Why do ariel and the other sylphs abandon belinda

Course Notes:

Dryden’s “MacFlecknoe” and “Criticism”

I. I want to start today by exploring a term which was central to the neo-classical era - “imitation of nature.” This was, for Dryden, and later for Pope, the highest virtue of poetry, but it’s hard to define exactly what the term means. It combines the idea that poetry should imitate something (as opposed to being pure invention) with the idea that what poetry should imitate is that which is natural ‑ by which it is meant that which is universally believed to be true. What is unnatural, for Dryden and Pope, are beliefs which are unique, which are not generally shared. In a sense, for them Protestantism is unnatural because it claims that individuals are free to believe in God however they choose.

II. Because Dryden and Pope assume that there are universal truths or values which we all have access to, there is no intention in their poetry to try to create new values. Rather, their poetry is designed either to imitate the values they assume we all should share, or to satirize those who for some reason have rejected those values. Dryden and Pope also assume that only those who are stupid or dull would reject universal values, and thus a central object of their satires is to expose such stupidity or dullness. In “Mac Flecknoe,” the object of Dryden’s ridicule is a playwright, Shadwell, who was aligned politically with the Whigs, and who was a “true‑blue Protestant” ‑ a religious extremist, from Dryden’s perspective. For Dryden, Shadwell is ridiculous both because of his political and religious beliefs, and because he had claimed that his writing was in the tradition of Ben Jonson, which Dryden thought was presumptuous. In “Mac Flecknoe,” Dryden will try to expose Shadwell to ridicule through two strategies ‑ he will have Shadwell praised for writing in ways that are contemptible, and he will portray the naming of Shadwell as the heir to Flecknoe as analogous to the recent coronation of Charles II, which he assumes we will see is preposterous. Each of these strategies is designed to reaffirm universal values ‑ the absurdity of what Shadwell is praised for will remind us of what kind of writing should be praised, and the inadequacy of Shadwell as a king will reaffirm the values against which he is seen as inadequate. Finally, before we turn to the poem, I should mention that the term for how Shadwell is portrayed is “mock‑heroic” ‑ the poem mocks the idea that he could be a hero, and thus reminds us of how important a value heroism itself is.

III. The poem breaks down into seven sections, each of which I now want to look at:

1. (ll.1‑12) Flecknoe is described ‑ look at ll.5‑6, 11‑12, to see what his “realm” consists of.

2. (ll. 13‑59) The first of two of Flecknoe’s speeches, in which he explains why Shadwell is best suited to perpetuate the qualities described in the opening of the poem. Note comparison to John the Baptist, ll. 31‑35.

3. (ll. 60‑63) A brief interlude, in which Flecknoe is overcome by what he has described.

4. (ll. 64‑93) An elaborate setting of a scene of decay and ruin, focusing on the place where Shadwell will be coronated. Look at ll.70‑78, the combining of images of sexual decay with a description of Shadwell’s version of the theater.

5. (ll. 94‑138) Shadwell’s coronation. Note description of who will come to the coronation (ll.98‑101), Shadwell’s gaining of the throne by “thy own labors”(ll106‑07), and the comparison to Hannibal, ll. 112‑2202.

6. (ll. 139‑210) Flecknoe’s second speech, which explains the wonderful consequences which will follow from Shadwell’s reign. Look at the description of his dominions, ll. 139‑140; the account of Shadwell’s skills as a writer, ll. 157‑160 and ll. 165‑66, ll. 183‑190, and ll. 205‑210.

7. (ll. 211‑217) Flecknoe is abruptly taken away, and Shadwell now reigns “with double portion of his father’s art.

English 2202 Lecture Notes on Dryden’s Criticism

I. The selections from Dryden’s criticism that you have read all rely on his general belief that poetry, because it is an imitation of an eternal or unchanging nature, can be claimed to be a vehicle for communicating universal truths. Note, though, that Dryden is in no sense a systematic theorist – in a sense, he doesn’t need to be for two reasons: first, because the bases of his critical claims are themselves “truths” that have been established by history; and second, because he assumes that his audience has itself been taught these truths, and thus doesn’t need arguments for why these truths are true.

II. Passages in Dryden’s criticism:

p. 2251-2252 Two types of poets: the first, who can be seen “wrestling and torturing a word into another meaning,” is like “witches” who are “justly hanged” and the second, who “creeps along with ten little words in every line,” is a Leveler, whose “plainness” is a failure of “imagination.” Look at how these two “types” set up by contrast Dryden’s ideal of a poet, although specifying what that ideal might be is elusive.

p. 2252 Wit is universal, true in all languages.

p. 2254 Shakespeare and “nature,” which he found “inwards.”

p. 2255 Shakespeare and Jonson as sources of “rules.”

p. 2256 How to use “particular opinion” to combat “general authority”

pp. 2256-2257 “Universal tradition,” and the causes of pleasure in poetry.

p. 2257 What is a “delight to all ages” is an “imitation of nature.”

p. 2257 Defining wit as a “propriety of thoughts and words.”.

p. 2258 Chaucer follows nature, but never “goes beyond her.”

English 2202 Pope’s “An Essay on Man”

I. Rather than trying to tie together all the pieces of “An Essay on Man,” I want to look at a number of specific passages to try to get a sense of how Pope thinks that humans should understand the human condition. First, however, I want to consider two general issues which are relevant to Pope’s ideas.

II. The first issue is the question of how human evil and suffering can be reconciled with the existence of God. The idea here, for Pope, is that a belief in God entails the notion that all aspects of the universe are part of a divine plan ‑ indeed, some 18th Century thinkers went so far as to compare the universe to a clock which God had set in motion. The problem with this assumption is that it makes it hard to explain evil ‑ if the universe is a display of the glory of God, what possible reason can there be for evil?

III. The second issue concerns the scope of human reason. In part because of the rise of science, the 18th Century was a period of immense optimism about the power of human reason. While earlier ages (in Europe) had believed that human experience was essentially evil or worthless (e.g. Puritanism or Calvinism), and had argued that human experience should largely be devoted to the avoidance of evil, the 18th Century instead emphasized the potential of humans to understand the deepest mysteries of existence ‑ basically, the switch is from seeing original sin as that which defines human experience, to seeing an almost god‑like reason as that which defines human experience. But the question here (echoing the first question we considered) is whether human reason is not exposed as meaningless by its failure to explain the ultimate mysteries of experience. What, Pope asks, can human reason be expected to reveal?

IV. What I now want to do is look at a number of passages which bear on these questions:

a. opening 16 lines (pp. 3-4) ‑ what is it Pope thinks needs to be vindicated?

b. limits of reason, ll. 44‑60 (pp. 4-5)

c. error of demanding consistency in nature, ll. 131‑153 (pp. 6-7)

d. defining the “bliss of man,” ll. 189-196 (p. 7)

e. the chain of being vs. man’s “impudence,” ll. 233‑258, especially the description of human pride as leading to a description of man as a “vile worm,” line 258. (pp. 8-9)

f. the culminating claim that “whatever is, is right” ll. 281-294 (p. 9)

e. “proper study of mankind” ll. 1-18 (pp. 2547-2548) – focus here on Pope’s central notion that understanding “mankind” can only be based upon studying what is revealed about humans in their actual behavior (as opposed to a Puritan argument that humans should be understood in terms of their deepest beliefs about themselves – note here, especially, ll. 29-30, where Pope sees the introspection that might be produced by recognizing the limits of human knowledge as leading to a judgment of man as a “fool”).

English 2202 Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock”

I. I want to approach “The Rape of the Lock” by first looking briefly at the kind of poem it is, and then tracing the action of the poem, canto by canto. Like Dryden’s “Mac Flecknoe,” “The Rape of the Lock” is a “mock-heroic” poem, which basically means treating commonplace events as if they were episodes in a heroic drama for example, the pretense that Shadwell was being coronated. In “The Rape of the Lock,” Pope uses traditional devices found in such epic poems as “The Iliad” to frame his account of what is certainly a trivial event a gentleman’s snipping of a young lady’s lock of hair. Thus (as your introduction explains) Pope imagines drawing room occurrences as a war, aristocratic young men and women as heroes and heroines, an epic battle in the card game, goddesses who watch over their chosen heroines, and a journey to the underworld in the Cave of Spleen episode in Canto 4 all devices that would have been appreciated by an audience trained in the classics. We will leave until the second hour of class, however, the question of what exactly is being mocked here suffice it to say that while Pope is certainly poking fun at the pampered rich youths he describes, he seems also quite serious about showing, as he puts it in l.2, “What mighty contests rise from trivial things.”

II. Let me now try to summarize the action in each of the cantos, and then we’ll talk about specific places in the poem that you found difficult or confusing.

Canto 1: After an initial description of Belinda waking up, we hear a long speech from, as we learn, Ariel, the Sylph who is supposed to guard Belinda. Ariel explains that there are four different kinds of spirits, each of whom is identified with a particular form of character, or humour: 1. The salamander (fire), or shrew; 2. The nymph (water), who yields readily; 3. The sylph (air), who seems a kind of innocent flirt; and 4. The Gnome (earth), or prude. Ariel says that prudes “early taint the female soul”(l.87) by a kind of too conscious flirtation (the idea seems to be that prudishness is the mirror image of overt sexuality), and says that the Sylphs preserve innocent vanity from such a fate. He warns that Belinda is in danger. Finally, Belinda awakens and prepares herself to go out.

Canto 2: Belinda ventures out for the night, described in rapturous terms (she is “the destruction of mankind”(l.19) she seems all light, all smiles, but with no consciousness of the effect she is having. The Baron is then described as her suitor he wants Belinda’s locks of hair, but of course what he really wants is her. Belinda is unaware of this, but Ariel summons the Sylphs to dedicate themselves to protecting her.

Canto 3: The central episodes here are the game of Ombre (which Belinda wins) and the Baron’s cutting of Belinda’s lock. As the game of cards is described, it comes to seem a metaphor for romantic combat, and Belinda’s glee in her victory is portrayed as part of her general vulnerability she seems unaware of the deeper sexual implications in what she does. The Baron’s assault on Belinda is aided by Clarissa, who will reappear in Canto 5 as a cynical prude. After the lock is cut, Ariel rushes to protect Belinda, but leaves when he discovers, in her confusion, “an earthly lover lurking at her heart.”(l.144) The canto ends with the Baron exulting in his triumph.

Canto 4 In Belinda’s gloom, her watching spirit changes from Ariel to Umbriel, who proceeds to the “Cave of Spleen” to address its queen. What Pope imagines here is a kind of warped sexuality, where women are seen as deranged by their inability to handle male sexual advances. Umbriel gains the “gifts” of the Queen of Spleen to take back to Belinda, and finds her in the arms of Thalestris, an Amazon. Thalestris gives a long speech attacking what men do to women, and then retreats to her “beau,” Sir Plume, who gives a disjointed, wimpy speech telling the Baron to return the lock. The Baron refuses, and the Canto ends with Belinda bemoaning her fate.

Canto 5 Everyone but the Baron is moved at this, and Thalestris tries hopelessly to change his mind. Clarissa then argues that all of women’s charms come to naught (women are valued for physical charms which cannot last), and counsels a sort of resigned submission. Belinda frowns at this, and Thalestris urges war, which then occurs. In the war, the weapons are social graces, as men die from frowns, but are reborn with smiles. Belinda confronts the Baron, drawing a dagger like pin on him, but the Baron still will not yield. Everyone cries at him, but the lock has disappeared into the heavens where it will consecrate the fame of Belinda.

III. The central issue of “The Rape of the Lock” is how the poem imagines Belinda’s fate as a sexual being her fate, that is, as a young woman confronting both sexual desire, and the social codes through which sexual desire is performed. The question I want to pursue is whether the poem allows us any sense of Belinda as in control of her identity is she merely an object defined by the codes she experiences, and by the desires of those who want her? Or is she allowed a sense of power or of control over how her identity is situated within the public form which sexuality takes in this world? As these questions make clear, the poem very much offers us a world where personal identity is public in the sense that one’s identity is defined by the relations one has both to others and to social codes Belinda’s self in the poem will be formed both by how she presents herself publicly, and by how she will respond to an assault on that public presentation.

IV. Let’s begin with the Ariel’s account of how young women are understood. Focus first on the general account of the Sylphs, 1:67-76 (p. 2689), and then on the contrast between the Gnomes, 1:78 90 (p. 2689), and the Sylphs, 1:98 105 (pp. 2689-2690).

V. Now turn to the description of Belinda preparing to go out, 1:121-145 (p. 2690). Note how her airiness is in fact defined as a lack of self-consciousness.

VI. Explore the contrast at the start of Canto II between how Belinda is described as she arrives at the party, 2:1-22 (p. 2691), and the first description of the Baron, 2:29-45 (p. 2691).

VII. Look at the actual assault in Canto III. Begin with Belinda’s glee at winning, 3:99 100 (p. 2696), then turn to Ariel’s inability to protect Belinda, 3:135 145 (pp. 2696-2697). Finish with the Baron’s gloating, 3:160 178 (p. 2697). W hat is the Baron’s attitude towards Belinda? How should she respond to this?

VIII. Of course, the rest of the poem pursues precisely the question of how Belinda should respond, and I want to look at some of the possibilities:

a. Thalestris’s first speech, 4:95-120 (pp. 2699-2700).

b. Belinda’s response, 4:147-176 (p. 2701).

c. Clarissa’s cynicism, 4:9-34 (p. 2702), and Belinda’s response: she “frowned,” 4:35-36 (p. 2702).

d. The battle: a party as power? 4:57-71 (pp. 2702-2703)

e. Loss as gain? The disappearance of the lock, 4:103-112,123-130 (pp. 2703-2704); and the conclusion, 4:141-150 (p. 2704).

English 2202 Lecture Notes on Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

I. Begin by talking about allegory explain that allegory is a dramatization or enactment of abstract ideas in which characters and situations have a one to one correspondence with the ideas that they are supposed to represent. It was, by the time Bunyan wrote, considered a naive or uncultured form of writing, since its primary purpose is a kind of translation of the abstract into the experiential presumably, the contempt for allegory comes from a belief that it is designed for those who are unable to understand abstract ideas, and indeed, Pilgrim’s Progress was enormously influential among working class families during the 18th and 19th Centuries. But the work does more than offer instruction on religious faith for the uneducated it also provides a critique of the very social hierarchy which writers such as Dryden were so concerned to defend, and it does this precisely because it translates the comfortable abstractions of Christian piety into concrete experiences, and by doing this shows how those experiences themselves might be transformed by Christian faith. Thus, in Bunyan’s hands, allegory becomes a powerful weapon for challenging the social complacency which Dryden seems to assume what the progress of Pilgrim through the world shows is the inadequacy of the world to what he believes, and while (unlike, say Milton) Bunyan believe that such inadequacy is finally redeemed only in an afterlife, the work still provided a tool by which working class people might articulate their own dissatisfaction with the very society which Dryden and Pope so confidently celebrate. Finally, it is worth noting that the contempt of much of subsequent British literary history for Bunyan (the philosopher David Hume wrote confidently that the essayists Addison and Steele would be read long after Bunyan was forgotten) is revelatory of how literary work devoted to the interests of the masses is regarded Dryden is “serious” and Bunyan is not because Dryden writes for an educated elite which in part defines what counts as serious.

II. Bunyan’s view of Christianity can cause discomfort, which is in many ways what he intends. But such discomfort does not justify the response that he isn’t “really” a Christian, or that there is some “genuine” Christianity that he fails to understand. Bunyan is offering an argument, anchored in Protestant and Puritan theology, about the form that he thinks Christian faith should take, and while his views may seem extreme, they are just as “Christian” as any other Christian denomination. From the perspective of academic study, there just isn’t anything like a real “Christianity” which can be used to judge whether particular expressions of Christian faith are to be seen as genuinely Christian. Rather, the purpose of academic study is to understand something on its own terms, and also in its relation to both what it might challenge, and what might challenge it. And in such study, your own beliefs about what is or is not really true are simply irrelevant.

II. In turning to Pilgrim’s Progress, what I would like to do is look closely at three episodes:

1. Christian’s revelation.

a. Let’s start with the initial description of Pilgrim’s distress, p.2270A. Note the emphasis on the internal definition of Pilgrim his distress is private and note the consequence of this for how he is regarded.

b. The reactions first of his family (2270B, 2271A) and Christian’s reactions to these reactions (2271B,C), and then of his “neighbors”(2272A).

c. Christian seeks “an inheritance incorruptible”(2272B).

2. Vanity Fair

a. Now, let’s examine the account of social experience in the description of Vanity Fair, pp. 2274-2275. Note the merging of commerce and evil, p. 2274. Then look at the inability of those caught up in this commercial world to understand the pilgrims, pp. 2275. Note how the violence of their reaction points to the impossibility of this world acknowledging what true faith demands..

b. The pilgrims are put on trial, 2275B-2276; note that in the book, most of them are put to death.

3. Heaven

a. Finally, look at how heaven itself is described when Christian finally arrives (pp. 2277-2278), focusing on Bunyan’s refusal to allow heaven to be seen as having any connection to a worldly sense of pleasure or purpose – what eternal life seems to allow (or demand) is a perpetual worship of God (the Talking Heads: “Heaven is a place/where nothing, nothing ever happens” and “It’s hard to imagine/that nothing at all/could be so exciting/could be this much fun.” ).

English 2202 Lecture Notes on Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV

I. I want to start by offering a little background to Gulliver’s Travels. As you know, the 17th and 18th Centuries witnessed the “discovery” by Europe of the rest of the world, and this “discovery” had a profound impact on the self assuredness of European thought. Basically, what the discovery of other cultures forced upon Europe was an awareness that the values of European civilization (most obviously the values of Christianity) were not the sole ways by which humans had made sense of their experience. During the period, a popular genre of literature was the travelogue which recounted the traveler’s experience of “alien” cultures, and focused on the conflict between the traveler’s beliefs and the beliefs he found in the cultures he visited. Some travelogues insisted on the equality or even the superiority of the alien cultures they described; others ridiculed these cultures, and claimed that the failings of foreign cultures confirmed the perfection of Christianity. But what is common to all these works is an awareness that the existence of a variety of cultures makes it impossible to simply assume the superiority of European culture. So the central theme of the travelogue is finally human nature how various cultures have understood human nature, and how to judge from among competing understandings of what human nature is. There is one further aspect of the travelogues that should be mentioned its role in legitimizing imperialism. Insofar as travelogues portrayed other cultures as inferior or savage, an excuse was provided for subjecting those cultures to European rule. An obvious corollary is that if travelogues presented European cultures as somehow inferior to the cultures that they sought to colonize, then that colonization would itself be seen as less legitimate, less morally defensible.

II. Gulliver’s Travels is clearly intended as a satire on the travelogue a satire on the idea that European culture can or should understand itself in relation to other cultures. The problem, for Swift, with the travelogue seems to be that the travelogue is founded on what is finally a dubious idea the idea that we can observe other cultures without the frame of our own beliefs, that we can see other cultures objectively. What Swift shows us in Gulliver’s Travels is what happens to a character who sees things completely objectively in the sense that he seems to have no beliefs or values which are the basis of his judgments. In this sense Gulliver is gullible completely taken in by whatever he sees or experiences. Most critics would agree with this characterization of Gulliver’s Travels as a satire, in part, on the character of Gulliver. But there is no agreement among critics about what the purpose of this satire is. Is it to show Gulliver’s inferiority to the values he experiences particularly the values of the rational Houyhnhnms’s? Or is it to show how his own lack of values leaves him unable to judge what he experiences? In either case, Gulliver’s Travels is deeply critical of Swift’s society the difference between the two interpretations is that in the first, Swift seems to imply that humans are intrinsically worthless, while in the second, the idea would be that individuals such as Gulliver (who is in a sense, for Swift, a typical “modern man”) pose a danger to the Christian values in which Swift himself believed. We’ll keep both of these possibilities in mind as we examine Gulliver’s Travels. III. Let’s begin with the initial description of Gulliver, p. 2587. What sort of person does he seem to be from this? What motivates him? What does he value?

IV. Now let’s look at what happens when he is set ashore examine the encounter with the Yahoos:

pp. 2588-2589 His description of the Yahoos.

p.2589A His response when a Yahoo holds out his hand.

p. 2589B, 2590 The first meeting with the Houyhnhnms. Emphasize how his reactions seem divided between violence towards that which is beneath him, and incredulity at that which he cannot understand.

V. Now that we have some sense of Gulliver’s character, I want to look at the society of the Houyhnhnms. Start by asking them to volunteer some of the qualities (in particular rationality) that characterize the Houyhnhnms. Then look at some passages that illustrate this:

a. Start with Gulliver’s learning their language: he’s introduced to the concept of “the thing which was not”(p. 2595), a phrase that he will go on to use with no apparent sense of irony(p. 2598). Then look at the description of the purpose of language, p. 2598.

b. Description of the differences among the horses, p. 2608. (Talk about the statement that it would be “unnatural” if the differences in rank were violated.)

c. The virtues of the horses include their rationality (p. 2615A) and their “friendship and benevolence.”(p. 2615C) They don’t understand the meaning of the word “opinion” (p. 2615C).

d. Their rearing of offspring and their “marriages” are the result of rational calculation, pp. 2615D-2617. Look in particular at the concluding description here of the “regulation of children”(pp. 2616B-2617), which makes clear that for the Houyhnhnms, raising their offspring is governed by their general understanding of rationality rather than any particular affection

f. The horses have no “letters” – their knowledge is “traditional,” p. 2618C.

g. A description of what a “conversation” among the horses is like, p. 2621.

VI. Now look at Gulliver’s account of poverty in his own land, pp. 2605-2606. What are we supposed to make of this? Are we meant to share Gulliver’s irony? (Probably note how the claim that Gulliver is merely gullible minimizes the radicalism of what Gulliver says here.)

VII. Now turn to the debate over whether Yahoos should be exterminated (p. 2617), which ends with accepting Gulliver’s notion that castration works to control a population (p. 2618A). (Gulliver only learns later that he will be targeted for castration, p. 2618B.) Does this change our sense of the superiority of this culture?

VIII. Finally, emphasize the effect of all of this on Gulliver, focusing in particular on the bleak view of human nature with which we are left.

p. 2620 Gulliver’s life with the Houyhnhnms.

pp. 2621-2622 Gulliver believes he can now see humans “as they really were.”

pp. 2628-2629 Reactions to his family when he returns home

pp. 2631-2632 A brutal description of the reality of colonialism, followed by irony (but would it be recognized as such?) about England as a colonizer.

English 2202 Lecture Notes on Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”

I. Swift took orders in the Anglican Church in 1694, and he was named dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin in 1713. For many years he worked, anxiously and unsuccessfully, to secure himself a permanent appointment in England; during this period he considered his life in Ireland a kind of exile. Swift's Ireland was a country that had been effectively controlled by England for nearly 500 years. The Stuarts had established a Protestant governing aristocracy amid the country's relatively poor Catholic population. Denied union with England in 1707 (when Scotland was granted it), Ireland continued to suffer under English trade restrictions and found the authority of its own Parliament in Dublin severely limited. Swift had himself made a variety of proposals for lessening the suffering of the Irish, none of which seems to have had any effect. (Many of these proposals are included in the list of alternative “expedients” that Swift says must be dismissed in “A Modest Proposal”[48].)

II. There is a logical structure to “A Modest Proposal,” which I think can be glimpsed if we break the essay into seven sections:

1. (44-45) A grimly serious description of the effect of poverty on the people of Ireland; however, the grimness is undermined by the satirical use of statistical and economic language.

2. (45-46) The solution? To cook children (and Swift assures us they will be tasty).

3. (46-47) A “digression,” that explains why of the idea that “young lads and maidens” between twelve and fourteen might also be made available as food. Why reject this idea? Because it is “a little bordering on cruelty.”

4. (47-48) A list of six “advantages” Swift’s proposal offers:

1. It would “lessen the number of Papists.”

2. It would give the “poorer tenants…something valuable of their own.”

3. It will increase the “nation’s stock,” as well as adding the “profit of a new dish.”

4. The “constant breeders” of infants don’t have to pay any money for “maintaining them” after their first birthday.

5. It will greatly benefit “taverns.”

6. It will be a “great inducement to marriage.”

5. (48) A paragraph listing other possible “advantages,” that are dismissed because they are “studious of brevity.”

6. (48) A paragraph dismissing alternative proposals, many of which were ones Swift had actually made.

7. (48-49) The conclusion, repeating some of the “arguments,” challenging “politicians” to explain to “the parents of these mortals” why they would oppose such a pathway out of their misery, and ending with a denial that he has any “personal interest” in the proposal: his own children are too old for him “to get a single penny.”

English 2202 Lecture Notes on Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” and Montagu’s “The Dean’s Provocation for Writing the Dressing Room”

I. My only general comment is that neither of these poems fits any narrowly conceived notion of gender. Swift’s poem is too complicated to be seen as needing to be judged (as some critics have suggested) as either “realism” or “woman hating.” Neither of these judgments can acknowledge the centrality of pleasure in the poem’s account of what Strephon discovers, nor can either address the function of the conclusion of the poem, which seeks to bracket Strephon’s voyeurism by seeing it as something to be judged. (There is a continuing tension in the poem between the language that’s used to describe the various things that Strephon “discovers,” and the speaker’s continued insistence that Strephon is repulsed by each of his discoveries.) Similarly, Montagu’s rejoinder doesn’t simply “counterattack” by seeing “bodily functions” as “personal fixation or frustrated desire” (I’m quoting here from the introduction to the poem in the Norton Anthology). It also, and more importantly, refuses to accede to the framework at the end of Swift’s poem – refuses, that is, to accede to the notion that erotic desire should either be based on some idealized notion of what Swift calls (mockingly?) “the charms of womankind”(l.130),or should instead locate itself within the gross physicality that Strephon discovers, and, I would argue, covertly desires. This dichotomy, which has certainly been central to how women have been understood within patriarchy, is shown by Montagu to be both reductive and absurd – reductive because it defines women exclusively in terms that emerge from male desire, and absurd because it ignores the male desire that lies behind such a characterization of women.

II. Passages in Swift:

ll. 1-18 Initial description of Strephon as a “rogue” in taking such an “inventory.”

ll. 37-42 The “basin” is “fouled” by her spit.

ll. 43-47 “No object Strephon’s eye escapes” (47).

ll. 62-68 Fantasizing how Celia must pick her nose – it takes a moment to realize that this is fantasy, not an actual account of an object.

ll. 89-118 Lifting up the lid of Celia’s toilet leads to the horrified recognition: “Celia shits.”

ll. 119-122 Strephon is “punished” for his “peeping” – his “foul imagination.”

ll. 129-143 Strephon is to be pitied for being “blind/To all the charms of womankind.”

III. Passages in Montagu:

ll. 1-14 Describing Swift’s own self-presentation as a kind of warped idealization of male charm.

ll. 15-20 Jenny reminds him that it’s all about the money. Note that the use of the word “come” has the same reference to orgasm that contemporary usage would have.

ll. 21-30 Swift is described as offering money (which “the Lady” accepts) in a “paradise of thought”(22).

ll. 31-63 “Morals” requires a “small digression.” The digression I think is best seen as a parody, or at least a scathingly ironic summary, of Pope’s arguments in “An Essay on Man.”

ll. 63-78 Impotence (he “tries – and tries”[69]) leads Swift to attack her body as disgusting, but Montagu’s focus is not on any particular aspect of the body as intrinsically repulsive – rather, her interest is in how impotence transforms what was erotic into something that is disgusting.

ll. 79-81 The “nymph” attacks his age(80) and tells him to leave.

ll. 81-83 He demands that she return his money.

ll. 84-95 She says that the money has been locked away, and ridicules his impotence, connecting his failure at sex with what she says is the failure of his poetry to sell. Note in particular the brilliant (but unstated) rhyming of “luck in” with fucking.

ll. 96-99 He threatens to get revenge by writing a poem about her dressing room (which is obviously meant as a reference to “The Lady’s Dressing Room”) which will cause “the very Irish [not to] come”(99) .

ll. 100-101 She responds by thanking him for offering to write such a poem because it will “furnish paper when I shite”(101).

English 2202 Lecture Notes on Mary Astell’s “Some Reflections on Marriage”

I. The central question in the selections from each of these writers is what we might call the fate of women within the social codes dominant in the 18th Century. Each of the selections you have read (or will read) suggests both that the way that women are defined serves primarily the interests of men, and that there are important dimensions of women’s experience that are denied within the dominant definition. But what is perhaps more important is that these writers disagree in fundamental ways about what is wrong with what came to be called patriarchy, and thus disagree about how patriarchy might be challenged. Generalizing much too loosely (but still with reasonable accuracy) the disagreement is whether women should be understood as being in significant ways indistinguishable from men, or rather whether they should be understood as being fundamentally different from men.

II. The first position is central to how women are portrayed in Montagu, and, in less obvious ways, in Leapor; the second position underlies everything Astell says about marriage. To put this in far too simply or programmatically, Montagu and Leapor think that restrictions on the lives of women have barred them from doing what men are encouraged to do, which is to have one’s life defined by one’s desires and interests, whatever they might be. On the other hand Astell thinks that restrictions on the lives of women have barred them from having what is unique to their own identity as women allowed to be the real basis of their lives.

III. In Astell’s “Some Reflections Upon Marriage” the central question is obviously whether marriage can offer women fulfillment. Focus on how “reason” is contrasted to the object-like status women have in marriage.

pp. 2421-2422A Marrying for love or for money are the same – in each case the man’s motive is his “irregular appetites.”

p. 2422B Defining “true wit,” as opposed to “that which nowadays passes under the name of wit.” Her point here seems to be that the “wit” which might make a woman attractive to a man has nothing to do with “true wit.”

p. 2422C Regardless of whether the love is of beauty or of “wit,” it will not last.

p. 2422D A woman “can’t properly be said to choose.”

p. 2423A A savagely ironic account of how women who are “allowed to improve themselves” might then teach men to use their “immortal minds” for goodness, rather than the “pursuit of irregular appetites and unreasonable desires.”

p. 2424A For women, the fact that marriage as Astell describes it might lead to the end of the human race is irrelevant, because their destiny was never this world.

English 2202 Lecture Notes on Mary Montagu’s “The Lover: A Ballad”

I. Mary Montagu’s poetry can be seen as an utter rejection of Mary Astell’s notion that women should be understood as fundamentally different than men because, rather than being driven by “irregular appetites” and “irrational desires,” they have a capacity to know and thus be defined by Christian notions of spiritual purity. For Montagu, the primary difference between men and women seems to be that men get to act on their desires and women don’t, in large part because of the success of what came to be called patriarchy in denying that desire was in any significant way a part of the lives of women. Montagu sees that one of the ways that patriarchy makes its view of women seem to be a simple truth of human nature is through the portrayal of women in literary culture, and many of her poems seek to disrupt that culture by portraying women as having a capacity not just to refuse to accept the terms by which they are understood in writing by men, but also to show what the patriarchal understanding of women reveals about male desire.

II. In her response to Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” Montagu is devastating in her insistence that Swift’s description of women is based on his own fear of what acknowledging the desires of a woman might do to his own sense of himself. For Montagu, Swift’s narcissism collapses once a woman refuses to accept the role that his desires would require of her. In “The Lover: A Ballad” Montagu’s target is also how the identity of women is structured in poems that express male desire (whether overtly or covertly seems irrelevant here), but her goal is less to expose and ridicule male desire than it is to describe (and make desirable) an account of erotic love in which men and women are free to act upon their desires, while also recognizing their obligations to the desires of those they desire. In the traditional (male) love poem, the goal of the speaker (the lover) was to persuade the beloved to abandon her resistance to his desire, and the assumption was always that this resistance was based upon some failure of the beloved to recognize that her fears were, in some sense, delusional or self-destructive. Montagu’s rejoinder to this is that women reject men (the beloved resists the lover) not because of a fear of male desire, but because of the utter inadequacy of male desire, if it defines itself in terms of overcoming the resistance of the beloved, to offer anything like a satisfying erotic relationship.

III. Thus, Montagu’s goal in “The Lover: A Ballad” is both to reject the traditional account in love poetry of why the lover resists the beloved, but also to describe the kinds of eroticism and intimacy that would become possible if she met a would-be lover who didn’t produce resistance on her part by seeing her exclusively in terms of his own desire.

English 2202 Lecture Notes on Mary Leapor’s “An Essay on Woman”

I. Leapor’s “An Essay on Woman” is in substantial agreement with Astell on how women are victimized by the roles that they are expected to play, and also on the scorn which an educated woman must face. But there seems no agreement about the solution to this oppression. Where Astell sees in Christian faith a source of meaning that might preserve women from what men would make of them, Leapor instead limits herself to the hope for “a friend to please,” but without any clear sense of either what pleasing might be, or any confidence that such pleasing might somehow by the basis, or at least the starting point, of a satisfying life. In this sense, “An Essay on Woman” seems deeply, even disturbingly pessimistic – ultimately, the emotional intensity that makes her poetry seem more modern than any of her contemporaries emerges not from an imagining of a life free of constraint or oppression, but rather from her engagement of constraint and oppression. What I am suggesting is that Leapor seems to need the social conditions she so mercilessly exposes as a condition of her own capacity for imaginative expression.

II. It’s supposed to be significant that Leapor was born poor and died young, never seeing any of her poems actually appear in print. She was encouraged (and seems to have been given support) by Bridget Freemantle, the daughter of a rector who lived near her. These two facts – her poverty and her having found support from a somewhat more affluent woman – seem to demand that we read her poetry in terms of her poverty or her finding support only in relation to another woman. The problem, though, with such a reading is that it risks reducing her poetry to nothing more than a confirmation of our own political pieties, and thus loses the chance to engage ways in which her poetry might challenge, or at least disturb, our own certainties.

a. (ll. 1-5) The only real worth women offer to men is “wealth.”

b. (ll. 22-25) Beauty becomes tiresome to men.

c. (ll. 27-37) A savage attack on how women with “wit” are regarded.

d. (ll. 40-47) The fate of women who strive to become a “brisk companion” of their husbands.

e. (ll. 49-52) Rather than wealth, what Leapor wants is warmth and a “friend to please.”

f. (ll. 53-60) Regardless of the particular shape her life may take, women are nothing “but a slave at large.”

English 2202 Lecture Notes on Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

I. The poetry we have read so far the poetry of Dryden and Pope, at least is similar in its rejection of particular experience as a proper subject matter for poetry. Rather, these poets believe that the subject matter of poetry should be derived from experiences which are sufficiently general to allow every reader to have access to them. Similarly, Dryden and Pope believe that the values which poetry expresses should be universal in the sense that they are values which, presumably, no one could doubt. Finally, these poets agree that such values are to be found in the beliefs and experiences of a social elite what poetry expresses, then, is what is valued by a cultural and social elite, and such value is universal because these poets cannot imagine that any alternative kind of value could be defended.

II. In the second half of the 18th Century, however, a different kind of poetry begins to emerge in what are called the poets of “sensibility.” Writers such as Gray, Smart, and Goldsmith turned from the idea of poetry as an imitation of what is universally valued, and instead wrote poetry which originates in the expression of feeling of sensibility. (It is not at all clear whether this was in any way a conscious or deliberate change – unlike a writer such as Bunyan, Gray, Smart, and Goldsmith were part of the same cultural elite that earlier had included Dryden and Pope.) This change, which will culminate in Romanticism, involves both a change in subject matter, and a change in style. Increasingly, the subject matter of poetry will come from either the natural world, or commonplace experience, and the poem will focus on the poet’s responses to what he is experiencing. The style of poetry changes similarly, from the highly artificial verse of Pope or the abstractness of Samuel Johnson to a much more direct or imaginative use of language where Johnson or Pope ask us to wonder, “what is the meaning of this?,” the poetry which emerges in this period instead seems to ask, “What would it mean to see something in this way?” The difference is finally between the attempt of, say, Johnson and Pope, to portray the truth, and the attempt of later writers to express a way of seeing things.

III. With this in mind let’s now consider Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Begin by focusing on the subject matter a speaker recounting a visit to a cemetery in a churchyard, and trying to imagine what value might have been found in the lives of those who are buried there. Crucially, in pursuing this question, Gray deliberately draws a contrast between our customary ways of finding value, the assumption being that we can genuinely respond to those who are buried in the churchyard only if we shed our normal understanding of what makes a life meaningful.

IV. Stanzas 1 3 (ll.1 12) describe the church yard look at the emphasis on “me” in the first stanza.

V. Stanzas 4 7 (ll.13 28) try to imagine the lives of those who are dead, focusing on the simplicity of their lives. Look at how the details of ll.21 24 create a sense of what has been lost.

VI. Stanzas 7 16 (ll.29 64) draws a contrast between the simplicity of the lives the speaker imagines, and the heroic abstractions which we normally use to describe value. Look at how “Ambition” “Grandeur” and so on are exposed as empty in the face of death note how death is first leveling (ll.41 44), and then finally allows a reversal of what we value in the description of Milton and Cromwell (ll.59 60).