Literature
On what basis can or should we treat a text a canonical? Discuss with reference to two texts
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The treatment of a text considered canonical can take many individual forms, particularly when it is appraised as life-enhancing. A canonical text reaches thoughts and ideas that the reader might never have imagined. It should possess a value that makes it meaningful to our understanding of what it means to be human, while remaining accessible to the modern reader. For a contemporary reader, Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost are two works of immense structural and narrative complexity that take the reader on a journey into another world. They rank as canonical texts and can be treated as such.
A canonical story must possess structure, contrasts, and literary devices that help to develop and inform its major themes and motifs. One of Dante’s major concerns was political conflict. He lived through the political turmoil of Italy, and the reader can see how he uses these circumstances in his epic poem to condemn political figures by placing them throughout the circles of Hell. He gives them what he considers to be their just retribution. The poem speaks for Dante, allowing him to transform contemporary political events into poetic subject matter. His belief that Church and state should exist as separate powers on Earth is expressed through a courageous and highly personal political vision. For good measure, he also incorporates ancient literary figures, referring to classical writers and poets such as Homer, Ovid, and Virgil.
Dante’s poem is an overarching allegory. It explores its themes through dozens, even hundreds, of symbols, with one of its most important ideas being the punishment of sinners. Inferno is canonical because of the quality and scope of the poem, which creates and explores something far more substantial than the particular characters and places it describes. We find in Dante a fundamental idea: the creation of an imaginative correspondence between a soul’s sin on Earth and the punishment it receives in the afterlife. Dante’s complexity creates an entire universe.
This new universe is a crucial characteristic of Dante’s imagery. Dante took some of his ideas from another epic, The Odyssey, and established a relationship with Homer’s famous travel narrative. To put the matter simply, Dante thrusts before us a worldview and a sense of cultural completeness. As we move through the work, we find the universe arranged from the presence of God down to Earth and then into increasingly confined circles, stage by stage, towards the depths of sin.
Dante makes us experience the exploration of complex questions about individual and social purpose. The poem concerns a system of belief, the relationship between past traditions and future prospects, and the major events that help define a culture and its path towards Christian understanding. Dante presents a remarkable complexity of ideas. The aesthetic unity and breadth of the epic bring before us a comprehensive picture of an entire culture in a way that an ordinary narrative, no matter how exciting, cannot.
Dante’s subject matter makes the reader recognise the moral implications of abandoning an understanding of the world and the heavens that is loaded with spiritual meaning. The enormous scale of the poem is coupled with the clarity and variety of its immediate details. The dramatic quality of human conversation is placed alongside sections of theological doctrine, while the emotional tone constantly shifts between humour, terror, disgust, anger, and fear. There is also a constant sense of movement, up and down and around, all coordinated by the developing awareness of the pilgrim narrator, who must make emotional and conceptual sense of everything he encounters. Inferno is therefore a truly canonical work.
Milton was a rebel because he identified with the revolutionary cause, and his masterpiece, also of epic proportions, is concerned with rebellion and its consequences. As a Puritan, Milton’s political and religious convictions were often opposed to royal authority. Paradise Lost explains an entire theology. It is concerned with the coming of sin into the world through the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan after his defeat in Heaven. If Milton has attempted to “justify the ways of God to men,” then our questions about humanity’s relationship with God are addressed through the poem’s theological framework.
The success of Milton’s explanation, of course, depends on whether the reader accepts the Christian worldview, and even whether the reader accepts Milton’s particular form of Christian individualism. Like Dante, Milton creates his own universe. The world is not simply the Earth; it is the entire universe within Milton’s imagined cosmos.
Milton’s achievement and the poem’s canonical status must also be considered in relation to its subject matter and its position within the epic tradition. Milton introduces the central theme of the entire poem and presents us with Satan and the fallen angels. He also makes it clear that the reader is encountering an epic poem. In order to place himself within the canonical epic tradition of The Odyssey and The Aeneid, Milton employs devices such as the invocation, epic similes, and catalogues. These are used heavily in the first two books to establish the credentials of Paradise Lost as an epic.
Paradise Lost begins with Milton’s prose summary, “The Argument.” He uses the word “argument” in the sense of “subject matter” rather than the modern meaning of a verbal clash. The prose summary tells the reader the story and can therefore be used as a reference point. In the poem, the reader encounters one of its central characters, Satan. Milton encourages the reader to consider whether Satan is a hero or a villain.
It is obvious from the first book that Satan possesses qualities that many readers admire. He is a fearless leader, eloquent, inspiring, resourceful, and even sympathetic to the suffering of his followers. Is he portrayed with these virtues because Milton wants to demonstrate how easily we can be deceived by heroic qualities? Has the reader ever found themselves attracted to people who ultimately proved harmful to them? It is unfortunately easy to identify with Satan when the reader first encounters him in the imaginary landscape of Hell.
Milton makes this experience accessible to the modern reader. All readers have experienced anger, bitterness, and a desire for revenge after a confrontation with authority. These may be small-scale personal grievances, but the emotions can still be intense. Satan’s grievances, however, result from his conflict with God and therefore have universal consequences. He wants to strike back at God for casting him into a dark and desolate place, and he intends to do so by bringing others down with him.
Like Dante, Milton was trained within the strictest academic education that his age could provide. The sources of Paradise Lost reflect Milton’s enormous range of reading. The story of Adam and Eve and the temptation comes from the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis. The vast majority of the poem’s allusions and references are to the Bible and to Greek and Latin classics. There are also references to Arthurian legend, Italian epics, and earlier English literature, especially the work of Spenser, the author of the moral epic The Faerie Queene. This immense catalogue of literary, religious, and cultural references contributes to the depth and complexity expected of a canonical text.
The reader could argue that Milton and Dante emerged from similar intellectual traditions. Milton drew some ideas from Dante, but each poet created a powerful epic that responded to the political, religious, and cultural circumstances of his own time. Their poems remain relevant because they continue to raise questions about politics, morality, religion, rebellion, sin, human nature, and our relationship with the divine. Their continuing ability to challenge and engage readers helps to establish them as enduring canonical texts.
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Political and Philosophical theories place too heavy a burden upon a writer. The inevitable result seems to be texts that are didactic and polemical, rather than imaginative and creative. Discuss any one text, which you believe disproves this assertion.
(706 Words)
Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe can be said to be a didactic text that details the death of the main character; the time leading up to that point and what becomes of his soul. It teaches us about his condemnation, not his salvation. However, contrary to this to disprove this assertion, Dr. Faustus is not just a didactic play. It is a play about Man pushing himself further, trying to have an intoxicating time and dream. He is a man that has been given three wishes and could be said to have found a genie in a bottle. What would the reader do with the wishes/genie? How would the reader strive for more than what they have got? Having the desire to have three wishes or to find a genie in a bottle is found in any person that allows not only them to be imaginative and creative but also the author.
Dr. Faustus wishes for many things and finds his genie in Mephistopheles. Dr. Faustus makes use of his newfound chances. He is a man who is a knowledge seeker. He wants to find out more than is good for him to know. This can not be wrong as a man who wants more than he has been offered. He does not want to plod along in life. He wants to eat, drink, and be merry. It is no accident that he compares himself to Colossus (IV, VII). Faustus is a scholar, books are his trade, philosophy his strength. Dr. Faustus begins by reading about the Greeks, Aristotle and ends up desiring Helen of Troy. His reading also contains maps that show Faustus exotic lands with their promise of new sensations. His study of classical authors has to be commendable as they are immense stories of biblical status.
The reader can, of course, decide to view Faustus through more modern eyes; he strives to better himself, his covetousness is soaring. This is particularly shown through the eyes of those who, in the eighteenth century, used him as an example of a positive thirst for knowledge, as a ‘striver’, as someone who anticipates the Age of Reason and tries to stand on his own two feet and work out his own salvation and try to better himself. He is motivated largely, but perhaps not entirely, by a desire for pleasure. The reader can assume that during most parts of the play, Faustus is a popular character, a great source of fun. Faustus hears renaissance voices who tell him to extend the boundaries of human knowledge, seek wealth and power, live this life because tomorrow you will be dead, such a popular theme is known as ‘carpe diem’ or ‘seize the day’.
In his superhuman aspirations, he mixes a desire for knowledge with no less strong desire for pleasure, power, and rape of overseas provinces, which were beginning to be colonized and exploited at the time. There is something of a rude soldier of fortune of him: ‘As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords’ 1:121, draws a specific analogy between the quest for hidden knowledge and the brutal activities of their colonial powers. He acts as if he were king, he commands, dictates terms. He wants to be some sort of superhero and why not? Life for him is for living.
Faustus decides to live bravely for his time on earth, a strong man who challenges life, he goes and explores, he does not wait for life to come to him. The play mentions that he does grand things that are useful to his countrymen, but he only feels at peace when he is playing practical jokes. His last two words are ‘Ah Mephastophilis’, he dies in the arms of his deceitful friend with immense relief, also gratitude, surprise, love, forgiveness, and exhaustion. It is the happiest death in drama.
Christopher Marlowe‘s assertion to a modern reader can be very different from those at the time; this is where you can think of Faustus not only as an explorer but also as someone who wants to extend the boundaries of life. This could be a lesson for all which is relayed to the reader from Marlowe’s imaginative and creative text.
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A linguistics class reflection
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Six days of attending linguistic lectures spread over three weeks can not be a major amount of time to achieve a solid and complete knowledge of linguistics, but all the same, this essay will try to establish how I accomplished a relative level of understanding through my studies. I tried hard to combine items raised in these lectures, my classmates’ comments, further reading away from the class, and clarity added by my focus group. I will try to highlight some of the points that stuck in my mind regarding linguistics while giving a little insight into the further ideas into the subject.
To begin with, would be to give my general view of linguistics. So, as I researched I found that linguistics is the study of human languages, where within this the science examines not only the structure of language but also its use and the structure in the mind. A layman may think that a linguist, the person who is skilled in linguistics, only looks at rules and grammar, but it is so much more than this. The subject takes in such fields as humanity, science, society, philosophy and literary criticism. Language is not as routine as some may think, and it is astonishing to think that language came from one source which spread across the world to create 6000 more. A learner of linguistics then would be amazed how many branches of linguistics have been created. So, without language where would we be?
My first recognisable factor about the classes was the highlighting of daily use of language which has to be the main dynamic in anyone’s scaffolding of knowledge. The more any speaker uses it, the more they will be able to use their fresh available knowledge of language. The lecturer actually mentioned that reading and writing inspire to make you more creative with your writing and speaking. This, I found to be a sensible choice to further one’s linguistic knowledge. The path that I followed on this course was not the one that I thought and as such I would like to draw attention to some of the further points.
I feel my reading has taken in many factors and has shown me that linguistics is a broad church. I was asked yesterday where the word ‘Santa Claus’ came from, and then I remembered I read about it in a book called the Power of Babel by John McWhorter who is famous for studying creoles. In it, he spoke about how it was a Dutch word, Sinterklaas, where immigrants coming to America and following their tradition they spoke about it and Americans misheard the word to be Santa Claus. This field of study in linguistics is actually called ‘Etymology’ where it recognises the origins of words and sees how they have changed over time. I actually picked up the Power of Babel book because I had read one of my group’s summaries from the book ‘Introduction to Linguistics’.
Moreover, the chapter in the Introduction to Linguistics book spoke about how words have changed through time. They called it variation; this means that languages take on their own route. English people especially in the northern region took the word ‘butter’ and pronounced it with the ‘er’. Other regions say ‘butta’ but other words are not so easy to understand such as ‘Owt and Nowt’. For me, this course has highlighted that linguistics is not just about grammar. Language takes on its own form and even one language like English below the surface lies a myriad of factors that are distinguished by linguists. For example, I read that language which was described by Ronald Langacker who is a founder of the field of cognitive linguistics, makes three fundamental assumptions: ‘that language is symbolic in nature that a linguistic community creates linguistic conventions, and that grammar is a speaker’s knowledge of linguistic conventions’. So, this gave me a better insight into the linguistic community creating the language and grammar. The speaker uses sentences that are built by selecting appropriate words from their vast lexicon that are learnt from his local language community.
Furthermore, if we are to talk about language communities, I can think back to watching the movie Sense and Sensibility in one class. The students were faced with sociolinguistics and the use of language around 1800 in England. A pioneering sociolinguist was William Labov who recognised the value of society, cultural norms and expectations on language. As for the film, it has a language of propriety of upper-class England. What people say and what they mean can be of different meanings. People had to behave properly and women were kept in place. There is a great scene where the daughter of the deceased father has to move to another residence where the owner speaks his mind to the disgust of the quiet and proper sisters. The movie certainly purports this as the characters are higher social standing and speak rather eloquently.
In addition, for this class to I had to look up the meaning of some of the branches of linguistics and as such, I read up about sociolinguistics. I recognised that language is seen as being used in a social context and isn’t this thing that is external to human beings but something that makes who we are. We could also add the branch of linguistics called Historical Linguistics which actually started around the same time as Jane Austin wrote her book. This field of study grew philology which is the study of ancient texts and documents. Not all fields of linguistics started that long ago. While studying this class, the name Noam Chomsky was mentioned a few times. He is an American linguist among other positions. In the 1950s, his branch of linguistics was generative grammar which is a particular approach to syntax. He came up with ‘universal grammar’ which highlights innate properties in the brain. This means that any person born to parents from one background (i.e. China) can easily be brought up to speak another language if they were immersed in another country (i.e. America) from an early age which means that the brain is programmed to accept speech at any level. This idea went against the behavioural idea that BF Skinner proposed.
To conclude, I have deepened my knowledge of linguistics and found that language works in many ways. It is interesting to see the use of English that has spread over the world and the variety of new words added. I think the main factor when studying linguistics is to take it on how it is used, not how it should be used, because maybe there is no clear right or wrong way. What matters is meaning.
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Consider the importance of setting in any one text – The Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness is not a story without its settings; the nightmarish journey of Charlie Marlowe (our narrator) into the unknown where we find ourselves traveling by boat to and in the Belgium Congo in 1890. The use of this setting shows and explains the exploitation of a colonial country and challenges the basic ethical question of good and evil of mankind. Marlowe’s setting is perfectly placed to give the reader a glimpse of the political environment of the Congo and the African exploration that was quite popular in Conrad’s day.
Although most of the action in The Heart of Darkness is set in the uncivilized jungles of the African Congo, the tale itself is narrated by Charlie, an experienced sailor aboard a pleasure boat with four other Englishmen as they lounge on the deck at the mouth of the Thames River outside London. Charlie sits Buddha-like to narrate his story. Here, the reader gets a glimpse of the Thames as a mighty river at sunset with the gauzy radiant lights of civilized London, which reflect on the river’s surface. This is represented where both the time of day and the spot are significant. It’s sunset. As the tale turns gloomier, images of darkness get more and more pervasive. The evening grows gradually darker, so that by the time Marlow finishes, late in the night, his listeners have literally been enveloped in darkness.
Consider how criticism might engage with race and religion (through two texts)
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Race and religion can form vital parts of any play or novel; history has proved that tension, be it through different religions/ races of people, has stirred up many conflicts. In this essay, I will refer to two texts namely ‘The Jew of Malta’ by Christopher Marlowe and ‘The Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad. I would like to show how criticism can engage from a story and that we can see the undertones of the text that shows racial and religious streams of thought and action. These narratives both show the act of colonialism/countries powers, which are true accounts of the Christian colonizers and the Turkish Siege of Malta as well as King Leopold and the Belgium Congo.
Initially, The Jew of Malta resonates with themes of religious tension, which was a parallel to the time, in the sixteenth century. There were not many Jews in England during this time. Jews in England secretly practiced. Many Jews who were born into the Jewish faith either converted or pretended to be Christians. Criticism can be pointed not only towards the non-secular people in England but also where this play tries to deal with the anti-semitic feeling that was rife throughout the whole of Europe. The Jewish people did not believe in Christianity, so they were a threat to social order. English Protestants felt that Jews were outsiders as well as Muslims and Catholics. Marlowe forces the reader to re-examine the factors that were the start of internationalism. It makes the reader comment about the internal affairs at that time. The subject of commerce and internationalism had a role in the unfolding drama that could be equal to the effects of antisemitism.
Furthermore, in 1594 the Queens physician Roderigo Lopez, a Portuguese Jew was tried and executed for treason on charges that included conspiring to poison the queen. The Lopez case inspired a wave of anti-Jewish feeling and was probably responsible for the appearance of several dramas dealing with Jewish characters including the revival of the Jew of Malta. At that time, Marlowe’s story would have assessed the Jewish implication as much as we do now. Barbaras is a Jewish merchant he is angered by the passage of law requiring all Jews to either convert to Christianity or give up one-half of their wealth. Barbaras’ daughter is also in love with a Christian. He commits crimes for revenge because he hates Christian race.
Marlowe wrote it about a Jew, of another religion, and let the reader see Barbaras as someone that is capable of any heinous crime, a factor brought on by other people’s motives. He is a wealthy Jewish man that cannot be trusted. Marlowe shows us a character of a Jew (Barbaras) and gives us that experience and thus forms the reader’s opinion. The main character Barbaras displays the kind of strategic cunning that is at odds with the Christian notions of altruism, but he shares much with Machiavellian self-advancement. There was anti-Machiavellian feeling that was widespread in Elizabethan England. In all do we admire or criticize Barbaras for his fight against the invaders?
In Conrad’s novel, we find a certain racial tension, which is documented throughout the novel, with reference to black and white with the insinuation to bad and good. The white race has the strong hold on the black. We find arguments with the whites who exploit the blacks though the whites are seen as dark souled. You feel pity for the blacks who are taken over. Europe at the time of the late 1900’s was generally thought a place of light or enlightenment and Africa was generally thought as a place of darkness. Conrad finds disparagement with the history of colonialism as it was applied in the Belgium Congo. We find criticism in the ways of the whites. He writes about the sociological investigation of those who conquer and those who are conquered and the complicated way between the two races.
King Leopold founded the ‘International Association for the Suppression of Slavery and the Opening up of Central Africa’ where he attempted to impose civilization and order. This colonial greed just fostered widespread abuse; so much for racial alliance! Conrad’s disparagement not only festered when he visited the Congo but also saw that exploitation suppurate everywhere. Again, we have reason to analyses; we find a race of people with their own motives trying to take over another country. Essentially, we come to evaluate the white race for their love of spreading salvation, religion, culture and commerce and not letting the blacks have their own. Do we admire or criticise the whites invaders for this?
To conclude, we find motivation for criticism because of some heinous acts from people of dissimilar races and religions. The height of racial tension must be thought to come from the colonialists who then thought that they were of superior wealth and knowledge that they would bring great ideas and make everything for the better although we find that they are not of the right knowledge to see the problems that they are causing. Here we have to challenge their motives. Racial and religious tension is made from acts that will not be forgotten with the passage of time, and we see here what mistakes each race of people could have made and the reactions that are born from them.
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