The following is an introduction to major British
poets from Chaucer to Keats. It is designed to help place the poets in context
and was originally used as a supplement to poetry units in an AP poetry class.
Where I have found useful website material it has been noted
The following site also offer significant support material for
AP English: AP
English Resources - links to active sites with high academic standards
- from Henrico County, VA
1370: The Book of the Duchess (first
important extant poem).
1372: First Italian journey and contact with Italian Literature.
1385: Troilius and Criseyde.
1386: Canterbury Tales begun.
Chaucer was born into an increasingly important Middle Class
that was constantly infiltrating the relatively small aristocracy. He was
the son of a wealthy wine-merchant, well educated, but probably exposed to
large cross section of the population of London. In his early teens he was
sent to serve in the household of an important aristocrat, Lionel of Antwerp,
son of King Edward III. Chaucer spent the rest of his life associating with
high nobility, including Lionel’s brother John of Gaunt, King Edward
III, as well as Lionel’s nephew who became Richard II; and finally with
John of Gaunt’s son who became Henry IV, who deposed Richard and became
king in 1399. Chaucer’s wife Phillippa, being a member of the households
of Edward’s queen and of John of Gaunt’s second wife, Constance
of Castile, was definitely of higher birth than her husband. Chaucer’
son Thomas was an eminent man in his day, and it appears that a granddaughter
married into two aristocratic houses and was a Duchess. The poet seems to have bridged the gap
between commoner and aristocratic.
His advancement must have been due to more than his extraordinary
ability as a poet. The scope of his translations suggests he was an exceptional
linguist, a valuable talent no doubt useful for the numerous and apparently
important diplomatic missions. He later engaged in remunerative work involving
trade and customs. Throughout his life he received grants and annuities. In
the final months of his life he rented a house in the garden of Westminster
Abbey. He never seemed to want for funds.
Few of Chaucer’s poems can be precisely dated, but
he appears to have always written. Some of his early work was translating
important works from France (French was still spoken by English Aristocrats).
His first dated work, the Book of the Duchess,
was an elegy for John of Gaunt’s first wife and combined translations
of various works into an original structure. (The Chaucer of The Canterbury
Tales implies that he was familiar with a variety of English dialects
as well.)
In addition to French, Chaucer knew Latin well and was familiar
with Virgil and Ovid. He translated the 6th Century philosopher Boethius,
who had a considerable influence on medieval thought and was able to combine
as Chaucer did, spiritual detachment with a robust life.
Chaucer’s trip to Italy when he was in his 30’s
opened him up to exciting world of the great Italian writers of the late Middle
Ages and Early Renaissance - Dante, Petrarch (the first great writer of sonnets)
and Boccaccio, who ultimately provided some of the stories that appear in
The Canterbury Tales and the original
for Chaucer longest poem, Troilius and Criseyde.
The Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's chief literary
interest for the last fifteen years of his life. Its original plan projected
about 120 stories. He completed “only” 22. Medieval pilgrims were
notorious storytellers (how else to pass the time?) and the common sight of
them probably inspired the “frame” Chaucer supplies for his tales.
There were other contemporary examples of such frames, but none were as integral
to the stories as Chaucer’s. Only in Chaucer does the character of the
storyteller pervade the story. As a result, the Tales have a unique liveliness to them and remain some of
the most enjoyable stories in all of literature.
Other characteristics of Chaucer’s work are his ability
to integrate his learning with what is clearly a knowledge and enjoyment of
a wide range of people. He is
able to present them with a wonderfully detached but sympathetic eye (something
he shares with Shakespeare). He has no illusions about the world but does
not retreat into cynicism; rather he accepts what he sees with a fondness
and an ironic sense of humor. (In this he reminds me of James, though his
cast of characters is much broader.) He is also a remarkably graphic poet,
creating “realistic” visual (as well as oral and occasionally
olfactory) pictures of the worlds he describes.
Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in iambic pentameter couplets. It is not clear how
original he was in doing this. He almost certainly was influenced by the rhymed
French poetry he translated, but he also might have been continuing an English
tradition that had evolved from the alliterative verse of the Middle Ages
and reflected the “natural” rhythms of English (notably London)
speech. Whether accurately or not, the iambic pentameter couplet is often
said to have been Chaucer’s invention. It came to be known as the heroic
couplet, the dominant English verse form in the late 17th and 18th centuries.
For more on Chaucer click here.
1579: Publication of The Shepheard's Calender.
1580: In Ireland where he lives until just before his death.
1590: First three books of The Faerie Queen
published.
“What an image that
is! ‘sea-shoulderinge whales.’”
Keats, at 16, on Spenser.
The son of a clothmaker (with perhaps more distinguished
relatives), Spenser was born in London and went to a well-known school on
a scholarship. The school was unusual in that its headmaster emphasized teaching
the English language. By the age of seven, Spenser was translating poems into
English from French. He went on to Cambridge as a “sizar” or poor
scholar. Here he fell under the strong Puritanical influence that was prevalent
at the university. His first poetry was translations of Anti-Catholic propaganda
for an anthology. Spenser clearly became interested in becoming a poet at
this time and was also interested different kinds of versification. After
receiving his M.A. in 1576, he worked in a number of important households,
most notably the Earl of Leicester’s (a favorite of Queen Elizabeth)
where he met others interested in poetry, notably Sir Philip Sydney. Spenser
and Sydney were among a number of poets interested in establishing a “New
English Poetry”. It is important to know that literature at this time
was almost exclusive the province of the aristocracy. Any poetry worthy of
“study” would have been Latin poetry. Spenser seems to have been
determined to show that English could accommodate a wide variety of forms,
and he saw himself as an English Virgil. His first important work, The
Shepheard's Calender, uses thirteen different
meters, some original, some adapted from classical models. His variety of
forms influenced countless poets after him. The Spenserian sonnet (see at
end of this section) is just one example of his ability to work effortlessly
in a complex form.
A year after the publication if The Shephearde's Calender,
Spenser went to Ireland to serve Lord Grey, Lord Deputy of Ireland, a powerful
and apparently repressive despot whose policies Spenser seems to have supported.
Like Chaucer before him and Donne and Milton after him, he led a full life
beyond the writing of poetry. This did not stop him from working on his great
romantic epic The Faerie Queen. In
1590, he went to London to oversee its publication. He was probably looking
for kudos in high places and did receive a pension of 50 pounds from the Queen,
but he was not crowned with laurels and returned to Ireland. He married a
second time in 1594 (nothing seems to be known about his first marriage 15
years earlier), apparently the occasion of his Epithalamion and his love sonnets, the Amoretti. They had
a number of children very quickly. Spenser lived in a leased castle where
he managed a huge estate most likely in the spirit of his mentor, for there
was a rebellion in 1598 that included the sacking and burning of the castle
and costing the life of one of his children. Shortly after this he was sent
to London where he died.
The Faerie Queen,
which was only half finished at his death, was to consist of twelve books,
each one of which was to instruct the reader on an aspect of “how to
become a noble gentleman” (like Castiglione’s The Courtier). However, these lessons, cloaked in narrative and
presented allegorically, were designed to entertain as much as to instruct.
The poem can be appreciated on several levels at once. It is centered in a
world that is romantic, medieval, heroic, religious, political and magical.
The texture of the work is rich in a variety of traditions. Its size should
not discourage prospective readers because it can be approached piecemeal.
The poem is immensely rewarding to those with those adventurous enough to
mine its riches. Although written in a deliberately archaic language (Spenser
was a great admirer of Chaucer and used “antique” spelling to
connect his poetry to a specifically English tradition.), it is far from inaccessible.
Its stories are exciting. They are filled with drama and fantastic figures,
monsters and damsels, heroes and villains, devils and angels. They have a
Lord of the Rings spirit to
them.
Spenser is a complex genius who cannot be pigeonholed. Although
influenced by Renaissance thought, especially Neo-Platonism, he was always
grounded in earthiness and practicality. He is both lover of earthy beauty
and Puritanical. He was considered the premier poet of his time and in the
next century was especially admired by Milton, who saw him (as he saw himself)
as a poet-prophet.
There is excellent material on the Web on Spenser. The best
place to start is the Spenser Home page http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenser/main.htm.
Texts are available on line but they do not have notes. The
Oxford texts are searchable): http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/,
The University of Toronto texts have line numbers. http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/
Plato and his Roman
champion, Plotinus, were rediscovered and remade in the Renaissance in 15th
century Italy. At the heart of Plato’s thinking is the idea expressed
in the Phaedrus that the soul comes from a spiritual world that we
can reach only by seeing past the veil of the senses. To see the soul is to see beyond the distractions of the world.
It is also to see the revelation of Beauty as suggested in The Symposium. In the Renaissance this beauty can be seen in Botticelli’s
“Birth of Venus”. Like Spenser’s “Aphrodite”
Urania, “her beauty fills the heavens with her light.” She can
be part of the visible world. Significantly, she can also offer a way to escape
this world; the love one first experiences in this world offers an avenue
to the higher world. To Spenser true earthly bliss is an aspect of heavenly
bliss. It is a sharing that reveals a timeless “soul” that, because
it shared, eludes those who deny themselves love. We see beyond ourselves
in the eyes of the beloved. As Donne writes:
And now good morrow to our waking souls. .
.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true
plain hearts do in the faces rest.
Castiglione (The
Courtier) and other Renaissance thinkers developed these ideas, building
on Plotinus’ notion of an ascent through stages to oneness with the
universe of God. They were able to integrate ideas of courtly love, popular
in at the end of the Middle Ages, into their theories. The pagan gods and
goddesses, especially of love, provided images that could help rather than
hinder insight. Products of the mind, they did not seem to offend the Christian
God. Love offers a resolution to the dilemma common to many poems of the early
17th century that portrays the soul enchained by the body. It does
not appeal to the most serious, and it is played with by the greatest wits,
but it is offers both fertile and sacred ground for the imagination.
The two greatest writers of sonnets in English were Spenser
and Shakespeare. Although both writers wrote sonnet cycles that dealt mainly
with love (which is the tradition they inherit from the Italian), their sonnets
have different rhyme schemes.
The Italian sonnet consists of and octave followed by a sestet;
these are rhymed abbaabba cdcdee. The
Spenserian Sonnet consists of four quatrains followed by a couplet and is
rhymed abab bcbc cdcd ee. Like Shakespeare's sonnet there is no visible division
between the quatrains, but almost without exception these section of the poem
end with a period or a colon. The
Shakespearean sonnet (the form of which was invented by Thomas Surrey) is
abab cdcd efef gg . They seem
sometimes to be divided into quatrains, and other times into octave, sestet.
One interesting aspect of Shakespeare's sonnets is that they are sometimes
single sentences, at other times as many as four. Spenser's are almost always
either three or four sentences. Later writers of sonnets used a variety of
forms, but practiced the form only occasionally (Donne, Milton, Wordsworth
and Keats were among the practitioners). The best sonneteer of the 20th century
was unquestionably Auden.
ca. 1588-92: In London as actor and playwright.
ca. 1592-98 Histories and comedies.
ca. 1594-1597 Sonnets.
ca. 1601-1609 Tragedies and late comedies.
ca. 1610 Retires.
Shakespeare was born into a Middle Class family of some distinction.
He attended school in Stratford, which would have provided a respectable knowledge
of Latin. He married at 18 to Anne Hathaway, fathered a daughter in 1583 and
a son and daughter (twins) in 1585. His name next surfaces in London in 1592
when he is acting and writing for the Lord Chamberlain’s men. His poem
Venus and Adonis was published in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece
a year later. His success as a playwright is almost certainly what enabled
him to purchase “the second largest home” in Stratford in 1598.
Indeed, he seems to be the first writer in England who was able to live comfortably
on income gained from his talent. (The second was Alexander Pope).
Shakespeare would almost certainly be remembered as a significant
poet even if his plays had never been published (as indeed they weren’t
until after his death). The heart of his poetic reputation is the sonnets.
They were published in 1609, although it is clear that some were written before
the turn of the century. There is considerable debate over everything from
the dedication of the book to the subject of the various sonnets to how they
relate to one another. Suffice it to say that a number of them are among the
most familiar poems in the English language.
In 1997, Helen Vendler wrote an exhaustive and occasionally
exhausting book on the sonnets, The Art of the Shakespeare’s Sonnets, analyzing each one individually. Her Analysis of sonnets
1 and 30 can be found at:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/venart/sonnet1_com.html
And http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/venart/sonnet30_com.html
Perhaps the best symbol of the Elizabethan aesthetic is the
“Knot” designed featured in their gardens. Species would be planted
in elaborate symmetrical patterns whose elaborate curves were framed by square
borders. In this there was an inherent tension between unruliness and order,
but one in which the order clearly prevailed. Indeed, as English gardens developed
over time they seem much closer to “nature” than that of the French
and Italians, but their apparent “wildness” is very studied. During
the late 17th century, the aesthetics of Chinese gardening opened
greater possibilities for this type of gardening and led to the splendor of
the “parks” that graced the Great Houses of England and of this
country as well. We can see the fruits of this aesthetic in English poetry
which, unlike French poetry, uses an impressive number of poetic devices to
frame the creative impulses of its poets.
1601; Secret marriage to Ann More.
1615: Sacred orders.
1633: first publication of Songs and sonnets.
Because he was born into an old Roman Catholic family, Donne
was always something of an outsider. He attended both Oxford and Cambridge,
studied assiduously, but could not take an academic degree because of his
Catholicism. He went to Lincoln’s Inn in London, ostensibly to study
law. He seemed unable to maintain his focus, apparently distracted both by
a love of ladies and plays, and the study of religion (divinity). (Donne’s
life, like his poems, has its share of paradox.) He abandoned his Catholicism
in the ‘90’s, but hesitated about becoming an Anglican (Church
of England). He was brilliant, incredibly well read, and dependent upon his
learning, wit and charm for advancement. He seemed to be on the road to success
when his secret marriage to his employer’s (Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord
Keeper) niece (she was 17, twelve years his junior) was discovered. Her father
was not amused by her marrying beneath her station. Donne, imprisoned briefly,
lost his position and any hopes of a comparable one. He had to scramble to
support his growing family. Although the marriage itself seems to have been
a happy one, he had bouts of depression and isolation, and Donne must have
had moments where he resented having so compromised his chances for advancement.
He seemed to have friends in high places, including several leading
poets, politicians, and clergy, but they did not have means or inclination
to find Donne the kind of employment (ambassador level) he desired. Though
never destitute, he was not financially secure enough to focus his energies
and talents in any one area. Ironically, his knowledge of Catholicism and
its tenets, and his ability to critique them, convinced those in a position
to grant him the type of position he wanted that he belonged in the Church
of England. First urged to become an ordained minister by King James in 1607,
he finally overcame his “doubts” after the King made it clear
to him six years later that “His Majesty” had no interest in conferring
any favors unconnected to the Church. In 1615, thirteen years after he was
dismissed from his work with Thomas Edgerton, Donne was ordained.
He became a famous and respected preacher almost
immediately after taking orders and 160 of his sermons survive. They reveal
that his success as a preacher was related to his ability to personalize what
he had to say, sharing his own religious trials and tribulations with a public
that was captivated by his sense of drama as well as his brilliance. His ability
to publicize his weaknesses calls to mind the current propensity for people
in the news to advertise their problems.
In his lifetime Donne published little poetry. His poetry
circulated in manuscript and was well known to his friends. It can be divided
into poetry that is either secular or religious, but in both cases it demonstrates
a kind of restless energy and intellectual rigor that is a sharp break from
much of what was being written at the time. Many of his poems center around
extended metaphors or conceits, which involve contrasts, strain and a certain
amount of mental gymnastics. His work can be intellectually intimidating.
There is a restlessness to his poetry that perhaps mirrors his life. There
is little that is smooth or flowing in the poems most admired today (the Songs
and Sonnets) which are metrically colloquial and difficult to pin down. Some
are more serious than others and taking the less serious ones seriously can
numb the mind. The rewards in reading Donne are best reaped by those who enjoy
discovering the keys to puzzles, who enjoy wordplay, who enjoy a dazzling
mental energy. T.S. Eliot was a great admirer of his style and skill and is
somewhat responsible for the “rehabilitation” of his reputation
in the first half of the 20th century.
Donne’s poems can be rewarding to teach to able high
school students because they are structured and lend themselves to a “new
critical” explication.
For questions on The Sun Rising”, and “The Flea”
click here (.rtf file - editable in any word processor)
or here (.pdf file).
It is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of
religion in the life of the English at this time. Almost all English were
Christians, but the consequences of the Reformation and the odd position of
the Church of England (Anglican Church) in relation to both the reformation
and the Catholic Church make for a multiplicity of Christianities.
Throughout the 17th centuries there were prominent Catholic
families, but the major religious tension in England were between the “High”
and “Low” Anglican church, and the Puritans who were ready to
shed the hierarchical structure of the Church entirely.
Much of the poetry of the time is intensely religious. It
frequently alludes to conflicts within people between the secular and spiritual
world. Donne tends to parody these conflicts (See The Relic, The
Canonization) but other poets state clearly that the path to Heaven is
one of abstinence and denial, and that what is good for the soul is a privation
for the body. The religious division eventually led to the overthrow of King
Charles I and the installation of Cromwell’s Puritan government, a government
in which John Milton played a prominent role.
1637: Lycidis.
1640-1660: The pamphlet wars.
1652: Blindness becomes almost total.
1667: Paradise Lost.
“He was an early riser, at 4 o’clock, yea
after he lost his sight. He had a man read to him. The first thing he head
was the Hebrew Bible and that was at 4:30. Then he contemplated. At 7 his
man came to him again and he read to him and wrote till dinner (ca. 2:00 p.m.);
the writing was as much as the reading. His 2nd daughter, Deborah,
very like her father, could read to him Latin, Italian, and French, and Greek.
After dinner he used to walk 3 to 4 hours at a time (he always had a garden
where he lived); went to bed around 9. Temperate, rarely drank between meals.
Extreme pleasant in his conversation, at dinner, supper etc. but satirical. (John Aubrey)
Born in London, and like so many of the major English
poets (all the ones focused on above) a member of the Middle class, Milton
was the eldest son of a “scrivener” who was clearly better off
than Melville’s Bartleby and seemed to hold a lucrative position somewhat
the equivalent of a lawyer who specialized in recording real estate transactions.
He was also a musician by inclination, a composer who encouraged Milton’s
ambitions as both a reader and writer. Milton’s mother was religious
by inclination and insured that her son would receive a proper education in
this area. She also was the source of his weak eyesight.
From the beginning Milton showed phenomenal talent as a language
student as well as a capacity to irritate some of his peers. At St. Paul’s
School he mastered Latin and Greek and was soon adept at most modern European
tongues as well as Hebrew. He attended Cambridge, earning his B.A. in 1629
and M.A. in 1632, while still reading voraciously and occasionally writing
a poem. It was thought that Milton would take church orders (as his mother
had wished), but dissatisfied with the trend of religious and civil affairs
at the time, Milton retired to his country house in Buckinghamshire and spent
the next five years reading under his own direction. He seemed to be training
himself for greatness. No one ever trained harder. By the end of this period
Milton appears to have read virtually everything extant that had ever been
written in English, Latin, Greek and Italian. He knew the Bible by heart,
most likely in four languages. In 1634 he wrote a mask, Comus, and in 1637 his first great poem, Lycidas, a pastoral elegy for a college classmate who had died
in an accident. Finally in 1638, his father sent Milton abroad to polish his
education. Milton met a variety of famous literary figures on the Continent
before returning home to an England endangered by the disputes between the
King and Parliament. Over time he had become not only a more serious person,
but a Puritan as well.
During the next twelve years he wrote pamphlets against the
bishops' control of the church, in favor of divorce (at least partially because
his marriage to Mary Powell in 1642 lasted only two months before she returned
to her father’s home) and finally in defense of Cromwell and Parliament
for the execution of King Charles (these were in Latin).
Despite his blindness, he continued to produce important
documents with the use of a secretary and served to give some dignity to Cromwell's
government by serving as Latin Secretary. Mary Powell returned to him, bore
three daughters and died in 1652; his second wife died in childbirth in 1658
after two years of marriage. When Charles II was recalled to the throne Milton
was imprisoned and in danger for his life, but friends intervened and he suffered
only a fine and the loss of most of his property. This was hardly the place
he would have expected to find himself twenty-five years earlier when he seemed
to have envisioned an almost totally literary life and a fame not unlike the
fame Spenser before him had wanted. Indeed, he looked to Spenser as his poetic
forbearer, and like Spenser, saw himself as becoming an English Virgil.
In 1663 Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull
and in blindness, poverty, defeat and relative isolation, set about finishing
Paradise Lost, an epic poem totally
out of sympathy with the tenor of the Restoration, but of such magnitude and
genius that it was recognized immediately as a supreme achievement. He also
wrote two other major works before his death, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.
Like Chaucer’s and Spenser’s, much of Milton’s
greatest work comes at the end of a busy life that often took him away from
his poetry. The first poet who can truly be said to have lived off, and in
many ways through his poetry, will be Pope. The tradition of major poets who
also have other occupations was to be continued in America by Wallace Stevens
(insurance executive) and William Carlos Williams (Doctor).
Milton’s poetry represents a kind of syntheses between
the rich and complex heritage of the Renaissance and the moral sternness of
the Reformation. Paradise Lost is a
dynamic poem in which Milton breathes new life into that staple of English
poetry, the iambic pentameter. As
Shakespeare did in most of his plays, Milton chose not to rhyme his pentameters
– indeed, many of his lines run over into the next and help create a
rhythmic flow that propels the poem forward. This is one of the first examples
of blank verse being used in a poem.
No poet has been better served by an Internet site than Milton
at http://www.dartmouth.edu/research/milton/reading_room/
One of the consequences of the commingling of Platonism and
Christianity was a Renaissance version of the medieval belief that all living
beings are interrelated in a hierarchic way (God, Angels, Man, Animals etc.).
This construct was not shaken by the rise of Protestantism and was shared
by most Elizabethan writers. They employed it in a variety of ways. At its
heart is the idea that world harmony is contingent upon all of its parts working
together. A disruption in nature echoes a disruption in a king (thus on the
night of Duncan’s death horses are eating each other; the night before
Caesar’s death sees earthquakes, lions roaming the street). Milton is
the last great writer to fully embrace this construct, which was being chipped
away at the discoveries of science. For instance, the unified picture of the
universe built an iconography on the Ptolemaic astronomy (earth at the center
of the universe) and authors used this iconography long after they accepted
that the science was flawed. Additionally, the civil war and its aftermath
produced innumerable iconoclasts who believed that “universal truth”
was more accessible through prayer, observation, sword, or even divine intervention
than through an archaic construct. Mankind could survive diverse views.
It is difficult to sustain such a coherent system of ideas
if it becomes apparent that it is no longer relevant. As England moves toward
the 18th century, a number of events and people seem to be moving it toward
a different type of world. After Richard Cromwell abdicated, Charles II came
and a period of considerable dissolution followed - dissolution mingled with
relief. Gradually, however, the practices that had alienated many of the people
and led to the revolution of 1649, reestablished themselves (notably in the
Test Act of 1673 which disallowed the holding of position by anyone not in
the Church of England). This eventually led to the Glorious Revolution of
1688 and issued in a period of tolerance that basically encouraged people
to shout at each other as much as they wanted to but not to further infringe
upon each other's lives. The solution to the religious turmoil of the century
was to allow the Reformation to go as far as each group wanted it; the solution
to the political turmoil was to turn the power of the monarch over to Parliament.
Milton’s poetry had few imitators. By the time he published
Paradise Lost, he could only be seen
as a man who had transcended his time. Although Donne had his school of poets
who followed him (The Metaphysicals), they gave way to the Cavalier poets
who were less ambitious and more polished and more restricted in what they
wrote about. In this they were more in concert with the succeeding age. And
indeed the Metaphysicals had to wait until the 20th century and T.S. Eliot
to be rediscovered.
John Locke writes in 1690, “Our business here is not
to know all things but those which concern our conduct.” This is a long
way from Milton’s grandiose plan. Human nature and human experience
come to the forefront of the age’s poetry; erudition does not disappear,
but serves to complement the world of “Nature”, for the great
writers truly expressed Nature. Significantly, one learned about Nature by
being a part of human society and through the sympathetic observation of it.
After 1660 the aristocracy is no longer the unchallenged center of intellectual
influence.
In poetry, sonnets, allegory, blank verse all lose ground
to the rhymed couplet, which began with the genius of John Dryden (1631-1700)
to take on the epigrammatic quality mastered by Alexander Pope.
The
concept of the harmony of the world still lent itself well to some metaphors,
especially those relating to music. Perhaps the most famous expression of
this came long after the chain, a kind of notation of the concert of existence,
had unraveled. Dryden, in the celebrated opening lines of “A Song for
St. Cecilia's Day, 1687, ” wrote:
FROM harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal
frame began:
When nature
underneath a heap
Of jarring
atoms lay,
And could not heave
her head, 5
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
'Arise,
ye more than dead!'
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power
obey.
10
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony
to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man. 15
Indeed the image of the chain
itself appears almost 50 years later in Pope’s Essay on Man when he asks:
Is the great
chain, that draws all to agree,
And drawn supports,
upheld by God or thee?
In Pope’s poem, he has set out to “vindicate
the ways of God to Man,” a task remarkably similar to Milton’s
ambition in Paradise Lost to “justify the ways of God to man.”
But Pope’s God is as different from Milton’s as his couplets are
from Milton’s blank verse. And his man is not trapped in a cycle of
sin and redemption, but in a kind of overweening vanity – a vanity that
can be freed by God’s gift of reason.
Pope’s chain is literal rather
than visionary; in adopting the image into his rational philosophy, it includes
everything from the eye of a fly to an imaginary being bridging the gap between
“the blessed firmament and man.” It has lost its mystifying power.
The new poet is clearly more comfortable with a new image: a watch.
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.
In human works, though labour'd on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God's, one single can its end produce;
Yet serves to second too some other use.
So man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
Science certainly altered the world as it was seen by those
who had accepted the precepts of the old order, but its scientists were not
revolutionary by nature and believed in a universe designed by God. Their
role was to grasp the nature and wonder of this universe and to extol the
brilliance of its creator. No one believed this more than Newton, the greatest
of the scientists and a theologian as well. He saw a universe of complex but
understandable order, as harmonious as St. Cecilia’s. The chain had
been replace by the calculus and the laws of motion.
This supplied the poet with a new but equally comforting
bass note. The notion of original sin is replaced by the idea of the perfectibility
of man. Pope displays intolerance for those who waste their lives in folly
when they could be improve their lot by perceiving and adhering to the laws
of nature. The world is as clearly moral as it ever was. Man’s job is
to accept his position in it. He is as perfect as he need be, no more, no
less. He should not be puzzled “elemental strife” for Passions
are the elements of life.” There is a sublime balance in Nature that
is reflected in man, and if man accepts this and his position within it, and
does not allow his reach to exceed his grasp, he will discover that “Whatever
is, is right.”
All this is more clearly a part of Nature than of scripture,
but it is hardly atheism. It does celebrate the concept of order overriding
disorder, and after the tumult of the 17th century, the relatively
peaceful 18th century (after Marlborough’s defeat of the
French) must have been welcome. England’s century of schism was over.
The monarchy had acknowledged the primacy of Parliament. The Whigs and the
Tories were effective statesmen no matter their squabbles. As Trevelyan notes:
Parliament had ceased to be the opposition and had become
the government. England’s civil troubles had for a hundred years handicapped
her in the race between nations, but now they were over and the effect of
them left her supple and strong.
No wonder Pope could say, despite his propensity for vigorous
argument and endless raillery, “Whatever is, is right.”
1711: Essay on Criticism.
1712: First version of Rape of the Lock.
1713-1726: Translating Homer; editing Shakespeare.
1726: The Dunciad (satire).
1733-34: The essay on Man (ethical and philosophical).
Pope was from his birth of a
constitution tender and delicate; but is said to have shewn remarkable gentleness
and sweetness of disposition. The weakness of his body continued through his
life, but the mildness of his mind perhaps ended with his childhood. (Samuel Johnson)
Pope is the first writer to live solely off his writing (Shakespeare
was also an actor and an owner of the company). This was forced upon him by
his Roman Catholicism and probably in the long run was for the good. The major
source of his income was his translations of Homer. These were and still are
remarkable accomplishments, especially The Iliad translation.
Pope seems always to have been ill. He was stunted and malformed
as a result of tuberculosis of the spine. His father retired the year Pope
was born and lived in the country, which contributed to Pope’s lifelong
love of gardening and natural beauty.
In his twenties Pope published a series of books, eventually
profiting enough from The Iliad to purchase Twickenham, a villa on
the Thames, in 1718. He moved here with his mother and proceeded to transform
it into a showpiece on a small scale, famed for its gardens and the grotto
where Pope like to contemplate. In it and in Pope’s gardens, we see
on a small scale the mastery so common in English
landscaping of nature (and, with the incorporation of ruins, history)
through art.
At the entrance of the Grotto next the garden are various
sorts of stones thrown promiscuously together in imitation of an old ruin,
some full of holes, others like honey combs which come from Ralph Allen’s
at Widcomb near Bath. Several fine fossils and snake stones with petrified
wood and moss in various shapes from the petrified spring from Nasborogh in
Yorkshire. Fine verd antique from Egypt with several sorts of Italian quarry
marble of diverse colors. Amethysts, several clumps of different forms, with
some fine pieces of white spar from her grace the Duchess of Cleveland. Some
fine pieces of German spar intermixed with yellow mundic, some moss, and some
English pebbles, In the center is a fine spring. (John Serle, Pope's gardener)
Sensitive, irritable, precociously talented, Pope was hindered
by his afflictions, but never let them stand completely in the way of a life
in the world. He had deep friendships, some of the nature of which are captured
in his epistles. Pope always held a mirror up to the frivolities of his time.
Somewhat like Voltaire at the end of the century, he did seem to appreciate
the importance of those frivolities to his art.
His take on those frivolities is best exemplified by “The
Rape of the Lock” which is a mock epic complete with demigods (Rosicrucians
which Pope imported for the second version) warring over the cutting of a
lock of hair. It is funny, biting, very human and dazzling in its brilliance.
It is Paradise Lost turned upside down
and placed on the head of a pin. Pope went on to write merciless satires of
his contemporaries (The Dunciad) and a major philosophical poem, An Essay on Man, which embraces Deism and champions the values of traditional
civilization. (He thought the George’s and the Whigs, the rise of money
and political corruption, were proof of a time of moral and cultural decay).
Next to Shakespeare, Pope is the most quoted of all English poets, probably
because of the epigrammatic nature of his couplets.
Pope’s couplets are remarkable because of his ability
to vary them metrically. Within the strictures of the couplet, he can elicit
any response he desires and this prevents even his long poems from becoming
monotonous. (Take a look at the introduction of the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot). Although
he modeled much of his poems on the “Ancients” (especially Horace)
he was never at a loss for originality. No other poet of the century can match
Pope in the range of his materials, the diversity of his styles, and his mastery
of the craft.
An excellent essay on the heroic couple by J. Paul Hunter,
the editor of The Norton Introduction to Poetry and The Norton Introduction to Literature, can be found at http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/ideasv41/hunter4.htm
There is
a superb sight on The Rape of the Lock:
http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~sconstan/
The University of Toronto poetry site has notes to accompany
the poems and these are most helpful in that many of Pope’s references
are specific to his situation.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/pope.html
Pope is the last significant poet in English who wrote poems
in the “Pastoral” tradition. This tradition dates back to Virgil’s
Ecologues. It celebrates a country
life that undoubtedly never really existed. The pastoral tradition idealizes
shepherds and the simple life of the countryside. The first significant English
pastoral is Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender. Like Milton in his
elegy Lycidis, Spenser felt
that it was important that his early poetry follow in the tradition of Virgil’s
early poetry. The tradition in many ways reflects the aristocratic patronage
of poetry, for it is the aristocrat’s (like Marie Antoinette) who create
a country life that is essentially pictorial and divorced from the idea that
this life can be in any way trying. (For a picture of this attitude, see Shakespeare’s
As You Like It., the pastoral paintings of 18th century French masters
like Boucher and Fragonard). This tradition should not be confused with what
Wordsworth is doing in The Prelude. Wordsworth “country” is something he has experienced and
returned to. There is no scent of a nature clipped into place and decorated
with perfumed shepherdesses. Although Frost has been called an American Pastoral
poet, this is misleading and does Frost a disservice. To avoid muddle-headedness,
it is best to use the word “pastoral” only when referring to poetry
wedded to the earlier tradition.
The Age of Enlightenment (18th Century) gave way to the Age
of Romanticism (or Romanticisms, as more than twenty have been identified).
There are innumerable reasons for this. The gradual erosion of a unified body
of thought initiated even before The Enlightenment continued. Although alternatives
were offered, and indeed the concept of enlightenment and the glorification
of man’s ability to reason was a mainstay of 18th century thought, none
provided a coherent view of the world that was universally accepted.
The believers in The Enlightenment in England were profoundly disturbed
by the bloody aftermath of the French Revolution; the Revolution itself was
something many supported. In the Prelude Wordsworth expresses his disillusion.
The oppressed had
Become oppressors in their turn,
Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defence
For one of conquest, losing sight of all
Which they had struggled for.
It had
become implausible to think that the brilliance of Newton and other great
minds that had deciphered the nature of the universe could shed meaningful
light on a mankind that was capable of such barbarism. Thinkers like Coleridge
adopted some of the tenets of the new German philosophers, rejecting the notion
that a world of atoms had been set into motion by a deity who presided over
a static universe of scientific laws.
In a sense this left everyone to fend for himself: to adhere
to a set of outmoded beliefs, or to move onto a new one. Each poet had to
create a world, which no one else would take for granted. Most of the Romantic
Poets we remember were in a profound sense philosophical poets, particularly
interested in epistemology (how do we come to known something; what is the
relationship between the outside world and the imagination, etc.). They looked
at the world, especially the natural world, or within themselves, searching
for answers to questions about life and art that earlier writers simply took
for granted. The result was a multiplicity of forms and types of poetry that
continues to this day. Symbols no longer can be taken for granted (a rose
is the symbol of the Virgin); symbols now take on meaning from the work that
surrounds them. There is a desire to see the world as it is (a rose is a rose
is a rose) as well as a position of the poets as hero in the world. Ironically,
the poet whose life seemed (at least on the surface) most heroic, Lord Byron,
and whose name (transformed into the adjective “Byronic”) was
used to describe innumerable wild-eyed young men who were eager to rise above
the ordinary, wrote poems that were relatively traditional in form and had
more in common with Pope than with the verse of his peers. Keats saw both
sides of Byron. He wrote a youthful poem in praise of him (“How sweetly
sad thy melody.”). Then later, just before his death at 26, Keats commented
that “Byron’s poetry is based on a paltry originality, that of
being new by making solemn things gay & gay things solemn.”
In many ways we are still living in the “Age”
begun by the Romantics. We have distanced them with endless layers of perspective,
we have searched for meaning in the absence of meaning, but we still, like
Wallace Stevens in the twentieth century, listen to the singer by the sea
whose song we do not grasp but whose voice makes “the sky acutest at its vanishing” and
we still, like Wordsworth, hear the solitary reaper sing a no less mysterious
strain “as if her song could have no ending.” For we have not
lost Stevens’ “rage for order,” with Wordsworth, we too
would,
Break.
. . the silence of the seas
Among
the farthest Hebrides.
1791-92: In France during the early period of the Revolution.
1797: With his sister at Alfoxden near Coleridge.
1799: William and Dorothy settle in the Lake District.
1800: Second edition of the Lyrical Ballads with famous preface.
1807: Poems in Two Volumes; end of the great decade.
I held unconscious intercourse with beauty
Old as creation,
drinking in a pure
Organic pleasure
from the silver wreaths
Of curling
mist, or from the level plain
Of waters coloured
by impending clouds.
(The Prelude, Book 1)
Wordsworth’s mother died when he was only eight; his
father, a successful lawyer with something of a cutthroat reputation, found
his large family more than he could handle at home. He sent Wordsworth to
Hawkshead School in a thinly settled region where he was later joined by his
three brothers. They boarded in a cottage whose owner, Ann Tyson, seems to
have filled the role of a nurturing parent. She also encouraged him to explore
the Lake District countryside a great deal. His love of the natural world
stems from these days and many of his experiences are the substance of first
two books of his autobiographical poem The Prelude.
The school itself was an excellent one and gave Wordsworth a strong background
in Classics, mathematics, and science. Its headmaster, William Taylor, encouraged
Wordsworth’s interest in writing poetry. Wordsworth loved his life at
Hawkshead so much that he dreaded vacations.
Wordsworth’s
father, a successful lawyer, died when Wordsworth was 13. Wordsworth continued
his schooling until he went to Cambridge when he was at 17. Here he was a
disengaged and uninspired student. Before his last term, he embarked on a
walking tour of Europe with a friend, an experience he treasured so much he
was to recreate it thirty years later. After graduating from Cambridge, he
went to France ostensibly to master the language in order to become a tutor.
Here he embraced the cause of the recent French Revolution while falling in
love with Annette Vallon, a royalist and a Catholic. Whether he intended to
marry her is unknown, but financially strapped, he returned to England about
the time his daughter Caroline was born in December, 1792. War broke out between
England and France and Wordsworth could not return. Like many at the time
he had a sense of divided loyalty because, unlike Annette, he supported the
concept of the French Revolution. For the next couple of years he appears
to have been in varying degrees of despair over the chaos of his personal
life.
The uncles who had handled his affairs seemed unwilling to
support him in any way and his inheritance from his father’s estate
would be tied up until 1802. The course of the revolution also discouraged
him. His life changed dramatically when he inherited enough money from a friend
who had died of tuberculosis to buy a small cottage in the Lake Country, where
he reestablished what would prove to be a life-long bond with his sister,
Dorothy, who had not been at Hawkshead. In The
Prelude (book11) he credits her for rescuing him from his lassitude:
My beloved
sister. . .
Maintained for me a saving intercourse
With my true self; for though bedimmed and changed
Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed
Than as a clouded and a waning moon;
She
whispered still that brightness would return.
She in the midst of all preserved me still
A Poet, made me seek beneath that name,
And that alone, my office
upon earth.
At this time
Wordsworth also became a friend of another poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Recovered, he entered at the age of 27 a decade of prolific and remarkable
poetry writing. He published along with Coleridge The Lyrical Ballads
of 1798. The small volume contained what were to become some of the most memorable
poems in English, and some of the most original in any language. At the heart
of his work was Wordsworth’s idea that great poetry stems from “emotion
recollected in tranquility.” He articulated his theory of poetry in
the Preface of the second edition of The Lyrical Ballads.
From 1799 on Wordsworth spent the rest of his life in the
Lake District. He gained his father’s full inheritance in 1802 and married
a girl whom he had known since Hawkshead. His partnership with Coleridge deteriorated
over time, as did his creative energies, although he edited The Prelude
for the rest of his life.
It is safe to say that if The Lyrical Ballads did not change the course of English poetry, it certainly
helped point it in a new direction. All poetry in English since The
Lyrical Ballads owes it a debt. It is
also safe to say The Prelude,
though uneven and indigestible, has stretches of great poetry everyone should
know.
The original version of The Lyrical Ballads published in facimile with text can be found at http://www.dal.ca/~etc/lballads/welcome.html
A nice excerpt from Book One of The Prelude with notes can be found at http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/wordswor10.html#385
A full version of two versions of The Prelude can be found an The Prelude home page http://216.156.253.178/DJEDS/WORDSWORTH/Testframes.html
However, these are huge files in not easily accessed formats.
1817: Poems, Keats’ first
book.
1818: Endymion.
1819: The year in which he writes almost all of his great poems.
GEOFFREY
CHAUCER (ca. 1343-1400)
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