Medieval to Renaissance Literature Renaissance Commentary Spring 2014
First-year students and Honours students: Write a commentary of approximately 1000 words on ONE of the following extracts / pairs of poems. Please hand ina hardcopy of your commentary to your tutor in your seminar in week 7, and submit a copy electronically by the end of the same week (Friday 21 February, 5pm).
You may wish to discuss some of the following: content, choice of vocabulary, metaphor, poetic technique, poetic form, point of view, argument, assumed audience and sequence of ideas.
1. Comment on the following extract from Thomas More’s Utopia:
But the whole matter can be cleared up if you’ll ask Raphael about it – either directly, if he’s still in your neighbourhood, or else by letter. And I’m afraid you must do this anyway, because of another problem that has cropped up – whether through my fault, or yours, or Raphael’s, I’m not sure. For it didn’t occur to us to ask, nor to him to say, in what area of the New World Utopia is to be found. I wouldn’t have missed hearing about this for a sizable sum of money, for I’m quite ashamed not to know even the name of the ocean where this island lies about which I’ve written so much. Besides, there are various people here, and one in particular, a devout man and a professor of theology, who very much wants to go to Utopia. His motive is not by any means idle curiosity, but rather a desire to foster and further the growth of our religion, which has made such a happy start there. To this end, he has decided to arrange to be sent there by the pope, and even to be named bishop to the Utopians. He feels no particular scruples about intriguing for this post, for he considers it a holy project, rising not from motives of glory or gain, but simply from religious zeal.
Therefore I beg you, my dear Peter, to get in touch with Hythloday – in person if you can, or by letters if he’s gone – and make sure that my work contains nothing false and omits nothing true. It would probably be just as well to show him the book itself. If I’ve made a mistake, there’s nobody better qualified to correct me; but even he cannot do it, unless he reads over by book. Besides, you will be able to discover in this way whether he’s pleased or annoyed that I have written the book. If he has decided to write out his own story for himself, he may be displeased with me; and I should be sorry, too, if, in publicizing Utopia, I had robbed him and his story of the flower of novelty.
But to tell the truth, I’m still in two minds as to whether I should publish the book or not. For men’s tastes are so various, the tempers of some are so severe, their minds so ungrateful, their judgements so foolish, that there seems no point in publishing something, even if it’s intended for their advantage, that they will receive only with contempt and ingratitude. Better simply to follow one’s own natural inclinations, lead a merry, peaceful life, and ignore the vexing problems of publication. Most people know nothing of learning; many despise it. The clod rejects as too difficult whatever isn’t cloddish. The pedant dismisses as mere trifling anything that isn’t stuffed with obsolete words. Some men approve only of ancient authors; most men like their own writing best of all. Here’s a man so shallow he won’t allow a shadow of levity, and there’s one so insipid of taste that he can’t endure the salt of a little wit.
Thomas More, from Letter from More to Peter Giles, Utopia
2.Compare the following two sonnets by Thomas Wyatt and Edmund Spenser as responses to Petrarch’s Rima 189 (translated in Norton Anthology, 9th edn, p. 651).
My galley
My galley charged with forgetfulness
Thorough sharp seas, in winter nights doth pass
’Tween rock and rock; eke mine enemy, alas,
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every oar a thought in readiness,
As though that death were light in such a case.
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,
Hath done the wearied cords great hinderance;
Wreathed with error and eke with ignorance.
The stars be hid that led me to this pain.
Drowned is reason that should me consort,
And I remain despairing of the port.
Thomas Wyatt
Sonnet 34, from Amoretti
Lyke as a ship that through the Ocean wyde,
By conduct of some star doth make her way
Whenas a storme hath dimd her trusty guyde,
Out of her course doth wander far astray:
So I whose star, that wont with her bright ray
Me to direct, with cloudes is overcast,
Doe wander now in darknesse and dismay,
Through hidden perils round about me plast.°placed
Yet hope I well, that when this storme is past
My Helice the lodestar° of my lyfeguiding star
Will shine again, and looke on me at last,
With lovely light to cleare my cloudy grief.
Till then I wander carefull° comfortlesse,full of cares
In secret sorow and sad pensivenesse.
Edmund Spenser
Helice: a name for the constellation of the Plough (Ursa Major).
3.Compare the following two poems by Edmund Campion and Richard Crashaw. They are closely related to one by the Roman poet Catullus. A translation of Catullus’ poem is provided for reference.
My sweetest Lesbia
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,
And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,
Let us not weigh° them: heav’ns great lamps do diveheed
Into their west, and straight° again revive,at once
But soon as once set is our little light,
Then must we sleep one ever-during night.
If all would lead their lives in love like me,
Then bloody swords and armour should not be;
No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should move,°disturb
Unless alarm° came from the camp of love.the call to arms
But fools do live, and waste their little light,
And seek with pain their ever-during night.
When timely death my life and fortune ends,
Let not my hearse be vexed with mourning friends,
But let all lovers, rich in triumph, come
And with sweet pastimes grace my happy tomb;
And Lesbia, close up thou my little light,
And crown with love my ever-during night.
Thomas Campion, 1601
Out of Catullus
Come and let us live my dear,
Let us love and never fear
What the sourest fathers say:
Brightest Sol°that dies todaythe sun
Lives again as blithe tomorrow;
But if we dark sons of sorrow
Set, o then how long a night
Shuts the eyes of our short light!
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin and tell
A thousand, and a hundred score,
An hundred, and a thousand more,
Till another thousand smother
That, and that wipe off another.
Thus at last when we have numbered°counted
Many a thousand, many a hundred,
We’ll confound the reckoning quite,
And lose ourselves in wild delight:
While our joys so multiply,
As shall mock the envious eye.
Richard Crashaw, 1648
Let us live, my Lesbia, and love, and value at one farthing all the talk of crabbed old men.Suns may set and rise again.For us, when the short light has once set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night.Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred. Then, when we have made up many thousands, we will confuse our counting, that we may not know the reckoning, nor any malicious person blight them with evil eye, when he knows that our kisses are so many.
Catullus, Poem 5, trans. Francis Warre Cornish, 1913.