ENGLISH LITERATURE: THE THREE PHASES OF THE INTRODUCTION OF BILINGUALI...

ENGLISH LITERATURE: THE THREE PHASES OF THE INTRODUCTION OF BILINGUALI...: According to Kachru, there have been three phases in the introduction of bilingualism in English in India. The first one of them, the mi...

THE THREE PHASES OF THE INTRODUCTION OF BILINGUALISM IN ENGLISH IN INDIA

According to Kachru, there have been three phases in the introduction of bilingualism in English in India. The first one of them, the missionary phase, was initiated around 1614 by Christian missionaries. The second phase, the demand from the South Asian public (in the eighteenth century) was considered to come about through local demand, as some scholars were of the opinion that the spread of English was the result of the demand and willingness of local people to learn the language. There were prominent spokesmen for English. Kachru mentions two of them, Raja Rammohan Roy (1772-1833) and Rajunath Hari Navalkar (fl.1770). Roy and Navalkar, among others, were persuading the officials of the East India Company to give instruction in English, rather than in Sanskrit or Arabic. They thought that English would open the way for people to find out about scientific developments of the West. Knowledge of Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic or of Indian vernaculars would not contribute to this goal (Kachru 1983: 67-68).

A letter of Raja Rammohun Roy addressed to Lord Amherst (1773-1857) from the year 1823 is often presented as evidence of local demand for English. Roy embraced European learning, and in his opinion, English provided Indians with "the key to all knowledge -- all the really useful knowledge which the world contains" (quoted in Bailey 1991: 136). In the letter, Roy expresses his opinion that the available funds should be used for employing European gentlemen of talent and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, and other useful sciences, which the natives of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the inhabitants of other parts of the world (quoted in Kachru 1983: 68).

Roy's letter has been claimed to be responsible for starting the Oriental-Anglicist controversy, the controversy over which educational policy would be suitable for India. The third phase, the Government policy, begun in 1765, when the East India Company's authority was stabilized (Kachru 1983: 21-22). English was established firmly as the medium of instruction and administration. The English language became popular, because it opened paths to employment and influence (NEB 1974: 406). English of the subject Indians became gradually a widespread means of communication.

During the governor generalship Lord William Bentinck in the early nineteenth century, India saw many social reforms. English became the language of record of government and higher courts, and government support was given to the cultivation of Western learning and science through the medium of English. In this he was supported by Lord Macaulay 

India, after becoming independent in 1947, was left with a colonial language, in this case English, as the language of government. It was thought that the end of the British Raj would mean the slow but sure demise of the English language in South Asia. This, of course, has not happened. The penetration of English in these societies is greater that it has ever been (Kachru 1994: 542).

Nationalist imperative wanted that English continue to be used. Nationalist motivations were of the opinion that an indigenous Indian language should be adopted as the official language. Hindi seemed

most qualified for that, since it had more native speakers than any other Indian language and was already widely used in interethnic communication (Fasold 1984: 24).

In addition, it was thought that linguistic unity was a prerequisite for political and national unity. Thus, Hindi was designated by the constitution as the language of communication between and within the states. It was to replace English within 15 years. The plan was that Hindi would be promoted so that it might express all parts of the "composite culture of India" (Spolsky 1978: 56).

There were, however, several problems with selecting Hindi, and since the protests were often violent (e.g. the riots in Tamil Nadu in May 1963, protesting against the imposition of Hindi), the government wanted to adapt a policy which would help to maintain the status quo. Firstly, Hindi is not evenly distributed throughout the country; e.g. in Tamil Nadu, in the south, only 0.0002 per cent of the people claimed knowledge of Hindi or Urdu, whereas in the northern states this figure can rise up to 96.7 per cent. Secondly, it was thought that the speakers of other languages would be offended by its selection; other Indian languages, for example Tamil and Bengali, had as much right to be national languages as Hindi. The other Indian communities felt they would be professionally, politically and socially disadvantaged were Hindi given the central role. Thirdly, Hindi was thought to need vocabulary development before it could be used efficiently as a language of government. In spite of these problems, Hindi was chosen as the national language in the constitution, and English was to be replaced by Hindi in fifteen years' time. However, due to the continuous opposition in the south, this replacement was not politically possible. In 1967 a law was passed which allowed the use of both Hindi and English for all official purposes - and that situation still exists (Fasold 1984: 24).

The controversy between Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani made the case for Hindi even worse. Support for Hindustani almost ended with independence; Hindi's supporters' enthusiasm was not, also, channeled in a constructive direction. As a result, English continues to be a language of both power and prestige

3. 5. THE POWER OF ENGLISH: THE CASE OF INDIA

The British were given a lot of political stature due to their political power, and they were required to adopt a pose that would fit their status. Language became a marker of the white man's power. Kachru quotes E. M. Forster in A Passage to India (Kachru 1986: 5): "India likes gods. And Englishmen like posing as gods". The English language was part of the pose and power. Indians accepted it, too (ibid).

English was used in India and elsewhere in the colonies as a tool of power to cultivate a group of people who identify with the cultural and other norms of the political elite. European values were, naturally, considered somehow inherently better whereas the indigenous culture was often considered somehow barbaric. English was considered as a "road to the light", a tool of "civilization". The Europeans thought that they can bring emancipation to the souls; they considered this as their duty. They sincerely thought they would contribute to the well-being of the native people in the colonies, and their language was elevated into being almost divine (6).

English provided a medium for understanding technology and scientific development. Non-western intellectuals admired accomplishments of the west. European literature was made available in colonies. Macaulay shows his ignorance towards the native languages in India by saying

I have never found one amongst them (the Orientalists) who would deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.

In India, English gradually acquired socially and administratively the most dominant roles: the power and prestige of language was defined by the domains of language use. Ultimately the legal system, the national media and important professions were conducted in English (Kachru 1986a: 7). In the words of Kachru, skilled professional Indian became the symbol of Westernization and modernization. Raja Rammohan Roy was committed to the idea that the "European gentlemen of talent and education" should be appointed to instruct the natives of India. English came to be used by Indians, as well. (Kachru 1986a:7).

By the 1920s English had become the language of political discourse, intra-national administration, and law, a language associated with liberal thinking. Even after the colonial period ended, English maintained its power over local languages

English was eventually used against Englishmen, their roles and intentions as it became the language of resurgence of nationalism and political awakening: the medium, ironically, was the alien language. Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948), for instance, although struggled to create consensus for an acceptable native variety as the national language, expressed his message to the elite in English

Hindi descends directly from Sanskrit. More than 180 million people in India regard Hindi as their mother tongue. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan group of languages (Hindi. 1998). It is, according to the Article 343 (1) of the Constitution, the Official Language of the Union (India Constitution. 1998.)

The position of Hindi as the Official Language of the Union becomes problematic the souther in India one gets: while it is the predominant language in the north, in the south very few people speak it. The most ferocious opposition toward the adoption of Hindi comes from the south; along with the strongest support for the retention of English 

DOMAIN ANALYSIS

The survey included statements related to domains such as family, friendship, neighborhood, transactions, education, government and employment. The informants' duty was to fill in the language he/she most often uses for each occasion (grading the frequency of use from one to four, four indicating the highest frequency). The aim was to analyze the use of English in India in different domains.

The domains used in the study could be divided into formal and informal domains: education, employment and government are formal; family, friendship, neighborhood and transactions more informal domains.

Conclusion

Thus we can say that English has got more attention as an official language in correspondence than Hindi

Regards

K.K.Singh

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Introduction of English in India

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Introduction of English in India: Lord Macaulay (Thomas Babington Macaulay) was born on October 25, 1800, and died on December 28, 1859. He arrived in India (Madras) on 10...

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Introduction of English in India

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Introduction of English in India: Lord Macaulay (Thomas Babington Macaulay) was born on October 25, 1800, and died on December 28, 1859. He arrived in India (Madras) on 10...

Introduction of English in India

Lord Macaulay (Thomas Babington Macaulay) was born on October 25, 1800, and died on December 28, 1859. He arrived in India (Madras) on 10th June 1834 as a member of the Supreme Council of India. William Bentinck was the then Governor General. He returned to England early 1838, and resumed his writing career there. Macaulay was in India, thus, only for nearly four years, but he was destined to impact the lives of millions of Indians forever.

2. MACAULAY'S FAMILY

Lord Macaulay's father Zachary Macaulay himself had seen overseas service in the West Indies and Sierra Leone, and was highly regarded for his contribution to public life. Zachary was against slavery and worked closely with Wilberforce and others.

Macaulay was a student of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge and was called to the bar in 1826. His nephew-biographer George Trevelyan wrote that Macaulay did not make it a serious profession (Trevelyan 1876 : 101). Macaulay was greatly attached to his family: his father, mother, and two sisters. Once he wrote to his mother,

How sick, and sleepless, and weak I was lying in bed, when I was told that you were come! How well I remember with what an ecstasy of joy I saw that face approaching me, in the middle of people that did not care if I died that night except for the trouble of burying me! The sound of your voice, the touch of your hand, are present to me now, and will be, I trust in God, to my last hour (from a letter of Macaulay to his mother dated March 25, 1821, in Trevelyan (1876).

Macaulay loved his sisters, Hannah and Margaret, deeply. Both were younger to him by ten and twelve years respectively. His letters to them were full of affection and concern for their welfare. He was truly affected much when his sisters got married one after another. Macaulay wrote philosophically in November 1832,

The attachment between brothers and sisters, blameless, amiable, and delightful as it is, is so liable to be superseded by other attachments that no wise man ought to suffer it to become indispensable to him. That women shall leave the home of their birth, and contract ties dearer than those of consanguinity, is a law as ancient as the first records of the history of our race, and as unchangeable as the constitution of the human body and mind. To repine against the nature of things, and against the great fundamental law of all society because, in consequence of my own want of foresight, it happens to bear heavily on me, would be the basest and most absurd of selfishness (Trevelyan 1876: 265).

INDIANS CANNOT BE EDUCATED BY MEANS OF THEIR MOTHER-TONGUE: ENGLISH IS THE LANGAUGE

How, then, stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the west. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with historical compositions, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equaled; with just and lively representations of human life and human nature; with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, and trade; with full and correct information respecting every experimental science which tends topreserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all th wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded int 4he course of ninety generations. It may be safely said, that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. Nor is this all. In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of Government. It is like to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East. It is the language of two great European communities which are raising, the one in south of Africa, the other in Australasia; communities which are every year becoming more important, and more closely connected with our Indian empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to our native subjects.

DO WE ABDICATE OUR RESPONSIBILITY?

The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages, by which, by universal confession, there are not books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own; whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, whenever they differ from those of Europe, differ for the worse; and whether, when we can patronise sound Philosophy and true History, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines, which would disgrace an English farrier, --Astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school,--History, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long,--and Geography, made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter.

 INDIANS CAN ATTAIN EXCELLENCE IN ENGLISH

It is taken for granted by the advocates of Oriental learning, that no native of this country can possibly attain more than a mere smattering of English. They do not attempt to prove this; but they perpetually insinuate it. They designate the education which their opponents recommend as a mere spelling book education. They assume it as undeniable, that the question is between a profound knowledge of Hindoo and Arabian literature and science on the one side, and a superficial knowledge of the rudiments of English on the other. This is not merely an assumption, but an assumption contrary to all reason and

experience. We know that foreigners of all nations do learn our language sufficiently to have access to all the most abstruse knowledge which it contains, sufficiently to relish even the more delicate graces of our most idiomatic writers. There are in this very town natives who are quite competent to discuss political or scientific questions with fluency and precision in the English language. I have heard the very question on which I am now writing discussed by native gentlemen with a liberality and an intelligence which would do credit to any member of the Committee of Public instruction. Indeed it is unusual to find, even in the literary circles of the continent, any foreigner who can express himself in English with so much facility and correctness as we find in many Hindoos. Nobody, I suppose, will contend that English is so difficult to a Hindoo as Greek to an Englishman. Yet an intelligent English youth, in a much smaller number of years than our unfortunate pupils pass at the Sanscrit college, becomes able to read, to enjoy, and even to imitate, not unhappily, the compositions of the best Greek Authors. Less than half the time which enables an English youth to read Herodotus and Sophocles, ought to enable a Hindoo to read Hume and Milton.

Regards

K.K Singh

ENGLISH LITERATURE: contrast “Tintern Abbey” and “Intimations of Immor...

ENGLISH LITERATURE: contrast “Tintern Abbey” and “Intimations of Immor...: --   According to Wordsworth man is a part of nature, not something out of it, or far from it. That is why he is found here thinking of na...

contrast “Tintern Abbey” and “Intimations of Immortality

--   According to Wordsworth man is a part of nature, not something out of it, or far from it. That is why he is found here thinking of nature not only as a painter, but as a philosopher too. He thinks that the beauteous and the rough form of nature shape human character. People may describe Wordsworth as a “nature poet”, but he is more concerned with the interaction between people and Nature, and particularly between himself and Nature. These thoughts are most obvious in “Tintern Abbey”, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”, and in “Michael”. Nature, of course, may dominate, but the “still sad music of humanity” is never ignored.

‘Tintern Abbey’ sums up, in a nutshell, the essentials of Wordsworth’s attitude to Nature. Away from the landscape he now rejoins, had not forgotten it, but indeed had owed to memories of it ‘sensations sweet’, felt in hours of urban weariness, and therapeutic of the lonely ills he has experienced. The recollection of natural scenes had a power to console the depressed mind and heal worried humanity and made him tranquil. As well, the recollection of the landscaped caused the poet to perform “Little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love” and “Heavy and weary weight of all this unintelligible world” to be lightened. Though he has lost the aching joy that’s Nature’s direct gift, still loves Nature as he can apprehended it by eye and ear. Even the initiative is mutual; neither Nature nor poet gives in hope of recompense, but out of this mutual generosity an identity is established one giver’s love and the other’s beauty. Here is the bond between man and Nature.

Only Nature has the privilege of leading us from joy to joy; we have to brood upon past joys and have faith that she will not abandon ‘the heart that loved her’. In “Tintern Abbey” we see Wordsworth himself use the image he saw in nature to comfort him in his life, and then pass this image on to his sister and called himself as a worshipper. So the relation is worshipped and the worshipper, comfort and comforter between man and Nature.

Wordsworth shows the growth of man in relation to nature. The child living in the lap of Nature, according to him grow in moral stature, which he says in ‘Michael’, a story of a shepherd, Michael, lived in the lap of Nature, was a strong and hard working shepherd, lived with his wife and son Luke. For a financial obligation he had to send Luke the city, London. But Luke lost his innocence and become corrupted as he is cut off from the objects of Nature like fields, mountains, and streams, he fails a prey ‘to evil courses, and ‘began to slacken in his duty’, forget their parental affection. But when he directly connected with Nature, he was responsible, helped in his father’s work she taught him to respect and care for others. Here humanity’s innate empathy and nobility of spirit becomes corrupted by artificial social conventions as well as by the squalor of city life. Nature plays a role of a molder of human character.

Overall, Wordsworth presents Nature as the kindest nurse who nourishes his primal thought of humanity; the guardian who protect and shape his moral character and the proper guide who guides him as a friend to understand that—from the highest mountain to the simplest flower—elicit noble, elevated thoughts and passionate emotions in the people who observe these manifestations. Wordsworth repeatedly emphasizes the importance of nature to an individual’s intellectual development.

Another bond between Nature and man is spiritual which heal and evoke ‘lofty thoughts, rash judgments’. Wordsworth refers to a “blessed mood” twice, this affection gently led him to understand the harmony of Nature and he could ‘see life into things’, emphasizing his spiritual relationship with nature. In his scheme of thought the human world is connected with the divine world by the way of the world of Nature.

These thoughts are also present in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” here the speaker finds a celestial glory in Nature. As children age, they lose this connection but gain an ability to feel emotions, which colours the mature mind and makes the relationship between them more significant. In this poem we read of the “soothing thoughts that spring out of human suffering. Indeed, it is suffering that leads to the philosophic mind which finds meaning even in the “meanest flower that blows”.the speaker also imagine nature as the source of the inspiring material that nourishes the active, creative mind.

Wordsworth’s writing has always been connecting our lives with the nature. If he will not analyze Nature, still less will he care to analyze man? In his poem the primal qualities of humanity where man and Nature touch and blend. Thus we can say that the freedom of mountain mist and wind has an inseparable bond with man.

Regards

K.K SINGH

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Ode: Intimations of Immortality

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Ode: Intimations of Immortality: In the first stanza, the speaker says wistfully that there was a time when all of nature seemed dreamlike to him, “apparelled in celesti...

Ode: Intimations of Immortality

In the first stanza, the speaker says wistfully that there was a time when all of nature seemed dreamlike to him, “apparelled in celestial light,” and that that time is past; “the things I have seen I can see no more.” In the second stanza, he says that he still sees the rainbow, and that the rose is still lovely; the moon looks around the sky with delight, and starlight and sunshine are each beautiful. Nonetheless the speaker feels that a glory has passed away from the earth.

In the third stanza, the speaker says that, while listening to the birds sing in springtime and watching the young lambs leap and play, he was stricken with a thought of grief; but the sound of nearby waterfalls, the echoes of the mountains, and the gusting of the winds restored him to strength. He declares that his grief will no longer wrong the joy of the season, and that all the earth is happy. He exhorts a shepherd boy to shout and play around him. In the fourth stanza, he addresses nature’s creatures, and says that his heart participates in their joyful festival. He says that it would be wrong to feel sad on such a beautiful May morning, while children play and laugh among the flowers. Nevertheless, a tree and a field that he looks upon make him think of “something that is gone,” and a pansy at his feet does the same. He asks what has happened to “the visionary gleam”: “Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”

In the fifth stanza, he proclaims that human life is merely “a sleep and a forgetting”—that human beings dwell in a purer, more glorious realm before they enter the earth. “Heaven,” he says, “lies about us in our infancy!” As children, we still retain some memory of that place, which causes our experience of the earth to be suffused with its magic—but as the baby passes through boyhood and young adulthood and into manhood, he sees that magic die. In the sixth stanza, the speaker says that the pleasures unique to earth conspire to help the man forget the “glories” whence he came.

In the seventh stanza, the speaker beholds a six-year-old boy and imagines his life, and the love his mother and father feel for him. He sees the boy playing with some imitated fragment of adult life, “some little plan or chart,” imitating “a wedding or a festival” or “a mourning or a funeral.” The speaker imagines that all human life is a similar imitation. In the eighth stanza, the speaker addresses the child as though he were a mighty prophet of a lost truth, and rhetorically asks him why, when he has access to the glories of his origins, and to the pure experience of nature, he still hurries toward an adult life of custom and “earthly freight.”

In the ninth stanza, the speaker experiences a surge of joy at the thought that his memories of childhood will always grant him a kind of access to that lost world of instinct, innocence , and exploration. In the tenth stanza, bolstered by this joy, he urges the birds to sing, and urges all creatures to participate in “the gladness of the May.” He says that though he has lost some part of the glory of nature and of experience, he will take solace in “primal sympathy,” in memory, and in the fact that the years bring a mature consciousness—“a philosophic mind.” In the final stanza, the speaker says that this mind—which stems from a consciousness of mortality, as opposed to the child’s feeling of immortality—enables him to love nature and natural beauty all the more, for each of nature’s objects can stir him to thought, and even the simplest flower blowing in the wind can raise in him “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

Form

Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode, as it is often called, is written in eleven variable ode stanzas with variable rhyme schemes, in iambic lines with anything from two to five stressed syllables. The rhymes occasionally alternate lines, occasionally fall in couplets, and occasionally occur within a single line (as in “But yet I know, where’er I go” in the second stanza).

Regards

K.K Singh

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The Rape of the Lock Alexander Pope

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The Rape of the Lock Alexander Pope: INTRODUCTION Modern critics consider The Rape of the Lock to be the supreme example of mock-heroic verse in the English language. Wri...

The Rape of the Lock Alexander Pope

INTRODUCTION

Modern critics consider The Rape of the Lock to be the supreme example of mock-heroic verse in the English language. Written in heroic couplets, the poem was most likely composed during the late summer of 1711 and first published in the May edition of Lintot's Miscellany in 1712. The original version of the poem contained 334 lines in two cantos. A more elaborate version appeared two years later, extending the poem to 794 lines in five cantos; a slight final revision was completed for the poem's inclusion in Pope's Works (1717). Inspired by an actual event, The Rape of the Lock recounts the circumstances surrounding the theft of a lock of a young woman's hair by an impassioned male admirer, which caused a rift between the families involved. The poem was intended to restore harmonious relations between the estranged families. Subtitled “an heroi-comical poem,” The Rape of the Lock treats the petty matter in full-blown epic style, which results in a great deal of humor. It uses the elevated heroic language that John Dryden, Pope's literary forebear, had perfected in his translation of Virgil and incorporates amusing parodies of passages from John Milton's Paradise Lost, Vergil's Aeneid, and Homer's Iliad, which Pope was translating at the time. Celebrated as a masterstroke of English originality, The Rape of the Lock established Pope as a master of metrics and a sophisticated satirist.

Plot and Major Characters

Although the precise time and place of the incident that occasioned The Rape of the Lock have been lost to history, the depilatory theft and ensuing feud between two prominent Catholic families certainly happened, the standard account of which is documented in the Twickenham edition of Pope's complete works. Briefly stated, the poem elaborates upon the events of a day, most likely during the summer of 1711, when Robert, Lord Petre, brazenly snipped off a curl of Arabella Fermor's hair, an act which estranged their families. Pope's friend John Caryll, to whom the poem is addressed, suggested that Pope write it in order to “laugh them together again.” The poem's epigraph (translated by Aubrey Williams as “I was unwilling, Belinda, to ravish your locks; but I rejoice to have conceded this to your prayers”) is a slightly altered passage from Martial's Epigrams, in which Pope substitutes Belinda for Martial's heroine, Polytimus, with the implication that the original poem was published with Arabella's consent. Pope set the central action of his poem at Hampton Court—the traditional home of royalty—which, though a possible site, is a highly unlikely one, since both families were mere gentry as well as members of an ostracized religion. In the original two-canto poem the “gentle belle,” Belinda, awakens one morning and joins friends on a river trip up the Thames to play cards and drink coffee at Hampton. As the afternoon wanes, the Baron snips one of Belinda's favorite locks of hair with scissors provided by Clarissa. Great dismay ensues among the guests, devastating Belinda and scandalizing the company. Her angry demands for the return of her purloined lock are futile, since the destined lock of hair floats away as a new star to adorn the night skies.

As in his later satires, Pope substitutes fictional or type names for the specific personalities he has in mind, so that the character of Belinda is based on Arabella, that of the Baron on Lord Petre, and that of Sir Plume, a blithering guest at Hampton, on Sir George Browne, a relative of Arabella's mother. Pope significantly expanded the straightforward story in subsequent editions by simply adding conventional features of epic verse, then called the “machinery,” or supernatural dimension, of the poem. Adapted from the light erotic work Le Comte de Gabalis and Rosicrucian lore, the “machinery” of the five-canto version of the poem introduces such supernatural creatures as the earthy gnome Umbriel—a reincarnation of a prude—and the ethereal sylphs—the spirits of dead coquettes. In addition, Pope inserted a detailed account of Belinda's daily routine at her dressing table, a description of the social rituals involved with a lively game of ombre, and an otherworldly visit to the Cave of Spleen. Clarissa's speech on “good Humor,” or common sense, first appeared in the last revision of the poem, which Pope added “to open more clearly the MORAL of the Poem.” In the 1712 and 1714 versions of the poem, Clarissa makes a brief appearance as the one who hands the scissors to the Baron.

Major Themes

Fusing high humor and moralization, The Rape of the Lock offers an ironic perspective on contemporary manners combined with a deep appreciation for the vitality of the eighteenth-century beau monde. With sensitivity, exquisite taste, high-spirited wit, and gentle satire, the poem forces a continuous comparison between insignificant and significant things, between the mundane and the exotic. In his mock epic, Pope exploits the difference between the grandeur of “heroic” moments depicted in traditional epics and the consciously trivial events in his poem. By treating the latter incidents as matters of great import, their inconsequence is made obvious. The poem features the devices of traditional epic poetry in abundant allusions to and parodies of incidents, characters, and themes from a range of classical and modern epics, but these themes are proportionately scaled down. In The Rape of the Lock, ladies and gentlemen are the heroines and heroes, exchanging repartee with the opposite sex in salons instead of waging war against noble enemies on fields of combat. Rather than gods and goddesses intruding in human affairs, sylphs and gnomes intervene, with tasks appropriate to their natures. The epic game is ombre played on the “velvet plain” of a card table, the victors feast on gossip between sips of coffee instead of ambrosia and wine, and the epic struggle is determined by clever quips and innuendo, by winks, nods, and frowns, not weapons. The traditional epic journey to the underworld is evoked by a visit to the Cave of Spleen, an emblem of the petty temperaments of privileged women. These actions unfold against an elegantly appointed backdrop of beautiful objects: rich brocades, glowing diamonds, tortoise shell and ivory combs, cosmetics and hair dressings, varnished furniture, silver coffeepots, and dainty china. Yet for all the evident beauty, charm, and allure this active, shimmering world exhibits, lighthearted raillery pulses throughout its civilized veneer, a reminder of its trite values and the vanities of its inhabitants.

Critical Reception

The original version of The Rape of the Lock accomplished its task—since the Fermors and Petres were reconciled—and it immediately received an enthusiastic response from the public and the critics alike. Joseph Addison, who considered the poem perfect as it was first written, advised Pope against revision, but with the addition of the “machinery” and other material, the poem soon was deemed Pope's most brilliant performance as well as one of his most popular and lucrative, going through seven printings by 1723. Throughout the eighteenth century the poem remained a perennial favorite. Samuel Johnson pronounced it “the most attractive of ludicrous compositions,” in which “New things are made familiar and familiar things are made new.” Although appreciation of Pope's poetry generally declined throughout the nineteenth century, Victorian readers and critics continued to delight in the ethereal qualities of The Rape of the Lock. James Russell Lowell declared, “For wit, fancy, invention, and keeping, it has never been surpassed,” and Leslie Stephen observed that Pope's poem “is allowed, even by his bitterest critics, to be a masterpiece of delicate fancy.”

Twentieth-century critics have interpreted the poem in a diverse range of contexts, from character analyses and examinations of the poem's extensive allusions to both literary and folklore traditions, to investigations into Pope's political motivations and his understanding of the commercial aspects of the burgeoning publishing industry. A common thread in much twentieth-century criticism of The Rape of the Lock has acknowledged the way in which a deep appreciation for English high society meshes with Pope's critique of its weaknesses. Since the 1980s a number of critics have delved into other areas of Pope's career in relation to the poem, including the nature of Pope's habit of revision and its effect on the poem's meaning as well as the connections between mercantile discourse and Popean aesthetics. In addition, feminist critics have approached the poem in terms of ideological and cultural assumptions about women and their status in Pope's society, uncovering a significant response to the poem by women readers since its publication. Inarguably, Pope's most popularly cherished poem, The Rape of the Lock, also is his most conceptually imaginative work.

Regards

K.K. Singh

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Poem—Tintern Abbey (William wordsworth)

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Poem—Tintern Abbey (William wordsworth):                                               "Tintern Abbey" is probably the most famous poem by one of the most famous Briti...

Poem—Tintern Abbey (William wordsworth)

                                             

"Tintern Abbey" is probably the most famous poem by one of the most famous British Romantic poets. William Wordsworth was writing during the British Romantic period (critics always disagree about how exactly to define the beginning and end of the Romantic period, but suffice to say that it was from around 1785-1820). The Romantic period wasn't so named because the poets wrote a lot about love, but because they were interested in Nature, Beauty, Truth, and all kinds of emotions that you could capitalize to mark as Very Important. The Romantics included poets, novelists, and even some philosophers and other non-fiction writers. In short, it was a complicated and many-sided movement.

But, for our purposes here, we're going to focus on it as a literary movement. There are six principal poets associated with the movement:William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. The first three (Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth) get the credit for starting the movement, while the last three (Byron, Shelley, and Keats), who were younger, get the credit for carrying the movement forward.

So our man Wordsworth was just one of many poets and writers producing work during this relatively short period, but he stands out for a lot of reasons. First of all, he was one of the people who really got the movement rolling. William Blake had already published his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience (in 1789 and 1794), but honestly, no one really read them besides his close friends until well after his death. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was a popular and commercial success, even during his lifetime. In 1798, he published a slim little collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads with his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge only contributed a few poems to the volume (including "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "The Nightingale"). The majority of the poems in the volume were by Wordsworth, and concluded with the oh-so-famous "Tintern Abbey."

And… boom. The Romantic movement really kicked off. The Lyrical Ballads were a huge hit, and the "Preface" that Wordsworth wrote at the beginning of the volume turned into a kind of poetic manifesto about what he and Coleridge were trying to do, poetically speaking. He said that they wanted to write using "the real language of men," instead of the highfalutin language that poets have been using since Day One. He also said he wanted to do away with the over-the-top metaphors and figurative language that poets so often use. Again, this was because he claimed that real people never actually talk that way. (What, don't you use elaborate extended metaphors all the time?)

But the Lyrical Ballads weren't just revolutionary in terms of the language they used; they also changed the whole idea of what poetry could and should be about. Instead of writing about kings, queens, dukes, and historical or mythological subjects, Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote most of the poems in Lyrical Ballads about common people, like shepherds and farmers. Some of the poems are even about the mentally ill or the mentally disabled, like "The Mad Mother," "The Idiot Boy," and "The Thorn."

"Tintern Abbey" is a little bit different in that it's about the poet himself, rather than a shepherd or distraught mother, but it is still representative of a lot of the changes Wordsworth wanted to make to the way poetry was written. It's written about common things (enjoying nature during a walk around a ruined abbey with his sister), and it uses a very conversational style with relatively simple vocabulary. It also introduces the idea that Nature can influence, sustain, and heal the mind of the poet. This idea also gets developed in The Prelude, a long, semi-autobiographical poem that Wordsworth worked on in some form for his whole life.

Before William Wordsworth wrote "Tintern Abbey" and the rest of theLyrical Ballads, literature, and especially poetry, was written pretty exclusively for and about rich people. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but that was the general trend. Wordsworth's mission (not unlike Shmoop's) was to open up literature and to make it more accessible and enjoyable to normal, everyday people.

Best Regards

K.K.Singh

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The prominent feature of the Renaissance

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The prominent feature of the Renaissance:             Edmund Spenser is considered a child of classical Renaissance and his work in general and Epithalamion in particular reveal ...

The prominent feature of the Renaissance

            Edmund Spenser is considered a child of classical Renaissance and his work in general and Epithalamion in particular reveal the prominent features of Renaissance. Renaissance stands for humanism, revival of interest in Greek and Roman mythology, extreme sensitiveness to the formal beauty and cultivation of aesthetic sense.

Epithalamion “as the most gorgeous jewel in the treasure house of the Renaissance

If we analyze Epithalamion, we find not only humanism but also a great wealth of Greek and Roman mythology woven in the texture of the poem. The invocation to the muses to help him in the composition of his wedding song is indeed strictly in the classical tradition. He refers to several incidents which have parallel situations in the present. He wished to enthrall his bride with his melodious wedding song as did “Orpheus for his own bride.” His reference to Jove to make his bridal bed look  splendid and his appeals to Gods and Goddesses not to allow any disturbances in their nocturnal enjoyment indeed make Epithalamion a classical mosaic well-fitted in the framework of his ode. As one critic has rightly said, “To scan through the pages of Epithalamion is to pass through a classical meadow with multi-coloured blooms of Greek and Roman myths.” The poet showed his keen interest in the inward aspect of human personality. Actually this new passion for life and interest in human personality make his poem an exquisite piece of lyrical poetry. 

The other important feature of Renaissance humanism

Besides classicism, the other important feature of the Renaissance humanism is the extreme sensitiveness to the formal beauty and the cultivation of aesthetic sense. The Renaissance scholars of Elizabethan age made use of all the arts, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, dancing, drama and costume so as to produce the effects of fantasy, allegory or scenic magnificence. In the poem Epithalamion, there is something of pageant or mosque and a series of tableaux interwoven with mythology, literature and natural descriptions and homely details. All these help him to express and reinforce the poet’s personal joy vividly and effectively.

A moral high seriousness close to the Reformation and English Bible

The other remarkable feature of this poem is not only Renaissance humanism and classical antiquity but a moral high seriousness close to the reformation and English Bible. As a matter of fact, Spenser was a

moralist poet who declared poesy as a medium of moral edification. He harmonized conflicting elements and attached them to his poetic vehicle. Michael Drayton has dubbed him rightly as “Grave moral Spenser”.

Master of unique style and enrichment of the English poetry by his thought, style and word pictures

By common consent, Epithalamion is Spenser’s highest poetic achievement. Here, we find him a child of Renaissance in the real sense of the term, as he displays wide range of his learning, wealth of fancy, love of music and intensity of passions. As a matter of fact, he proved himself master of unique style and enriched the English poetry by his thoughts, style and word pictures. The poem Epithalamion gave him a good opportunity to provide us with gallery of word pictures, word paintings and he can be called a unique master of his pictorial art. In this poem, we find Spenser at his best as a master of rhythmical and musical verse.

He enriches his wedding song with a wealth of imagery and galaxy of classical deities. Here, we find solemnity is combined with levity and serene Christian morality. We can say that Spenser is at his best as an artist in the poem and he occupied an exalted position as the prince of poets in his time.

A repository of all the various characteristics of Elizabethan Renaissance

Thus, in the final analysis, we can conclude that Epithalamion is a repository of all the various characteristics of Elizabethan Renaissance and this statement that Spenser is at once the child of the Renaissance and the reformation stands fully endorsed and justified.

 

ENGLISH LITERATURE: THE ADDRESS by Marga Minco-

ENGLISH LITERATURE: THE ADDRESS by Marga Minco-: The narrator arrives at 46, Marconi Street, a house owned by a certain Ms. Dorling. The door is opened a mere inch by a woman who seem...

THE ADDRESS by Marga Minco-

The narrator arrives at 46, Marconi Street, a house owned by a certain Ms. Dorling. The door is opened a mere inch by a woman who seems not to know the narrator and treats her with cool incivility. However, during the course of the interaction, three important realisations occur:

1) The narrator realises that she is at the correct address as Mrs. Dorling is wearing her mother's sweater. From the faded buttons, it is evident that the sweater has been worn fairly often.

2) The narrator knows she is unwelcome as Mrs. Dorling does not even let the narrator come into the house. The narrator goes away disappointed and unsuccessful in collecting her things.

3) The narrator hears a door open and close within the house behind Mrs. Dorling. The readers know then that there is another person in the house,someone whom Mrs. Dorling is anxious to keep away from the narrator.

As the narrator walks back to the train station, she recalls how once on returning home from the university during the first half of World War II, she had found several of their household items missing. Her mother had then informed her that Mrs. Dorling, an old acquaintance of her mother's, had renewed their contact and insisted that she (Mrs. Dorling) keep their things safe during the war. The narrator also recalls another incident when she had seen Mrs. Dorling for an instant in a brown coat and shapeless hat, before the woman left with yet another instalment of the narrator's things. 

The narrator's mother, an apparently gullible woman, did not seem to suspect Mrs. Dorling of any ulterior motive. Mrs. S, the narrator's woman was more worried about Mrs. Dorling hurting herself or being attacked by someone while carrying their things back to Marconi street for safekeeping. She asked her daughter to remember Mrs. Dorling's address in case the narrator was the only one who survived the war.

After the first unsuccessful visit, the narrator ruminates about why she took so long to return for her mother's things. The war and the loss of her family had settled heavily on the narrator's heart. She only felt fear and hesitation when she thought about the things kept at Mrs. Dorling's house. Each of those things carried memories of her life before the war. The pain of loss stopped her from returning for her things sooner.

The impact of war on civilians has been portrayed in several books and movies including 'The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank', 'Sarah's Key' by Tatiana de Rosnay, 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' by John Boyne and movies such as 'Schindler's List'. The torture of the concentration camps, the loss of loved ones left a painful ever-lasting impact. The narrator's observation of the light-coloured bread, familiar views and unthreatened sleep implies the coarse stale food of the camps, the view of barren land and barbed wires and a sleep forever threatened with pain and death.

After the first failed attempt, the narrator tried to visit Mrs. Dorling again. This time, the woman was not at home and she was greeted by her fifteen year old daughter. The girl showed off the antiques in her house to the narrator oblivious to the fact that they had once belonged to the narrator's own home. When the narrator finds that her things had now become part of someone else's life and memories, she decides not to take her things after all. The memories associated with her things were overwhelming, there was no space for such fancy items in the small room where she lived now, everything was now a part of someone else's home and life creating new memories each day. The visit was actually successful in the sense that the narrator was finally able to find the strength to move on and felt that of all the memories left behind by the war, the address with her mother's old things would be the easiest to forget.

ENGLISH LITERATURE: “Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness

ENGLISH LITERATURE: “Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness: The speaker says that since he will soon die and come to “that holy room” where he will be made into the music of God as sung by a choir o...

“Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness

The speaker says that since he will soon die and come to “that holy room” where he will be made into the music of God as sung by a choir of saints, he tunes “the instrument” now and thinks what he will do when the final moment comes. He likens his doctors to cosmographers and himself to a map, lying flat on the bed to be shown “that this is my south-west discovery / Per fretum febris, by these straits to die.” He rejoices, for in those straits he sees his “west,” his death, whose currents “yield return to none,” yet which will not harm him. West and east meet and join in all flat maps (the speaker says again that he is a flat map), and in the same way, death is one with the resurrection.

The speaker asks whether his home is the Pacific Sea, or the eastern riches, or Jerusalem. He lists the straights of Anyan, Magellan, and Gibraltar, and says that only straits can offer access to paradise, whether it lies “where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.” The speaker says that “Paradise and Calvary, / Christ’s Cross, and Adam’s tree” stood in the same place. He asks God to look and to note that both Adams (Christ being the second Adam) are unified in him; as the first Adam’s sweat surrounds his face, he says, may the second Adam’s blood embrace his soul. He asks God to receive him wrapped in the purple of Christ, and, “by these his thorns,” to give him Christ’s other crown. As he preached the word of God to others’ souls, he says, let this be his sermon to his own soul: “Therefore that he may raise the Lord throws down.”

Form

Like many of Donne’s religious poems, the “Hymn to God my God” is formally somewhat simpler than many of his metaphysical secular poems. Each of the six five-line stanzas follows an ABABB rhyme scheme, and the poem is metered throughout in iambic pentameter.

Commentary

Scholars are divided over the question of whether this poem was written on Donne’s deathbed in 1630 or during the life-threatening fever he contracted in 1623. In either case, the “Hymn to God my God” was certainly written at a time when Donne believed he was likely to die. This beautiful, lyrical, and complicated poem represents his mind’s attempt to summarize itself, and his attempt to offer, as he says, a sermon to his soul. In the first stanza, the speaker looks forward to the time when he will be in “that holy room” where he will be made into God’s music—an extraordinary image—with His choir of saints. In preparation for that time, he says, he will “tune the instrument” (his soul) by writing this poem.

The next several stanzas, devoted to the striking image of Donne’s body as a map looked over by his navigator-doctors, develop an elaborate geographical symbolism with which to explain his condition. He is entering, he says, his “south-west discovery”—the south being, traditionally, the region of heat (or fever) and the west being the site of the sunset and, thus, in this poem, the region of death. (A key to this geographical symbolism can be found in A.J. Smith’s concise

notation in the Penguin Classics edition of Donne’s Complete English Poems.) The speaker says that his discovery is made Per fretum febris, or by the strait of fever, and that he will die “by these straits.”

Donne employs an elaborate pun on the idea of “straits,” a word that denotes the narrow passages of water that connect oceans, yet which also refers to grim personal difficulties (as in “dire straights”): Donne’s personal struggles with his illness are like the straits that will connect him to the paradise of the Pacific Sea, Jerusalem, and the eastern riches; no matter where one is in the world—in the region of Japhet, Cham, or Shem—such treasures can only be reached through straits. (Japhet, Cham, and Shem were the sons of Noah, who divided the world between them after the ark came to rest: Japhet lived in Europe, Cham lived in Africa, and Shem lived in Asia.) Essentially, all of this word play and allusion is merely another way of saying that Donne expects his fever to lead him to heaven (even on his deathbed, his mind delighted in spinning metaphysical complexities). The speaker says that on maps, west and east are one—if one travels far enough in either direction, one ends up on the other side of the map—and, therefore, his death in the “west” will lead to his “eastern” resurrection.

He then shifts to a dramatically different set of images, claiming that Christ’s Cross and Adam’s tree stood physically on the same place, and that by the same token, both the characteristics of Adam (sin and toil) and of Christ (resurrection and purity) are present in Donne himself: The phrase “Look Lord, and find both Adams met in me” is Donne’s most perfect statement of the contrary strains of spirituality and carnality that run through his poems and ran through his life. As the sweat of the first Adam (who was cursed to work after expulsion from Eden) surrounds his face in his fever, he hopes the blood of Christ, the second Adam, will embrace and purify his soul.

Donne concludes by charting his actual entry into heaven, saying that he hopes to be received by God wrapped in the purple garment of Christ—purple with blood and with triumph—and to obtain his crown. As his final poetic act, he writes a sermon for his own soul, just as he preached sermons to the souls of others during his years as a priest. The Lord, he says, throws down that he may raise up; Donne, thrown down by the fever, will be lifted up to heaven, where his soul, having been “tuned” now on Earth, may be used to make the music of God.

Best Regards

K.K Singh

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The Renaissance influence in England is seen at it...

ENGLISH LITERATURE: The Renaissance influence in England is seen at it...: The prominent feature of the Renaissance             Edmund Spenser is considered a child of classical Renaissance and his work in gener...

The Renaissance influence in England is seen at its best and purest in Epithalamion

The prominent feature of the Renaissance

            Edmund Spenser is considered a child of classical Renaissance and his work in general and Epithalamion in particular reveal the prominent features of Renaissance. Renaissance stands for humanism, revival of interest in Greek and Roman mythology, extreme sensitiveness to the formal beauty and cultivation of aesthetic sense.

Epithalamion “as the most gorgeous jewel in the treasure house of the Renaissance

If we analyze Epithalamion, we find not only humanism but also a great wealth of Greek and Roman mythology woven in the texture of the poem. The invocation to the muses to help him in the composition of his wedding song is indeed strictly in the classical tradition. He refers to several incidents which have parallel situations in the present. He wished to enthrall his bride with his melodious wedding song as did “Orpheus for his own bride.” His reference to Jove to make his bridal bed look  splendid and his appeals to Gods and Goddesses not to allow any disturbances in their nocturnal enjoyment indeed make Epithalamion a classical mosaic well-fitted in the framework of his ode. As one critic has rightly said, “To scan through the pages of Epithalamion is to pass through a classical meadow with multi-coloured blooms of Greek and Roman myths.” The poet showed his keen interest in the inward aspect of human personality. Actually this new passion for life and interest in human personality make his poem an exquisite piece of lyrical poetry. 

The other important feature of Renaissance humanism

Besides classicism, the other important feature of the Renaissance humanism is the extreme sensitiveness to the formal beauty and the cultivation of aesthetic sense. The Renaissance scholars of Elizabethan age made use of all the arts, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, dancing, drama and costume so as to produce the effects of fantasy, allegory or scenic magnificence. In the poem Epithalamion, there is something of pageant or mosque and a series of tableaux interwoven with mythology, literature and natural descriptions and homely details. All these help him to express and reinforce the poet’s personal joy vividly and effectively.

A moral high seriousness close to the Reformation and English Bible

The other remarkable feature of this poem is not only Renaissance humanism and classical antiquity but a moral high seriousness close to the reformation and English Bible. As a matter of fact, Spenser was a

moralist poet who declared poesy as a medium of moral edification. He harmonized conflicting elements and attached them to his poetic vehicle. Michael Drayton has dubbed him rightly as “Grave moral Spenser”.

Master of unique style and enrichment of the English poetry by his thought, style and word pictures

By common consent, Epithalamion is Spenser’s highest poetic achievement. Here, we find him a child of Renaissance in the real sense of the term, as he displays wide range of his learning, wealth of fancy, love of music and intensity of passions. As a matter of fact, he proved himself master of unique style and enriched the English poetry by his thoughts, style and word pictures. The poem Epithalamion gave him a good opportunity to provide us with gallery of word pictures, word paintings and he can be called a unique master of his pictorial art. In this poem, we find Spenser at his best as a master of rhythmical and musical verse.

He enriches his wedding song with a wealth of imagery and galaxy of classical deities. Here, we find solemnity is combined with levity and serene Christian morality. We can say that Spenser is at his best as an artist in the poem and he occupied an exalted position as the prince of poets in his time.

A repository of all the various characteristics of Elizabethan Renaissance

Thus, in the final analysis, we can conclude that Epithalamion is a repository of all the various characteristics of Elizabethan Renaissance and this statement that Spenser is at once the child of the Renaissance and the reformation stands fully endorsed and justified.

Best Regards

K.K Singh

ENGLISH LITERATURE: POEM—THE SUNNE RISING (JOHN DONNE)

ENGLISH LITERATURE: POEM—THE SUNNE RISING (JOHN DONNE): The poet asks the sun why it is shining in and disturbing him and his lover in bed. The sun should go away and do other things rather than...

POEM—THE SUNNE RISING (JOHN DONNE)

The poet asks the sun why it is shining in and disturbing him and his lover in bed. The sun should go away and do other things rather than disturb them, like wake up ants or rush late schoolboys to start their day. Lovers should be permitted to make their own time as they see fit. After all, sunbeams are nothing compared to the power of love, and everything the sun might see around the world pales in comparison to the beloved’s beauty, which encompasses it all. The bedroom is the whole world.

Analysis

“The Sunne Rising” is a 30-line poem in three stanzas, written with the poet/lover as the speaker. The meter is irregular, ranging from two to six stresses per line in no fixed pattern. The longest lines are generally at the end of the three stanzas, but Donne’s focus here is not on perfect regularity. The rhyme, however, never varies, each stanza running abbacdcdee. The poet’s tone is mocking and railing as it addresses the sun, covering an undercurrent of desperate, perhaps even obsessive love and grandiose ideas of what his lover is.

The poet personifies the sun as a “busy old fool” (line 1). He asks why it is shining in and disturbing “us” (4), who appear to be two lovers in bed. The sun is peeking through the curtains of the window of their bedroom, signaling the morning and the end of their time together. The speaker is annoyed, wishing that the day has not yet come (compare Juliet’s assurances that it is certainly not the morning, in Romeo and Juliet III.v). The poet then suggests that the sun go off and do other things rather than disturb them, such as going to tell the court huntsman that it is a day for the king to hunt, or to wake up ants, or to rush late schoolboys and apprentices to their duties. The poet wants to know why it is that “to thy motions lovers’ seasons run” (4). He imagines a world, or desires one, where the embraces of lovers are not relegated only to the night, but that lovers can make their own time as they see fit.

In the second stanza the poet continues to mock the sun, saying that its “beams so reverend and strong” are nothing compared to the power and glory of their love. He boasts that he “could eclipse and cloud them [the sunbeams] with a wink.” In a way this is true; he can cut out the sun from his view by closing his eyes. Yet, the lover doesn’t want to “lose her sight so long” as a wink would take. The poet is emphasizing that the sun has no real power over what he and his lover do, while he is the one who chooses to allow the sun in because by it he can see his lover’s beauty.

The lover then moves on to loftier claims. “If her eyes have not blinded thine” (13) implies that his beloved’s eyes are more brilliant than sunlight. This was a standard Renaissance love-poem convention (compare Shakespeare “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” in Sonnet 130) to proclaim his beloved’s loveliness. Indeed, the sun should “tell me/Whether both th’Indias of spice and mine/Be where thou lef’st them, or lie here with me.” Here, Donne lists wondrous and exotic places (the Indias are the West and East Indies, well known in Donne’s time for their spices and precious metals) and says that his mistress is all of those things: “All here in one bed lay” (20). “She’s all states, and all princes I”(21). That is, all the beautiful and sovereign things in the world, which the sun meets as it travels the world each day, are combined in his mistress.

This is a monstrous, bold comparison, a hyperbole of the highest order. As usual, such an extreme comparison leads us to see a spiritual metaphor in the poem. As strong as the sun’s light is, it pales in comparison to the spiritual light that shines from the divine and which brings man to love the divine.

The strange process of reducing the entire world to the bed of the lovers reaches its zenith in the last stanza: “In that the world’s contracted thus” (26). Indeed, the sun need not leave the room; by shining on them “thou art everywhere” (29). The final line contains a play on the Ptolemaic astronomical idea that the Earth was the center of the universe, with the Sun rotating around the Earth: “This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.” Here Donne again gives ultimate universal importance to the lovers, making all the physical world around them subject to them.

This poem gives voice to the feeling of lovers that they are outside of time and that their emotions are the most important things in the world. There is something of the adolescent melodrama of first love here, which again suggests that Donne is exercising his intelligence and subtlety to make a different kind of point. While the love between himself and his lover may seem divine, metaphorically it can be true that divine love is more important than the things of this world.

The conflation of the earth into the body of his beloved is a little more difficult to understand. Donne would not be the first man who likened his female lover to a field to be sown by him, or a country to be ruled by him. Yet, if she represents the world because God loves the world, is Donne really putting himself, as the one who loves, in the position of God?

What we can say with some firmness is that the sun, which marks the passage of earthly time, is rejected as an authority. The “seasons” of lovers (with the pun on the seasons of the earth, also ruled by the sun) should not be ruled by the movements of the sun. There should be nothing above the whims and desires of lovers, as they feel, and on the spiritual level the sun is just one more creation of God; all time and physical laws are subject to God.

That the sun, of course, will not heed a man’s insults and orders is tacitly acknowledged. It will continue on its way each day, and one cannot wink it out of existence. There is nothing that the poet can do to change the movements of the sun or the coming of the day, no matter how clever his comparisons. From his perspective, the whole world is right there with him, yet he knows that his perspective is limited. This conceit of railing against the sun and denying the reality of the world outside the bedroom closes the poem with a more heartfelt (and more believable) assertion that the “bed thy center is.” It can be imagined that here he is speaking more to himself, realizing that the time he has with his lover is more important to him than anything else in his life in this moment, even while the spiritual meaning of the poem extends to the sun’s relatively weak power compared with the cosmic forces of the divine.

Best Regards

K.K Singh