EXAM 3

Chief conventions of the country house poem in Jonson’s “To Penshurst”

• Barnyard imagery; natural catalogues (animals)

• Ideal archetype of rural society; praises owner of countryhouse

• Themes of hospitality and family

Chief conventions of the cavalier poem

• Love and honor as dominant subjects

• Dashing, courtly persona

• Lighthearted, witty, melodious, polished, and epigrammatic, often pronouncing a carpe diem theme.

ex) Robert Herrick’s “Corinna’s Going A-Maying” + John Suckling’s “Why so pale and wan, fond lover?”

Traits of Herrick’s “The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home”

• Iambic tetrameter

• Country house genre

• Pastoral poem

• Rhymed couplets (suggests harmony)

• Single stanza

• Subtext satirizes Puritans

Main theme and argument of Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”

• Theme: Life is fleeting and beauty forfeits to time. It’s best to live in the moment.

• Argument: Narrator persuades their lover to make love with them.

Donne’s poems and their metaphysical conceit

• “Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward”: Compares the human soul to a sphere—a planet that orbits God

• “The Sun Rising”: The universe revolves around a couple’s bed

Important quotes from *Leviathan* by Hobbes

• “Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power.”

• “Hell is truth seen too late.”

The meaning of “Leviathan”

A large, powerful, and monstrous sea creature that appears in the Bible. In the context of Hobbes’ work, it embodies a government in which kings have all the power.

Milton’s chief elegy

“Lycidas,” which is a pastoral elegy

Pastoral elegy conventions

• Depiction of nature and its cruelty

• Repeated invocations of the muses

• Descriptions of flowers

• Discusses the deceased

Milton’s argument in *Areopagitica*

• Milton’s argument is a philosophical opposition to censorship written in response to Parliament passing a law which refused the publication of any material until it was approved by an official censor. Milton’s writing argues this is detrimental to society at large since it limits learning opportunities and free thought.

• “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

Milton’s purpose in *Paradise Lost*

“To the height of this great argument I may assert eternal providence and justify the ways of God to man.”

Six epic convention in *Paradise Lost*

1. In media res: Begins the epic discussing Satan and how he was thrown out of Heaven into Hell after the invocation of the muse and stating his purpose. Only afterwards does he begin the fall of man.

2. Invocation of the muse: “Sing Heav’nly Muse” invoking the Holy Spirit instead using a classic Greek muse.

3. Statement of the theme/purpose: “To the height of this great argument I may assert eternal providence and justify the ways of God to man.”

4. Epic question: “For one restraint, lord of the world besides?”

5. Epic catalogue: Lists the animals Satan sees in the Garden of Eden including dogs, snakes, wolves, lions, sheep, etc.

6. Epic simile: He compares Satan's size/bulk to a titan—Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size, Titanian, or Earth-born, that…”

Arguments in Book II of *Paradise Lost*

• Moloch: wanted open war with God and was desperate for revenge

• Belial: Did not want to go to war with God; better off in Hell

• Mammon: Middle ground; suggested they build a better Heaven in Hell to make God jealous/angry

• Beelzebub: On Satan’s side to get revenge on God with some sort of action

• Satan: Wants revenge on God; decides to destroy his new creations Adam and Eve on Earth

*Felix culpa* in Paradise Lost

• Also called the fortunate fall, it is when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and sinned

• Displays the necessity of humankind's obedience to God.

The reason for the lack of Puritan poetry and the wealth of Anglican poetry

Puritans didn’t believe in anything that didn't come directly from the Bible so they never believed in the importance of poetry in a society. 

The English Civil War

• 1641-1649

• A series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (“Roundheads”) and Royalists (“Cavaliers”)

• Mainly over the manner of England’s governance and issues of religious freedom.

• Part of the wider Wards of the Three Kingdom

List the Stuart kings in order (no dates)

• James I

• Charles I

• Charles II

• James II

• William III and Mary II

• Anne

The Restoration

• Took place in 1660 after the Puritan Commonwealth was destroyed

• Charles II was placed back onto the throne.

1603

Queen Elizabeth died and James 1 ascended the throne beginning the 17th century.

Maryland in the 17th Century

• King Charles granted the land to Cecil Calvert (Lord Baltimore) in 1632

• Named “Maryland” to honor Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I.

• Founded as a haven for English Catholics to worship and conduct business without fear of persecution

• The Ark and the Dove and landed on St. Clement's Island (In Saint Mary’s county)

The Declaration of Right of 1689’s influence on the US Constitution

The Declaration of Rights

• granted sovereignty to parliament

• established free election of parliament

• the rights of subjects to keep and bear arms

• habeas corpus (protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment)

• prohibited excessive bail, and cruel and unusual punishment

Our Declaration of Independence has these same rights granted to our people and are governed partially by Congress (essentially like the British Parliament).

What great change in the English monarchy occurred in 1689 after William and Mary took the throne?

The Glorious Revolution occurred, which permanently established Parliament as the ruling power of England. It dissolved the monarchy.

Two traditional poles of satiric tone

1. Juvenalian Satire: bitter and angry criticism of corruption of humans and institutions. Derives from Roman poet Juvenal.

   1. The Dunciad by Alexander Pope

2. Horatian Satire: light, gentle, witty, produces sympathetic laughter. Derived from Roman poet Horace

   1. Gulliver's Travels by Johnathan Swift

*Persona* in satire

• The persona is a satiric voice that speaks in first person directly to another character or readers.

• Does not mean that the author is the one speaking in their work; it is usually a masking of them.

• Ex) “A Modest Proposal” by Johnathan Swift: Swift creates a character who argues that eating young children will prevent hunger in Ireland and create taxes for England. He doesn't actually believe this but is satirizing rationalism.

List three literary consequences of Grub Street in the 18th Century

• Modern periodical press (newspapers, magazines) was founded there

• Realism: made common people heroes and “drafted the blueprints for fiction’s future”

• “Occasioned the legal values on which the modern free press is founded” (AKA, inspired the USA’s First Amendment)

• Harsh Satire: created and popularized this in literature throughout the century

List three reasons for the importance of the coffee house in 18th-century London.

• Created a public forum for discussing politics and challenging government elites.

• Developed a short, direct, and witty style of speech. This style of speech led to the understated, dry humor still present in England.

• From rules posted and the preferred conduct in the coffee houses, a new social code was created which blended reasonableness, good judgment, and wit.

• Coffee houses also democratized learning and made popular essays easier to access for the general public.

The technique of parody in Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”

• “Parody” is a satiric technique that ridicules a work by mocking and imitating its style.

• Swift’s inflates the stereotypical Protestant Englishman’s when he ridicules the Irish and takes the word of a “knowing American.”

*Rape of the Lock* by Alexander Pope as a mock epic

Uses the classical epic conventions of

• invoking a muse

• posing a question

• arming of the hero scene

• supernatural involvement

• a battle scene

• an epic speech.

Social and moral argets in *Rape of the Lock*

• The upper-class is too absorbed in themselves and their luxuries; they act like beauty is a religion.

• It mocks letters of love, trivial literary talk, and vanity.

Lampoon satire

Caustic ridicule of the character or personal appearance of a person.

* ex) “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift

Mock epic satire

Inflation of a low subject by a high style

* ex) *Rape of the Lock* by Alexander Pope

Travesty satire

Deflation of a high subject to a low style

* ex) Butler’s *Hudibras*

Parody satire

Mock of literary style by exaggerated imitation

* *ex) Gulliver’s Travels* by Jonathan Swift

Burlesque satire

Ridiculous exaggeration specifically in incongruity between subject and style.

* ex) Dryden’s *MacFlecknoe*

Estates satire

Ridicules a general class of people (social status and occupations) 

* Chaucer’s *Canterbury Tales*

Define verbal irony as exemplified in a specific Augustan work

Verbal irony is a figure of speech that conveys a meaning opposite to its literal meaning.

* In Jonathon Swift's A Modest Proposal, he says "I rather recommend buying the children alive and dressing them hot from the knife, as we did roasting pigs" to mock the rationalism of selling children.

Technical features of the heroic couplet

1. Two verses of ten syllables each

2. Iambic pentameter

3. End rhymed – often a verb that has weight and impact

4. Middle style – formal, conversational speech with is neither vulgar nor elegant (coffee house talk)

5. Variety – varying caesura, syllables (light v. heavy), and tonal quality and phonemic elements (long v. short sounds).

6. Figures of speech – similes were preferable and used for clarity

Cite a work by Pope, quote a heroic couplet from it, and analyze it in terms of its prosody.

The Rape of the Lock: “Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; / Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”

1. Two 10 syllable lines

2. End stop (semicolon and period)

3. Iambic pentameter

4. Memorably captures the thought that physical beauty pales in comparison to the personality/lasting qualities

Scriblerus Club (Swift, Pope, and Gay)

They were Tories who were traditionalist, conservative, and aristocratic.

The Scriblerus Club satirized pretentious and scholarly jargon through their works.

• Swift: Prose satirist; used Juvenalian satire In “A Modest Proposal”

• Pope: Poetic satirist; used mock epic in Rape of the Lock

• Gay: Dramatic satirist; The Beggar’s Opera as a parody of Italian operas

Shift from Augustan to Romantic poetry

• Literary Sensibility: Driven by the un-Hobbesian belief that benevolence is an innately human element and central to moral experience is sympathy. Includes emotions for the beauty of nature/art. Seen as a symbol of one's gentility.

• Jean-Jacques Rousseauu’s notion that humanity in a state of nature is naturally good and benevolent and is corrupted by society.

• John Locke’s empiricist notion of human knowledge (“tabula rasa,” for example, meaning “blank slate”—all knowledge comes from experience or perception)

Four Romantic tendencies in Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

1. Preference for the rural instead of urban

2. The solitary and the contemplative over the social

3. Imagination

4. Contemplation

5. Notice and sympathy for the poor and common people

Four examples of satire in “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat”

1. Horation satire: Named after Roman poet Horace; is gentle, more sprightly than angry and is aimed at traits of general human nature

2. Parody: mocks the high styles of the ode

3. Travesty: reduces foolish ladies to cats

4. Burlesque: a mocking imitation of convention of the funeral elegy through imagery on vase

Four qualities of James Boswell’s *The Life of Samuel Johnson*

1. Extensive reports on Johnson’s conversations

2. Collection of entries in Boswell’s diaries

3. Common man as the “hero” (though written with more complexity)

4. Captures unlikely literary friendship between Boswell (libertine) and Johnson (Tory)

Maryland’s official nickname

Old line state (?)

* George Washington bestowed the name "Old Line State" and associated Maryland with its regular line troops, the Maryland Line, who served courageously in many Revolutionary War battles.

Satan’s main character traits in specific instances

• Prideful, hateful, resolute, stubborn, and childish: When it comes to getting revenge on God and his actions/feelings towards Heaven

• Courageous, thoughtful, persuasive, clever, ambitious: How he acts with the Devils to get them to follow his plan of revenge against God

1605

The Gunpowder plot—a failed attempt to assassinate King James I of England during the Opening of Parliament in November 1605.

Done to end the persecution of Roman Catholics by the English government.

1611

Publication of the King James Bible and the dissolution of Parliament

1660

Charles II restored to the English throne and the end of the protectorate.

1665

An outbreak of the Bubonic Plague spread across Europe killing thousands of people and creating mass graves

1666

The Great Fire of London destroyed one third of London and killed thousands.

1649

England declared a Commonwealth and free state; abolished monarchy