This one was a doozie. Let's see.
Canto 7 - Guyon goes with Mammon into the underworld, where he's tempted by three temptations (avarice, ambition, and food/drink/rest). He resists the first two, but succumbs to the third, because it's been three days since he's eaten or slept. Poor guy.
Canto 8 - Palmer comes across Guyon's body, with an angel next to it. Pyrochles and Cymochles (with Archimago) find the body and start stripping it of arms. Arthur arrives to defend the body. Pyrochles takes Guyon's sevenfold shield (with the Faerie queen on the front) and Arthur's sword (from Archimago) called Morddure. They fight in a lengthy battle. Arthur's sword won't strike him, so P and A end up wrestling, but A wins against both. Tons of blood. Guyon awakens.
Canto 9 - Arthur asks about the Faerie Queen on Guyon's shield. They ride up and find the Castle of Temperance, held by a damsel, Alma. She represents the body, in bodily balance, complete with allegories for speaking, digesting, expelling, sensation, and thought. The castle is besieged by thousand in a rabble that move about like shades without substance. At the end, after seeing Phantasie, Judgment, and Memory, Guyon learns from a history of Britain and a history of fairy.
Canto 10 - The history of Britain and the history of fairy. It goes all the way back to the days of giants before Brutus, with mythical accounts of pre-Roman kings and placenames (like Lear). Eventually reaches the Roman conquest and Cymbeline, who ruled at the time of Christ. Then more time, Joseph of Arimathia and the Grail, and gradually the Roman recession, Vortigern/Hengist/Horsus, and finally Uther's lineage. Then it goes on to describe the creation of Elves (from Prometheus in the garden of Adonis) and Faeries, with a much shorter lineage going to Oberon and the Faerie Queen.
Canto 11 - Guyon leaves the castle with the Palmer. Arthur rides out to defend the castle. He fights the rabble's captain Maleger, who has two hags Impotence and Impatience waiting on him. He's difficult to catch, mounted on a tiger, and he fires deadly arrows (in the manner of Indians (21)). Arthur deflects the arrows, and tries to take the hags down as they gather the deflected arrows, but is nearly overcome. He gets up just in time to surprise Maleger, who very reluctantly fights. When Maleger is hewn in the chest, he doesn't bleed. Other wounds don't bleed. Arthur tries crushing Maleger to the ground, but he revives. Realizing that Maleger is connected to his mother Earth, he picks up Maleger and tosses him into the water.
Canto 12 - Guyon and the Palmer, with a boatman, journey by sea toward the Bower of Bliss. They see a number of pitfalls, including a Gulf of Greediness, the Rock of Vile Reproach, Wandering Islands, the Whirlpool of Decay, many monsters, mermaids (womanish forgeries), birds of misfortune, and the like. Upon making it to the bower, they ward off a number of animals that approach. Genius keeps an ivory gate with a soft wall (contrast with the hard and high wall of Temperance, its counter-body). He, representing lust, is easily defied. Excess is similarly dealt with, her gold cup dashed to bits. Painted flowers and the like follow, a strange and yet beautiful combination of Nature and Art. Two naked damsels writhe and ogle each other, tempting both themselves and Guyon, but the Palmer has none of it. Music pours forth from Acrasia's bower, where she and a lover (Verdant) recline. Verdant's honor has been long forgotten, his shield empty of engraving. They're seized and bound. They find out that the animals are all deformed into monsters by their lust for Acrasia (and her spells). It ends on a beratement of Grill, the pig, who must remain a pig.
Weird stuff - the body that doesn't bleed? When bleeding has been so effusive elsewhere?
Religious overtones here - Guyon mimicking the three temptations of Christ in his own journey into the underworld, and how he ends up failing on the last one.
Giants and monsters are especially predominant here, always the morally deformed other of human virtue. Yet, sometimes those that might be expected to be deformed (Acrasia's sons P and C) turn out to be fine, and just angry knights. Is this a difference of will here, where one or the other could yet choose to be otherwise, but an animal or monster has been changed essentially and can no longer choose?
Lots of language around happiness, and where one finds ultimate rest, especially in Canto 7. Worldly bliss as opposed to "another happiness." If this isn't Boethian, then I'm crazy.
Model of the mind and body (which aren't separated) as evoked in the allegory in Canto 9. Comparison of this body with the similar body in Canto 12. What gets emphasized? Exchanges of the body with the outside world, and the threefold Averroesean model of the mind, which incorporates the Imaginative capacity.
Nature and forgery, especially in the bower of bliss. Not all artifice is bad, as it lists among the feigned "leasings, tales, and lies" (IX.51.9). In that, it seems to take a similar tack that Sidney's Defense of Poetry later does, having to balance the idea that fiction is constructed with the idea that such fictions can still be instructive and potentially good.
And of course amongst all these religious allegories and philosophical ideas you have the entrappings of romance. Arthur has his sword and his horse named (MORDDURE AND SPUMADOR). You have the lesbians in the bower of bliss, or at least seeming lesbians, since there seems to be a confusion where desirability proliferates unbridled outside of heterosexual bounds. Guyon certainly likes it. >_>
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Monday, March 21, 2011
Friday, June 4, 2010
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Biography:
Henry, born in 1517, and died in 1547. The ignoble distinction of being the last person executed by Henry VIII's order, convicted of treason after he opposed the Seymours (remember Jane Seymour?) when power swung to them after Catherine Howard was executed for adultery. He was very high born, the eldest son of the duke of Norfolk, a conservative Catholic faction. He served in the French wars as "Lietenant General of the King on Sea and Land." In 1541 he helped free Thomas Wyatt from the Tower of London.
He was well-loved in the sixteenth century, especially after Tottel's miscellany in 1557 (Songs and Sonnets written by the Right Honorable Lord Henry Howard Late Earl of Surrey and Other). He's the first author known to use the English sonnet form, and the first English poet to publish in blank verse (for the Aeneid partial translation).
Works
"The soote season"
Surrey refers to spring in his translation of Rima 310 by Petrarch. It is beautiful. Summer has come, and various animals are individually renewed and in their accustomed action. Winter is worn away, but "Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs." It's a wonderful juxtaposition.
"Love, that doth reign and live within my thought"
Petrarch's Rima 140, also translated by Wyatt. Surrey differs in that Love's holder conflicts more with it. He resists falling fully into this love, while nonetheless doing so.
"Alas! so all things now do hold their peace"
Translation of Rima 164. Unconventional rhyme here - ababababababcc. It's calm outside - depicting the night. No animals, calm sea. Then the shift in line 6 suddenly, perhaps allowed by the unconventional rhyme in the sonnet. "So am not I." Last poem's "doubtful hope" is this one's "doubtful ease." This is a speaker that is shaken inwardly.
"Th'Assyrians' king, in peace with foul desire"
An English sonnet. Depicts the Assyrian king growing soft by lust. Depiction of it as "womanish delight." Distortion of his body depicted in the way it no longer takes to swords and armor. ("The dint of swords from kisses seemed strange, / And harder than his lady's side, his targe.") Interesting at the end, where he is depicted as depleted, killing himself is done to show some "manful deed," though the tone set by "some" indicates some amount of scorn or derision, the best of terrible options after a depleted life.
"So cruel prison how could betide"
Quatrains, abab, until the concluding couplet. He is in Windsor, where he spent in childhood, and the poem juxtaposes the nostalgia for his youthful games (like joust?) and the company of friends and ladies. Upon remembering "The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just," he laments.
"Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest"
Same format as the last. The title alone gets the hesitating contradiction - Wyatt lived, but now he has died. In praise of Wyatt, dividing him into body parts - head, visage, hand, tongue, eye, heart, and then the "valiant corpse," the body as a whole. Each part serves to deliver some measure of virtue. The body then turns to the heavens after the famous lines about Nature losing the mold. Finally, it turns back to the speaker, lamenting the loss "for our guilt."
"O happy dames, that may embrace"
A woman (perhaps Surrey's wife) laments that she cannot embrace her husband like the other ladies can embrace "the fruit of your delight." No gender is attributed to the dames' loves, but the wife looks to her love on the ocean, having sailed away. This also transforms her, the lover, into the mariner - "Lo, what a mariner love hat made me!" (28). Her questions indicate her struggle to understand why he leaves. Again, "doubtful hope" recurs in line 38, a state for her worry even when the seas are calm.
"Martial, the things for to attain"
A translation of an epigram (10.47). It, like the last poem, has some preoccupation with happiness. But now it prescribes the state of happiness, which tends to avoid strife by embracing simplicity.
Henry, born in 1517, and died in 1547. The ignoble distinction of being the last person executed by Henry VIII's order, convicted of treason after he opposed the Seymours (remember Jane Seymour?) when power swung to them after Catherine Howard was executed for adultery. He was very high born, the eldest son of the duke of Norfolk, a conservative Catholic faction. He served in the French wars as "Lietenant General of the King on Sea and Land." In 1541 he helped free Thomas Wyatt from the Tower of London.
He was well-loved in the sixteenth century, especially after Tottel's miscellany in 1557 (Songs and Sonnets written by the Right Honorable Lord Henry Howard Late Earl of Surrey and Other). He's the first author known to use the English sonnet form, and the first English poet to publish in blank verse (for the Aeneid partial translation).
Works
"The soote season"
Surrey refers to spring in his translation of Rima 310 by Petrarch. It is beautiful. Summer has come, and various animals are individually renewed and in their accustomed action. Winter is worn away, but "Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs." It's a wonderful juxtaposition.
"Love, that doth reign and live within my thought"
Petrarch's Rima 140, also translated by Wyatt. Surrey differs in that Love's holder conflicts more with it. He resists falling fully into this love, while nonetheless doing so.
"Alas! so all things now do hold their peace"
Translation of Rima 164. Unconventional rhyme here - ababababababcc. It's calm outside - depicting the night. No animals, calm sea. Then the shift in line 6 suddenly, perhaps allowed by the unconventional rhyme in the sonnet. "So am not I." Last poem's "doubtful hope" is this one's "doubtful ease." This is a speaker that is shaken inwardly.
"Th'Assyrians' king, in peace with foul desire"
An English sonnet. Depicts the Assyrian king growing soft by lust. Depiction of it as "womanish delight." Distortion of his body depicted in the way it no longer takes to swords and armor. ("The dint of swords from kisses seemed strange, / And harder than his lady's side, his targe.") Interesting at the end, where he is depicted as depleted, killing himself is done to show some "manful deed," though the tone set by "some" indicates some amount of scorn or derision, the best of terrible options after a depleted life.
"So cruel prison how could betide"
Quatrains, abab, until the concluding couplet. He is in Windsor, where he spent in childhood, and the poem juxtaposes the nostalgia for his youthful games (like joust?) and the company of friends and ladies. Upon remembering "The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just," he laments.
"Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest"
Same format as the last. The title alone gets the hesitating contradiction - Wyatt lived, but now he has died. In praise of Wyatt, dividing him into body parts - head, visage, hand, tongue, eye, heart, and then the "valiant corpse," the body as a whole. Each part serves to deliver some measure of virtue. The body then turns to the heavens after the famous lines about Nature losing the mold. Finally, it turns back to the speaker, lamenting the loss "for our guilt."
"O happy dames, that may embrace"
A woman (perhaps Surrey's wife) laments that she cannot embrace her husband like the other ladies can embrace "the fruit of your delight." No gender is attributed to the dames' loves, but the wife looks to her love on the ocean, having sailed away. This also transforms her, the lover, into the mariner - "Lo, what a mariner love hat made me!" (28). Her questions indicate her struggle to understand why he leaves. Again, "doubtful hope" recurs in line 38, a state for her worry even when the seas are calm.
"Martial, the things for to attain"
A translation of an epigram (10.47). It, like the last poem, has some preoccupation with happiness. But now it prescribes the state of happiness, which tends to avoid strife by embracing simplicity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
