Jacobean Period (Early 17th Century) PDF

Session 3: Jacobean period (early 17th C.)  Religious debates Elizabeth, the last Tudor, died childless. James Stuart James VI of Scotland/James I of England and Ireland => King of Great Britain(1603) => Jacobean period Anglicans vs Puritans King James Bible (1604) His son James I...

Session 3: Jacobean period (early 17th C.)  Religious debates Elizabeth, the last Tudor, died childless. James Stuart James VI of Scotland/James I of England and Ireland => King of Great Britain(1603) => Jacobean period Anglicans vs Puritans King James Bible (1604) His son James I (1625): Catholic influence (Divine Right of Kings)  Cavaliers v. Roundheads Cavalier Roundhead Royalist (Charles I) Parliamentarian (O. Cromwell) Church of England Puritan Decadent/aristocratic lifestyle Disciplined lifestyle The Stuarts: Charles I fascination for French absolutism (“Divine Right of Kings”) Patron of the arts : court painting and court drama (masque)  Baroque Originally a derogatory term to deride 17th C extravagance. It was initiated by the Jesuits as a strategy of esthetic fascination against the austerity of Reformation. Relies on complicated geometries, effects of optical illusions and ornamentation, relations between the part and the whole.  Masque A dramatic form that mixed poetry, music, song, dance, scene machinery, elaborate costumes, thus relying heavily on pure theatricality (ie. non verbal communication, as opposed to the reliance on dramatic dialog). Plot is feeble; focus on virtue as expressed by outward splendor. Marked by elaborateness and extravagance in costumes and setting. A courtly genre: - Performed by royals and courtiers - Stage architecture, with perspectives opening on painted ideal landscapes, testified to the integration between heaven and earth, the kingdom of heaven and the court of the King..  A Lady masquer Sketch Inigo Jones A star  Jacobean revenge play (tragedy of blood) Often set in Italy, it allowed indirect allusion to Catholic excesses and transgressions. Hen there is no political justice, uncontrolled retaliation takes its place. - Political corruption/ manipulation/conspiracy - Extreme violence actually performed on stage - metaphysical questioning as to the nature of evil - The occult and the supernatural (ghosts, witches, would-be werewolves – more or less metaphoric: interrogations about the demonic) - Labyrinthine plot, - Often play within the play. - Stock character of the malcontent, who seeks to improve his status through manipulation and murder. Ex: John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi (1613)  Cavalier poetry - Characterized by lightness and frivolous pursuits: lovemaking - Elegant but cynical and shallow (Richard Lovelace ; Robert Herrick) - Tolerant treatment of sexuality - Refusal of idealism Van Dyck, “Charles I at the Hunt” (c. 1635) Van Dyck , Lord John Stuart and his brother, Lord Bernard Stuart William Dobson, “Portrait of Endymion Porter” (c.1642-1645)  Across confessional brriers: the intellect Scientific pursuits (Royal Society) to be accomplished collectively en empirically (Sir Francis Bacon) 1687 Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica (gravity) => Universal laws of nature could be discovered by human reason  Essay writing Michel de Montaigne : “essai”, a form which dealt with ideas Francis Bacon,’s Novum Organum (1620): Empiricism; Essays (1625) Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): an encyclopedia of madness Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), a political treatise, proposes a pessimistic vision of man as driven by aggressiveness What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love, of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians, examineth the matter, and is at a stand, to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth, is a naked, and open day-light, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum doemonum, because it filleth the imagination; and yet, it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt; such as we spake of before. But, howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments, and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last, was the light of reason; and his sabbath work ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed light, upon the face of the matter or chaos; then he breathed light, into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light, into the face of his chosen. The poet, that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: It is a pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure, to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling, or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth. To pass from theological, and philosophical truth, to the truth of civil business; it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear, and round dealing, is the honor of man's nature; and that mixture of falsehoods, is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding, and crooked courses, are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice, that doth so cover a man with shame, as to be found false and perfidious. And therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason, why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge? Saith he, If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and breach of faith, cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal, to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men; it being foretold, that when Christ cometh, he shall not find faith upon the earth. F. Bacon, “Of Truth” Aphorism: Concise, striking sentence that sounds like a final statement. It is marked by terseness and often involves paradox. It is close to witticism. Ex: “Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.” (Oscar Wilde) “Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect.” (Francis Bacon)  Metaphysical Poets Name given retroactively to a group of seventeenth century poets seen as obscure and eccentric. - Both devout and intellectual - Fondness for tortuous logic – like the Jesuits - Relied on irony and paradox. - focus on conceit =>High demand on reader  metaphor Metaphor is an implicit comparison between two items, based on analogy (common properties) between them. Based on resemblance and meant to “discern similarities” (Aristotle’s Poetics). Thus creative of new insights, since the interaction of the two parts of the metaphor creates meaning. Since the metaphor asserts more than that the two things are merely alike, our discovery that and how the two subject-things belong together cannot be determined from these objective likenesses alone. Rather, an act of reflection is required that results in a new way of organizing our experience. (Mark Johnson, Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor, 1981)  Conceit The trademark of Metaphysical poetry ; notion of “concept” ie. an intellectual metaphor Strained metaphor or similes linking dissimilar items, based on a complex logic Often criticized as far-fetched, pure nonsense.  Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): “a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike”. => far-fetched George Herbert “Easter Wings” (1633)  John Donne, “Love’s Alchemy” Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I, Say, where his centric happiness doth lie. I have loved, and got, and told, But should I love, get, tell, till I were old, I should not find that hidden mystery. O ! 'tis imposture all ; And as no chemic yet th' elixir got, But glorifies his pregnant pot, If by the way to him befall Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal, So, lovers dream a rich and long delight, But get a winter-seeming summer's night. Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day, Shall we for this vain bubble's shadow pay? Ends love in this, that my man Can be as happy as I can, if he can Endure the short scorn of a bridegroom's play? That loving wretch that swears, 'Tis not the bodies marry, but the minds, Which he in her angelic finds, Would swear as justly, that he hears, In that day's rude hoarse minstrelsy, the spheres. Hope not for mind in women ; at their best, Sweetness and wit they are, but mummy, possess'd.