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British Literature and Culture, Lecture 1CheyneWilliam Shakespeare (1564–1616)Life and timesBorn (Stratford-upon-Avon) and lived mainly in Elizabeth I’s (1533–1603) reign. She was succeeded by James I (James IV of Scotland). England’s national poet. Father: alderman and glover. Classical (Latin) education (free) at King’s New School, Stratford. At 18, married Anne Hathaway (26). Their first child, Susanna, was born six months later. He died aged 52. Curiously, he bequeathed Anne his ‘second best bed’. Wrote around 38 plays (including Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear), two long poems (Venus and Adonis, and The Rape of Lucrece, and possibly a third, A Lover’s Complaint), and 154 sonnets (published 1609). Master of iambic pentameter, as he matured his style became more flexible within the iambic pentameter structure.His plays were highly successful, and performed at The Globe Theatre, London. Not only did he write and direct, he also acted.SONNET 116Let me not to the marriage of true minds(1)Admit impediments. Love is not love(2)Which alters when it alteration finds,(3)Or bends with the remover to remove:(4)O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,?(5)That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;(6)It is the star to every wandering bark,(7)Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.(8)Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks?(9)Within his bending sickle's compass come;?(10)Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,?(11)But bears it out even to the edge of doom.(12)???If this be error and upon me proved,(13)???I never writ, nor no man ever loved.?(14)Vocabulary and special phrasesGive definitions or paraphrases of the following:marriage of true mindsadmitimpedimentsaltersalterationever-fixedtempestsbarkwandering barkbark,/ Whose worth's unknownbark,/ Whose . . . height be takensicklecompasssickle's compassbears it outdoomTerms in prosodyFeet: Iambs, Trochees, Spondees, Dactyls, and Anapests Stress: Classical (Greek and Latin) verse varied the rhythm with short and long syllables. This can occur in English verse too, but varying the stress (accent) is more usual. Sometimes the natural stress of a word overrides the underlying rhythm, (e.g. Sonnet 116 l. 1 begins with an anapest, rather than the underlying iamb). Conversely, the underlying pattern sometimes changes stress pattern of the word or phrase. Both of these techniques can give satisfying or jarring effects, depending on context.Many English words and phrases fall naturally into iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls, or anapests. Such words make it easy to spot the metrical pattern in a poem. Here are some examples: Iamb or Iambus (iambic) = υ / (Gk. assail, throw)behold, amuse, arise, awake, return, that looks, within, depict, destroy, inject, inscribe, insist, employ, to beTrochee (trochaic) = / υ (Gk. trechein: to run)happy, hammer, double, injure, roses, certain, clever, dental, dinner, shatter, chosen, planet, chorus, widow, bladder, cuddle, doctor, LondonSpondee (spondaic) = / / (Gk. solemn libation)football, Mayday, heartbreak, shortcake, spondee, dumbbell, childhood, race-track, bathrobe, black hole, breakdown, love-songPyrrhus or dibrach (pyrrhic) = υ υIn practice, poetic lines are not composed solely from pyrrhic feet, which would be too monotonous. However, they can be used in alternation, and Tennyson sometimes alternated pyrrhics with spondees, as in this example from In Memoriam (1850): υ υ / / υ υ / /When the?blood creeps?and the?nerves prickHere is another example, this one from Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Garden’ (1681):υ υ / / υ υ / /To a?green thought?in a?green shadeDactyl (dactylic) = / υ υ (Gk. finger – three divisions)I would like, carefully, changeable, merrily, mannequin, tenderly, prominent, bitterly, notable, horrible, scorpionAnapest (anapestic): = υ υ / (Gk. aná: back; paíein: to strike = reversed, because a reversed dactyl)‘Let me not’, understand, interrupt, comprehend, anapest, contradict, ‘In the blink of an eye’.British Literature and Culture, Lecture 2CheyneWilliam Shakespeare (1564–1616)SONNET 116Let me not to the marriage of true minds(1)Admit impediments. Love is not love(2)Which alters when it alteration finds,(3)Or bends with the remover to remove:(4)O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,?(5)That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;(6)It is the star to every wandering bark,(7)Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.(8)Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks?(9)Within his bending sickle's compass come;?(10)Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,?(11)But bears it out even to the edge of doom.(12)???If this be error and upon me proved,(13)???I never writ, nor no man ever loved.?(14)FormRhythm / Meter:Underlying structure/ framework: iambic pentameterGk. iamb: iaptein, to attack, to throw; foot = de DUM (e.g. good BYE)Gk. Pentameter: five measuresTherefore: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUMHowever: WS uses the rhythmic form as an underlying framework, and then plays within it. Not robotic/ slavish.L. 1 does not work as iambs. Instead, he creates an irregular line beginning with two anapests (da da DUM da da DUM):let me NOT to the MARR iage of TRUE MINDS?By ll. 3–4, the meter becomes more regular:which AL ters WHEN it AL ter A tion FINDS?or BENDS with THE rem OV er TO rem OVE?<Stress variation is usually notated by υ / υ / when doing scansion by hand>Like musical performance, different stresses have different degrees of emphasis. S. T. Coleridge: ‘graduated emphasis’ (Notebooks 4, 4844). Thus in l. 4, BENDS will always have greater emphasis than THE. Words in poetry can keep their natural rhythm, or the poet can deviate from it. Thus ‘impediments’ in l. 2 retains its natural fluidity. We say it naturally, more rapidly than the iambic structure would dictate, but this quickness is immediately balanced by the full stop that gives a caesura (break/ rest) to the line and a gravitas to ‘Love is not love’. Ezra Pound (1885–1972): As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome. (Pound ‘A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste’, Poetry, I, 6, March 1913).Note also the enjambment from l. 1 to l. 2 that actually prevents the word ‘impediments’ from being next to ‘the marriage of true minds’. Even the structure of the poem refuses to ‘Admit impediments’!The sonnet formThis is a highly stylised way of presenting and developing an ‘argument’ in verse form. The proposition plus the resolution is called the argument.Petrarchan sonnetOriginally from C13th Italy; troubadours’ chivalrous love songs. Dante wrote sonnets, as did Michelangelo. Petrarch’s were so famous that we call C13th sonnets Petrarchan sonnets. Form: 14 lines = 1. octave (two quatrains): proposition (problem/question); 2. Sestet (two tercets): resolution. The ninth line is usually a volta, a turnaround, indicating the move from proposition to resolution. The rhyme scheme was usually abba, abba, cde, cde.Shakespearean sonnetSir Thomas Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan sonnets into English poetry in the early C16th. These are called Shakespearean sonnets not because he was first, but because he is the most famous. While many English sonnets took the Petrarchan form (including ones by later poets such as John Milton, Thomas Gray, William Wordsworth, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning). The distinctly English form has some slight differences: an octave (two quatrains), followed by a sestet (another quatrain plus a rhyming couplet); rhyme scheme = abab, cdcd, efef + gg. Like the Petrarchan, the Shakespearean sonnet also often has a volta at the ninth line. There is still the proposition and resolution structure, although this is looser, and the resolution is further divided so that the final couplet can give a succinct concluding statement.Poets often, indeed usually, use a particular poetic form (e.g. the sonnet) as a metrical and composition frame, like a trellis or floral cage within which their emotions and ideas can grow and take shape. That is to say, the form is never a stricture in good poetry, but neither is it merely an aid, because the relationship between the underlying, and often deviated-from, formal structure and the growth, development, and expression of the ideas and feelings is something far too intricate and interpenetrating (truly synthetic) to hold the two sides apart in any simple dichotomy. VoltaThe volta in Sonnet 116 turns from describing love as the Pole Star (Venus = the goddess of love), to a personification of love (‘not Time’s fool’)British Literature and Culture, Lecture 3CheyneWilliam Shakespeare (1564–1616)SONNET 116Discussion of the meaningAffirmation and NegationThe poem appears to be affirming true love, yet it does this with several negative statements. Much of the poem is spent declaring what love is not. The negative constructions, words, and phrases are: Let me not; impediments; Love is not love; Which alters; alteration; bends with (opposite of keeping straight); O no; never shaken; worth’s unknown; not Time’s fool; bending sickle’s compass (a sickle cuts, removes); alters not; edge of doom; error; never writ, no man ever loved.Some critics argue that Shakespeare is being ironic or cynical about the possibility of true love, because he uses so many negations in the poem. However, it is more likely that he is using negation for emphatic effect. A negative statement can be used to give additional force and clarity to a positive one, thus one can say ‘I will always love you; I will never leave you’.Moreover, straightforward positive assertions are also made about love. Though they are fewer than the negative statements, they are very idealistic: it is an ever-fixed mark; It is the star; bears it outAbsolutes and relativesNote also that all of his statements, positive and negative, are in the form of absolutes. There are no conditions here to weaken his bold statements. Regarding relativity, he even states that ‘Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds’. This is to deny relative love any real existence, and to affirm that the only true love is absolute. Notice also that lines 2, 3, and 4 contain similar formulas of repetition: Love is not love; alters when alteration finds; remover to remove. Here he is negating negations; and to negate a negative is to affirm a positive.Apophatic approachThere is a form of philosophical clarification, used for example by Socrates and Plato, that clarifies something by saying what that thing is not. There is also a long tradition of apophatic or negative theology (e.g. Pseudo-Dionysius; St Thomas Aquinas) that asserts that God is unknowable, but we can progress with knowledge of what God is not.Reductio ad absurdumThe rhyming couplet at the end is a reductio ad absurdum. That is, it makes an assertion in paradoxical form that what he has said about love must be true, otherwise he ‘never writ’: yet obviously he did write these lines!The Elizabethan marriage ceremonyIn Shakespeare’s time, during the Church of England marriage ceremony, the priest asked the congregation if anybody knew of any impediments to the bride and groom marrying. The 1552 Book of Common Prayer states that the bride and groom should be asked: ‘if either of you doe knowe any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joyned together in Matrimonie, that ye confesse it.’ The Book also says:?At whiche daye of mariage it any man doe allege and declare any impediment why thei may not be coupled together in Matrimony by god's law or the lawes of this Realme, and wyl be bounde, and sufficient suerties with him, to the parties, or elles put in a caucion to the full value of such charges as the persons to be maried doeth susteine to prove his allegacion: then the Solemnizacion must be deferred, unto such tyme as the trueth be tryed.It seems therefore that Shakespeare is reflecting on this custom in the sacred marriage ceremony. While some impediments can be announced at marriage ceremonies (e.g. one of the couple is already married), Shakespeare is declaring that he will not admit impediments ‘to the marriage of true minds’. The marriage of true mindsWhat does he mean by ‘the marriage of true minds’? He might mean Platonic love. Or he could mean romantic, sexual love. Or both. He is certainly declaring that true love is absolute and constant, in that it is unchanging and eternally patient (‘bears it out even to the edge of doom’). Because he says ‘minds’, and not ‘hearts’ or ‘bodies’, he seems to be proclaiming the intellectual (and perhaps spiritual) nature of true love. This relates to the traditional ideal of a ‘soul mate’, and his bold affirmation of that romantic notion helps to explain the great appeal of the sonnet and its widespread popularity.It is an ever-fixed markThe second quatrain uses the metaphor of the Pole Star, which does not rotate over the sky (it is ‘an ever-fixed mark’), whereas the other stars rotate around it. Also, it is the first star to rise, and the last to set, symbolizing love’s constancy. Further, as a fixed eye, it sees all dangers, but is ‘never shaken’, it is firm and bold, utterly dependable. Finally, sailors navigate by it, from which they know which way is North.Every wandering barkA ‘bark’ is a ship. Wandering barks are therefore ships moving around, perhaps having lost their way. The Pole Star (love) helps these lost ships (spiritually lost people) to find their way to their destination and to safe haven. As the Pole Star guides all ships in the Northern Hemisphere, love can guide all souls through life.Whose worth's unknown, although his height be takenThis line refers to the practice of seeing how heavily laden with cargo a ship is by measuring its height above the water. Nowadays ships use the Plimsoll Line, but waterlines of various kinds have been used for thousands of years, and the application is based on Archimedes principle of water displacement by mass in a given volume. We can measure the amount of water displacement by measuring the height of the ship above the sea, and thus we can calculate the mass of the cargo. However, the mass alone cannot tell us the worth of the cargo. Paper money will be lighter than iron bars, for example, but have greater economic worth. Or a young baby will be lighter than a cow, but that baby is surely of the greater value, and who knows what kind of person the baby will become? Shakespeare is saying the same thing here: We might know external measurements of a person, how tall they are, how much money they have, but by those we cannot know a person’s true value. True love, however, can appreciate a person’s hidden worth. ................
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