Humanism was popular in Europe from 1300-1600, often called the renaissance. During this time, some female writers began to be heard, but their voices were often as shouts in the wilderness, partly because humanism was not mainstream, but mostly because of their gender. It is very difficult to research this topic because there has not been that much interest until very recently. Searches in several databases bring up little information, and most of it was written by men. However, there were some writers then who did have an impact.
The word humanism means stressing the importance of human beings. The humanist movement began in Italy and gave shape to the Renaissance, the new age of interest in the arts, education, and the classics of ancient Greece and Rome. It stressed the humanities, which included grammar, rhetoric (the art of persuasive argument), poetry, history, and moral philosophy, and these were studied in order to make the Christian well-rounded and virtuous.
Petrarch, the Italian poet, is credited with the development of humanism as he tried to relate scripture to the human condition and understand it in terms of the spirituality of humans, especially depending upon the ancient works in Greek and Latin. It eventually evolved to include the well-rounded scholar. There were a great number of female scholars at the time since women of means had little else to do than study or perfect their arts. However, breaking into a public publication or being recognized at that time for great literary work was still quite questionable.
Most female writers of the time wrote verse or poetry. Some wrote on lighter subjects, such as children’s literature and subjects of interest largely to females. Smarr’s book covers the writers of dialogue, which was a new way to break into print, “The argument of Smarr’s book – that the dialogue provided Renaissance women with a variety of means and strategies for entering into public speech – seems, in retrospect, almost inevitable. If the burgeoning number of dialogues produced in the period (as Thomas Greene argued many years ago of Castiglione’s Cortegiano) attests to the open-ended character of Renaissance culture in contrast to the relative closure of the medieval, certainly the genre might be expected to appeal to women hoping to stage their own interventions in the monologic masculine discourses surrounding them” (Phillippy).
In fact, in order to find humanist women writers of the renaissance, one has to do very complicated literature searches using a whole set of criteria with which to sift through and sort out: women writers of the middle ages who wrote from a humanist point of view. Considering that women writers are still in the minority in this enlightened age, how very much fewer they were in the new age of art and science, which was male-dominated. So I searched in various veins and found that there were even Huguenot female humanist writers.
“Huguenot women writers, few though they may have been, nevertheless had an influence. They described a new relationship with the Word. Through their individual manipulation of the Word, Huguenot women writers, in their modest and practical application of Scripture, stepped away – without appearing to – from the Calvinist ideal of the plain style, preparing the sort of play with language that typifies the plasticity of the salonnard’s self-expression in the seventeenth century. Laboring within constraints to give birth to herself, the Huguenot woman writer engendered a genealogy of discussion and dialogue, interaction rather than intimidation, that found a paradoxical tributary in the relaxed, libertine climate of the salons” (Randall).
It is not surprising that Huguenot women writers would have been humanists, considering their solid grounding in scripture. What is surprising is that there were quite a few Heugenot women writers.
In research, it was found that many female writers were printed by either a very few sympathetic printers/ publishers who believed in them, or by female publishers who had taken overpresses they inherited from husbands or fathers. The general did not reveal their gender on the letterhead, so they could depend that many would not notice.
“The majority of women printers, however, did not sign their names to the works they produced, preferring to designate themselves simply as the heirs of the master printer. Such a practice is by no means confined to female heirs; sons also frequently signed their works in this way.”(Parker)
During the research I discovered many names I have never heard of before:
“King, Margaret L. “Petrarch, the Self-Conscious Self, and the First Women Humanists.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 35, no. 3 (2005), 537-58.
Thomson, Melissa (2005). Women of the Renaissance. Lucent Books. San Diego.
Cereta, Laura, 1469-1499. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist. Transcribed, Translated and Edited by Diana Robin (1997). University of Chicago Press. Chicago, Ill.
Hale, J.R. (1993-1995). The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. Simon and Shuster. New York.
Elton, G. R. (1963). Renaissance and Reformation, 1300-1648.
Letts, Rosa Maria (1981). The Renaissance. Cambridge University Press. New York.
Witt, Ronald G. “The Humanist Movement.” In Handbook of European History, 1400-1600, edited by Thomas A. Brady Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, 93-125. Leiden: Brill, 1995.”
While most of the writers I have discovered thusly are quite obscure in the mainstream, this points out just how far we have yet to go. However, their impact on literature in the middle ages was not insignificant, as attested to by the growing list of studies of their works. Further, since academic writing of the time did not necessarily cite sources properly, it is known that women humanist writers could easily have been quoted elsewhere in works by male authors.
Works Cited
Benson, Pamela Joseph. 1992. The Invention of the Renaissance Woman: The Challenge of Female Independence in the Literature and Thought of Italy and England. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Gold, Barbara K., Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter, eds. 1997. Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition /. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Parker, Deborah. 1996. Women in the Book Trade in Italy, 1475-1620. Renaissance Quarterly 49, no. 3: 509+.
Phillippy, Patricia. 2006. Joining the Conversation: Dialogues by Renaissance Women. Renaissance Quarterly 59, no. 1: 142+.
Randall, Catharine. 1997. Shouting Down Abraham: How Sixteenth Century Huguenot Women Found Their Voice. Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 2: 411+.
The development of poetry as an individual genre of literature has always reflected social problems of specific periods, which allowed poets to attract the attention of the public and express their worries and emotions. For instance, in the early Middle Ages, the emphasis on religious themes and the connection between humans and God was a poetic trend that could be traced in rhymed works of that period. However, over time, reform movements in Europe touched poetry, and new ideas and values began to advance. Attention to the human essence, spiritual experiences, and love became the key motives of Renaissance poetry. This transition marked a shift in values and made it possible to popularize the ideas of humanism and the importance of harmony in relationships. Therefore, the rejection of religious themes and an emphasis on the human soul are the characteristic features of the love poetry of the Renaissance.
Comparison with Early Medieval Poetry
The poetry of the early Middle Ages was filled with religious themes and the call of the human to entrust one’s soul to God. The analysis of the poetic works of that time proves that poets turned to the topic of love, but the context of self-sacrifice was the key scenario (Medieval and Renaissance Literature). Appeals to higher powers as an omnipotent mind that stood over the human was a common plot. For instance, in one of such poems, a woman appeals to mystical entities. She wants to figure out how to return her husband’s love to her: “Say me, wight in the brom, teach me how I shal don that min housëbondë me lovien woldë” (10 Short Medieval Poems). Trusting one’s life and destiny to higher powers was natural for the early Middle Ages, and poetic examples confirm this.
For the love poetry of the Renaissance, attention to the human essence was riveted, and the soul was perceived as a receptacle of all emotions and experiences. Poets began not to refer to God and other mystical entities but to promote the idea that people themselves shaped their destiny, including love. In one of his famous sonnets, William Shakespeare, one of the prominent poets and playwrights of the Renaissance, notes as follows: “Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds” (10 Very Short Renaissance Poems). Such a comparison emphasizes the tendency to enrich the poetic vocabulary with artistic ways of coloring and means that human is the creator of one’s destiny and spiritual path. Mental suffering, joy, and other emotions are not subordinate to God and are a reflection of personal aspirations. As Semple states, in the love poetry of the Renaissance, the breadth of feelings was often conveyed through epithets, hyperbolae, oppositions, and other techniques designed to enrich the meaning of poems. Thus, depth and the emphasis on personality are the main factors that distinguish the love poetry of the Renaissance from that of the early Middle Ages.
Transition to a New Form of Poetic Lyrics
As a result of the transformation of thinking that the Renaissance entailed, the genre of love poetry changed not only stylistically but also structurally. Mayne remarks that some prominent poets, for instance, John Donne, John Milton, the aforementioned William Shakespeare, and some others created their works in the form of a sonnet that gained popularity at this time. Even though according to Mayne, Francesco Petrarch was the founder of this form of love poetry and worked on it in the 14th century, representatives of the Renaissance popularized this style. This is another proof that the poets of this genre moved away from the canonical principles of versification and strove for more complex and detailed approaches to expressing their creativity.
The fourteen-stanza sonnet format became a common form of love poetry and allowed changing the style of massive and multi-page epics. The speech patterns of poets became more refined and metaphorical, which helped them express ideas with deeper meaning. For instance, in his Sonnet 18, Shakespeare praises his beloved and compares her to a summer day: “so long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee” (Snell). Thus, the transition to a new structural form made it possible to express creative ideas more accurately and, at the same time, richly from the perspective of semantic content.
Relationship Between a Man and a Woman
Even though in early medieval poetry, the theme of love was raised, during the Renaissance, the relationship between a man and a woman became more intimate and deep. Palma compares these two creative periods and notes that representatives of the Renaissance, particularly English poets, reflected more sensual forms (12). The emphasis on the human soul as a repository of versatile emotions allowed the poets of this period to reveal a new form of love expression based not only on suffering and valor but also on deep feelings. A man and a woman began to be perceived as objects of attraction, and the intimate subtext of poems was a characteristic feature. In one of his works, Michael Drayton writes as follows: “since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part” (10 Very Short Renaissance Poems). Such a lyrical context of parting gained popularity only during the Renaissance, and compared to early medieval lyrics, the poetry of this period became more human-oriented.
Individual Vision of the Genre
Studying love poetry opens up an opportunity to observe transformations not only in poets’ stylistic manner but also in the social environment. The shift from religious scripts to more intimate and spiritual forms marked the beginning of a shift in values when humanism and the importance of the human being came to the fore. Moreover, the poems of Shakespeare, Milton, and other representatives of the new school of thought gave impetus to subsequent generations of poets. In the modern world, studying the poetic lyrics of the Renaissance is still useful due to the breadth of ideas of that time and the relevance of reflections. As a result, love lyrics that appeared in the 16th century have taken a special place in the world’s literary heritage and helped create a unique style of poetry with an emphasis on human feelings and experiences.
Conclusion
The emphasis on the human soul and manifestations of pure emotions, which replaced religious motives, are the key differences between the love poetry of the Renaissance and that of the early Middle Ages. The reformers of this genre resorted not only to stylistic but also structural changes, created new forms of versification, and used numerous means of literary expression. The relationship between a man and a woman was described more intimately, and ballads and epics were replaced by lyrical chants of love. Studying the love poetry of the Renaissance provides an opportunity to assess the shift in values and allows analyzing the relevance of the great poets’ ideas of that era.
In the Stanza by John Donne, the speaker is having a conversation with his beloved. Firstly, he argues that she should note how insignificant the thing she denies is by stating – ‘how little that which thou denies me is’ (Donne, n.d., line 3). Next, the author explains how this flea that they both see already has the blood of both of them.
Since this is a romantic poem, one can argue that Donne uses a very unusual symbol to depict his feelings and demonstrate his opinion on the relationship with the woman he loves. The conclusion of this stanza suggests that this mixing of their blood inside the flea is not a sin and is more than what he and the woman did. In this regard, this work relates to the works by George Herbert, who was also a metaphysical poet and used unusual and intellectually challenging forms and symbols to depict love and romantic relationships.
Country-House Poem
A country house poem is a popular genre that developed in the 17th century. The main theme and aim of these poems are to compliment the country house of a friend or a patron, which the poet considers beautiful. In her poem A Description of Cookham Aemilia Lanyer praises a house belonging to her patron (Lanyer, n.d.).
These poems were usually dedicated to a poet’s patron, and in the case of Aemilia, the author openly spoke about her search for patronage since at that time, female-poets were not as common as male. This particular work was dedicated to Countess of Cumberland who helped Lanyer publish her poems. In it, the author explains her experience of visiting the courthouse and the delight she felt there, by stating – ‘those pleasures which my thoughts did then unfold’ (Lanyer, n.d. line 5). As such, it can be concluded that these poems serve as a way to express gratitude to a patron who helped a poet, in the case of Lanyer, to Countess of Cumberland.
Twellth Night
Twellth Night is a comedy by William Shakespeare in which the author tells a story of four people, who through misunderstandings and complications eventually are able to marry (Greenblatt, 2005). The comedy of the plot is the idea that the main characters pursue the wrong partners because of identity confusion. The comedic atmosphere is supported by cross dressings of the characters and other misunderstandings.
By definition, comedy is a genre that involves a depiction of dramatic events portrayed in a humorous way (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.). In Shakespeare’s work, the author uses comedy to showcase a complex problem of society, where people who fall in love face difficulties because of their status and have to go through challenges to eventually be with each other. In essence, this work is filled with confusion and misunderstandings.
A distinct characteristic of this comedy is the author’s use of subversion, which shared a theme with the works of Whitney and Lanyer. Through the use of comedy, Shakespeare attracts attention to an important issue – the societal standards, which dictated that a noble person cannot fall in love with a servant. Therefore, the combination of a serious theme and a humorous depiction are the main elements that make Twellth Night by Shakespear a comedy.
Raphael Hythloday
Raphael Hythloday is a character in work by Thomas More titled Utopia. In it, the author presents a written portrayal of the conversation he had with Hythloday. Therefore, Hythloay is one of the main characters of Utopia. His significance is supported by the role that this character plays in regards to the plot. Hythloday is a fictional character, although the focus is on his conversation with More, it is evident that such a conversation never occurred.
His name, Raphael, is a reference to a Biblical character, an angel called Raphael. The character talks about a mysterious island, the one where an ideal society resides. He is wise and demonstrates a good knowledge of the court system and continuously praises the society of Utopia.
The following describes Raphael’s view of Utopia – ‘Among [the Utopians] virtue has its reward, yet everything is shared equally, and all men live in plenty’ (‘Sir Thomas More: Utopia (1516),’ n.d., para. 50). Unfortunately, the island does not exist in reality and therefore, the role of Hythlodaay is central to the understanding of the plot of Utopia since this character brings the news of the mysterious island.
Pastoral Poetry
Pastoral poetry can be defined as a genre in which a poet aims to depict the beauty of rural life, landscapes and other important aspects of living. This tradition has a long history and mostly focuses on human labour and rural life. Herrick’s Corrinna’s Going A-Maying is dedicated to portraying the beauty of celebrating the first of May (Herrick, n.d.). The May holiday aims to celebrate the work of people, and that the author encourages Corinna to get out of bed and spend time with others. Herrick depicts nature in the following manner – ‘To come forth, like the Spring-time, fresh and greene.’ (Herrick, n.d., line 10).
Notably, the author does not dedicate much attention to the description of landscapes, instead focuses on another important element of pastoral poetry – the virginity of nature. At the time of Herrick’s life, the celebration of May was an important holiday during which people were able to have fun and celebrate. Through his poem, he depicts this tradition and nature’s beauty.
Renaissance Self-Fashioning
The perception of self is a complicated matter, impacted by many personal and societal factors. The understanding of a person’s self in the Renaissance period was majorly affected by the need to correspond to a certain standard or an image of perfect men and women, which is self-fashioning. The concept of self-fashioning can be examined through vivid illustrations present in the literature created during the Renaissance period. This paper aims to explore the concept of self-fashioning introduced by Greenblatt and provide two examples from Renaissance literature that illustrate it.
The term self-fashioning was introduced by Greenblatt in the author’s book Renaissance, Self-Fashioning. The idea behind the concept is that one’s personality is constructed on the basis of the socially desirable profile. In other words, a person develops characteristics based on the demands of the society they live in (Greenblatt, 2005).
One example presented by Greenblatt in his book is a man who had to be well-dressed and educated during the Renaissance. He would have to be interested in arts and literature, as well as have some passion for sports and behave according to the set standards. As one can tell, the main idea is that a person’ individualistic characteristics or interests did not matter or were not considered during the time, the emphasis was on the way a person had to behave or look.
Notably, both men and women of that era had a specified self-fashioned image. The portraits of that time that aimed to showcase these key features and provide some insight into the specifics of perceived masculinity and femininity. Additionally, it should be mentioned that there are two ways of viewing a person’s self (Robson, 2018).
On the one hand, it can be perceived as a given, something that is natural for a particular person. This incorporates both the innate characteristics and those developed by a person as a result of social interactions, learning and development. Secondly, the self can be viewed as a collection of socially constructed characteristics, including gender and perception of an individual.
In general, one can argue that the construction of self prevalent during the Renaissance is similar to the one considered appropriate in modern times. Authenticity was perceived as a core element, together with individuality and autonomy. The fragmentation of this self would inevitably lead to a disease of any kind, which was the core idea of that time (Haydon, 2008; Robson, 2018).
Religion has a vital role in the context of literature during the Renaissance; however, its role shifts. While the idea of self’s perception in the Renaissance can be explored from different perspectives, it is impossible to make conclusions without an examination of examples from works of literature. For instance, in Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, the main characters have to engage in dress-up and other imitations to fill the suitable roles within society.
Another example is the work by Lanyer, and it is an interesting since the author emphasises some of the significant elements of a Renaissance poet, such as the search for a patron. Regardless, she is a woman, and her poetry depicts the subversion and some of the societal standards.
It is a depiction of a self-fashioned poet, for instance, the poem A Description of Cookham is a tribute to Countess of Cumberland, which was typical for that time. Notably, one can argue that in Lanyer’s work, there is a clear distinction between real, noble features and a status inherited by an individual, which is another element of self-fashioning. Lanyer (n.d.) states the following:
‘Yet you (great Lady) Mistress of that place,
From whose desires did spring this work of grace;
Vouchsafe to think upon those pleasures past,
As fleeting worldly joys that could not last,
Or, as dim shadows of celestial pleasures,
Which are desired above all earthly treasures.’ (line 3)
In this passage, Lanyer praises the Lady of the house, her nobility, which is a way of praising her novelty. As such, one can argue that these characteristics were vital for a Countess living during the Renaissance, and by explaining the beauty of the house, Lanyer also praises the character and image of the Countess. In general, Greenblatt (2005) argues that the view of self that emerged during the Renaissance corresponds with the modern-day approach. More specifically, he explains that self can be changed based on the political and cultural specifics of a society.
Overall, this paper focused on examining the idea of self-fashioning, which emerged during the Renaissance and is similar to the modern view of self. The main goal of this approach was to create an image of self that corresponded to the societal standards, including the most beautiful clothes and interests in subjects such as art or sports. The literature works by Shakespeare and Lanyer help to understand this concept better.
The renaissance was a movement which occurred in Europe between the 14th and 17th century that mainly affected the culture and the lifestyles of people (Mason 5). Due to its nature, the renaissance period is viewed as a transition between the middle ages to the modern era. William Shakespeare’s and the Renaissance are inseparably associated due to the playwright’s impact on the period. The essay shall analyze how the famous playwright’s works influenced the renaissance.
During this period, a lot of changes took place in religion, education system, politics, culture, and lifestyle. It is during this period that Europeans moved away from their traditional beliefs and embraced modern ideology. During the middle ages, people tended to believe that God was the Supreme Being and that he had the absolute power of the whole world.
However, people started to develop different ideologies concerning religion during the renaissance era. Even though they still believed in God, they also began to question his relationship to humanity, an ideology that threatened the influence of the Catholic Church in society.
Shakespeare and the Renaissance. General Information
William Shakespeare was among the people who brought about a lot of changes during the renaissance period in England and transformed literature, thus affecting later culture. His biography evidences that Shakespeare (1564-1616) was among the most prominent poets and authors who ever lived (E-Notes.com 2011).
He is the most famous writer of all times with his works being used even today in many societies in the world. He started his career in London in 1592 when the theatre in England has just begun to flourish.
Due to his excellent work, he had a broad audience, mainly composed of people from the middle class who flocked to the theatres to see his work (McEvoy 92). The most famous and important plays Shakespeare wrote during the renaissance are Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. Before his retirement, he had made a lot of innovations in the genres, comedy, drama, romance, and other forms of performing arts, which we still use up to the present moment.
How Did Shakespeare Impact the Renaissance Period?
Shakespeare is usually referred to as the Renaissance man due to the contributions he had on the lives of people during this period. As stated earlier, there were a lot of cultural changes during this period. Most of these changes were initiated by the elite people in the society who felt that the rights and freedoms of individuals in the community were being violated.
These people noticed that the few people of the upper class were using the law and religion to their advantage, which led them to benefit more from the available resources as compared to the other people of the society who composed the bulk of the community. This led to the emergence of a group of philosophers, artists, writers, and scholars who were inquisitive about their surroundings.
As a result, these elite people advocated for equality of all people in the society, raising a lot of issues that affected the economy, religion, and political stability of the community.
To protect their dignity, the government started to persecute such people and tried to minimize the influence of the movements which such people had created to fight for people’s rights. To avoid persecution, most of these people hid under the umbrella of the public and used public means to air out their grievances and ideologies. William Shakespeare was among the people who embraced the renaissance.
Through his works, he brought out various issues that were affecting society. He brought out the problems which the monarch and the general community were facing, geographical zealotry hand the effects of the renaissance period in the society. While doing so, he also entertained his audience.
The people loved his works because he touched on the key issues which were affecting them at the individual level and as a society. That is why his works were very famous during those days and still are at the present moment.
Shakespeare is credited with having brought about various innovations in the world performing arts. Some of these innovations were used to accommodate the information which he was passing to his audience about the renaissance.
Unique Characters by William Shakespeare in the Renaissance Period
Shakespeare, for example, changed from the traditional two-dimensional writing, a technique that was being used during the pre-renaissance drama and created human characters in his plays that were psychologically complex (Jamieson 2011).
These characters could think and make decisions independently without being influenced by their elders, society, or the law. They did what they felt was right at that point and time, and at the end of the play, these decisions made them successful. Through such plays, Shakespeare was advocating for people to have freedom of choice so that they can choose what is right and avoid what they felt was wrong. This humanism concept was brought out in his work entitled Hamlet.
The renaissance also led to a disruption of the social hierarchy in society. People who were protected by the law because they belonged to a royal family or the monarch were viewed more or less the same as any other individual in society. Shakespeare, therefore, had a chance to explore the character of every individual in the community regardless of the social class which the individual belonged to (Jamieson 2011).
In his plays, he had characters of people from the monarch, the rich, the elite, business people, and peasants. He focused intensely on their lives, their achievements, and failures. In so doing, people started to realize that people faced more or less the same problems regardless of their social status. Thus, William Shakespeare’s plays contributed to renaissance culture by creating complex characters.This, therefore, led to the growth of the spirit of equality among all the individuals of the society.
Shakespeare also utilized the information and knowledge he had concerning the classics, which were of Greek and Italian origin. Initially, these works had been banned from circulation by the Catholic Church.
Shakespeare used this information while writing his literature. Due to this, he was able to put forward the culture of foreign societies in his plays, which not only attracted people from these origins to his audience but also made the English people familiar with foreign customs.
They could, therefore, adopt some aspects of such cultures bringing about the integration of cultures. Some of the things which people adapted were dressing, architecture, accent, cuisine, and music. Thus through the works of Shakespeare, people became aware of what was going on in other societies and cultures (Cody and Spirincorn 18).
Conclusion
William Shakespeare’s contributions to the renaissance were of great significance. He was not just a writer but an advocate of change in the lifestyles of people of Europe, just like the philosophers, artists, and other scholars. Through his works, the popularity of literature, plays, and poems increased.
This is because they all were talking about various issues which the society was facing. As a result, therefore, Shakespeare used his works to enlighten the public on what they were facing and means through which they could face such oppression. This led to the emergence of modern society in which we are living now.
Works Cited
Cody, Gabrielle and Sprinchorn, Evert. The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Introduction: The Delightful Emptiness of Modernism
Modernist era was not a simple time to create in and talk about; set in the time when the world started changing rapidly and, therefore, facing a number of political crises, the Civil War being one of the most horrible of them, it made people feel lost and desperate.
As a result, the literature of the period was filled with anguish and despair as well. Although such works as Crane’s “Open Boat,” Gilman’s “The Yellow Paper” and London’s “To Build a Fire” were written independently and concerned absolutely different topics, they still revolved around the same issue, namely, the idea that life was a trail of suffering ending in death, and that madness was the only retreat.
Literary Analysis
Which Way the Boat Flows: Surviving on a Shipwreck
Known for his attempts to help people reconcile with the tough American nature, Jack London was one of the first people to portray the U.S. nation as the victims of cataclysm, which the Civil war, actually was; inflicted not by nature, but by people, it, however, left much more scars than one might expect it to. London nails down the major problems of the post-war U.S. society: “This tower […] represented […] the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual—nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men” (Crane).
In fact, the very title of the novel speaks for itself, the shipwreck being a metaphor for the U. S. at the beginning of the XX century. Torn limb to limb by the Civil War, the United States resembled a wreck of a state and had, in fact, to start from the very beginning to build a new society.
The Yellow Wallpaper and What Lurks Behind It: A Gradual Descent into Madness
A different perspective on the XX century world in general and the USA in particular, Charlotte Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper” is more than a journey into the protagonist’s psychotic mind. In “Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman questions the sanity of the entire world: “There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day” (Gilman), thus, adding to its Modernist portrayal.
Into the Primitive: Jack London Tries to Light the Fire
Much like the two previous writers, London offers the readers to consider a conflict; however, the conflict in London’s work is of different origin than the ones in Gilman and Crane’s stories. While the latter dwell on the relationships between people, the mistakes that people make and the horrible misunderstandings that these mistakes lead to, London considers the relationship between people and nature.
The traces of the tension that gripped the entire world, however, can also be traced in the story. Instead of portraying a touching reconcile with nature, as London used to do, the author depicts a battle for life between a freezing man and the storm on the Yukon Trail: “It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of the sun” (London).
Conclusion: Looking for the New Means of Expressing the Old Truth
It seems that there was a common thread in the Modernist epoch with the idea of disaster gradually approaching the humankind. Even though the three stories mentioned above are related to completely different themes, they are all shot through with the anticipation of something tragic. A typical characteristic of the Modernist literature, which was considered the manifestation of the era of uncertainty, with the terrors of WWI, the graphic portrayal of creeping insanity is what the three above-mentioned works can be characterized with.
Works Cited
Crane, Stephen. Open Boat. n. d. Web.
Gilman, Charlotte P. The Yellow Wallpaper. n. d. Web.
Claude McKay’s poem, “If we Must Die” talks about tensions between African Americans and Whites and paints a gloomy outlook about the future of race relations in the U.S. The poet is incensed by the restrictions that make it difficult for African Americans to live free, in a country that they call home.
It must be noted that this poem had a special role to play in the Harlem Renaissance because it encouraged African Americans to fight against incidents of injustice and oppression.
The poem typecasts the author as a champion for equality and human dignity, who is not willing to stand by and watch his people getting persecuted (Sayre, 2012, p. 1174).
McKay adopts an angry tone in the poem to show his frustrations concerning constant harassments of black people by Caucasian lynch mobs in different parts of the country.
Langston Hughes’ poem, “The Weary Blues”, talks about how blues music helps black people reconnect with their heritage. The persona adopts a melancholic tone yet the power of blues makes him forget about his problems in a short while to help him convey inner feelings about his existence.
The musician described in the poem is a representation of all black people in general that struggle with a conflicted sense of identity, in a strange land they are supposed to call home. The poet describes how the musician sways to the rhythm of the blues and the emotional uplifting he gets out of the experience (Sayre, 2012, p. 1208).
Through the musician, the feelings and experiences of all black people are revealed. The persona and descriptions used in the poem epitomize the Harlem renaissance era, when blacks were free to express their artistic abilities without restraint in a hostile social environment.
McKay talks about hopelessness, violence and retributive justice in his poem. The element of double consciousness comes out when he insists that the black man’s will to survive will always prevail against any form of oppression.
His poem connects the past and present by asking African Americans to use any means to fight against their oppressors to ensure they gain a high level of respect which they deserve.
Additionally, McKay’s poem has dark imagery and speaks about blows, open graves and shedding blood (Sayre, 2012, p. 1174). These elements are symbolic of the struggles African Americans have faced from the days of slavery and how these struggles have shaped their destiny.
The poet seems to be resigned to the fact that African Americans must be willing to make sacrifices to earn the respect and dignity they deserve in the country. The omniscient narration in the poem has an aggressive tone which shows that African Americans are willing to settle scores to safeguard their racial pride.
Hughes consciousness’ is inspired by a strong cultural heritage and inbuilt strength; attributes that define African Americans’ existence in the U.S. He uses a somber mood in his poem to describe the seriousness of his themes and their relevance to ordinary people’s lives.
In a way, the poem seems to be communicating a message of self- appreciation to all African American people living in the country encouraging them not to despair.
His poem seems to be calling upon African Americans not to dwell too much on the past but to focus on having a better future in a country where they are still treated as inferior beings (Miller, 1989, p. 69).
Hughes calls upon black people to take time and reflect about what they ought to do to overcome different forms of oppression they are subjected to (Duplessis, 2001, p. 118).
McKay’s poem portrays themes of self –belief, valor, suffering and indignity. The title, “If We Must Die”, is a symbolic clarion call to all African Americans to be ready to shed blood to safeguard their pride and dignity.
He insists that collectively, they will remain defiant to their tormentors and they will use all their efforts to fight them, regardless of the consequences. The combative and aggressive tone used in the poem serves as a collective voice telling all African Americans to do more to protect themselves from white lynch mobs (Maxwell, 1999, p. 53).
Elements of pride and dignity are worth protecting and McKay insists that it is better for a person to die a hero than to live a miserable life. He adopts a defiant persona by claiming that all African American men need to show their masculinity by retaliating against their attackers to show that they are proud.
In the end, McKay comes out as a crusader for retributive justice and warns perpetrators that their actions will no longer be condoned.
The illustrations used in the poem demonstrate themes of resilience, tranquility and communal identity and strong cultural attachments. Hughes uses the poem to express black sorrow in the wake of strong discriminative practices that subjugate African Americans.
The blues offer resilience to African Americans encouraging them to forge ahead and make something positive out of their existence. Hughes’ description about the black singer’s hands pressing white keys of the piano, exemplifies the struggle African Americans have to endure, before they are accepted by the mainstream white society.
Moreover, singers and listeners alike are able to forget about their tribulations momentarily, because the rhythm is able to provoke their inner emotional sentiments (Gabbins, 1999, p. 115).
The blues is a representation of the collective black soul because it continues to echo in the musician’s head even after he has gone to sleep. Therefore, the suggestive message brought out by the powerful lyrics of the blues makes the singer appreciate his heritage and all it represents.
Poem: There was a Time
Stanza One
The Harlem Renaissance was a time,
When black artists were conscious and their ideas flowed freely,
Provoking minds of men and women, suffering from similar fates,
Yet, amidst all this doom and gloom, they stood out from the rest,
And they overcame their fears, limitations and hopelessness,
By writing and narrating powerful words, that nourished and uplifted the soul.
Stanza Two
One acted as a crusader, beseeching all black men and women,
To regain their dignity, pride, self-respect and honor,
That had been taken away from them by their oppressors,
By fighting back viciously against the oppressor,
Because that was the perfect time for retribution and heroism,
That would redefine racial relations and attitudes in the country.
Stanza Three
Another one, encouraged African Americans,
To look back at their heritage with pride and nostalgia,
And reminisce about both the good and the bad times,
To reflect about their purpose and true destiny,
To improve their attitudes about their own existence,
By listening to the soft and evocative rhythms of the blues.
References
Duplessis, R.B. (2001). Genders, races, and religious cultures in modern American poetry, 1908-1934. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Gabbins, J.V. (1999).The furious flowering of African American poetry. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
Maxwell, W.J. (1999). New Negro, Old Left. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Miller, R.B. (1989). The art and language of Langston Hughes. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.
Sayre, H. M. (2012).The humanities: culture, continuity and change. New York, NY: Pearson.
It is usual to suppose that Dante’s great poem La Divina Commedia is permeated so thoroughly with scholasticism and contemporary reference that it cannot be readily understood without considerable learning. But this is not so. A great poem is not so limited. Whatsoever has been integrated into an art-form derives prolonged vitality from that whole which is its new setting: and that whole is not readily antiquated. A careful inspection shows Dante’s work, like that of other poets, to be built mainly of imaginative effects: these are primary. The philosophy and historical references find their places in the imaginative scheme, and when seen like this, their significance is generally not hard to understand.
The poem is in three parts: L’Inferno, Il Purgatorio, and Il Paradiso. It narrates Dante’s progress through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. But what are we to say of these if we do not ourselves believe in any so rigid an eschatology? In what sense can an admirer be said to accept Dante’s attitude and conviction? The answer is simple. We can suggest first that the whole is to be seen as Dante’s personal spiritual progress, from an evil to a blessed state: but this alone does scant justice to the firmly objective system to which he introduces us. In this objective reality, he himself believed. Therefore we must blend our facts and say that the poem expresses Dante’s own experience of an objectively conceived evil or grace. We need not believe what Dante believes, but we must believe in his belief, thus tuning our minds to his experience. Then we shall see that the people he finds in Hell are there because he sees them as Hell-forces. Persons are not evil: evil needs ever a relation, reciprocity. Therefore, Dante’s progress through Hell shows Dante’s experience of evil in terms of people he knew or books he has read. We can follow exactly his Hell experience without at all agreeing to his judgment on pagans. All poetry must be read like this. The constituting elements in a poem or play grow out of date in a year, an hour, a minute. The symbolized experience is dateless. Dante Inferno is such an experience endued with poetic immortality.
Dante’s poem is a poem of fire. First, the hungry flames of Hell; next, the varying light of Purgatory; third, the light and still blaze of Paradise. But we must see how skilfully the poet incarnates his spirit-world into natural forms such as the Eagle, the Rose. And Goethe Faust more strongly still stresses the idea of incarnation. It is his final statement. The poem is rough and chaotic: it expresses the experience of a lifetime, speaking in terms of Renaissance aspiration and erotic intuition, often looking back to ancient Greece and considering to what extent poetry may recreate the future of our life. The final ideal is that of creative work, and the whole is crowned by Christian immortality. Historicity and time are to be considered flexible: the experience only is important.
By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the discourse of confession was one of a large number of discourses of the self that confession may have originally been designed to suppress or compete with. Among these is the new emphasis on private piety that develops with mysticism; the new literacy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that encouraged the recording of private ruminations, the autobiographical emphasis of authorship in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, heralded by Dante and prefigured by the biographical interests of the Raza of the troubadours: and even the rise of the mercantile ethic, which, however corporately organized through guilds and urban governments, depended upon the acceptance of private risk and personal probity. The epic hero and the saint were no longer the exclusive subjects of biographically structured narrative—even contemporary nobles found themselves or could arrange to find themselves, the subject of chronicles organized around their accomplishments and conquests.
Another traditional way of understanding the impact of confession, however, is to see it as an attempt to constrain the individualism of the twelfth-century Renaissance, to see it as a conservative reaction. Contrition seeks a homogenization, a reduction of the “individuality” created by the experience of sinfulness. As an elite phenomenon, individual awareness had already appeared in the new spirituality of the twelfth century. However, the stress on confession and the institutionalization of conscience turned the development of individual spiritual awareness against itself, subsuming the freely unmoored quest (a staple of both narrative form and new developments in twelfth-century theology and history) to social and liturgical control. 7 Even the literary quest of Arthurian romance was repackaged as a moral collection of sorts. (The fourteenth-century secular collections combine a dynamic quest form with a collection of distinct tales, in which the outward form is often more resonant of moral and theological values than the individual tales.)
Despite Auerbach’s admiration for Boccaccio’s skills at narrative fluency, Boccaccio is condemned to a transitional limbo between the figural realism of Dante and the tragic realism of the Renaissance. Boccaccio studies both admire the quick sketch of character accomplished in the Decameron and regret the lack of depth in that sketch. It is as if Boccaccio had rejected medieval certainties that gravitated against the delineation of individual character but had not embraced the novelistic or tragic conception of character that literary history celebrates as Western literature’s great accomplishment. In fact, Boccaccio depends as much on the model he is rejecting as on the one he is apparently half-forging.
What Chaucer and Boccaccio call into question, however, is the possibility of the purity and integrity of human experience as defined from a single theological or secular point of view. Neither the dynamic will of Renaissance Faustianism, despite fragmentary prefigurations of that mode, nor the abnegation of the self typical of hagiography (despite occasional images held up as impossible ideals) are offered as real possibilities for human action. Chaucer and Boccaccio, more rooted in the secular realm in their tale collections, tend not to indulge in the revelation of the inner self that both Dante and Langland attempt. The narrators of the Commedia and Piers Plowman define themselves through the language of confession in ways that neither Chaucerian nor Boccaccian personae do. Indeed, Chaucer and Boccaccio are guarded, or represent themselves as guarded, in terms of their willingness, or their fictions’ willingness, to reveal much about their interiority.
The self in Boccaccio and Chaucer exists, then, as a powerfully contradictory artifact. Apparently accessing the new languages of commerce, travel, science, social dislocation, and protest, these vocabularies are contained within a syntax still structured on the model of a discourse designed at least partly to contain these new forces. Certainly, the tension between containment and explosiveness is negotiated in different ways by Chaucer and Boccaccio, but it is that tension which is partly responsible for the energy of their works in their entirety, rather than the interest of local passages or isolated tales.
In fact, the individual of the late Middle Ages is defined by corporate structures as well. But such corporate structures as early mercantilism, or the stirrings of absolutism or the city, highlighted individual accomplishment as an expression of their own power and success.
Chaucer, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and even Dante, problematize the notion of a sharp periodic or epistemic break. Foucault’s own fascination with the eighteenth century as the fault line, in fact, obscures some of his insights. Foucault’s emphasis on this period, central in the development of French thought and of scientism, verges on a rewriting of Eliot’s “dissociation of sensibility,” or a Robertsonian distinction between medieval social corporatism and modern romantic individualism. This does not mean that we need to reinvent Chaucer and Boccaccio as transitional figures, with one proverbial foot, awkwardly placed in the Middle Ages and the other in the Renaissance. Instead, we might learn from what Foucault meant rather than what he said and regard the literary text as a site for and enactment of conflicting cultural activities, whose historical destiny remains very much of an open question, and whose consistency and coherence into an overdetermined epistemic or periodic cultural whole is infinitely deferred.
Dante’s Commedia, called the Divine Comedy by some critics, is a tale of one sinner’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and heaven. Dante serves as an everyman figure of sorts witnessing the despair, pain, hope, and ecstasy of the dead as they exist in Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. In Inferno (Hell), he meets and talks with unrepentant sinners, guilty of a wide variety of crimes for which they will suffer eternally and never see God. The punishments are often fitted to the crime, as in the punishment for soothsayers, who try to peer too far ahead into the future and are damned to spend eternity walking along in pain with their heads facing backward. Through the intervention of Beatrice (a woman who served as Dante’s inspiration, but who died young), Virgil (who was greatly admired by Dante for his Aeneid and for living the life of a virtuous pagan) guides Dante through Hell, explaining some of its architecture and rules and vouching for Dante’s authority to visit the infernal realm to many of the classical beasts and devils that inhabit the nether region.
In Purgatorio (Purgatory), Dante and Virgil watch sinners do proper penance for their sins as they ascend the mountain of penance, and they grow to understand the forgiving nature of God as they discuss the nature of the mountain with various sinners. Torment and punishment are welcomed by the sinners in Purgatory because as soon as a sinner fully pays for her/his sins, she/he may enter heaven. Sins in Purgatory are fittingly remitted by the sinners suffering appropriate consequences for their sins: gluttons are starved; the slothful must run.
In Paradiso (Paradise), Dante leaves Virgil behind (only those who believed in Christ enter heaven). Beatrice serves as Dante—s guide as he meets the saints who inhabit the different levels of heaven and are united with the Godhead. He speaks with numerous famous saints who espoused different virtues in life and learns how different virtues fit into the overall picture of holiness and godliness. As he ascends higher and higher in heaven, he slowly adjusts to the divine light and beauty of each realm in preparation for seeing God and the union of saints in the empyrean. Upon seeing God, Dante is struck by the inadequacy of language and the human mind to comprehend the Godhead. The Commedia, in many ways, is an attempt to explain the most important journeys of the medieval Christian life (the journey of the soul toward heaven) to the average Christian.
Works Cited
Gardiner, Eileen. Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante. New York: Italica, 1989.
Jacoff, Rachel, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Morgan, Alison. Dante and the Medieval Other World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
The love poetry of the Renaissance is a genre that gave rise to a new style focusing on human feelings as the highest form of manifestation of spiritual experiences. Outstanding British, Italian, Spanish, and other poets laid the foundation for a special form of versification, which became the background for subsequent generations and allowed conveying the depth of emotions. The rejection of religious themes and an emphasis on a human soul is a characteristic feature of this genre.
During the Renaissance, poetry took on new forms and ways of expressing feelings. According to Mayne, prominent English poets, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, and some others made contributions to the development of this genre and developed the sonnet style previously proposed by Petrarch. The theme of love was conveyed through suffering, a wide range of emotions, and vivid epithets, which was not typical of earlier medieval poetry (Semple). Snell draws attention to the techniques of the English poets and notes that their romanticism laid the foundation for a new concept in the reflection of the relationship between a man and a woman. Thus, the Renaissance love poetry is a genre that called for an open expression of feelings, and compared to earlier works, poems and sonnets from this period were distinguished by a rich emotional coloring.
The poem “Dream Boogie” by Langston Hughes is a piece reflecting the frustration of African American citizens. The concerns of these people regarding their oppressed position in society could not be expressed openly, and music was one of the means of communicating with the white population. Therefore, the selected work represents the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance and can be used for improving the understanding of the movement.
“Dream Boogie” by Langston Hughes
The connection between the poem and the period under consideration can be established by paying attention to the rhythm and the mood conveyed by it. Thus, the author speaks to the audience using short phrases, and this technique resembles jazz songs written by musicians during the Harlem Renaissance. In this case, “boogie-woogie rumble” is not merely the way to refer to the arts but an attempt to highlight that communication was facilitated by music that everyone could hear (Hughes, n.d.). This circumstance contributes to the possibility to link the African American cultural movement with this piece, while the explicit dialogue contributes to the theme of this event. For instance, Hughes (n.d.) writes that “a dream deferred” corresponds to the beat, which is both happy and sad. This phrase implies discontent of this population group with their lives and the desire to demonstrate their worldviews to other citizens.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the poem “Dream Boogie” by Langston Hughes represents what the Harlem Renaissance stands for by emphasizing the perceptions of struggles by African Americans. It shows that they could not express their needs because communication with white people was complicated, and music was the only way to do so. The symbolic meaning of this work for the movement is also conditional upon its emphasis on the affected individuals’ feelings stemming from the existing disparities.
References
Hughes, L. (n.d.). Dream boogie. Poetry Foundation. Web.
Undoubtedly, sonnets of William Shakespeare are the true masterpieces of the world’s classic poetry. First published nearly four centuries ago, Shakespeare’s sonnets remain the most popular, but, perhaps, little-understood literary work. What makes Shakespeare’s poetry special and popular among a wide range of readers? He wrote at a time when lyric poetry was full of trite metaphors as well as pompous, pretentious, and still empty conundrums. Shakespeare broke these literary conventionalities and gave a new meaning to old forms, creating his own unique and vivid images. Apparently, the wide variety of themes that he chose for his writings also contribute to their popularity: the complexity of human soul, its ability to rise and fall, wisdom and vanity, purity and vice, the brevity of human life, transience of time, fear of death, hope of salvation, and, of course, the eternal need for love and beauty.
No author of the Renaissance era could express a complex set of human experiences associated with the realization of time transience brighter and stronger than Shakespeare did in his sonnets. He interprets time as the subjective fact of human existence that requires no explanation but resignation. Like a force that is beyond control, time threatens humanity with physical destruction, strictly regulates its status and possibilities. A flash of youth, the prime of life, gradual withering, and death constitute the eternal cycle of human existence. In Shakespeare’s philosophy, fear of time and death, as opposed to the theme of immortality can be obtained through art. Art lives through centuries and retains the memory of people that were glorified by a poet and image of the poet as well. A person acquires immortality in the works of art. The poet lives eternally in his lyrics. The themes of time, death, youth, and immortality are brilliantly intertwined in Shakespeare’s Sonnets 18, 60, 63, and 73.
The Renaissance era took its origin in the 14th-century Italy. Over 100 years, the cultural movement spread across Europe and came to England only by the end of 15th century. The flourishing of the Renaissance in England fell in the Elizabethan era. At that time, all prerequisites for the development of legendary Shakespearean theater and literature had been formed. One cannot say, however, that these cultural spheres were in great decline before William Shakespeare: his elder contemporaries made a significant contribution to the development of literature and drama. Marlowe invented a truly elevated literary style and a new type of hero – a common person that did not have the royal blood. Robert Greene created a “mild tragedy”, the type of drama that featured captivating cordiality and psychological authenticity.
Thomas Kyd started to develop the basics of dramatic art (Cousins, 2014). Shakespeare simply had to deepen everything that was invented before him, and he did it with astonishing success. He enlarged English vocabulary with approximately 1,700 words, not to mention numerous idioms (Schiffer, 2013). Thanks to Shakespeare, the English language obtained plasticity and freedom of expression that made it more eloquent and vivid for drama. Shakespearean plays became the symbol of the English Renaissance: partly because of the introduction of ancient motives (classic Latin and Greek plots), and partly because of Shakespeare’s philosophy that allowed him to create authentic, deep, and true-to-life characters. It was at the time of Shakespeare when the main scenic principles were formed: the central focus was shifted now to the message and acting. Owing to William Shakespeare, the Renaissance theater became a versatile, ahistorical model of the universe that concentrated on the perpetual conflict between person and society.
We know 154 Shakespeare’s sonnets that can be divided roughly into two big groups: Sonnets 1-126 are addressed to an unknown young man, who eventually became referred to as a Friend among critics, and Sonnets 127-154 are devoted to an unknown woman that eventually acquired a name of the Dark Lady (Leishman, 2013). In the first 18 sonnets, Shakespeare admonishes and persuades his Friend, a young man of astonishing beauty, to marry a woman and procreate. The main theme of first sonnets is the great value of beauty that is threatened by Time. The theme of time is the building line of the whole cycle of sonnets. The reader observes that in the course of time, the Bard changes his attitude to this subject. Initially, in Sonnet 18, he is self-confident and believes that time and death have no power over humans: “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this and this gives life to thee” (Shakespeare, 2002, 18.13-14).
Such confidence vanishes over time, and in Sonnet 146 Shakespeare is full of humble resignation “So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men / And death once dead, there’s no more dying then” (Shakespeare, 2002, 146.13-14). The theme of time in Shakespeare’s poetry is not incidental; it is determined by the epoch in which he lived. During the Renaissance era, all art was conditioned by predominating at that time dichotomy of perfection and imperfection. Perfection was expressed in terms of permanence of beauty, while the change was a synonym of imperfection. This view was formed by such external factors as high rates of mortality and shift from the West to the East (as a result of numerous geographical discoveries). As a response to such instability, the Renaissance artists were trying to find any kind of immortality; a guarantee that humans can live forever. Thus, Shakespeare’s interest in the themes of time and death may be explained by the omnipresent instability of the Renaissance epoch.
As it was already mentioned, Sonnet 18 features the themes of destructive and uncontrollable time and permanence of beauty. It starts with a rhetorical question that directs the whole piece of poetry. In this question, Shakespeare connects the subjective perception of time with nature. Although time and nature are eternal, their representations in the human mind are different. We used to imagine nature as a dynamic cyclic process in which one season gives way to the other. Time is also a dynamic and constantly changing phenomenon, however, we imagine time as a serial line of events that has the beginning but does not have the end. But in Sonnet 18 Shakespeare suggests that time has common features with nature, he likens youth of a young man to summer, implying that both summer and youth are rather short: “And summer’s lease hath all too short a date” (Shakespeare, 2002, 18.4).
The word choice is not accidental: the legal term “lease” used as a metaphor “summer’s lease” creates the necessary impression of illusory freedom and eternity of youth. In this context, Shakespeare expresses the idea that human life completely depends on time; it is limited since it has its “lease term”. Further, in the second quatrain Shakespeare likens life to the sun, to which he refers as “the eye of heaven” (Shakespeare, 2002, 18.5). He suggests that life passes by too quickly; a person experiences so many emotions and feelings that they feel the “hotness” of life. The sun gives energy to everything, as life gives a wide range of opportunities to humans. However, “Every fair from fair sometimes declines” (Shakespeare, 2002, 18.7), and all opportunities and possibilities that life gives eventually kill us. In this line, Shakespeare suggests that despite the playfulness that humans feel at the time of their youth, despite the power that they feel at the time of maturity, by the end of their lives they are exhausted and tired of everything that they experienced.
Therefore, time has its price, and by the end of life, humans pay their ticks. In the third sextet, Shakespeare resolves the problem of “lease term” and finds the way to escape from the inevitability of death. Maintaining the metaphor that likens youth of a young man to life, Shakespeare now refers to it as the “eternal summer” and uses a set of anaphoric negations “nor lose”, “nor shall death brag you” to express his flat denial of life limitedness (Shakespeare, 2002, 18.8-10). He decides that “eternal lines” will help the young man to live through centuries, and in these lines, he will always be young and beautiful. Such idea introduces the theme of art that is closely connected with the theme of time and death. Although Time controls everything including the life of humans, it cannot control art. By means of poetry, Shakespeare aims to fight against the power of Time. Thus, in the last lines of the sextet, the Bard concludes that the young man will live until this piece of poetry exists. One should pay attention to the expressive means, such as alliteration of a sound [s] that creates emotionality and passion of Shakespeare’s faith in Art. The intensiveness of sounds is aimed to contrast the silence that will follow the recitation of the sonnet.
Perhaps, Shakespeare’s interest in the theme of time is conditioned not only by the instability of the Renaissance era but also by his age. Loosely speaking, most of the sonnets he wrote when he was 40 years old. At this age, people tend to evaluate their life and think about the coming death. Probably, Shakespeare was worried by how quickly time passes and reluctant to admit the fact of the forthcoming end. Striving for the eternal life, he weaves time and art together, believing that it will ensure immortality.
Sonnet 60 opens a sequence of lyrics in which themes of time, death, and art entwined together. In the first quatrain, Shakespeare refers to the image of water that symbolizes death. Considering the epoch in which the Bard wrote his sonnets as well as the influence of Latin and Greek literature and mythology on his poetry and prose, water is closely connected with the image of unnatural death. Shakespeare often used this image in his other writings. In Hamlet, for example, Ophelia committed suicide by drowning herself in the river, and in The Tempest Gonzago claimed that the most inhospitable land is better than the ocean (López, 1996). In Sonnet 60, water symbolizes the sequence of minutes that pass, bringing a person closer to death. In the second quatrain Shakespeare again, as in Sonnet 18, refers to the stages of human life, expressing the idea that youth is fleeting as the light, and maturity is connected with crawling to the end of life. Here Shakespeare restates the thesis of Sonnet 18, claiming that Time and life will take everything that was given to humans in the beginning: “And Time that gave does now its gift confound” (Shakespeare, 2002, 60.8).
The third quatrain is fully devoted to the theme of time. The Bard describes it as powerful and yet indifferent force that “transfix”, “delves”, and “feeds” on the human life. Thus, Shakespeare personifies Time, perhaps, in order to fight with it. As a rule, people are afraid of obscurity, but when they are able to imagine the threat, to make it visible and similar to what they already know, it becomes less fearful. The narrative reaches its climax at the end of the third quatrain with a common image of the scythe. Although it is commonly accepted that scythe is an attribute of death, Shakespeare uses it in the other context, thus equating time that flows like a deadly river with death. The whole piece of poetry is rather dramatic and pessimistic, and yet the Bard does not leave hope for life. In the last two lines he addresses to the young man, claiming once again that the art of poetry will save his beauty and will immortalize it: “And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand / Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand” (Shakespeare, 2002, 60.13-14). The pessimistic mood changes; the sonnet acquires joyful and festive tone when Shakespeare assures his Friend in the power of his lines.
Sonnet 64 resembles Sonnet 60 in many perspectives: the images of water and time, fear of the forthcoming and inevitable death, fear for the young man, or Friend, and the general pessimistic atmosphere of the narrative. The only thing that is different is the conclusion that Shakespeare makes. If Sonnet 60 ended with the strong belief in the power of art that can win the merciless time and death, Sonnet 64 concludes that death is inevitable and there is no power that can counteract it. In the first quatrain, Shakespeare makes reference to Horace’s ode Exegi Monumentum Aere Rerennius, stating that “the rich proud cost of outworn buried age”, or monuments of previous ages fell by the hand of Time (Shakespeare, 2002, 63.2). The Bard expresses the idea that even stone that seems to be eternal is the subject to the destructive influence of time. The former passion that Shakespeare had in Sonnet 18 comes back, and the Bard rages against nature and time that lead humanity to the eventual death, enslaving and enthralling it.
The image of water as the powerful force that in its omnipotence is equated to time and death appears once again after being mentioned in Sonnet 60: “When I have seen the hungry ocean gain / Advantage on the kingdom of the shore” (Shakespeare, 2002, 63.5-6). Shakespeare is convinced that time, “the hungry ocean”, may obliterate all kingdoms and states that were raised by people, implying that nothing lasts forever and all things will eventually surrender to the power of time. Again, the word choice is not accidental. Shakespeare repeats the verb “confound” referring to Sonnet 60. What is more interesting is that the verb “ruminate” resembles the noun “ruin” in line 11: “Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate” (Shakespeare, 2002, 63.11). Shakespeare highlights the idea of destruction caused by Time, focusing on its visual representation in the form of ruins. In the end, he concludes that Time will take his friend, and nothing can prevent it. Even art is powerless in the face of time and death; now the Bard sorrowfully resigns to the laws of nature.
Shakespeare’s apprehension of the inevitability of death reaches its climax in Sonnet 73, in which the careful reader may observe the signs of autobiographical tone: first-person pronouns and conversational constructions. In this sonnet, the Bard reveals his sorrow and grief that time causes in him. The fear of death has never been expressed so distinctly. Shakespeare creates vivid images so that the reader could see and feel the Bard’s grief. He also resorts to the gradation of verbs of perception: “seest” to “perceiv’st” to achieve the highest point in the expression of his apprehension of time and death. In the first quatrain, the reader is presented to another simile where Shakespeare compares time with nature. However, if Sonnets 18 and 60 used the image of summer, Sonnet 73 features the image of fall. Here the description of the season is not aimed at praising the young man’s beauty, but at symbolizing Shakespeare’s mood.
Moreover, the fall as an intermediate season between summer and winter may imply the “crawling” of a person from their youth to death. In the second quatrain, time is presented as a constant change of day and night, implying that a person lives peacefully through these moments mostly unaware of the number of years, months, or even days that are left to them. The end of this quatrain is sudden and even sharp. It contrasts with a smooth sequence of the preceding lines and cuts them unexpectedly by direct introduction of the Death’s image. This whole quatrain may be projected to life where day goes after day and then suddenly comes death. This suddenness, sharpness, and directness together with the alliteration of a sound [s] in the last line of the second quatrain cause the ringing silence after it: “Death’s second self that seals up all in rest” (Shakespeare, 2002, 73.8).
In the third quatrain, the reader finds the same idea as in Sonnets 18 and 60: “Consummed with that which it was nourished by” (Shakespeare, 2002, 73.12). If one compares it with lines “And every fair from fair sometimes declines” (18.6) and “And Time that gave does now its gift confound” (Shakespeare, 2002, 60.8) then they will see that Shakespeare is convinced that eventually a person should compensate for all happiness, love, and joy that was given him with his life. The themes of time and death are closely connected in this sonnet. In fact, in Sonnet 73 Shakespeare concludes that time and death may be interchangeable because both refer to the mortality of human existence. Yet, he finds a solution to this dramatic problem. If in the first sonnets Shakespeare could state that only childbearing helps to prolong human life; that only art is able to immortalize a person, in Sonnet 73 he claims that the key to immortality is the strong, passionate, and self-sacrificing love.
Shakespeare’s sonnets convey the poet’s philosophy that can be characterized as existentialism. Apparently, the Bard was not a philosopher in the real sense of this word. As Dostoevsky, Shakespeare simply expressed his thoughts in his works. His poetry reveals the pessimistic view of life and more often than not features almost complete negation of possibilities. He presents time as an external, inimical force that is beyond of control but follows the universal laws of nature: everything must have its rise, fall, and disappearance. The theme of time in Shakespeare’s sonnets is connected with the themes of death, art, and immortality. Despite the sorrow and apprehension, the Bard does not relinquish hope and suggests his own solution to mortality. He believes that art and love lead to eternity and help humans to become immortal.
Nevertheless, grief and despair prevail in most of his works. Sonnets 18, 60, 63, and 73 present a series of gradual change of Shakespeare’s perspective on time and death. In the beginning, the Bard believes in omnipotent art as a means of fighting death and gaining immortality. Then, he starts to analyze the concept of time and realizes that it is rather powerful, but still, Shakespeare is sure that the poetry will protect his beloved ones from its influence. Further, the Bard deepens his analysis in which he begins to compare time and death and concludes that nothing can last forever and that everything will eventually come to an end. Finally, Shakespeare realizes the omnipotence of time over humanity and all its creations; he also concludes that time is an alter ego of death. In this sequence, the reader may observe the way in which Shakespeare’s existentialism developed over time. Perhaps, the Bard was right that art is not all-powerful; however, one should not forget that Shakespeare wrote almost six centuries ago but the images and characters that he created live up to these days and remain popular among a wide range of readers.
References
Cousins, A. D. (2014). Shakespeare’s sonnets and narrative poems. New York, NY: Routledge.
Leishman, J. B. (2013). Themes and variations in Shakespeare’s sonnets. New York, NY: Routledge.
López, M. M. (1996). Teaching Shakespeare’s sonnets: Time as fracture in Sonnets 18, 60, 73. SEDERI: yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, 1(7), 287-296.
Schiffer, J. (2013). Shakespeare’s sonnets: Critical essays. New York, NY: Routledge.
Shakespeare, W. (2002). The complete sonnets and poems. (C. Burrow, Ed.). Oxford University Press.