From Elizabeth to the 17th Century

Elizabeth I

• Before we move on, lets discuss the Talking Points 2
• Shakespeare in the Elizabethan Age
• Elizabethan Theater --> Early Modern era

The Early 17th Century (1603-1660)

• Writers like Shakespeare and Donne wrote during the Elizabethan-Jacobean (Stuart Reign)...so how can we see the two as separate literary eras?

• Distinctions in Jacobean literature:

1. writing the wrestles with the stable past (under Elizabeth) and the unknown future (of the New World, etc.).
2. Class consciousness (Donne, for example)
3. Highly politicized literature (see English Revolution)
4. The notion of the human being as a self-interested, self-seeking individual operating in a society -->a larger theme of literature in this time period, seen in "villains" in Shakepeare's King Lear (Edmund) and John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (Ferdinand)

5. Literacy has large increase; books published doubled between 1600-1640.
6. Women authors entered into fray more: published, etc. (1/3 of writers in Norton section are women!)
7. The Professional Writer: Ben Jonson (Volpone, can be seen as first of the many respected "professional authors" in a rising capitalist society!
8. This is a time period when the "poor class" starts to be, what I'd call a thematic whisper, but ideas addressing poverty start to become a literary topic!
9. Perhaps, this last one is a result of what we reduce for our purposes into the War of the Three Kingdoms (England, Ireland and Scotland) [or the English Revolution]...There were many, many battles between these three from 1640-60--> religious and civil issues. Writers inserted themselves on all sides, but no one "won."
10. Devotional Poetry -- as seen in John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, John Milton (Paradise Lost).
11. The Scientific Revolution -- Kepler, Galileo, Sir Francise Bacon, etc. -- and the Material World.

John Donne, main example of The Metaphysical Poets

• Metaphysical poetry:

1. metaphysical conceits: conceptual, large chasm between the objects being compared (like Marvell comparing the earth to a drop of dew on a rain branch, or the soul to a drop of dew, etc.); often scientifically rooted comparisons...
2. Wit -- playful intelligence (like Donne's "The Flea")
3. Analyzing emotion, religious struggles, through science and wit...
4. Paradoxes (see Donne's "Holy Sonnet #14, below)

Poems:

"The Flea"

• How can we see the sacred and the sexual "mixing" in this poem?

"The Sun Rising"

• an aubade: poem about lovers greeting the morning/dawn)
• Why is the speaker of the poem so angry at the sun?
• What are some of the speaker's suggestions for the sun to do?

"Holy Sonnets" -- devotional poems, with use of the "erotic"

• sonnets: tightly structured arguments, more serious than his earlier poems, exampled above...

• #10: Death is addressed. What is so unusual about the speaker's argument against Death? How does the argument "fit in" with common views of death?

• #14: What is startling about the image of God in this particular sonnet? What is the speaker's main argument in this poem, regarding his own religion?

Homework:

***Schedule Change:

Tuesday, March 9th:

• "The Gender Wars": pages 1543-1550

• Sir Francis Bacon: p. 1550

1. "Of Marriage and Single Life" (1553)
2. "Of Superstition" (1556)
3. "Of Plantations" (1557)
4. both "Of Studies (1562)

• Thomas Hobbes: start and read Ch.1 and Ch. 13 of "Leviathan," and we will get rest finished as we move to Restoration and 18th next Thursday.

Thursday, March 11th:

• finish discussing "Leviathan" quickly
• spend most of time on Aphra Behn's "Oroonoko" (pages 2183-2226)