personified), and the 'Pilot of the Galilean lake' (St. Peter). Finally, a second narrator appears
for only the last eight lines to bring a conclusion in ottava rima (a sestet + a couplet). The
poem till this point is almost in free verse: the lengths of the lines vary, the rhymes follow
no fixed order, indeed the poem seems to rely heavily on internal rhymes within the same
line or set of lines, as for instance in the repetition of the '-ier' (or '-ear) sound in the first few
lines of the poem. Additionally, there are neither couplets nor stanzas. In other words, the
poem contains the irregular rhyme and meter characteristic of the Italian canzone form.
Canzone is essentially a polyphonic lyrical form, hence creating a serious conflict with the
'monody'. Yet, this formal conflict does not detract from the poem; rather, it enhances the
complex elaboration of its equally complex themes. Further, the sense of sorrow and
bewilderment is intensified by the lines refusal to be confined to consistent lengths and
specific rhyme patterns. By referring to the poem as monadic then, Milton may have meant
that the poem should be regarded more as a story told completely by one person as opposed
to a chorus. This person would presumably be the final narrator, who had apparently masked
himself as the "uncouth swain" in the poem. 'This concept of story-telling ties Lycidas closer
to the genre of pastoral elegy.

The pastoral elegy is a genre initiated by Theocritus, also put to famous use by Virgil and
Spenser. It employs the irregular rhyme and meter of an Italian canzone. Lycidas also exhibits
the influence of Pindaric odes, especially in its allusions to Orpheus, Alpheus, and Arethusa.
The poem's arrangement in verse paragraphs and its introduction of various voices and
personae are also features that anticipate epic structures. Like the form, structure, and voice
of Lycidas, its genre is deeply complex.

15.4 LET'S SUM UP

A question that must occur after we have examined both the poems and their implications is,
why is Milton so intent on maintaining the superiority of the Christian over the classical?
The obvious answer is that he was a deeply Christian man, and living as he did in times of
politico-religious controversy and conflict, perhaps it was inevitable that he would espouse
his own vision of Christianity in his writings. However, this answer has to be supplemented
by another set of factors. For Milton, it was not sufficient to just emphasize the Christian
over the classical; paradoxically he wanted to also celebrate the classical heritage as a
powerfully influential and attractive cultural discourse, extremely accomplished in its poetic
and literary achievements. Milton negotiated these dual and divergent impulses by inventing
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a poetic style that was rich with classical allusions, tropes and formal and generic elements,
yet fundamentally English and Christian in sensibility. He cast the language in a sonorous
musicality that was appropriate to his weighty themes, deliberate and measured in its
cadences, and rich with the imagery of rural England. The effect is poetry that measures itself
against the classical greats, with an eye to transcending them in both quality of form and
scale of content. Evidently Milton was writing, even in his shorter literary works, in the
nationalistic shadow of Spenser.

15.5 REVISION OUESTIONS

1. In the 'Nativity Ode', the effect of Milton's use of classical and pagan mythology is more
distracting than enhancing of the poem's themes. Do you agree? Discuss with reference
to the poem.

2. The 'Nativity Ode' is less about the celebration of Christ and more about the superiority
of a Protestant English spirit. Analyse the poem in the light of this statement.

3. What in your opinion is explored in 'Lycidas', a psychological conflict about the vocation
of poetry or a personal lament for a dead friend? Give reasons for your answer.

4. Analyse with reference to the poem some of the personifications the poet employs in
'Lycidas'. Do they add to the sense of lament or serve another purpose altogether?

5. Both the 'Nativity Ode' and 'Lycidas' are poems that struggle to reconcile themes that are
posed as irreconcilable Identify some of these in each. Which poem is more successful
in its attempts to do so?

15.6 ADDITIONAL READING

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1. Abrams, M.H. "Five Types of Lycidas." in Milton's Lycidas: The Tradition and die Poem.
Ed. C. A. Patrides. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983: 216-235.

2. Corns, Thomas N. "Milton Before 'Lycidas'." Graham Parry and Joad Raymond.
eds. Milton and the Term of Liberty. Cambridge: Brewer, 2002.

3. Corns, Thomas N. Milton’s Language. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.

4. Creaser, John. "Prosody and Liberty in Milton and Marvell." Graham Parry and Joad
Raymond, eds. Milton and the Terms of liberty, Cambridge: Brewer, 2002.

5. Guillory, John. "Milton, Narcissism, Gender: 011 the Genealogy of Male SelfEsteem."
Critical Essay on John Milton. Edited by Christopher Kendrick. New York: G.K. Hall,
1995, 165-193.

6. Hubbard, Thomas The Pipes of pan: Intertextuality and Literary Filiation in the Pastoral
Tradition from Theocritus to Milton. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.

7. Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-century Religious Lyric.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979.

8. Patrides, C, A. Ed. Milton's. Lycidas: The Tradition and the Poem. Columbia: University
of Missouri Press, 1983.

9. Robertson, David. "Soliloquy and Self in Milton's Major Poems." Of poetry and Politics:
New Essays on Milton and His World. Ed. P.G. Stanwood. Binghamton, NY: Medieval &
Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995: 59-77.

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UNIT- 16 PARADISE LOST- BOOK 1

16.1 INTRODUCTIO

N by Emma

Fendesack

Paradise Lost was written by John Milton, who is considered to be one of the greatest English
poets of his or any age. It is an epic poem in blank verse; the first version, published in 1667,
consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674,
arranged into twelve books (in the manner of Virgil’s ; Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout
(“Paradise Lost”). It is considered to be Milton’s major work, and it helped solidify his
reputation; the poem concerns the biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and
Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. By 1652, Milton was
completely blind and wrote Paradise Lost by reciting it to his daughters in their home in England
(“SparkNote on Paradise Lost”). Milton believed that all poetry served a religious purpose and
wrote his epic poem to help people become better Christians (“Paradise Lost in Popular
Culture.”). Paradise Lost influenced many authors throughout history, including John Steinbeck,
C.S. Lewis, and Mary Shelley.

16.2 SYNOPSIS

The poem follows the epic tradition of starting in medias res (Latin for in the midst of things), the
background story being recounted later.

Milton’s story has two narrative arcs, one about Satan (Lucifer) and the other following Adam
and Eve. It begins after Satan and the other rebel angels have been defeated and banished to Hell,
or, as it is also called in the poem, Tartarus. In Pandæmonium, the capital city of Hell, Satan
employs his rhetorical skill to organize his followers; he is aided by Mammon and Beelzebub.
Belial and Moloch are also present. At the end of the debate, Satan volunteers to corrupt the
newly created Earth and God’s new and most favoured creation,
Mankind. He braves the dangers of the Abyss alone in a manner reminiscent
of Odysseus or Aeneas. After an arduous traversal of the Chaos outside Hell, he enters God’s new
material World, and later the Garden of Eden.

At several points in the poem, an Angelic War over Heaven is recounted from different
perspectives. Satan’s rebellion follows the epic convention of large-scale warfare. The battles
between the faithful angels and Satan’s forces take place over three days. At the final battle, the
Son of God single-handedly defeats the entire legion of angelic rebels and banishes them from
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Heaven. Following this purge, God creates the World, culminating in his creation of Adam and
Eve. While God gave Adam and Eve total freedom and power to rule over all creation, he gave
them one explicit command: not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on
penalty of death.

The story of Adam and Eve’s temptation and fall is a fundamentally different, new kind of epic:
a domestic one. Adam and Eve are presented as having a romantic and sexual relationship while
still being without sin. They have passions and distinct personalities. Satan, disguised in the form
of a serpent, successfully tempts Eve to eat from the Tree by preying on her vanity and tricking
her with rhetoric. Adam, learning that Eve has sinned, knowingly commits the same sin. He
declares to Eve that since she was made from his flesh, they are bound to one another – if she
dies, he must also die. In this manner, Milton portrays Adam as a heroic figure, but also as a
greater sinner than Eve, as he is aware that what he is doing is wrong.

After eating the fruit, Adam and Eve have lustful sex. At first, Adam is convinced that Eve was
right in thinking that eating the fruit would be beneficial. However, they soon fall asleep and
have terrible nightmares, and after they awake, they experience guilt and shame for the first time.
Realizing that they have committed a terrible act against God, they engage in mutual
recrimination.

Meanwhile, Satan returns triumphantly to Hell, amid the praise of his fellow fallen angels. He
tells them about how their scheme worked and Mankind has fallen, giving them complete
dominion over Paradise. As he finishes his speech, however, the fallen angels around him
become hideous snakes, and soon enough, Satan himself turns into a snake, deprived of limbs
and unable to talk. Thus, they share the same punishment, as they shared the same guilt.

Eve appeals to Adam for reconciliation of their actions. Her encouragement enables them to
approach God, and sue for grace, bowing on supplicant knee, to receive forgiveness. In a vision
shown to him by the Archangel Michael, Adam witnesses everything that will happen to
Mankind until the Great Flood. Adam is very upset by this vision of the future, so Michael also
tells him about Mankind’s potential redemption from original sin through Jesus Christ (whom
Michael calls “King Messiah”).

Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden, and Michael says that Adam may find “a paradise within
thee, happier far.” Adam and Eve also now have a more distant relationship with God, who is
omnipresent but invisible (unlike the tangible Father in the Garden of Eden).

16.3 LITERARY STYLE

Paradise Lost is an epic poem written in blank verse, in the style of Homer and Virgil, meaning
it doesn’t rhyme. It is also written in iambic pentameter, meaning that a line consists of a stressed
syllable and then an unstressed syllable and so on and so forth until the next line. Milton was
very much inspired by Virgil and his epic, Aeneid. This poem has many Latin characteristics,
specifically where syntax is concerned, which makes it somewhat hard to understand because the
word order is often reversed (“Paradise Lost Writing Style”), allowing Milton greater creative
expression. This poetic style was popularized and later on became known as “Miltonic Verse”
and was very influential for future English poets.

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 16.4 THEMES

This epic has many themes, but the main one that is consistently used throughout the poem is our
obedience to God. The story of Adam and Eve is widely known, so the buildup and detail in this
poem isn’t for suspense, but is to show how terribly Adam and Eve have sinned. It is described
so that the reader is aware of how great the consequences that exist for those who disobey God’s
law. “Paradise” and “Lost” represent the two different paths that one can take: “Paradise” could
represent the redemption of Adam and Eve, one rooted in loyalty to God alone. “Lost” could
represent the path of sin that Satan takes and one that anyone can take if they sin.

16.5 CONTROVERSIES

Milton also suggests that women were always the weaker sex through his characterization of
Eve, who is portrayed as vain and easily swayed. Although accused of being sexist, Milton
always denied it and suggested that he loved women. Eve was convinced to eat the fruit because
Satan flattered her, suggesting that women care more about appearances than God’s word.
Immediately after eating the fruit, she convinces Adam to eat it too so she won’t be alone in
death. This, quite blatantly, suggests that women only care about themselves and that they are to
blame for the fall of mankind.

Works Cited

“Paradise Lost,” Wikipedia, 23 Oct. 2020. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost Accessed 24 Oct.

2020.

“Paradise Lost in Popular Culture.” Wikipedia, 14 Apr. 2019,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost_in_popular_culture. Accessed 15 April. 2019. “Paradise
Lost Writing Style.” Shmoop., 11 Nov. 2008, www.shmoop.com/paradise-lost/writingstyle.html.
Accessed 15 April 2019.

16.6 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Why do you think Milton feels the need to tell Satan’s perspective? Who do you think
is portrayed as the hero? Why?

2. God sees everything that will happen, perceiving the past, present, and future
simultaneously. Why, then, are Adam and Eve allowed to sin?

3. Satan transforms himself into many creatures throughout this poem, starting with a
large winged creature, then a cherub, then a bird, then to a toad, and finally a snake. What
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 does this pattern of transformations say about Satan’s character as we get further into the
poem?

4. What does the gate represent and what does it say about who’s guarding it? What do
you think Sin and Death represent?

5. In book one, Satan says, “I’d rather be a king in Hell than a servant in Heaven.” What
do you think this means, and do you agree? Do you think that most people today live by this
as well?

BOOK 1

THE ARGUMENT

This first Book proposes, first in brief, the whole Subject, Mans disobedience, and the loss
thereupon of Paradise wherein he was plac’t: Then touches the prime cause of his fall, the
Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many
Legions of Angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his Crew into the
great Deep. Which action past over, the Poem hasts into the midst of things, presenting Satan
with his Angels now fallen into Hell, describ’d here, not in the Center (for Heaven and Earth
may be suppos’d as yet not made, certainly not yet accurst) but in a place of utter darkness,
fitliest call’d Chaos: Here Satan with his Angels lying on the burning Lake, thunder-struck and
astonisht, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in Order and
Dignity lay by him; they confer of thir miserable fall. Satan awakens all his Legions, who lay till
then in the same manner confounded; They rise, thir Numbers, array of Battel, thir chief Leaders
nam’d, according to the Idols known afterwards in Canaan and the Countries adjoyning. To these
Satan directs his Speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven, but tells them lastly
of a new World and new kind of Creature to be created, according to an ancient Prophesie or
report in Heaven; for that Angels were long before this visible Creation, was the opinion of many
ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this Prophesie, and what to determin thereon he refers to
a full Councel. What his Associates thence attempt. Pandemonium the Palace of Satan rises,
suddenly built out of the Deep: The infernal Peers there sit in Councel.

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top Of
Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill [ 10 ] Delight
thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
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Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar Above
th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues [ 15 ] Things
unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime. And chiefly
Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread [ 20 ]
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And
mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark Illumin,
what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument I
may assert Eternal Providence, [ 25 ] And
justifie the wayes of God to men.

Say first, for Heav’n hides nothing from thy view Nor
the deep Tract of Hell, say first what cause
Mov’d our Grand Parents in that happy State,
Favour’d of Heav’n so highly, to fall off [ 30 ] From
thir Creator, and transgress his Will
For one restraint, Lords of the World besides?
Who first seduc’d them to that foul revolt?
Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv’d [ 35 ]
The Mother of Mankind, what time his Pride Had
cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in Glory above his Peers, He
trusted to have equal’d the most High, [ 40 ]
If he oppos’d; and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
Rais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power Hurld
headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie [ 45 ]
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In
Adamantine Chains and penal Fire, Who
durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.
Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night [ 50 ]
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Confounded though immortal: But his doom Reserv’d
him to more wrath; for now the thought Both of lost
happiness and lasting pain [ 55 ]
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
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That witness’d huge affliction and dismay
Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate: At
once as far as Angels kenn he views
The dismal Situation waste and wilde, [ 60 ] A
Dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great
Furnace flam’d, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible Serv’d
onely to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace [ 65 ]
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end Still
urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum’d:
Such place Eternal Justice had prepar’d [ 70 ]
For those rebellious, here thir Prison ordain’d
In utter darkness, and thir portion set As far
remov’d from God and light of Heav’n
As from the Center thrice to th’ utmost Pole.
O how unlike the place from whence they fell! [ 75 ]
There the companions of his fall, o’rewhelm’d
With Floods and Whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns, and weltring by his side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and nam’d [ 80 ]
Beelzebub. To whom th’ Arch-Enemy, And thence
in Heav’n call’d Satan, with bold words Breaking
the horrid silence thus began.

If thou beest he; But O how fall’n! how chang’d

From him, who in the happy Realms of Light [ 85 ] Cloth’d
with transcendent brightness didst out-shine
Myriads though bright: If he Whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the Glorious Enterprize,
Joynd with me once, now misery hath joynd [ 90 ] In
equal ruin: into what Pit thou seest
From what highth fall’n, so much the stronger prov’d He
with his Thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those,
Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage [ 95 ] Can
else inflict, do I repent or change, Though
chang’d in outward lustre; that fixt mind
And high disdain, from sence of injur’d merit,
That with the mightiest rais’d me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along [ 100 ]
Innumerable force of Spirits arm’d
159
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring, His
utmost power with adverse power oppos’d
In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav’n,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? [ 105 ]
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And
study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might [ 110 ]
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deifie his power,
Who from the terrour of this Arm so late
Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy and shame beneath [ 115 ]
This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods
And this Empyreal substance cannot fail,
Since through experience of this great event In
Arms not worse, in foresight much advanc’t,
We may with more successful hope resolve [ 120 ]
To wage by force or guile eternal Warr Irreconcileable,
to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy Sole
reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav’n.

So spake th’ Apostate Angel, though in pain, [ 125 ] Vaunting

aloud, but rackt with deep despare:
And him thus answer’d soon his bold Compeer.

O Prince, O Chief of many Throned Powers,

That led th’ imbattelld Seraphim to Warr
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds [ 130 ]
Fearless, endanger’d Heav’ns perpetual King; And
put to proof his high Supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or Chance, or Fate,
Too well I see and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat [ 135 ]
Hath lost us Heav’n, and all this mighty Host
In horrible destruction laid thus low, As far
as Gods and Heav’nly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns, [ 140 ] Though
all our Glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallow’d up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conquerour, (whom I now
Of force believe Almighty, since no less
Then such could hav orepow’rd such force as ours) [ 145 ]

160
Have left us this our spirit and strength intire
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire, Or do him
mightier service as his thralls By right of Warr,
what e’re his business be [ 150 ]
Here in the heart of Hell to work in Fire,
Or do his Errands in the gloomy Deep;
What can it then avail though yet we feel
Strength undiminisht, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment? [ 155 ]
Whereto with speedy words th’ Arch-fiend reply’d.

Fall’n Cherube, to be weak is miserable Doing

or Suffering: but of this be sure,
To do ought good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight, [ 160 ]
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his Providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil; [ 165 ]
Which oft times may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb His
inmost counsels from thir destind aim.
But see the angry Victor hath recall’d
His Ministers of vengeance and pursuit [ 170 ] Back
to the Gates of Heav’n: The Sulphurous Hail
Shot after us in storm, oreblown hath laid The
fiery Surge, that from the Precipice Of Heav’n
receiv’d us falling, and the Thunder,
Wing’d with red Lightning and impetuous rage, [ 175 ]
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now To
bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.
Let us not slip th’ occasion, whether scorn, Or
satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
Seest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wilde, [ 180 ]
The seat of desolation, voyd of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves,
There rest, if any rest can harbour there, [ 185 ]
And reassembling our afflicted Powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our Enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire Calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from Hope, [ 190 ] If
not what resolution from despare.

161
Thus Satan talking to his neerest Mate
With Head up-lift above the wave, and Eyes That
sparkling blaz’d, his other Parts besides
Prone on the Flood, extended long and large [ 195 ]
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the Fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr’d on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the Den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast [ 200 ]
Leviathan, which God of all his works Created
hugest that swim th’ Ocean stream: Him haply
slumbring on the Norway foam
The Pilot of some small night-founder’d Skiff,
Deeming some Island, oft, as Sea-men tell, [ 205 ]
With fixed Anchor in his skaly rind Moors by
his side under the Lee, while Night Invests
the Sea, and wished Morn delayes:
So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay Chain’d
on the burning Lake, nor ever thence [ 210 ]
Had ris’n or heav’d his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought [ 215 ]
Evil to others, and enrag’d might see
How all his malice serv’d but to bring forth Infinite
goodness, grace and mercy shewn
On Man by him seduc’t, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance pour’d. [ 220 ] Forthwith
upright he rears from off the Pool
His mighty Stature; on each hand the flames
Drivn backward slope thir pointing spires, and rowld
In billows, leave i’th’ midst a horrid Vale.
Then with expanded wings he stears his flight [ 225 ]
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky Air
That felt unusual weight, till on dry Land
He lights, if it were Land that ever burn’d With
solid, as the Lake with liquid fire;
And such appear’d in hue, as when the force [ 230 ]
Of subterranean wind transports a Hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shatter’d side Of
thundring Ætna, whose combustible
And fewel’d entrals thence conceiving Fire,
Sublim’d with Mineral fury, aid the Winds, [ 235 ]
And leave a singed bottom all involv’d

162
With stench and smoak: Such resting found the sole Of
unblest feet. Him followed his next Mate,
Both glorying to have scap’t the Stygian flood As
Gods, and by thir own recover’d strength, [ 240 ]
Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,

Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he [ 245 ]
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail [ 250 ]
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time. The
mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a
Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. [ 255 ]
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: [ 260 ]
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce To
reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th’ associates and copartners of our loss [ 265 ]
Lye thus astonisht on th’ oblivious Pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy Mansion, or once more
With rallied Arms to try what may be yet
Regaind in Heav’n, or what more lost in Hell? [ 270 ] So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub Thus
answer’d. Leader of those Armies bright,
Which but th’ Onmipotent none could have foyld, If
once they hear that voyce, thir liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft [ 275 ] In
worst extreams, and on the perilous edge
Of battel when it rag’d, in all assaults
Thir surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they lye
Groveling and prostrate on yon Lake of Fire, [ 280 ]
As we erewhile, astounded and amaz’d, No
wonder, fall’n such a pernicious highth.
163
He scarce had ceas’t when the superiour Fiend
Was moving toward the shoar; his ponderous shield
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, [ 285 ]
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb
Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views
At Ev’ning from the top of Fesole, Or in
Valdarno, to descry new Lands, [ 290 ]
Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe. His
Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast
Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand,
He walkt with to support uneasie steps [ 295 ]
Over the burning Marle, not like those steps
On Heavens Azure, and the torrid Clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with Fire;
Nathless he so endur’d, till on the Beach
Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call’d [ 300 ]
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans’t
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades High
overarch’t imbowr; or scatterd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce Winds Orion arm’d [ 305 ]
Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew
Busiris and his Memphian Chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursu’d
The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore thir floating Carkases [ 310 ]
And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood, Under
amazement of thir hideous change.
He call’d so loud, that all the hollow Deep
Of Hell resounded. Princes, Potentates, [ 315 ]
Warriers, the Flowr of Heav’n, once yours, now lost, If such astonishment as this can sieze
Eternal spirits; or have ye chos’n this place After
the toyl of Battel to repose
Your wearied vertue, for the ease you find [ 320 ]
To slumber here, as in the Vales of Heav’n? Or
in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conquerour? who now beholds
Cherube and Seraph rowling in the Flood With
scatter’d Arms and Ensigns, till anon [ 325 ]
His swift pursuers from Heav’n Gates discern

164
Th’ advantage, and descending tread us down Thus
drooping, or with linked Thunderbolts Transfix us
to the bottom of this Gulfe.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall’n. [ 330 ]

They heard, and were abasht, and up they sprung

Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, Rouse
and bestir themselves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceave the evil plight [ 335 ]
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to thir Generals Voyce they soon obeyd
Innumerable. As when the potent Rod
Of Amrams Son in Egypts evill day
Wav’d round the Coast, up call’d a pitchy cloud [ 340 ] Of
Locusts, warping on the Eastern Wind,
That ore the Realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like
Night, and darken’d all the Land of Nile:
So numberless were those bad Angels seen
Hovering on wing under the Cope of Hell [ 345 ]
‘Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding Fires;
Till, as a signal giv’n, th’ uplifted Spear Of
thir great Sultan waving to direct
Thir course, in even ballance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the Plain; [ 350 ] A
multitude, like which the populous North
Pour’d never from her frozen loyns, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous Sons
Came like a Deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibralter to the Lybian sands. [ 355 ]
Forthwith from every Squadron and each Band
The Heads and Leaders thither hast where stood
Thir great Commander; Godlike shapes and forms
Excelling human, Princely Dignities,
And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones; [ 360 ]
Though of thir Names in heav’nly Records now
Be no memorial blotted out and ras’d
By thir Rebellion, from the Books of Life.
Nor had they yet among the Sons of Eve
Got them new Names, till wandring ore the Earth, [ 365 ]
Through Gods high sufferance for the tryal of man,
By falsities and lyes the greatest part
Of Mankind they corrupted to forsake
God thir Creator, and th’ invisible
Glory of him that made them, to transform [ 370 ]

165
Oft to the Image of a Brute, adorn’d With
gay Religions full of Pomp and Gold, And
Devils to adore for Deities:
Then were they known to men by various Names,
And various Idols through the Heathen World. [ 375 ]
Say, Muse, thir Names then known, who first, who last,
Rous’d from the slumber, on that fiery Couch,
At thir great Emperors call, as next in worth
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,
While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof? [ 380 ]
The chief were those who from the Pit of Hell
Roaming to seek thir prey on earth, durst fix Thir
Seats long after next the Seat of God,
Thir Altars by his Altar, Gods ador’d
Among the Nations round, and durst abide [ 385 ]
Jehovah thundring out of Sion, thron’d
Between the Cherubim; yea, often plac’d Within
his Sanctuary it self thir Shrines, Abominations;
and with cursed things His holy Rites, and solemn
Feasts profan’d, [ 390 ] And with thir darkness
durst affront his light.
First Moloch, horrid King besmear’d with blood Of
human sacrifice, and parents tears,
Though for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud
Thir childrens cries unheard, that past through fire [ 395 ]
To his grim Idol. Him the Ammonite
Worshipt in Rabba and her watry Plain,
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart [ 400 ]
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His Temple right against the Temple of God
On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove The
pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black
Gehenna call’d, the Type of Hell. [ 405 ]
Next Chemos, th’ obscene dread of Moabs Sons,
From Aroar to Nebo, and the wild
Of Southmost Abarim; in Hesebon
And Horonaim, Seons Realm, beyond
The flowry Dale of Sibma clad with Vines, [ 410 ]
And Eleale to th’ Asphaltick Pool.
Peor his other Name, when he entic’d
Israel in Sittim on thir march from Nile To do
him wanton rites, which cost them woe.
Yet thence his lustful Orgies he enlarg’d [ 415 ]
Even to that Hill of scandal, by the Grove Of
166
Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate; Till good
Josiah drove them thence to Hell.
With these came they, who from the bordring flood
Of old Euphrates to the Brook that parts [ 420 ]
Egypt from Syrian ground, had general Names
Of Baalim and Ashtaroth, those male,
These Feminine. For Spirits when they please
Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is thir Essence pure, [ 425 ]
Not ti’d or manacl’d with joynt or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose
Dilated or condens’t, bright or obscure, Can
execute thir aerie purposes, [ 430 ] And
works of love or enmity fulfill.
For those the Race of Israel oft forsook
Thir living strength, and unfrequented left
His righteous Altar, bowing lowly down
To bestial Gods; for which thir heads as low [ 435 ]
Bow’d down in Battel, sunk before the Spear
Of despicable foes. With these in troop Came
Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians call’d
Astarte, Queen of Heav’n, with crescent Horns;
To whose bright Image nightly by the Moon [ 440 ]
Sidonian Virgins paid thir Vows and Songs, In
Sion also not unsung, where stood
Her Temple on th’ offensive Mountain, built
By that uxorious King, whose heart though large,
Beguil’d by fair Idolatresses, fell [ 445 ]
To Idols foul. Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur’d The
Syrian Damsels to lament his fate
In amorous dittyes all a Summers day,
While smooth Adonis from his native Rock [ 450 ]
Ran purple to the Sea, suppos’d with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the Love-tale
Infected Sions daughters with like heat,
Whose wanton passions in the sacred Porch
Ezekiel saw, when by the Vision led [ 455 ]
His eye survay’d the dark Idolatries Of
alienated Judah. Next came one Who mourn’d
in earnest, when the Captive Ark
Maim’d his brute Image, head and hands lopt off In
his own Temple, on the grunsel edge, [ 460 ]
Where he fell flat, and sham’d his Worshipers: Dagon
his Name, Sea Monster, upward Man
167
And downward Fish: yet had his Temple high
Rear’d in Azotus, dreaded through the Coast Of
Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon [ 465 ]
And Accaron and Gaza’s frontier bounds.
Him follow’d Rimmon, whose delightful Seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertil Banks Of
Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
He also against the house of God was bold: [ 470 ]
A Leper once he lost and gain’d a King,
Ahaz his sottish Conquerour, whom he drew
Gods Altar to disparage and displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn His
odious off’rings, and adore the Gods [ 475 ]
Whom he had vanquisht. After these appear’d
A crew who under Names of old Renown,
Osiris, Isis, Orus and their Train With
monstrous shapes and sorceries abus’d
Fanatic Egypt and her Priests, to seek [ 480 ]
Thir wandring Gods disguis’d in brutish forms
Rather then human. Nor did Israel scape Th’
infection when thir borrow’d Gold compos’d The
Calf in Oreb: and the Rebel King
Doubl’d that sin in Bethel and in Dan, [ 485 ]
Lik’ning his Maker to the Grazed Ox,
Jehovah, who in one Night when he pass’d From
Egypt marching, equal’d with one stroke Both
her first born and all her bleating Gods.
Belial came last, then whom a Spirit more lewd [ 490 ]
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love Vice
for it self: To him no Temple stood Or Altar
smoak’d; yet who more oft then hee In Temples
and at Altars, when the Priest Turns Atheist, as did
Ely’s Sons, who fill’d [ 495 ] With lust and
violence the house of God.
In Courts and Palaces he also Reigns
And in luxurious Cities, where the noyse
Of riot ascends above thir loftiest Towrs,
And injury and outrage: And when Night [ 500 ] Darkens the Streets, then wander forth the Sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the Streets of Sodom, and that night In
Gibeah, when the hospitable door
Expos’d a Matron to avoid worse rape. [ 505 ]
These were the prime in order and in might; The
rest were long to tell, though far renown’d, Th’
Ionian Gods, of Javans Issue held
Gods, yet confest later then Heav’n and Earth
168
Thir boasted Parents; Titan Heav’ns first born [ 510 ]
With his enormous brood, and birthright seis’d
By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove His
own and Rhea’s Son like measure found;
So Jove usurping reign’d: these first in Creet
And Ida known, thence on the Snowy top [ 515 ]
Of cold Olympus rul’d the middle Air
Thir highest Heav’n; or on the Delphian Cliff,
Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds Of
Doric Land; or who with Saturn old Fled over
Adria to th’ Hesperian Fields, [ 520 ]
And ore the Celtic roam’d the utmost Isles.
All these and more came flocking; but with looks
Down cast and damp, yet such wherein appear’d
Obscure some glimps of joy, to have found thir chief
Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost [ 525 ]
In loss it self; which on his count’nance cast Like
doubtful hue: but he his wonted pride
Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore Semblance
of worth, not substance, gently rais’d
Thir fainting courage, and dispel’d thir fears. [ 530 ]
Then strait commands that at the warlike sound
Of Trumpets loud and Clarions be upreard His
mighty Standard; that proud honour claim’d
Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall:
Who forthwith from the glittering Staff unfurld [ 535 ]
Th’ Imperial Ensign, which full high advanc’t
Shon like a Meteor streaming to the Wind With
Gemms and Golden lustre rich imblaz’d,
Seraphic arms and Trophies: all the while
Sonorous mettal blowing Martial sounds: [ 540 ]
At which the universal Host upsent A shout
that tore Hells Concave, and beyond Frighted
the Reign of Chaos and old Night.
All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten
thousand Banners rise into the Air [ 545 ]
With Orient Colours waving: with them rose
A Forest huge of Spears: and thronging Helms
Appear’d, and serried shields in thick array Of
depth immeasurable: Anon they move
In perfect Phalanx to the Dorian mood [ 550 ]
Of Flutes and soft Recorders; such as rais’d
To hight of noblest temper Hero’s old
Arming to Battel, and in stead of rage Deliberate
valour breath’d, firm and unmov’d

169
With dread of death to flight or foul retreat, [ 555 ]
Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage With
solemn touches, troubl’d thoughts, and chase
Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain
From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they
Breathing united force with fixed thought [ 560 ]
Mov’d on in silence to soft Pipes that charm’d
Thir painful steps o’re the burnt soyle; and now
Advanc’t in view, they stand, a horrid Front
Of dreadful length and dazling Arms, in guise Of
Warriers old with order’d Spear and Shield, [ 565 ]
Awaiting what command thir mighty Chief Had to
impose: He through the armed Files Darts his
experienc’t eye, and soon traverse The whole
Battalion views, thir order due,
Thir visages and stature as of Gods, [ 570 ]
Thir number last he summs. And now his heart
Distends with pride, and hardning in his strength
Glories: For never since created man, Met such
imbodied force, as nam’d with these
Could merit more then that small infantry [ 575 ]
Warr’d on by Cranes: though all the Giant brood
Of Phlegra with th’ Heroic Race were joyn’d
That fought at Theb’s and Ilium, on each side Mixt
with auxiliar Gods; and what resounds
In Fable or Romance of Uthers Son [ 580 ] Begirt
with British and Armoric Knights;
And all who since, Baptiz’d or Infidel Jousted
in Aspramont or Montalban,
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond,
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore [ 585 ]
When Charlemain with all his Peerage fell
By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond
Compare of mortal prowess, yet observ’d
Thir dread commander: he above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent [ 590 ] Stood
like a Towr; his form had yet not lost
All her Original brightness, nor appear’d
Less then Arch Angel ruind, and th’ excess
Of Glory obscur’d: As when the Sun new ris’n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air [ 595 ]
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclips disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs. Dark’n’d so, yet shon
170
Above them all th’ Arch Angel: but his face [ 600 ]
Deep scars of Thunder had intrencht, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under Browes
Of dauntless courage, and considerate Pride
Waiting revenge: cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion to behold [ 605 ]
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
(Far other once beheld in bliss) condemn’d For
ever now to have thir lot in pain, Millions of
Spirits for his fault amerc’t
Of Heav’n, and from Eternal Splendors flung [ 610 ]
For his revolt, yet faithfull how they stood, Thir
Glory witherd. As when Heavens Fire Hath scath’d
the Forrest Oaks, or Mountain Pines, With singed top
thir stately growth though bare Stands on the blasted
Heath. He now prepar’d [ 615 ]
To speak; whereat thir doubl’d Ranks they bend
From wing to wing, and half enclose him round With
all his Peers: attention held them mute.
Thrice he assayd, and thrice in spight of scorn,
Tears such as Angels weep, burst forth: at last [ 620 ] Words
interwove with sighs found out thir way.

O Myriads of immortal Spirits, O Powers Matchless,

but with th’ Almighty, and that strife
Was not inglorious, though th’ event was dire,
As this place testifies, and this dire change [ 625 ]
Hateful to utter: but what power of mind
Foreseeing or presaging, from the Depth Of
knowledge past or present, could have fear’d,
How such united force of Gods, how such
As stood like these, could ever know repulse? [ 630 ]
For who can yet beleeve, though after loss,
That all these puissant Legions, whose exile
Hath emptied Heav’n, shall fail to re-ascend
Self-rais’d, and repossess thir native seat?
For mee be witness all the Host of Heav’n, [ 635 ]
If counsels different, or danger shun’d
By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns
Monarch in Heav’n, till then as one secure
Sat on his Throne, upheld by old repute,
Consent or custome, and his Regal State [ 640 ]
Put forth at full, but still his strength conceal’d, Which
tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall.
Henceforth his might we know, and know our own So
as not either to provoke, or dread

171
New warr, provok’t; our better part remains [ 645 ]
To work in close design, by fraud or guile
What force effected not: that he no less
At length from us may find, who overcomes By
force, hath overcome but half his foe.
Space may produce new Worlds; whereof so rife [ 650 ]
There went a fame in Heav’n that he ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant A
generation, whom his choice regard Should
favour equal to the Sons of Heaven:
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps
Our first eruption, thither or elsewhere: [ 655 ]
For this Infernal Pit shall never hold Cælestial
Spirits in Bondage, nor th’ Abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
Full Counsel must mature: Peace is despaird, [ 660 ]
For who can think Submission? Warr then, Warr Open
or understood must be resolv’d.

He spake: and to confirm his words, out-flew

Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs Of
mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze [ 665 ]
Far round illumin’d hell: highly they rag’d
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Clash’d on thir sounding Shields the din of war, Hurling
defiance toward the vault of Heav’n.

There stood a Hill not far whose griesly top [ 670 ]

Belch’d fire and rowling smoak; the rest entire
Shon with a glossie scurff, undoubted sign That
in his womb was hid metallic Ore, The work of
Sulphur. Thither wing’d with speed
A numerous Brigad hasten’d. As when Bands [ 675 ]
Of Pioners with Spade and Pickax arm’d
Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field,
Or cast a Rampart. Mammon led them on,
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From heav’n, for ev’n in heav’n his looks and thoughts [ 680 ]
Were always downward bent, admiring more The
riches of Heav’ns pavement, trod’n Gold,
Then aught divine or holy else enjoy’d
In vision beatific: by him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught, [ 685 ]
Ransack’d the Center, and with impious hands
Rifl’d the bowels of thir mother Earth
For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
172
Op’nd into the Hill a spacious wound And dig’d out
ribs of Gold. Let none admire [ 690 ]
That riches grow in Hell; that soyle may best
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those
Who boast in mortal things, and wond’ring tell Of
Babel, and the works of Memphian Kings
Learn how thir greatest Monuments of Fame, [ 695 ]
And Strength and Art are easily out-done
By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour What
in an age they with incessant toyle And
hands innumerable scarce perform.
Nigh on the Plain in many cells prepar’d, [ 700 ] That
underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluc’d from the Lake, a second multitude With
wondrous Art found out the massie Ore, Severing
each kind, and scum’d the Bullion dross: A third as
soon had form’d within the ground [ 705 ] A various
mould, and from the boyling cells
By strange conveyance fill’d each hollow nook,
As in an Organ from one blast of wind To many
a row of Pipes the sound-board breaths.
Anon out of the earth a Fabrick huge [ 710 ]
Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound
Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With Golden Architrave; nor did there want [ 715 ]
Cornice or Freeze, with bossy Sculptures grav’n,
The Roof was fretted Gold. Not Babilon, Nor
great Alcairo such magnificence Equal’d in all
thir glories, to inshrine
Belus or Serapis thir Gods, or seat [ 720 ]
Thir Kings, when Ægypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxurie. Th’ ascending pile
Stood fixt her stately highth, and strait the dores
Op’ning thir brazen foulds discover wide
Within, her ample spaces, o’re the smooth [ 725 ]
And level pavement: from the arched roof
Pendant by suttle Magic many a row
Of Starry Lamps and blazing Cressets fed
With Naphtha and Asphaltus yeilded light
As from a sky. The hasty multitude [ 730 ] Admiring
enter’d, and the work some praise
And some the Architect: his hand was known
In Heav’n by many a Towred structure high,
Where Scepter’d Angels held thir residence,
173
And sat as Princes, whom the supreme King [ 735 ]
Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, Each in his
Hierarchie, the Orders bright.
Nor was his name unheard or unador’d
In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land
Men call’d him Mulciber; and how he fell [ 740 ]
From Heav’n, they fabl’d, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o’re the Chrystal Battlements: from Morn To
Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve,
A Summers day; and with the setting Sun
Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star, [ 745 ]
On Lemnos th’ Ægean Ile: thus they relate,
Erring; for he with this rebellious rout Fell
long before; nor aught avail’d him now
To have built in Heav’n high Towrs; nor did he scape
By all his Engins, but was headlong sent [ 750 ] With
his industrious crew to build in hell.
Mean while the winged Haralds by command
Of Sovran power, with awful Ceremony
And Trumpets sound throughout the Host proclaim
A solemn Councel forthwith to be held [ 755 ]
At Pandæmonium, the high Capital Of Satan
and his Peers: thir summons call’d From every
Band and squared Regiment
By place or choice the worthiest; they anon
With hunderds and with thousands trooping came [ 760 ]
Attended: all access was throng’d, the Gates
And Porches wide, but chief the spacious Hall
(Though like a cover’d field, where Champions bold
Wont ride in arm’d, and at the Soldans chair
Defi’d the best of Paynim chivalry [ 765 ] To
mortal combat or carreer with Lance)
Thick swarm’d, both on the ground and in the air, Brusht
with the hiss of russling wings. As Bees
In spring time, when the Sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth thir populous youth about the Hive [ 770 ]
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Flie to and fro, or on the smoothed Plank,
The suburb of thir Straw-built Cittadel, New
rub’d with Baum, expatiate and confer
Thir State affairs. So thick the aerie crowd [ 775 ] Swarm’d and were straitn’d; till the Signal giv’n.
Behold a wonder! they but now who seemd
In bigness to surpass Earths Giant Sons
Now less then smallest Dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless, like that Pigmean Race [ 780 ]
Beyond the Indian Mount, or Faerie Elves,
174
Whose midnight Revels, by a Forrest side
Or Fountain some belated Peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while over-head the Moon
Sits Arbitress, and neerer to the Earth [ 785 ]
Wheels her pale course, they on thir mirth and dance
Intent, with jocond Music charm his ear; At once
with joy and fear his heart rebounds.
Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms
Reduc’d thir shapes immense, and were at large, [ 790 ]
Though without number still amidst the Hall
Of that infernal Court. But far within
And in thir own dimensions like themselves
The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim
In close recess and secret conclave sat [ 795 ]
A thousand Demy-Gods on golden seats,
Frequent and full. After short silence then
And summons read, the great consult began.

BOOK 2

THE ARGUMENT

The Consultation begun, Satan debates whether another Battel be to be hazarded for the recovery
of Heaven: some advise it, others dissuade: A third proposal is prefer’d, mention’d before by
Satan, to search the truth of that Prophesie or Tradition in Heaven concerning another world, and
another kind of creature equal or not much inferiour to themselves, about this time to be created:
Thir doubt who shall be sent on this difficult search: Satan thir chief undertakes alone the
voyage, is honourd and applauded. The Councel thus ended, the rest betake them several wayes
and to several imployments, as thir inclinations lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return.
He passes on his journey to Hell Gates, finds them shut, and who sat there to guard them, by
whom at length they are op’nd, and discover to him the great Gulf between Hell and Heaven;
with what difficulty he passes through, directed by Chaos, the Power of that place, to the sight of
this new World which he sought.

HIgh on a Throne of Royal State, which far

Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showrs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit rais’d [ 5 ]
To that bad eminence; and from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires Beyond
thus high, insatiate to pursue Vain Warr with
Heav’n, and by success untaught His proud
imaginations thus displaid. [ 10 ]

Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heav’n, For

since no deep within her gulf can hold
175
Immortal vigor, though opprest and fall’n,
I give not Heav’n for lost. From this descent Celestial
vertues rising, will appear [ 15 ]
More glorious and more dread then from no fall, And
trust themselves to fear no second fate:
Mee though just right, and the fixt Laws of Heav’n Did
first create your Leader, next free choice,
With what besides, in Counsel or in Fight, [ 20 ] Hath
bin achievd of merit, yet this loss
Thus farr at least recover’d, hath much more Establisht
in a safe unenvied Throne
Yielded with full consent. The happier state In
Heav’n, which follows dignity, might draw [ 25 ]
Envy from each inferior; but who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes
Formost to stand against the Thunderers aim
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share
Of endless pain? where there is then no good [ 30 ]
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there
From Faction; for none sure will claim in Hell
Precedence, none, whose portion is so small
Of present pain, that with ambitious mind
Will covet more. With this advantage then [ 35 ]
To union, and firm Faith, and firm accord, More
then can be in Heav’n, we now return
To claim our just inheritance of old,
Surer to prosper then prosperity
Could have assur’d us; and by what best way, [ 40 ]
Whether of open Warr or covert guile, We now
debate; who can advise, may speak.

He ceas’d, and next him Moloc, Scepter’d King Stood

up, the strongest and the fiercest Spirit
That fought in Heav’n; now fiercer by despair: [ 45 ]
His trust was with th’ Eternal to be deem’d
Equal in strength, and rather then be less Care’d
not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or worse
He reck’d not, and these words thereafter spake. [ 50 ] My sentence is for open Warr: Of Wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those Contrive
who need, or when they need, not now.
For while they sit contriving, shall the rest,
Millions that stand in Arms, and longing wait [ 55 ]
The Signal to ascend, sit lingring here Heav’ns
fugitives, and for thir dwelling place Accept this
dark opprobrious Den of shame,

176
The Prison of his Tyranny who Reigns
By our delay? no, let us rather choose [ 60 ]
Arm’d with Hell flames and fury all at once
O’re Heav’ns high Towrs to force resistless way, Turning
our Tortures into horrid Arms
Against the Torturer; when to meet the noise
Of his Almighty Engin he shall hear [ 65 ]
Infernal Thunder, and for Lightning see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his Angels; and his Throne it self
Mixt with Tartarean Sulphur, and strange fire,
His own invented Torments. But perhaps [ 70 ]
The way seems difficult and steep to scale With
upright wing against a higher foe.
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
Of that forgetful Lake benumm not still,
That in our proper motion we ascend [ 75 ]
Up to our native seat: descent and fall
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late
When the fierce Foe hung on our brok’n Rear
Insulting, and pursu’d us through the Deep,
With what compulsion and laborious flight [ 80 ]
We sunk thus low? Th’ ascent is easie then;
Th’ event is fear’d; should we again provoke
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find
To our destruction: if there be in Hell Fear to be
worse destroy’d: what can be worse [ 85 ]
Then to dwell here, driv’n out from bliss, condemn’d
In this abhorred deep to utter woe;
Where pain of unextinguishable fire
Must exercise us without hope of end
The Vassals of his anger, when the Scourge [ 90 ]
Inexorably, and the torturing hour Calls us to
Penance? More destroy’d then thus We should be
quite abolisht and expire.
What fear we then? what doubt we to incense His
utmost ire? which to the highth enrag’d, [ 95 ]
Will either quite consume us, and reduce
To nothing this essential, happier farr Then
miserable to have eternal being:
Or if our substance be indeed Divine,
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst [ 100 ] On
this side nothing; and by proof we feel
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heav’n,
And with perpetual inrodes to Allarme, Though
inaccessible, his fatal Throne:

177
Which if not Victory is yet Revenge. [ 105 ]

He ended frowning, and his look denounc’d

Desperate revenge, and Battel dangerous To less
then Gods. On th’ other side up rose Belial, in act
more graceful and humane; A fairer person lost
not Heav’n; he seemd [ 110 ]
For dignity compos’d and high exploit:
But all was false and hollow; though his Tongue
Dropt Manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest Counsels: for his thoughts were low; [ 115 ]
To vice industrious, but to Nobler deeds Timorous
and slothful: yet he pleas’d the ear, And with
perswasive accent thus began.

I should be much for open Warr, O Peers, As

not behind in hate; if what was urg’d [ 120 ]
Main reason to persuade immediate Warr,
Did not disswade me most, and seem to cast Ominous
conjecture on the whole success:
When he who most excels in fact of Arms,
In what he counsels and in what excels [ 125 ]
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair And
utter dissolution, as the scope Of all his aim, after
some dire revenge. First, what Revenge? the Towrs
of Heav’n are fill’d
With Armed watch, that render all access [ 130 ]
Impregnable; oft on the bordering Deep
Encamp thir Legions, or with obscure wing
Scout farr and wide into the Realm of night,
Scorning surprize. Or could we break our way
By force, and at our heels all Hell should rise [ 135 ]
With blackest Insurrection, to confound
Heav’ns purest Light, yet our great Enemy All
incorruptible would on his Throne
Sit unpolluted, and th’ Ethereal mould
Incapable of stain would soon expel [ 140 ]
Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire
Victorious. Thus repuls’d, our final hope Is
flat despair; we must exasperate
Th’ Almighty Victor to spend all his rage,
And that must end us, that must be our cure, [ 145 ]
To be no more; sad cure; for who would loose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through Eternity,
To perish rather, swallowd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night, [ 150 ]
178
Devoid of sense and motion? and who knows,
Let this be good, whether our angry Foe
Can give it, or will ever? how he can Is
doubtful; that he never will is sure.
Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire, [ 155 ]
Belike through impotence, or unaware, To
give his Enemies thir wish, and end Them in
his anger, whom his anger saves To punish
endless? wherefore cease we then?
Say they who counsel Warr, we are decreed, [ 160 ]
Reserv’d and destin’d to Eternal woe;
Whatever doing, what can we suffer more,
What can we suffer worse? is this then worst, Thus
sitting, thus consulting, thus in Arms?
What when we fled amain, pursu’d and strook [ 165 ]
With Heav’ns afflicting Thunder, and besought
The Deep to shelter us? this Hell then seem’d A
refuge from those wounds: or when we lay Chain’d
on the burning Lake? that sure was worse.
What if the breath that kindl’d those grim fires [ 170 ]
Awak’d should blow them into sevenfold rage And
plunge us in the flames? or from above
Should intermitted vengeance arm again
His red right hand to plague us? what if all Her
stores were open’d, and this Firmament [ 175 ] Of
Hell should spout her Cataracts of Fire,
Impendent horrors, threatning hideous fall
One day upon our heads; while we perhaps Designing
or exhorting glorious warr,
Caught in a fierie Tempest shall be hurl’d [ 180 ] Each
on his rock transfixt, the sport and prey
Of racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk
Under yon boyling Ocean, wrapt in Chains;
There to converse with everlasting groans,
Unrespited, unpitied, unrepreevd, [ 185 ] Ages
of hopeless end; this would be worse.
Warr therefore, open or conceal’d, alike
My voice disswades; for what can force or guile
With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye Views all
things at one view? he from heav’ns highth [ 190 ]
All these our motions vain, sees and derides; Not
more Almighty to resist our might Then wise to
frustrate all our plots and wiles. Shall we then live
thus vile, the race of Heav’n Thus trampl’d, thus
expell’d to suffer here [ 195 ]
Chains and these Torments? better these then worse
By my advice; since fate inevitable
179
Subdues us, and Omnipotent Decree
The Victors will. To suffer, as to doe,
Our strength is equal, nor the Law unjust [ 200 ]
That so ordains: this was at first resolv’d, If
we were wise, against so great a foe
Contending, and so doubtful what might fall.
I laugh, when those who at the Spear are bold And
vent’rous, if that fail them, shrink and fear [ 205 ]
What yet they know must follow, to endure
Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain,
The sentence of thir Conquerour: This is now
Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear,
Our Supream Foe in time may much remit [ 210 ]
His anger, and perhaps thus farr remov’d Not
mind us not offending, satisfi’d With what is
punish’t; whence these raging fires
Will slack’n, if his breath stir not thir flames.
Our purer essence then will overcome [ 215 ]
Thir noxious vapour, or enur’d not feel,
Or chang’d at length, and to the place conformd In
temper and in nature, will receive
Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain;
This horror will grow milde, this darkness light, [ 220 ]
Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future dayes may bring, what chance, what change
Worth waiting, since our present lot appeers
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,
If we procure not to our selves more woe. [ 225 ]

Thus Belial with words cloath’d in reasons garb

Counsell’d ignoble ease, and peaceful sloath, Not
peace: and after him thus Mammon spake.

Either to disinthrone the King of Heav’n

We warr, if Warr be best, or to regain [ 230 ]
Our own right lost: him to unthrone we then
May hope when everlasting Fate shall yeild
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife: The
former vain to hope argues as vain
The latter: for what place can be for us [ 235 ]
Within Heav’ns bound, unless Heav’ns Lord supream We
overpower? Suppose he should relent
And publish Grace to all, on promise made
Of new Subjection; with what eyes could we
Stand in his presence humble, and receive [ 240 ]
Strict Laws impos’d, to celebrate his Throne
180
With warbl’d Hymns, and to his Godhead sing
Forc’t Halleluiah’s; while he Lordly sits
Our envied Sovran, and his Altar breathes
Ambrosial Odours and Ambrosial Flowers, [ 245 ] Our
servile offerings. This must be our task
In Heav’n, this our delight; how wearisom Eternity
so spent in worship paid
To whom we hate. Let us not then pursue By
force impossible, by leave obtain’d [ 250 ]
Unacceptable, though in Heav’n, our state Of
splendid vassalage, but rather seek
Our own good from our selves, and from our own
Live to our selves, though in this vast recess,
Free, and to none accountable, preferring [ 255 ]
Hard liberty before the easie yoke
Of servile Pomp. Our greatness will appeer
Then most conspicuous, when great things of small,
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse We can
create, and in what place so e’re [ 260 ] Thrive
under evil, and work ease out of pain
Through labour and indurance. This deep world Of
darkness do we dread? How oft amidst
Thick clouds and dark doth Heav’ns all-ruling Sire
Choose to reside, his Glory unobscur’d, [ 265 ] And
with the Majesty of darkness round Covers his
Throne; from whence deep thunders roar
Must’ring thir rage, and Heav’n resembles Hell? As
he our darkness, cannot we his Light
Imitate when we please? This Desart soile [ 270 ]
Wants not her hidden lustre, Gemms and Gold; Nor
want we skill or Art, from whence to raise
Magnificence; and what can Heav’n shew more?
Our torments also may in length of time
Become our Elements, these piercing Fires [ 275 ]
As soft as now severe, our temper chang’d
Into their temper; which must needs remove
The sensible of pain. All things invite
To peaceful Counsels, and the settl’d State
Of order, how in safety best we may [ 280 ]
Compose our present evils, with regard Of
what we are and were, dismissing quite All
thoughts of warr: ye have what I advise.

He scarce had finisht, when such murmur filld Th’

Assembly, as when hollow Rocks retain [ 285 ] The
sound of blustring winds, which all night long
Had rous’d the Sea, now with hoarse cadence lull
181
Sea-faring men orewatcht, whose Bark by chance
Or Pinnace anchors in a craggy Bay
After the Tempest: Such applause was heard [ 290 ]
As Mammon ended, and his Sentence pleas’d, Advising
peace: for such another Field
They dreaded worse then Hell: so much the fear
Of Thunder and the Sword of Michael
Wrought still within them; and no less desire [ 295 ]
To found this nether Empire, which might rise
By pollicy, and long process of time, In
emulation opposite to Heav’n.
Which when Beelzebub perceiv’d, then whom,
Satan except, none higher sat, with grave [ 300 ]
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem’d
A Pillar of State; deep on his Front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care;
And Princely counsel in his face yet shon,
Majestic though in ruin: sage he stood [ 305 ]
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest Monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as Night Or
Summers Noon-tide air, while thus he spake.

Thrones and Imperial Powers, off-spring of heav’n [ 310 ]

Ethereal Vertues; or these Titles now Must we renounce,
and changing stile be call’d Princes of Hell? for so the
popular vote
Inclines, here to continue, and build up here
A growing Empire; doubtless; while we dream, [ 315 ]
And know not that the King of Heav’n hath doom’d
This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat
Beyond his Potent arm, to live exempt From
Heav’ns high jurisdiction, in new League
Banded against his Throne, but to remaine [ 320 ]
In strictest bondage, though thus far remov’d,
Under th’ inevitable curb, reserv’d
His captive multitude: For he, be sure
In heighth or depth, still first and last will Reign
Sole King, and of his Kingdom loose no part [ 325 ]
By our revolt, but over Hell extend His
Empire, and with Iron Scepter rule
Us here, as with his Golden those in Heav’n.
What sit we then projecting peace and Warr?
Warr hath determin’d us, and foild with loss [ 330 ] Irreparable;
tearms of peace yet none
Voutsaf’t or sought; for what peace will be giv’n
182
To us enslav’d, but custody severe,
And stripes, and arbitrary punishment
Inflicted? and what peace can we return, [ 335 ]
But to our power hostility and hate, Untam’d
reluctance, and revenge though slow, Yet ever
plotting how the Conqueror least
May reap his conquest, and may least rejoyce
In doing what we most in suffering feel? [ 340 ]
Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need With
dangerous expedition to invade Heav’n, whose
high walls fear no assault or Siege, Or ambush
from the Deep. What if we find
Some easier enterprize? There is a place [ 345 ]
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heav’n Err
not) another World, the happy seat Of some
new Race call’d Man, about this time To be
created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favour’d more [ 350 ]
Of him who rules above; so was his will Pronounc’d
among the Gods, and by an Oath,
That shook Heav’ns whol circumference, confirm’d. Thither
let us bend all our thoughts, to learn
What creatures there inhabit, of what mould, [ 355 ]
Or substance, how endu’d, and what thir Power, And
where thir weakness, how attempted best,
By force or suttlety: Though Heav’n be shut,
And Heav’ns high Arbitrator sit secure
In his own strength, this place may lye expos’d [ 360 ] The
utmost border of his Kingdom, left
To their defence who hold it: here perhaps
Som advantagious act may be achiev’d By
sudden onset, either with Hell fire
To waste his whole Creation, or possess [ 365 ]
All as our own, and drive as we were driven,
The punie habitants, or if not drive,
Seduce them to our Party, that thir God
May prove thir foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works. This would surpass [ 370 ]
Common revenge, and interrupt his joy
In our Confusion, and our Joy upraise
In his disturbance; when his darling Sons
Hurl’d headlong to partake with us, shall curse
Thir frail Original, and faded bliss, [ 375 ]
Faded so soon. Advise if this be worth
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here
Hatching vain Empires. Thus Beelzebub Pleaded
his devilish Counsel, first devis’d
183
By Satan, and in part propos’d: for whence, [ 380 ]
But from the Author of all ill could Spring
So deep a malice, to confound the race
Of mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell
To mingle and involve, done all to spite
The great Creatour? But thir spite still serves [ 385 ]
His glory to augment. The bold design Pleas’d
highly those infernal States, and joy
Sparkl’d in all thir eyes; with full assent They
vote: whereat his speech he thus renews.

Well have ye judg’d, well ended long debate, [ 390 ]

Synod of Gods, and like to what ye are, Great things
resolv’d; which from the lowest deep
Will once more lift us up, in spight of Fate,
Neerer our ancient Seat; perhaps in view
Of those bright confines, whence with neighbouring Arms [ 395 ]
And opportune excursion we may chance
Re-enter Heav’n; or else in some milde Zone
Dwell not unvisited of Heav’ns fair Light
Secure, and at the brightning Orient beam
Purge off this gloom; the soft delicious Air, [ 400 ]
To heal the scarr of these corrosive Fires
Shall breath her balme. But first whom shall we send
In search of this new world, whom shall we find Sufficient?
who shall tempt with wandring feet
The dark unbottom’d infinite Abyss [ 405 ] And
through the palpable obscure find out
His uncouth way, or spread his aerie flight
Upborn with indefatigable wings
Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive
The happy Ile; what strength, what art can then [ 410 ]
Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe
Through the strict Senteries and Stations thick
Of Angels watching round? Here he had need
All circumspection, and we now no less
Choice in our suffrage; for on whom we send, [ 415 ] The
weight of all and our last hope relies.

This said, he sat; and expectation held His

look suspence, awaiting who appeer’d To
second, or oppose, or undertake
The perilous attempt; but all sat mute, [ 420 ]
Pondering the danger with deep thoughts; and each
In others count’nance read his own dismay
Astonisht: none among the choice and prime
Of those Heav’n-warring Champions could be found
184
So hardie as to proffer or accept [ 425 ] Alone
the dreadful voyage; till at last
Satan, whom now transcendent glory rais’d
Above his fellows, with Monarchal pride Conscious
of highest worth, unmov’d thus spake.

O Progeny of Heav’n, Empyreal Thrones, [ 430 ]

With reason hath deep silence and demurr Seis’d
us, though undismaid: long is the way And hard,
that out of Hell leads up to light;
Our prison strong, this huge convex of Fire,
Outrageous to devour, immures us round [ 435 ] Ninefold,
and gates of burning Adamant
Barr’d over us prohibit all egress.
These past, if any pass, the void profound
Of unessential Night receives him next Wide
gaping, and with utter loss of being [ 440 ]
Threatens him, plung’d in that abortive gulf.
If thence he scape into whatever world, Or
unknown Region, what remains him less
Then unknown dangers and as hard escape.
But I should ill become this Throne, O Peers, [ 445 ]
And this Imperial Sov’ranty, adorn’d
With splendor, arm’d with power, if aught propos’d
And judg’d of public moment, in the shape Of
difficulty or danger could deterr
Mee from attempting. Wherefore do I assume [ 450 ]
These Royalties, and not refuse to Reign,
Refusing to accept as great a share
Of hazard as of honour, due alike
To him who Reigns, and so much to him due
Of hazard more, as he above the rest [ 455 ]
High honourd sits? Go therefore mighty Powers,
Terror of Heav’n, though fall’n; intend at home,
While here shall be our home, what best may ease
The present misery, and render Hell
More tollerable; if there be cure or charm [ 460 ]
To respite or deceive, or slack the pain
Of this ill Mansion: intermit no watch
Against a wakeful Foe, while I abroad
Through all the Coasts of dark destruction seek
Deliverance for us all: this enterprize [ 465 ]
None shall partake with me. Thus saying rose
The Monarch, and prevented all reply, Prudent,
least from his resolution rais’d
Others among the chief might offer now
185
(Certain to be refus’d) what erst they fear’d; [ 470 ]
And so refus’d might in opinion stand
His Rivals, winning cheap the high repute
Which he through hazard huge must earn. But they
Dreaded not more th’ adventure then his voice
Forbidding; and at once with him they rose; [ 475 ]
Thir rising all at once was as the sound
Of Thunder heard remote. Towards him they bend With
awful reverence prone; and as a God
Extoll him equal to the highest in Heav’n:
Nor fail’d they to express how much they prais’d, [ 480 ]
That for the general safety he despis’d
His own: for neither do the Spirits damn’d
Loose all thir vertue; least bad men should boast
Thir specious deeds on earth, which glory excites,
Or clos ambition varnisht o’re with zeal. [ 485 ]
Thus they thir doubtful consultations dark Ended
rejoycing in thir matchless Chief:
As when from mountain tops the dusky clouds Ascending,
while the North wind sleeps, O’respread
Heav’ns chearful face, the lowring Element [ 490 ]
Scowls ore the dark’nd lantskip Snow, or showre; If
chance the radiant Sun with farewell sweet
Extend his ev’ning beam, the fields revive,
The birds thir notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest thir joy, that hill and valley rings. [ 495 ]
O shame to men! Devil with Devil damn’d Firm
concord holds, men onely disagree
Of Creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly Grace; and God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife [ 500 ]
Among themselves, and levie cruel warres,
Wasting the Earth, each other to destroy: As
if (which might induce us to accord)
Man had not hellish foes anow besides,
That day and night for his destruction waite. [ 505 ]
The Stygian Counsel thus dissolv’d; and forth In
order came the grand infernal Peers:
Midst came thir mighty Paramount, and seemd
Alone th’ Antagonist of Heav’n, nor less
Than Hells dread Emperour with pomp Supream, [ 510 ]
And God-like imitated State; him round
A Globe of fierie Seraphim inclos’d With
bright imblazonrie, and horrent Arms.

186
Then of thir Session ended they bid cry
With Trumpets regal sound the great result: [ 515 ]
Toward the four winds four speedy Cherubim Put
to thir mouths the sounding Alchymie
By Haralds voice explain’d: the hollow Abyss Heard farr
and wide, and all the host of Hell With deafning shout,
return’d them loud acclaim. [ 520 ]
Thence more at ease thir minds and somwhat rais’d By
false presumptuous hope, the ranged powers
Disband, and wandring, each his several way
Pursues, as inclination or sad choice
Leads him perplext, where he may likeliest find [ 525 ]
Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain The irksom
hours, till his great Chief return.
Part on the Plain, or in the Air sublime
Upon the wing, or in swift Race contend, As at th’
Olympian Games or Pythian fields; [ 530 ] Part curb
thir fierie Steeds, or shun the Goal With rapid
wheels, or fronted Brigads form. As when to warn
proud Cities warr appears Wag’d in the troubl’d
Skie, and Armies rush
To Battel in the Clouds, before each Van [ 535 ]
Prick forth the Aerie Knights, and couch thir Spears Till
thickest Legions close; with feats of Arms
From either end of Heav’n the welkin burns.
Others with vast Typhœan rage more fell Rend up
both Rocks and Hills, and ride the Air [ 540 ] In
whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wilde uproar.
As when Alcides from Oechalia Crown’d
With conquest, felt th’ envenom’d robe, and tore Through
pain up by the roots Thessalian Pines,
And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw [ 545 ]
Into th’ Euboic Sea. Others more milde,
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes Angelical to many a Harp
Thir own Heroic deeds and hapless fall By doom
of Battel; and complain that Fate [ 550 ] Free
Vertue should enthrall to Force or Chance.
Thir Song was partial, but the harmony
(What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?)
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet [ 555 ]
(For Eloquence the Soul, Song charms the Sense,)
Others apart sat on a Hill retir’d,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high

187
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate, Fixt
Fate, free will, foreknowledg absolute, [ 560 ] And
found no end, in wandring mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argu’d then, Of
happiness and final misery,
Passion and Apathie, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie: [ 565 ]
Yet with a pleasing sorcerie could charm Pain
for a while or anguish, and excite Fallacious
hope, or arm th’ obdured brest With stubborn
patience as with triple steel.
Another part in Squadrons and gross Bands, [ 570 ]
On bold adventure to discover wide
That dismal world, if any Clime perhaps Might
yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways thir flying March, along the Banks
Of four infernal Rivers that disgorge [ 575 ]
Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams;
Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, nam’d of lamentation loud Heard on the
ruful stream; fierce Phlegeton [ 580 ] Whose
waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Farr off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the River of Oblivion roules
Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets, [ 585 ] Forgets
both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen Continent
Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms
Of Whirlwind and dire Hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems [ 590 ]
Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice,
A gulf profound as that Serbonian Bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where Armies whole have sunk: the parching Air Burns
frore, and cold performs th’ effect of Fire. [ 595 ]
Thither by harpy-footed Furies hail’d,
At certain revolutions all the damn’d
Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extreams, extreams by change more fierce,
From Beds of raging Fire to starve in Ice [ 600 ]
Thir soft Ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immovable, infixt, and frozen round, Periods
of time, thence hurried back to fire.
They ferry over this Lethean Sound
Both to and fro, thir sorrow to augment, [ 605 ]

188
And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach
The tempting stream, with one small drop to loose
In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,
All in one moment, and so neer the brink;
But fate withstands, and to oppose th’ attempt [ 610 ]
Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards
The Ford, and of it self the water flies
All taste of living wight, as once it fled
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on
In confus’d march forlorn, th’ adventrous Bands [ 615 ]
With shuddring horror pale, and eyes agast
View’d first thir lamentable lot, and found
No rest: through many a dark and drearie Vaile
They pass’d, and many a Region dolorous,
O’er many a Frozen, many a fierie Alpe, [ 620 ]
Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death,
A Universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, [ 625 ] Abominable,
inutterable, and worse
Then Fables yet have feign’d, or fear conceiv’d, Gorgons
and Hydra’s, and Chimera’s dire.

Mean while the Adversary of God and Man, Satan with

thoughts inflam’d of highest design, [ 630 ]
Puts on swift wings, and towards the Gates of Hell
Explores his solitary flight; som times
He scours the right hand coast, som times the left,
Now shaves with level wing the Deep, then soares
Up to the fiery Concave touring high. [ 635 ]
As when farr off at Sea a Fleet descri’d
Hangs in the Clouds, by Æquinoctial Winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the Iles
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence Merchants bring
Thir spicie Drugs: they on the Trading Flood [ 640 ] Through
the wide Ethiopian to the Cape
Ply stemming nightly toward the Pole. So seem’d
Farr off the flying Fiend: at last appeer
Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid Roof,
And thrice threefold the Gates; three folds were Brass, [ 645 ]
Three Iron, three of Adamantine Rock, Impenetrable,
impal’d with circling fire,
Yet unconsum’d. Before the Gates there sat On
either side a formidable shape;
The one seem’d Woman to the waste, and fair, [ 650 ]
189
But ended foul in many a scaly fould Voluminous
and vast, a Serpent arm’d
With mortal sting: about her middle round A
cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark’d
With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung [ 655 ] A
hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb’d thir noyse, into her woomb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark’d and howl’d
Within unseen. Farr less abhorrd than these Vex’d
Scylla bathing in the Sea that parts [ 660 ] Calabria
from the hoarse Trinacrian shore:
Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call’d In
secret, riding through the Air she comes
Lur’d with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland Witches, while the labouring Moon [ 665 ]
Eclipses at thir charms. The other shape, If shape
it might be call’d that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb, Or
substance might be call’d that shadow seem’d,
For each seem’d either; black it stood as Night, [ 670 ] Fierce
as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem’d his head The
likeness of a Kingly Crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat The
Monster moving onward came as fast [ 675 ]
With horrid strides, Hell trembled as he strode.
Th’ undaunted Fiend what this might be admir’d, Admir’d,
not fear’d; God and his Son except,
Created thing naught valu’d he nor shun’d
And with disdainful look thus first began. [ 680 ]

Whence and what art thou, execrable shape, That

dar’st, though grim and terrible, advance Thy
miscreated Front athwart my way
To yonder Gates? through them I mean to pass,
That be assured, without leave askt of thee: [ 685 ] Retire,
or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,
Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heav’n.
To whom the Goblin full of wrauth reply’d,
Art thou that Traitor Angel, art thou hee,
Who first broke peace in Heav’n and Faith, till then [ 690 ]
Unbrok’n, and in proud rebellious Arms
Drew after him the third part of Heav’ns Sons
Conjur’d against the highest, for which both Thou

190
And they outcast from God, are here condemn’d To
waste Eternal dayes in woe and pain? [ 695 ] And
reck’n’st thou thy self with Spirits of Heav’n,
Hell-doom’d, and breath’st defiance here and scorn
Where I reign King, and to enrage thee more,
Thy King and Lord? Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings, [ 700 ]
Least with a whip of Scorpions I pursue Thy
lingring, or with one stroke of this Dart Strange
horror seise thee, and pangs unfelt before.

So spake the grieslie terror, and in shape,

So speaking and so threatning, grew tenfold [ 705 ]
More dreadful and deform: on th’ other side
Incenst with indignation Satan stood Unterrifi’d,
and like a Comet burn’d,
That fires the length of Ophiucus huge In th’
Artick Sky, and from his horrid hair [ 710 ]
Shakes Pestilence and Warr. Each at the Head
Level’d his deadly aime; thir fatall hands
No second stroke intend, and such a frown Each
cast at th’ other, as when two black Clouds
With Heav’ns Artillery fraught, come rattling on [ 715 ]
Over the Caspian, then stand front to front
Hov’ring a space, till Winds the signal blow To
join thir dark Encounter in mid air:
So frownd the mighty Combatants, that Hell
Grew darker at thir frown, so matcht they stood; [ 720 ]
For never but once more was either like
To meet so great a foe: and now great deeds
Had been achiev’d, whereof all Hell had rung,
Had not the Snakie Sorceress that sat Fast by
Hell Gate, and kept the fatal Key, [ 725 ] Ris’n,
and with hideous outcry rush’d between.

O Father, what intends thy hand, she cry’d, Against

thy only Son? What fury O Son,
Possesses thee to bend that mortal Dart
Against thy Fathers head? and know’st for whom; [ 730 ]
For him who sits above and laughs the while
At thee ordain’d his drudge, to execute
What e’re his wrath, which he calls Justice, bids, His
wrath which one day will destroy ye both.

She spake, and at her words the hellish Pest [ 735 ] Forbore,
then these to her Satan return’d:

191
So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange
Thou interposest, that my sudden hand
Prevented spares to tell thee yet by deeds
What it intends; till first I know of thee, [ 740 ]
What thing thou art, thus double-form’d, and why
In this infernal Vaile first met thou call’st
Me Father, and that Fantasm call’st my Son? I
know thee not, nor ever saw till now
Sight more detestable then him and thee. [ 745 ]

T’ whom thus the Portress of Hell Gate reply’d; Hast

thou forgot me then, and do I seem
Now in thine eye so foul, once deemd so fair
In Heav’n, when at th’ Assembly, and in sight
Of all the Seraphim with thee combin’d [ 750 ]
In bold conspiracy against Heav’ns King, All
on a sudden miserable pain
Surprisd thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzie swumm In
darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast Threw
forth, till on the left side op’ning wide, [ 755 ]
Likest to thee in shape and count’nance bright,
Then shining Heav’nly fair, a Goddess arm’d
Out of thy head I sprung; amazement seis’d
All th’ Host of Heav’n back they recoild affraid
At first, and call’d me Sin, and for a Sign [ 760 ] Portentous
held me; but familiar grown,
I pleas’d, and with attractive graces won
The most averse, thee chiefly, who full oft
Thy self in me thy perfect image viewing
Becam’st enamour’d, and such joy thou took’st [ 765 ]
With me in secret, that my womb conceiv’d A
growing burden. Mean while Warr arose, And fields
were fought in Heav’n; wherein remaind (For what
could else) to our Almighty Foe
Cleer Victory, to our part loss and rout [ 770 ]
Through all the Empyrean: down they fell Driv’n
headlong from the Pitch of Heaven, down Into
this Deep, and in the general fall
I also; at which time this powerful Key Into my hand
was giv’n, with charge to keep [ 755 ]
These Gates for ever shut, which none can pass Without my op’ning. Pensive here I sat Alone,
but long I sat not, till my womb
Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown
Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes. [ 780 ]
At last this odious offspring whom thou seest
192
Thine own begotten, breaking violent way
Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew Transform’d:
but he my inbred enemie [ 785 ]
Forth issu’d, brandishing his fatal Dart
Made to destroy: I fled, and cry’d out Death; Hell
trembl’d at the hideous Name, and sigh’d From
all her Caves, and back resounded Death.
I fled, but he pursu’d (though more, it seems, [ 790 ]
Inflam’d with lust then rage) and swifter far, Mee
overtook his mother all dismaid,
And in embraces forcible and foule
Ingendring with me, of that rape begot
These yelling Monsters that with ceasless cry [ 795 ]
Surround me, as thou sawst, hourly conceiv’d
And hourly born, with sorrow infinite
To me, for when they list into the womb
That bred them they return, and howle and gnaw
My Bowels, thir repast; then bursting forth [ 800 ]
A fresh with conscious terrours vex me round, That
rest or intermission none I find.
Before mine eyes in opposition sits
Grim Death my Son and foe, who sets them on,
And me his Parent would full soon devour [ 805 ]
For want of other prey, but that he knows
His end with mine involvd; and knows that I Should
prove a bitter Morsel, and his bane, Whenever that
shall be; so Fate pronounc’d.
But thou O Father, I forewarn thee, shun [ 810 ]
His deadly arrow; neither vainly hope
To be invulnerable in those bright Arms,
Though temper’d heav’nly, for that mortal dint, Save
he who reigns above, none can resist.

She finish’d, and the suttle Fiend his lore [ 815 ] Soon
learnd, now milder, and thus answerd smooth.
Dear Daughter, since thou claim’st me for thy Sire, And
my fair Son here showst me, the dear pledge
Of dalliance had with thee in Heav’n, and joys
Then sweet, now sad to mention, through dire change [ 820 ]
Befalln us unforeseen, unthought of, know
I come no enemie, but to set free
From out this dark and dismal house of pain,
Both him and thee, and all the heav’nly Host Of
Spirits that in our just pretenses arm’d [ 825 ]
Fell with us from on high: from them I go

193
This uncouth errand sole, and one for all
Myself expose, with lonely steps to tread Th’
unfounded deep, and through the void immense
To search with wandring quest a place foretold [ 830 ]
Should be, and, by concurring signs, ere now Created
vast and round, a place of bliss
In the Purlieues of Heav’n, and therein plac’t
A race of upstart Creatures, to supply
Perhaps our vacant room, though more remov’d, [ 835 ]
Least Heav’n surcharg’d with potent multitude
Might hap to move new broiles: Be this or aught
Then this more secret now design’d, I haste
To know, and this once known, shall soon return,
And bring ye to the place where Thou and Death [ 840 ]
Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen
Wing silently the buxom Air, imbalm’d With
odours; there ye shall be fed and fill’d
Immeasurably, all things shall be your prey.
He ceas’d, for both seem’d highly pleasd, and Death [ 845 ]
Grinnd horrible a gastly smile, to hear His
famine should be fill’d, and blest his mawe
Destin’d to that good hour: no less rejoyc’d His
mother bad, and thus bespake her Sire.

The key of this infernal Pit by due, [ 850 ] And

by command of Heav’ns all-powerful King
I keep, by him forbidden to unlock
These Adamantine Gates; against all force Death
ready stands to interpose his dart, Fearless to be
o’rmatcht by living might. [ 855 ] But what ow I
to his commands above
Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me down
Into this gloom of Tartarus profound, To sit in
hateful Office here confin’d, Inhabitant of
Heav’n, and heav’nlie-born, [ 860 ]
Here in perpetual agonie and pain, With
terrors and with clamors compasst round Of
mine own brood, that on my bowels feed:
Thou art my Father, thou my Author, thou
My being gav’st me; whom should I obey [ 865 ] But
thee, whom follow? thou wilt bring me soon
To that new world of light and bliss, among
The Gods who live at ease, where I shall Reign
At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems
Thy daughter and thy darling, without end. [ 870 ]

Thus saying, from her side the fatal Key,

194
Sad instrument of all our woe, she took;
And towards the Gate rouling her bestial train,
Forthwith the huge Porcullis high up drew,
Which but her self not all the Stygian powers [ 875 ]
Could once have mov’d; then in the key-hole turns
Th’ intricate wards, and every Bolt and Bar Of
massie Iron or sollid Rock with ease
Unfast’ns: on a sudden op’n flie
With impetuous recoile and jarring sound [ 880 ]
Th’ infernal dores, and on thir hinges grate
Harsh Thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus. She op’nd, but to shut
Excel’d her power; the Gates wide op’n stood,
That with extended wings a Bannerd Host [ 885 ]
Under spread Ensigns marching might pass through
With Horse and Chariots rankt in loose array;
So wide they stood, and like a Furnace mouth Cast
forth redounding smoak and ruddy flame.
Before thir eyes in sudden view appear [ 890 ]
The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark
Illimitable Ocean without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, & highth,
And time and place are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold [ 895 ]
Eternal Anarchie, amidst the noise Of endless
Warrs, and by confusion stand.
For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce
Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring
Thir embryon Atoms; they around the flag [ 900 ] Of
each his faction, in thir several Clanns,
Light-arm’d or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow,
Swarm populous, unnumber’d as the Sands
Of Barca or Cyrene’s torrid soil,
Levied to side with warring Winds, and poise [ 905 ]
Thir lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,
Hee rules a moment; Chaos Umpire sits, And
by decision more imbroiles the fray
By which he Reigns: next him high Arbiter
Chance governs all. Into this wilde Abyss, [ 910 ]
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire, But
all these in thir pregnant causes mixt
Confus’dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th’ Almighty Maker them ordain [ 915 ]

195
His dark materials to create more Worlds, Into this
wild Abyss the warie fiend Stood on the brink of
Hell and look’d a while, Pondering his Voyage: for
no narrow frith He had to cross. Nor was his eare
less peal’d [ 920 ] With noises loud and ruinous (to
compare
Great things with small) then when Bellona storms,
With all her battering Engines bent to rase
Som Capital City; or less then if this frame
Of Heav’n were falling, and these Elements [ 925 ] In
mutinie had from her Axle torn
The stedfast Earth. At last his Sail-broad Vannes
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoak
Uplifted spurns the ground, thence many a League
As in a cloudy Chair ascending rides [ 930 ]
Audacious, but that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuitie: all unawares
Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fadom deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance [ 935 ]
The strong rebuff of som tumultuous cloud Instinct
with Fire and Nitre hurried him
As many miles aloft: that furie stay’d,
Quencht in a Boggy Syrtis, neither Sea,
Nor good dry Land: nigh founderd on he fares, [ 940 ]
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, Half
flying; behoves him now both Oare and Saile.
As when a Gryfon through the Wilderness
With winged course ore Hill or moarie Dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stelth [ 945 ]
Had from his wakeful custody purloind
The guarded Gold: So eagerly the fiend
Ore bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,
And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flyes: [ 950 ]
At length a universal hubbub wilde Of
stunning sounds and voices all confus’d
Borne through the hollow dark assaults his eare
With loudest vehemence: thither he plyes,
Undaunted to meet there what ever power [ 955 ]
Or Spirit of the nethermost Abyss
Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask
Which way the neerest coast of darkness lyes
Bordering on light; when strait behold the Throne
Of Chaos, and his dark Pavilion spread [ 960 ]
Wide on the wasteful Deep; with him Enthron’d Sat
Sable-vested Night, eldest of things,
The Consort of his Reign; and by them stood
196
Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name
Of Demogorgon; Rumor next and Chance, [ 965 ]
And Tumult and Confusion all imbroild, And
Discord with a thousand various mouths.

T’ whom Satan turning boldly, thus. Ye Powers

And Spirits of this nethermost Abyss,
Chaos and ancient Night, I come no Spy, [ 970 ]
With purpose to explore or to disturb
The secrets of your Realm, but by constraint
Wandring this darksome Desart, as my way
Lies through your spacious Empire up to light,
Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek [ 975 ]
What readiest path leads where your gloomie bounds
Confine with Heav’n; or if som other place
From your Dominion won, th’ Ethereal King Possesses
lately, thither to arrive
I travel this profound, direct my course; [ 980 ]
Directed no mean recompence it brings
To your behoof, if I that Region lost, All
usurpation thence expell’d, reduce
To her original darkness and your sway
(Which is my present journey) and once more [ 985 ]
Erect the Standard there of ancient Night; Yours be
th’ advantage all, mine the revenge.

Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old With

faultring speech and visage incompos’d
Answer’d. I know thee, stranger, who thou art, [ 990 ]
That mighty leading Angel, who of late Made head
against Heav’ns King, though overthrown. I saw and
heard, for such a numerous Host
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep With
ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, [ 995 ] Confusion
worse confounded; and Heav’n Gates
Pourd out by millions her victorious Bands
Pursuing. I upon my Frontieres here
Keep residence; if all I can will serve,
That little which is left so to defend [ 1000 ]
Encroacht on still through our intestine broiles
Weakning the Scepter of old Night: first Hell
Your dungeon stretching far and wide beneath; Now
lately Heaven and Earth, another World
Hung ore my Realm, link’d in a golden Chain [ 1005 ] To that side Heav’n from whence your
Legions fell: If that way be your walk, you have not farr; So much the neerer danger; go and speed;
Havock and spoil and ruin are my gain.

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He ceas’d; and Satan staid not to reply, [ 1010 ] But
glad that now his Sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacritie and force renew’d Springs
upward like a Pyramid of fire
Into the wilde expanse, and through the shock
Of fighting Elements, on all sides round [ 1015 ]
Environ’d wins his way; harder beset And
more endanger’d, then when Argo pass’d
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling Rocks:
Or when Ulysses on the Larbord shunnd
Charybdis, and by th’ other whirlpool steard. [ 1020 ]
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Mov’d on, with difficulty and labour hee;
But hee once past, soon after when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
Following his track, such was the will of Heav’n, [ 1025 ]
Pav’d after him a broad and beat’n way
Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling Gulf Tamely
endur’d a Bridge of wondrous length
From Hell continu’d reaching th’ utmost Orbe
Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse [ 1030 ]
With easie intercourse pass to and fro To
tempt or punish mortals, except whom God
and good Angels guard by special grace. But
now at last the sacred influence
Of light appears, and from the walls of Heav’n [ 1035 ] Shoots
farr into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn; here Nature first begins
Her fardest verge, and Chaos to retire As
from her outmost works a brok’n foe
With tumult less and with less hostile din, [ 1040 ]
That Satan with less toil, and now with ease
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light
And like a weather-beaten Vessel holds
Gladly the Port, though Shrouds and Tackle torn;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling Air, [ 1045 ] Weighs
his spread wings, at leasure to behold
Farr off th’ Empyreal Heav’n, extended wide
In circuit, undetermind square or round, With
Opal Towrs and Battlements adorn’d
Of living Saphire, once his native Seat; [ 1050 ]
And fast by hanging in a golden Chain
This pendant world, in bigness as a Starr Of
smallest Magnitude close by the Moon.
Thither full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accurst, and in a cursed hour he hies. [ 1055 ]
198
 BOOK 3

THE ARGUMENT

God sitting on his Throne sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shews him to
the Son who sat at his right hand; foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears his
own Justice and Wisdom from all imputation, having created Man free and able enough to have
withstood his Tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his
own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduc’t. The Son of God renders praises to his Father for
the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards Man; but God again declares, that Grace
cannot be extended towards Man without the satisfaction of divine justice; Man hath offended
the majesty of God by aspiring to God-head, and therefore with all his Progeny devoted to death
must dye, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his
Punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a Ransome for Man: the Father accepts him,
ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all Names in Heaven and Earth;
commands all the Angels to adore him; they obey, and hymning to thir Harps in full Quire,
celebrate the Father and the Son. Mean while Satan alights upon the bare Convex of this Worlds
outermost Orb; where wandring he first finds a place since call’d The Lymbo of Vanity; what
persons and things fly up thither; thence comes to the Gate of Heaven, describ’d ascending by
staires, and the waters above the Firmament that flow about it: His passage thence to the Orb of
the Sun; he finds there Uriel the Regent of that Orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a
meaner Angel; and pretending a zealous desire to behold the new Creation and Man whom God
had plac’t here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed; alights first on Mount
Niphates.

HAil holy light, ofspring of Heav’n first-born,

Or of th’ Eternal Coeternal beam
May I express thee unblam’d? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from
Eternitie, dwelt then in thee, [ 5 ] Bright
effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear’st thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose Fountain who shall tell? before the Sun,
Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a Mantle didst invest [ 10 ]
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite. Thee
I re-visit now with bolder wing,
Escap’t the Stygian Pool, though long detain’d
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight [ 15 ]
Through utter and through middle darkness borne
With other notes then to th’ Orphean Lyre I
sung of Chaos and Eternal Night, Taught by
the heav’nly Muse to venture down The dark
descent, and up to reascend, [ 20 ]
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,

199
And feel thy sovran vital Lamp; but thou Revisit’st
not these eyes, that rowle in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quencht thir Orbs, [ 25 ]
Or dim suffusion veild. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Cleer Spring, or shadie Grove, or Sunnie Hill,
Smit with the love of sacred Song; but chief
Thee Sion and the flowrie Brooks beneath [ 30 ]
That wash thy hallowd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor somtimes forget Those other
two equal’d with me in Fate,
So were I equal’d with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, [ 35 ] And
Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old.
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntarie move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal Note. Thus with the Year [ 40 ] Seasons
return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of Ev’n or Morn, Or
sight of vernal bloom, or Summers Rose,
Or flocks, or heards, or human face divine;
But cloud in stead, and ever-during dark [ 45 ]
Surrounds me, from the chearful wayes of men
Cut off, and for the Book of knowledg fair
Presented with a Universal blanc Of Nature’s
works to mee expung’d and ras’d,
And wisdome at one entrance quite shut out. [ 50 ]
So much the rather thou Celestial light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of
things invisible to mortal sight. [ 55 ]

Now had the Almighty Father from above, From

the pure Empyrean where he sits
High Thron’d above all highth, bent down his eye, His
own works and their works at once to view: About
him all the Sanctities of Heaven [ 60 ]
Stood thick as Starrs, and from his sight receiv’d
Beatitude past utterance; on his right
The radiant image of his Glory sat,
His onely Son; On Earth he first beheld
Our two first Parents, yet the onely two [ 65 ]
Of mankind, in the happie Garden plac’t, Reaping
immortal fruits of joy and love,

200
Uninterrupted joy, unrivald love
In blissful solitude; he then survey’d
Hell and the Gulf between, and Satan there [ 70 ]
Coasting the wall of Heav’n on this side Night In
the dun Air sublime, and ready now
To stoop with wearied wings, and willing feet On
the bare outside of this World, that seem’d Firm
land imbosom’d without Firmament, [ 75 ]
Uncertain which, in Ocean or in Air.
Him God beholding from his prospect high,
Wherein past, present, future he beholds, Thus
to his onely Son foreseeing spake.

Onely begotten Son, seest thou what rage [ 80 ]

Transports our adversarie, whom no bounds
Prescrib’d, no barrs of Hell, nor all the chains Heapt
on him there, nor yet the main Abyss
Wide interrupt can hold; so bent he seems
On desparate reveng, that shall redound [ 85 ]
Upon his own rebellious head. And now
Through all restraint broke loose he wings his way
Not farr off Heav’n, in the Precincts of light,
Directly towards the new created World, And Man
there plac’t, with purpose to assay [ 90 ] If him by
force he can destroy, or worse,
By some false guile pervert; and shall pervert
For man will heark’n to his glozing lyes,
And easily transgress the sole Command,
Sole pledge of his obedience: So will fall, [ 95 ] Hee
and his faithless Progenie: whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee
All he could have; I made him just and right, Sufficient
to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all th’ Ethereal Powers [ 100 ]
And Spirits, both them who stood and them who faild; Freely
they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere
Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love, Where onely
what they needs must do, appeard, [ 105 ]
Not what they would? what praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoild,
Made passive both, had servd necessitie, [ 110 ]
Not mee. They therefore as to right belongd,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate,

201
As if predestination over-rul’d
Thir will, dispos’d by absolute Decree [ 115 ]
Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed
Thir own revolt, not I: if I foreknew, Foreknowledge
had no influence on their fault, Which had no less
prov’d certain unforeknown.
So without least impulse or shadow of Fate, [ 120 ]
Or aught by me immutablie foreseen,
They trespass, Authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge and what they choose; for so
I formd them free, and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change [ 125 ]
Thir nature, and revoke the high Decree
Unchangeable, Eternal, which ordain’d
Thir freedom, they themselves ordain’d thir fall. The
first sort by thir own suggestion fell, Self-tempted,
self-deprav’d: Man falls deceiv’d [ 130 ]
By the other first: Man therefore shall find grace,
The other none: in Mercy and Justice both, Through
Heav’n and Earth, so shall my glorie excel, But
Mercy first and last shall brightest shine.

Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance fill’d [ 135 ] All

Heav’n, and in the blessed Spirits elect
Sense of new joy ineffable diffus’d:
Beyond compare the Son of God was seen
Most glorious, in him all his Father shon
Substantially express’d, and in his face [ 140 ]
Divine compassion visibly appeerd, Love
without end, and without measure Grace,
Which uttering thus he to his Father spake.

O Father, gracious was that word which clos’d

Thy sovran sentence, that Man should find grace; [ 145 ]
For which both Heav’n and Earth shall high extoll
Thy praises, with th’ innumerable sound
Of Hymns and sacred Songs, wherewith thy Throne
Encompass’d shall resound thee ever blest.
For should Man finally be lost, should Man [ 150 ]
Thy creature late so lov’d, thy youngest Son
Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though joynd
With his own folly? that be from thee farr,
That farr be from thee, Father, who art Judg
Of all things made, and judgest onely right. [ 155 ]
Or shall the Adversarie thus obtain
His end, and frustrate thine, shall he fulfill
202
His malice, and thy goodness bring to naught, Or
proud return though to his heavier doom, Yet with
revenge accomplish’t and to Hell [ 160 ] Draw
after him the whole Race of mankind,
By him corrupted? or wilt thou thy self Abolish thy
Creation, and unmake, For him, what for thy glorie
thou hast made? So should thy goodness and thy
greatness both [ 165 ] Be questiond and blaspheam’d
without defence.

To whom the great Creatour thus reply’d.

O Son, in whom my Soul hath chief delight,
Son of my bosom, Son who art alone
My word, my wisdom, and effectual might, [ 170 ]
All hast thou spok’n as my thoughts are, all As
my Eternal purpose hath decreed:
Man shall not quite be lost, but sav’d who will, Yet
not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely voutsaft; once more I will renew [ 175 ]
His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthrall’d By
sin to foul exorbitant desires;
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe,
By me upheld, that he may know how frail [ 180 ]
His fall’n condition is, and to me ow
All his deliv’rance, and to none but me.
Some I have chosen of peculiar grace Elect
above the rest; so is my will:
The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warnd [ 185 ]
Thir sinful state, and to appease betimes
Th’ incensed Deitie while offerd grace
Invites; for I will cleer thir senses dark,
What may suffice, and soft’n stonie hearts
To pray, repent, and bring obedience due. [ 190 ]
To Prayer, repentance, and obedience due,
Though but endevord with sincere intent, Mine
ear shall not be slow, mine eye not shut.
And I will place within them as a guide
My Umpire Conscience, whom if they will hear, [ 195 ]
Light after light well us’d they shall attain, And
to the end persisting, safe arrive.
This my long sufferance and my day of grace
They who neglect and scorn, shall never taste;
But hard be hard’nd, blind be blinded more, [ 200 ]
That they may stumble on, and deeper fall; And
none but such from mercy I exclude.
203
But yet all is not don; Man disobeying, Disloyal
breaks his fealtie, and sinns Against the high
Supremacie of Heav’n, [ 205 ] Affecting God-
head, and so loosing all,
To expiate his Treason hath naught left,
But to destruction sacred and devote,
He with his whole posteritie must dye,
Dye hee or Justice must; unless for him [ 210 ] Som
other able, and as willing, pay The rigid satisfaction,
death for death. Say Heav’nly Powers, where shall
we find such love, Which of ye will be mortal to
redeem
Mans mortal crime, and just th’ unjust to save, [ 215 ] Dwels
in all Heaven charitie so deare?

He ask’d, but all the Heav’nly Quire stood mute,

And silence was in Heav’n: on mans behalf Patron
or Intercessor none appeerd,
Much less that durst upon his own head draw [ 220 ] The
deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.
And now without redemption all mankind Must
have bin lost, adjudg’d to Death and Hell By
doom severe, had not the Son of God, In whom
the fulness dwells of love divine, [ 225 ] His
dearest mediation thus renewd.

Father, thy word is past, man shall find grace;

And shall grace not find means, that finds her way,
The speediest of thy winged messengers,
To visit all thy creatures, and to all [ 230 ] Comes
unprevented, unimplor’d, unsought, Happie for
man, so coming; he her aide
Can never seek, once dead in sins and lost;
Attonement for himself or offering meet,
Indebted and undon, hath none to bring: [ 235 ]
Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life
I offer, on mee let thine anger fall;
Account mee man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glorie next to thee
Freely put off, and for him lastly dye [ 240 ] Well
pleas’d, on me let Death wreck all his rage;
Under his gloomie power I shall not long
Lie vanquisht; thou hast givn me to possess
Life in my self for ever, by thee I live,
Though now to Death I yield, and am his due [ 245 ]
All that of me can die, yet that debt paid,
Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsom grave
His prey, nor suffer my unspotted Soule
204
For ever with corruption there to dwell;
But I shall rise Victorious, and subdue [ 250 ]
My Vanquisher, spoild of his vanted spoile; Death his
deaths wound shall then receive, and stoop
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarm’d.
I through the ample Air in Triumph high
Shall lead Hell Captive maugre Hell, and show [ 255 ]
The powers of darkness bound. Thou at the sight Pleas’d,
out of Heaven shalt look down and smile,
While by thee rais’d I ruin all my Foes, Death
last, and with his Carcass glut the Grave:
Then with the multitude of my redeemd [ 260 ]
Shall enter Heaven long absent, and returne,
Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud Of
anger shall remain, but peace assur’d,
And reconcilement; wrauth shall be no more
Thenceforth, but in thy presence Joy entire. [ 265 ]

His words here ended, but his meek aspect Silent

yet spake, and breath’d immortal love
To mortal men, above which only shon Filial
obedience: as a sacrifice Glad to be offer’d,
he attends the will [ 270 ]
Of his great Father. Admiration seis’d All Heav’n,
what this might mean, and whither tend Wondring;
but soon th’ Almighty thus reply’d:

O thou in Heav’n and Earth the only peace

Found out for mankind under wrauth, O thou [ 275 ]
My sole complacence! well thou know’st how dear,
To me are all my works, nor Man the least
Though last created, that for him I spare
Thee from my bosom and right hand, to save,
By loosing thee a while, the whole Race lost. [ 280 ]
Thou therefore whom thou only canst redeem,
Thir Nature also to thy Nature joyn;
And be thy self Man among men on Earth,
Made flesh, when time shall be, of Virgin seed,
By wondrous birth: Be thou in Adams room [ 285 ] The
Head of all mankind, though Adams Son.
As in him perish all men, so in thee As
from a second root shall be restor’d,
As many as are restor’d, without thee none.
His crime makes guiltie all his Sons, thy merit [ 290 ]
Imputed shall absolve them who renounce
Thir own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,
And live in thee transplanted, and from thee
Receive new life. So Man, as is most just, Shall
205
satisfie for Man, be judg’d and die, [ 295 ] And
dying rise, and rising with him raise His
Brethren, ransomd with his own dear life.
So Heav’nly love shall outdoo Hellish hate, Giving
to death, and dying to redeeme,
So dearly to redeem what Hellish hate [ 300 ]
So easily destroy’d, and still destroyes In those
who, when they may, accept not grace. Nor
shalt thou by descending to assume Mans
Nature, less’n or degrade thine owne.
Because thou hast, though Thron’d in highest bliss [ 305 ]
Equal to God, and equally enjoying
God-like fruition, quitted all to save
A World from utter loss, and hast been found
By Merit more then Birthright Son of God,
Found worthiest to be so by being Good, [ 310 ]
Farr more then Great or High; because in thee
Love hath abounded more then Glory abounds,
Therefore thy Humiliation shall exalt
With thee thy Manhood also to this Throne;
Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt Reign [ 315 ]
Both God and Man, Son both of God and Man,
Anointed universal King, all Power
I give thee, reign for ever, and assume
Thy Merits; under thee as Head Supream
Thrones, Princedoms, Powers, Dominions I reduce: [ 320 ]
All knees to thee shall bow, of them that bide In
Heaven, or Earth, or under Earth in Hell; When
thou attended gloriously from Heav’n Shalt in
the Sky appeer, and from thee send
The summoning Arch-Angels to proclaime [ 325 ]
Thy dread Tribunal: forthwith from all Windes
The living, and forthwith the cited dead Of all past
Ages to the general Doom Shall hast’n, such a peal
shall rouse thir sleep. Then all thy Saints assembl’d,
thou shalt judge [ 330 ] Bad men and Angels, they
arraignd shall sink
Beneath thy Sentence; Hell her numbers full,
Thenceforth shall be for ever shut. Mean while
The World shall burn, and from her ashes spring
New Heav’n and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell [ 335 ] And after all thir tribulations long See
golden days, fruitful of golden deeds, With Joy and Love triumphing, and fair Truth.
Then thou thy regal Scepter shalt lay by,
For regal Scepter then no more shall need, [ 340 ]
God shall be All in All. But all ye Gods,
Adore him, who to compass all this dies, Adore
the Son, and honour him as mee.

206
No sooner had th’ Almighty ceas’t, but all
The multitude of Angels with a shout [ 345 ]
Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices, uttering joy, Heav’n rung
With Jubilee, and loud Hosanna’s filld
Th’ eternal Regions: lowly reverent
Towards either Throne they bow, and to the ground [ 350 ]
With solemn adoration down they cast
Thir Crowns inwove with Amarant and Gold,
Immortal Amarant, a Flour which once
In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life
Began to bloom, but soon for mans offence [ 355 ]
To Heav’n remov’d where first it grew, there grows, And
flours aloft shading the Fount of Life,
And where the river of Bliss through midst of Heavn
Rowls o’re Elisian Flours her Amber stream;
With these that never fade the Spirits elect [ 360 ]
Bind thir resplendent locks inwreath’d with beams,
Now in loose Garlands thick thrown off, the bright Pavement
that like a Sea of Jasper shon
Impurpl’d with Celestial Roses smil’d.
Then Crown’d again thir gold’n Harps they took, [ 365 ]
Harps ever tun’d, that glittering by thir side
Like Quivers hung, and with Præamble sweet
Of charming symphonie they introduce
Thir sacred Song, and waken raptures high;
No voice exempt, no voice but well could joine [ 370 ] Melodious
part, such concord is in Heav’n.

Thee Father first they sung Omnipotent,

Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
Eternal King; thee Author of all being,
Fountain of Light, thy self invisible [ 375 ] Amidst
the glorious brightness where thou sit’st
Thron’d inaccessible, but when thou shad’st
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant Shrine,
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appeer, [ 380 ]
Yet dazle Heav’n, that brightest Seraphim
Approach not, but with both wings veil thir eyes,
Thee next they sang of all Creation first,
Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,
In whose conspicuous count’nance, without cloud [ 385 ]
Made visible, th’ Almighty Father shines,
Whom else no Creature can behold; on thee
207
Impresst the effulgence of his Glorie abides,
Transfus’d on thee his ample Spirit rests.
Hee Heav’n of Heavens and all the Powers therein [ 390 ]
By thee created, and by thee threw down
Th’ Aspiring Dominations: thou that day
Thy Fathers dreadful Thunder didst not spare,
Nor stop thy flaming Chariot wheels, that shook
Heav’ns everlasting Frame, while o’re the necks [ 395 ]
Thou drov’st of warring Angels disarraid.
Back from pursuit thy Powers with loud acclaime
Thee only extoll’d, Son of thy Fathers might, To
execute fierce vengeance on his foes, Not so on Man;
him through their malice fall’n, [ 400 ] Father of
Mercie and Grace, thou didst not doome So strictly, but
much more to pitie encline: No sooner did thy dear and
onely Son Perceive thee purpos’d not to doom frail
Man
So strictly, but much more to pitie enclin’d, [ 405 ] He
to appease thy wrauth, and end the strife
Of Mercy and Justice in thy face discern’d,
Regardless of the Bliss wherein hee sat Second
to thee, offerd himself to die
For mans offence. O unexampl’d love, [ 410 ] Love
no where to be found less then Divine!
Hail Son of God, Saviour of Men, thy Name
Shall be the copious matter of my Song
Henceforth, and never shall my Harp thy praise
Forget, nor from thy Fathers praise disjoine. [ 415 ]

Thus they in Heav’n, above the starry Sphear, Thir

happie hours in joy and hymning spent.
Mean while upon the firm opacous Globe
Of this round World, whose first convex divides
The luminous inferior Orbs, enclos’d [ 420 ]
From Chaos and th’ inroad of Darkness old,
Satan alighted walks: a Globe farr off It
seem’d, now seems a boundless Continent
Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of Night
Starless expos’d, and ever-threatning storms [ 425 ]
Of Chaos blustring round, inclement skie;
Save on that side which from the wall of Heav’n
Though distant farr some small reflection gaines Of
glimmering air less vext with tempest loud:
Here walk’d the Fiend at large in spacious field. [ 430 ]
As when a Vultur on Imaus bred,
Whose snowie ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
208
Dislodging from a Region scarce of prey
To gorge the flesh of Lambs or yeanling Kids
On Hills where Flocks are fed, flies toward the Springs [ 435 ]
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;
But in his way lights on the barren Plaines Of
Sericana, where Chineses drive
With Sails and Wind thir canie Waggons light:
So on this windie Sea of Land, the Fiend [ 440 ]
Walk’d up and down alone bent on his prey, Alone,
for other Creature in this place
Living or liveless to be found was none,
None yet, but store hereafter from the earth
Up hither like Aereal vapours flew [ 445 ]
Of all things transitorie and vain, when Sin With
vanity had filld the works of men:
Both all things vain, and all who in vain things Built
thir fond hopes of Glorie or lasting fame,
Or happiness in this or th’ other life; [ 450 ]
All who have thir reward on Earth, the fruits
Of painful Superstition and blind Zeal,
Naught seeking but the praise of men, here find Fit
retribution, emptie as thir deeds;
All th’ unaccomplisht works of Natures hand, [ 455 ] Abortive,
monstrous, or unkindly mixt,
Dissolvd on earth, fleet hither, and in vain,
Till final dissolution, wander here,
Not in the neighbouring Moon, as some have dreamd;
Those argent Fields more likely habitants, [ 460 ]
Translated Saints, or middle Spirits hold Betwixt
th’ Angelical and Human kinde:
Hither of ill-joynd Sons and Daughters born
First from the ancient World those Giants came
With many a vain exploit, though then renownd: [ 465 ]
The builders next of Babel on the Plain Of
Sennaar, and still with vain designe
New Babels, had they wherewithall, would build:
Others came single; he who to be deem’d
A God, leap’d fondly into Ætna flames [ 470 ] Empedocles,
and hee who to enjoy
Plato’s Elysium, leap’d into the Sea,
Cleombrotus, and many more too long, Embryo’s
and Idiots, Eremits and Friers
White, Black and Grey, with all thir trumperie. [ 475 ]
Here Pilgrims roam, that stray’d so farr to seek
In Golgotha him dead, who lives in Heav’n; And
they who to be sure of Paradise
209
Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,
Or in Franciscan think to pass disguis’d; [ 480 ] They
pass the Planets seven, and pass the fixt,
And that Crystalline Sphear whose ballance weighs
The Trepidation talkt, and that first mov’d;
And now Saint Peter at Heav’ns Wicket seems
To wait them with his Keys, and now at foot [ 485 ]
Of Heav’ns ascent they lift thir Feet, when loe A
violent cross wind from either Coast
Blows them transverse ten thousand Leagues awry
Into the devious Air; then might ye see
Cowles, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost [ 490 ]
And flutterd into Raggs, then Reliques, Beads,
Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls,
The sport of Winds: all these upwhirld aloft
Fly o’re the backside of the World farr off
Into a Limbo large and broad, since calld [ 495 ]
The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown Long
after, now unpeopl’d, and untrod;
All this dark Globe the Fiend found as he pass’d,
And long he wanderd, till at last a gleame
Of dawning light turnd thither-ward in haste [ 500 ]
His travell’d steps; farr distant he descries Ascending
by degrees magnificent
Up to the wall of Heaven a Structure high,
At top whereof, but farr more rich appeer’d
The work as of a Kingly Palace Gate [ 505 ]
With Frontispice of Diamond and Gold
Imbellisht, thick with sparkling orient Gemmes
The Portal shon, inimitable on Earth By Model,
or by shading Pencil drawn.
The Stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw [ 510 ]
Angels ascending and descending, bands
Of Guardians bright, when he from Esau fled
To Padan-Aram in the field of Luz,
Dreaming by night under the open Skie, And waking
cri’d, This is the Gate of Heav’n [ 515 ] Each Stair
mysteriously was meant, nor stood
There alwayes, but drawn up to Heav’n somtimes Viewless,
and underneath a bright Sea flow’d
Of Jasper, or of liquid Pearle, whereon Who after
came from Earth, sayling arriv’d, [ 520 ]
Wafted by Angels, or flew o’re the Lake Rapt
in a Chariot drawn by fiery Steeds.
The Stairs were then let down, whether to dare
The Fiend by easie ascent, or aggravate
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His sad exclusion from the dores of Bliss. [ 525 ]
Direct against which opn’d from beneath,
Just o’re the blissful seat of Paradise,
A passage down to th’ Earth, a passage wide, Wider
by farr then that of after-times
Over Mount Sion, and, though that were large, [ 530 ]
Over the Promis’d Land to God so dear,
By which, to visit oft those happy Tribes, On
high behests his Angels to and fro
Pass’d frequent, and his eye with choice regard
From Paneas the fount of Jordans flood [ 535 ] To
Beersaba, where the Holy Land
Borders on Ægypt and th’ Arabian shoare;
So wide the op’ning seemd, where bounds were set To
darkness, such as bound the Ocean wave.
Satan from hence now on the lower stair [ 540 ]
That scal’d by steps of Gold to Heav’n Gate
Looks down with wonder at the sudden view
Of all this World at once. As when a Scout
Through dark and desart wayes with peril gone
All night; at last by break of chearful dawne [ 545 ]
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing Hill,
Which to his eye discovers unaware
The goodly prospect of some forein land
First-seen, or some renown’d Metropolis With
glistering Spires and Pinnacles adorn’d, [ 550 ]
Which now the Rising Sun guilds with his beams.
Such wonder seis’d, though after Heaven seen,
The Spirit maligne, but much more envy seis’d At
sight of all this World beheld so faire.
Round he surveys, and well might, where he stood [ 555 ]
So high above the circling Canopie
Of Nights extended shade; from Eastern Point
Of Libra to the fleecie Starr that bears
Andromeda farr off Atlantic Seas
Beyond th’ Horizon; then from Pole to Pole [ 560 ] He
views in bredth, and without longer pause
Down right into the Worlds first Region throws
His flight precipitant, and windes with ease
Through the pure marble Air his oblique way
Amongst innumerable Starrs, that shon [ 565 ]
Stars distant, but nigh hand seemd other Worlds,
Or other Worlds they seemd, or happy Iles, Like
those Hesperian Gardens fam’d of old,
Fortunate Fields, and Groves and flourie Vales,
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Thrice happy Iles, but who dwelt happy there [ 570 ]
He stayd not to enquire: above them all
The golden Sun in splendor likest Heaven Allur’d
his eye: Thither his course he bends
Through the calm Firmament; but up or downe
By center, or eccentric, hard to tell, [ 575 ]
Or Longitude, where the great Luminarie
Alooff the vulgar Constellations thick,
That from his Lordly eye keep distance due,
Dispenses Light from farr; they as they move
Thir Starry dance in numbers that compute [ 580 ]
Days, months, & years, towards his all-chearing Lamp
Turn swift thir various motions, or are turnd
By his Magnetic beam, that gently warms
The Univers, and to each inward part
With gentle penetration, though unseen, [ 585 ] Shoots
invisible vertue even to the deep:
So wondrously was set his Station bright.
There lands the Fiend, a spot like which perhaps
Astronomer in the Sun’s lucent Orbe
Through his glaz’d Optic Tube yet never saw. [ 590 ]
The place he found beyond expression bright, Compar’d
with aught on Earth, Medal or Stone;
Not all parts like, but all alike informd
With radiant light, as glowing Iron with fire;
If mettal, part seemd Gold, part Silver cleer; [ 595 ]
If stone, Carbuncle most or Chrysolite,
Rubie or Topaz, to the Twelve that shon
In Aarons Brest-plate, and a stone besides
Imagind rather oft then elsewhere seen,
That stone, or like to that which here below [ 600 ]
Philosophers in vain so long have sought,
In vain, though by thir powerful Art they binde
Volatil Hermes, and call up unbound
In various shapes old Proteus from the Sea,
Draind through a Limbec to his Native forme. [ 605 ]
What wonder then if fields and region here
Breathe forth Elixir pure, and Rivers run
Potable Gold, when with one vertuous touch
Th’ Arch-chimic Sun so farr from us remote
Produces with Terrestrial Humor mixt [ 610 ]
Here in the dark so many precious things Of
colour glorious and effect so rare?
Here matter new to gaze the Devil met Undazl’d,
farr and wide his eye commands,
For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade, [ 615 ] But
all Sun-shine, as when his Beams at Noon

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Culminate from th’ Æquator, as they now
Shot upward still direct, whence no way round
Shadow from body opaque can fall, and the Aire,
No where so cleer, sharp’nd his visual ray [ 620 ]
To objects distant farr, whereby he soon Saw
within kenn a glorious Angel stand, The same
whom John saw also in the Sun:
His back was turnd, but not his brightness hid;
Of beaming sunnie Raies, a golden tiar [ 625 ]
Circl’d his Head, nor less his Locks behind
Illustrious on his Shoulders fledge with wings Lay
waving round; on som great charge imploy’d He
seemd, or fixt in cogitation deep.
Glad was the Spirit impure as now in hope [ 630 ]
To find who might direct his wandring flight
To Paradise the happie seat of Man, His
journies end and our beginning woe.
But first he casts to change his proper shape,
Which else might work him danger or delay: [ 635 ]
And now a stripling Cherube he appeers, Not
of the prime, yet such as in his face Youth
smil’d Celestial, and to every Limb
Sutable grace diffus’d, so well he feign’d;
Under a Coronet his flowing haire [ 640 ]
In curles on either cheek plaid, wings he wore
Of many a colourd plume sprinkl’d with Gold,
His habit fit for speed succinct, and held Before
his decent steps a Silver wand.
He drew not nigh unheard, the Angel bright, [ 645 ]
Ere he drew nigh, his radiant visage turnd,
Admonisht by his ear, and strait was known
Th’ Arch-Angel Uriel, one of the seav’n
Who in God’s presence, neerest to his Throne
Stand ready at command, and are his Eyes [ 650 ]
That run through all the Heav’ns, or down to th’ Earth Bear
his swift errands over moist and dry,
O’re Sea and Land; him Satan thus accostes;

Uriel, for thou of those seav’n Spirits that stand

In sight of God’s high Throne, gloriously bright, [ 655 ]
The first art wont his great authentic will
Interpreter through highest Heav’n to bring, Where
all his Sons thy Embassie attend;
And here art likeliest by supream decree
Like honor to obtain, and as his Eye [ 660 ]
To visit oft this new Creation round;
Unspeakable desire to see, and know
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All these his wondrous works, but chiefly Man,
His chief delight and favour, him for whom
All these his works so wondrous he ordaind, [ 665 ]
Hath brought me from the Quires of Cherubim
Alone thus wandring. Brightest Seraph tell
In which of all these shining Orbes hath Man
His fixed seat, or fixed seat hath none,
But all these shining Orbes his choice to dwell; [ 670 ]
That I may find him, and with secret gaze,
Or open admiration him behold
On whom the great Creator hath bestowd
Worlds, and on whom hath all these graces powrd;
That both in him and all things, as is meet, [ 675 ]
The Universal Maker we may praise; Who justly
hath driv’n out his Rebell Foes To deepest Hell,
and to repair that loss
Created this new happie Race of Men
To serve him better: wise are all his wayes. [ 680 ]

So spake the false dissembler unperceivd;

For neither Man nor Angel can discern
Hypocrisie, the onely evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By his permissive will, through Heav’n and Earth: [ 685 ]
And oft though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps
At wisdoms Gate, and to simplicitie
Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill Where
no ill seems: Which now for once beguil’d Uriel,
though Regent of the Sun, and held [ 690 ]
The sharpest sighted Spirit of all in Heav’n;
Who to the fraudulent Impostor foule In his
uprightness answer thus returnd.
Faire Angel, thy desire which tends to know
The works of God, thereby to glorifie [ 695 ]
The great Work-Maister, leads to no excess
That reaches blame, but rather merits praise
The more it seems excess, that led thee hither
From thy Empyreal Mansion thus alone,
To witness with thine eyes what some perhaps [ 700 ]
Contented with report hear onely in heav’n:
For wonderful indeed are all his works,
Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all
Had in remembrance alwayes with delight;
But what created mind can comprehend [ 705 ]
Thir number, or the wisdom infinite
That brought them forth, but hid thir causes deep.
I saw when at his Word the formless Mass, This
worlds material mould, came to a heap:
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Confusion heard his voice, and wilde uproar [ 710 ]
Stood rul’d, stood vast infinitude confin’d;
Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light
shon, and order from disorder sprung:
Swift to thir several Quarters hasted then
The cumbrous Elements, Earth, Flood, Aire, Fire, [ 715 ]
And this Ethereal quintessence of Heav’n
Flew upward, spirited with various forms,
That rowld orbicular, and turnd to Starrs
Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move; Each
had his place appointed, each his course, [ 720 ] The
rest in circuit walles this Universe.
Look downward on that Globe whose hither side
With light from hence, though but reflected, shines;
That place is Earth the seat of Man, that light His
day, which else as th’ other Hemisphere [ 725 ]
Night would invade, but there the neighbouring Moon
(So call that opposite fair Starr) her aide
Timely interposes, and her monthly round Still
ending, still renewing through mid Heav’n,
With borrowd light her countenance triform [ 730 ]
Hence fills and empties to enlighten th’ Earth,
And in her pale dominion checks the night.
That spot to which I point is Paradise, Adams
abode, those loftie shades his Bowre.
Thy way thou canst not miss, me mine requires. [ 735 ]

Thus said, he turnd, and Satan bowing low,

As to superior Spirits is wont in Heaven,
Where honour due and reverence none neglects,
Took leave, and toward the coast of Earth beneath,
Down from th’ Ecliptic, sped with hop’d success, [ 740 ]
Throws his steep flight in many an Aerie wheele, Nor
staid, till on Niphates top he lights.

16.6 LET'S SUM UP

In this unit we studied two phases of Milton's life, the early phase, when he began writing
poetry in English, and the middle phase, when he concentrated his intellectual and creative
energies in prose, in the cause of the Commonwealth. We examined some of the more
important influences on his writing and the sources that he turned to. We noted his use of
such sources and the significance in particular of their amalgamation into an entire system
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of thought and vision, blending the classical and the Christian in such a way that the former
served the interests of the latter. We also noted that this fusion of diverse traditions, far from
rendering Milton a plagiarist, serves to emphasise the uniqueness of his voice, in prose and
in poetry. The unit also attempted to draw out the relations between Milton's prose concern
and his poetic oeuvre. In doing so, it sought to lay the foundation for a comprehensive
understanding of the circumstances and factors involved in Milton's poetry. As we noted in
the Introduction, the longer epics are for reasons of space, outside our immediate attention;
but the study of this block should help the student pursue an examination of the epics on
his/her own. We may now continue to examine the more wellknown of Milton's shorter
poetic works in the following units.

16.7 REVISION QUESTIONS

1. In your considered opinion, does Milton's early work bear signs of the poetic ambitions
that he later fulfils? Analyse any one poem to substantiate your answer.
2. From your study of this unit, and from other readings, identify the primary influences and
the main literary sources that are to be found in Milton's early poetic work.
3. What in your opinion could be the reason(s) for Milton's emphasis on prose in the middle
years of his life?
4. Examine and discuss the relations between Milton's poetic and prose oeuvre.

16.8 ADDITIONAL READING

1. Brown, Cedric C. John Milton: A Literary Life. New York: St. Martin's, 1995.
2. Corns, Thomas N. "Milton Before 'Lycidas'." Graham Parry and Joad Raymond, eds.
Milton and the Terms of Liberty. Cambridge: Brewer, 2002.
3. Evans, J. Marlin. The Miltonic Moment. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky,
1998.

4. Grose, Christopher. Milton and the Sense of Tradition. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988.
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5. Hill, Christopher. Milton and the English Revolution. New York, 1977
6. L,egouis, Emile and Louis Cazamian. A History of English Literature. London: Dent and
Sons, 1954.

7. Loewenstein, David and James Grantham Turner, eds. Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneuties
in Milton's Prose. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990

8. Potter, Lois. A Preface to Milton. Preface Books. N. York: Longman, 1986.

9. Shawcross, John T. John Milton: The Self and the World. Lexington, KY:
University Press of Kentucky, 1993.

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