British Literature Fall 2013 Top 5

December is the point at which we tend to pause and consider the past year. Everywhere you look there are top ten lists of 2013, tributes to the ones we have lost and the nation takes on a reflective tone as we ready to launch into a new year. Reviewing for the final exam for this class has fit nicely with this contemplative theme. Rereading key bits of each text brings the characters and themes back into sharp focus, for better or for worse, and I can't stop myself from categorizing them into my own top 5's.

Top 5 Villains: 5)The Grendel - Beowulf 4)The Duke - Measure for Measure 3)Angelo - Measure for Measure 2)Mephistopheles - Dr. Faustus 1)Satan - Paradise Lost Satan earns this dubious distinction because - well he's Satan. Additionally, he is the perfect study of a good man gone bad. He was once an angel, after all. Most importantly, Satan has the most awesome arch enemy of all. Speaking of which...

Top 5 Heroes: 5)Beowulf - Beowulf 4)The Wife of Bath - Canterbury Tales 3)Isabella - Measure for Measure 2)Oroonoko - Oroonoko 1)God - Paradise Lost God is the easy winner because, like Satan, he is of legendary proportion. He is also the only hero without flaws, which skews the playing field a bit. Doesn't a hero need flaws? Regardless, it is my top 5.

Most Interesting Character: The Wife of Bath Honorable Mention: Satan - Paradise Lost This was a difficult decision, because Satan is such a round and, at times, empathetic character. The Wife of Bath takes the honors because she is a kick-butt female character in a time before heroines. Sure, she is a bit of a parody, but I feel her strength overrides any comic factor she has.

Most Pathetic Lead: Tie: Gulliver - Gulliver's Travels & Faustus - Dr. Faustus Equally weak and despicable, these two men lack the backbone to be anything more than a cautionary tale. Gulliver's sense of self is easily compromised,as evidenced in his willingness to identify with horses after his return to England and Faustus, well, Faustus is just a very lonely, weak man. Place I would least like to visit: Utopia No privacy, no thank you. Way too much togetherness, not enough identity and I have the sneaky suspicion I would be stuck as a full time farmer. I humbly submit, my Top 5's of Brit. Lit. Fall 2013 5 of 5 WOOT!

Swift's Utopia?

     I have to say I am admittedly a little miffed with Mother Nature for her role in preventing further discussion on Gulliver's Travels as I have been looking forward to this text all semester! So, I have resolved to continue the discussion in some proportion.

     As I prepare to face this final, I am pondering all the connections and thematic similarities that can be made across the texts we have covered this semester.  And I have been thinking about Swift's potential motives when writing this narrative. We've spent a fair amount of time discussing utopian and dystopian thought and this has made me think more about how Swift may have been engaging in a sort of utopian pun. While we've talked about how he is satirizing England society, it seems he uses the different societies Gulliver encounters, such as that of the Lilliputians and the Houyhnhnms, as conversation starters for his contemporaries to question the way things are done in their own society. Personally, I find these “civilizations” bizarre and unattractive, which brings me to the question: is he intending to open the floor for new ideas to inspire change or does this story serve to repel us from the idea of a utopia (a perfect society) and perhaps even those cultures who are different?

Change of Views

So, In the beginning of the semester, we made an influence map where we found pictures to represent what we thought of when we thought of what it meant to be British. My images were probably pretty generic in what people would think of. I had a picture of the Royal Wedding, tea, the "Keep Calm and Carry on Sign", and images of Shakespeare, but now that the semester is over I feel like many of my ideas have evolved from where they began. This made me think about what I would change from our original assignment based on what I've learned over the semester.

openwalls.com

To begin with, I would still leave my image of Peter Pan flying across London. For whatever reason, when someone says England this is the first things I think of. I think partly because, at a young age, it showed a very physical place that was full of magic and fantasy. I think this representation has been a huge part of what we learned this semester. Magic in the world, for whatever reason, has been represented in the text we read like Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, The Wife of Bath's Tale, Doctor Faustus, and Gulliver's Travels. Each of these tales goes beyond the natural world and exposes the reader to a fantasy one. So yes, after I've rambled, Peter Pan, would stay.

inglesrios.blogspot.com

 The Canterbury Tales would be another image that would have to be added to my map. For one thing, beside reading the tales in this class, I also took the Chaucer class, and we pretty much read the whole thing, so it definitely has influenced my view of medieval and British culture. The Canterbury Tales is an interesting text because it examines, so many different issue like social differences, gender roles, and religious influence. There were some stories like "The Knight's Tale" that showed the nobility, and in a lot of ways, what we expect from British culture, but then there were surprises like "The Miller's Tale" and how they behaved. I also like the storytelling aspect of The Canterbury Tales, and how the tone and style of story changes with each character. The story is filled with different layers between the story of the pilgrimage to each travelers own stories. It has a complex style, but after working through that text all semester it has really influenced my ideas of medieval times.

airesnf.deviantart.com

An image of an angel and devil would also be added to my map now as well. I had never thought about how mooch of British Literature focused on the characters of God, angels, demons, and the devil. We saw reoccurring ideas of sin and redemption. Multiple texts showed this idea where character went out in search of Hell or supported it's ideas, but questions in discussion were also raised about when is it too late to be redeemed? We saw the ideas of Hell and Sin, and the ideas of redemption in text like Doctor Faustus and Paradise Lost, but the idea of sin and redemption was not one that I had previously associated with the idea of "Britain".

en.wikipedia.org

The last idea that I would add is the idea of the government, and how it has evolved. This was not an area the I thought about. I knew that the Royal family is face of the government, but that parliament was in charge more, but I never thought of the evolution of this system. When I thing of England, I think of Kings and Queens like King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth. Many of our texts addressed the idea of government, but it also showed how the perception of government changed over time. In Rule Britania, there was an extreme pride in being British but then by the time we get to Gulliver's Travels the author is mocking the system with satire. Even in Measure for Measure the behavior of government officials in charge is assessed.

Post 5/5

A Growing Struggle and Realisation - Why I Love Literature and What I Learned This Semester (That Had Nothing to do with the Lectures or Readings Themselves)

When I was very young, I lived with my mother and a very sick great aunt, whom my mother was taking care of. We had a dog, a poodle-mix, who quite literally saved my life one morning when a neighbor’s doberman-beast got loose and decided to go on a rampage. Our dog would walk with a limp for the rest of his life. We had a cat, who was as defiant and obstinate as every stereotypical cat that couldn’t co-star in a seedy Japanese cartoon if they were made into a person. The cat would literally live to the age of 26 off of pure anger and spite, and to ensure that my first experience with death that I was sentient for to understand, after years of battling cancer, this cat would be sentenced to a merciful death; that he would proceed to raise two middle fingers at and die on his own in the car on the way to the vet. Though there were men in my life in my extended family, I had no friends in the neighborhood; I didn’t go to the school that I was supposed to, because every morning my mother would need to take me from what is now the Walkersville area to the Linganore area. She did this so that my aunt, her sister, could watch me in the mornings while she went off to work at four. Great Aunt Bett had died before I started school proper.

I made some friends in school, but proceeded to have little to no contact with them outside of school until I was eight, when we moved to be closer to the rest of the family (and partly out of my own inability to lie about my address to the teachers who believed I was living at my aunt’s location). I would play with toys, read, and otherwise distract myself in the time I had alone (which was a large amount of time) by even occasionally reading. My mother was too tired to play when she and I got home each night, my grandfather was in no condition to be able to teach me how to play SportBall, and my uncle was never home early enough to do so either.

I was smart. Smart enough. I certainly didn’t have as much trouble in school as my cousin, who at this point in my life was more like a sister that I didn’t have actually at home with me and my mother. My grades never suffered for my abilities to accomplish a task. Except for Physical Education, which I blame entirely on an illness that had left me unable to walk for the greater part of two months (and at Christmas time!). In fact, my grades were excellent for the amount of work that I was putting into the admittedly simple tasks that were being given to us, once I had mastered the basics. It has always been the things that I simply failed to do which hurt me the most; in both school and in my personal life. To this day, my family has loved to give my mother no end of harassment for her treatment of what we call “the map incident”. A Social Studies project, a major part of that grade at the time, was to create a map. The details of the project itself are lost to time and memory, but she and I had both known about it for weeks and weeks and weeks. I didn’t start on it until the night before, and in the time that she spent calling people to yell and complain about my foolishness and openingly admitting that she wanted to watch me fail, I fulfilled the requirements of the assignment and received an A. She very nearly called up my teacher to tell me that I deserved an F; and looking back, I wouldn’t have blamed her. Everyone else in my family would cite this incident as a way to remind her not to underestimate my capabilities.

But the truth of the matter is, my abilities did not matter. That assignment was not about my ability to create a map, and getting the A, while helpful at the time, the cost may have been my future success after all. The assignment was about using your time wisely. It has become increasingly obvious to me, over the course of the last semester, something that should be fairly obvious to anyone who’s actually bothered to read through this; my thoughts are all over the place, and I’m having difficulty even paying enough attention to write.

Over the last two weeks, I have repeatedly sat down to write something or another for the rapidly approaching Finals and have each and every time “woken up” several hours later on a website that I had read several hundred times before, with absolutely zero progress made on what I’d originally set out to do.

What originally started as me developing an ability to keep myself entertained with books and music and art and television and video games has developed into a serious problem for my productivity, but has alongside it spawned a fascination and a need for literature. Everything that is constantly fighting for my attention with flashing lights or repetitive sounds or whatever completely fades away when I’m able to truly devote my attention to something; anything. Today, I read the back of a bottle of shampoo for twenty minutes.

But this same defense mechanism that’s inadvertently crippled me is also what’s allowed me to be so completely enthralled by stories. When reading Beowulf, there’s only so much of the world we’re being told. Shakespeare’s plays only show us so much of Vienna-London. Even in bigger works that tackle the creations of complete worlds (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter) there are no distractions. Everything that is being shown is something that is important, and thus deserving of attention. There’s no trying to decide what there is to pay attention to or not. (Incidentally, this makes me a terrible person to watch a movie with, because why are there fighter jets flying so close to the kaiju when this is clearly set in roughly the modern era, in which we have magnetic rail guns mounted on battleships that can, with pinpoint accuracy, launch a minivan at it from more than three miles away.)

Add into this the growing technologies of our media and the increased abilities of video games to create worlds and stories worth considering and deconstructing critically, and it becomes easier to at least rationalize the ease at which I get lost in them. At the risk of damning myself, I very well may have forgotten more about the Warcraft setting than most people will ever learn about their home country’s history.

Utopia, Oroonoko, Gulliver’s Travels; all of these are excruciatingly important because through what they choose to show us, we learn more about the worlds not just in their narratives, but also the worlds that created them. Just like literally any media or literature ever made in the history of humanity.

Much like even sitting down to write this paper, sometimes the hardest part is simply sitting down  and starting; in this case, to talk about things worth considering. The Utopian civilization in Utopia has slaves. Oronooko gives us a conflict between what we consider to be “civilized” and what we consider to be “savage” in the form of an educated, royal general who is both a slave trader, and eventually enslaved. Gulliver’s Travels opens with a long, drawn out masturbation pun, and I may very well have Attention Deficit Disorder and didn’t even realize it until it’s been able to have the tremendous effect that it’s had on my life and my productivity. I should have graduated last spring.

But I can sit. I can read. I can think about what I’ve read. Stories are important, in all of our media. The canon of literature that has come before now will always influence us, as it has helped to shape the culture, and thus society, that creates what we have now. We need stories; as points of reference and as points of focus that we can all look at, because it might be easier to talk about London when your plays are set in Vienna, but it is certainly easier to look at just the one thing you want to look at when that is what the story is about.

Now it’s your turn. What did you learn this semester that had nothing to do with the lectures and the reading? What did you learn about yourself?

---

5 of 5

Just a little more on Oroonoko

After reading the first portion of this story, as Oroonoko was on the boat headed for the plantation, I remember thinking that I would be very upset if he didn't find Imoinda over there.  Needless to say, when they found each other and finally got to be together I was pretty happy.  Unfortunately the story just goes downhill from there.  I don't quite get why people thought Oroonoko would simply sit around and let the promises made to him be delayed forever; I was more surprised that he waited as long as he did.  And seriously, "we have to wait until the governor gets back" is a pretty shoddy excuse considering the entire point of a deputy governor is to fill the governor's shoes while he's not around.  There's no reason he couldn't have made the call himself, which means he was just being (as we found out later) a major asshole.  I guess maybe they were used to dealing with slaves who had been captured in battle and felt, culturally, that their fate was deserved.  Whatever the case, things took a sharp turn for the worse after he led the mass escape.

(www.quickmeme.com)

I was heartened to hear in class that I was not the only one who approved of his killing Imoinda.  At that point it was obvious they were not going to get their freedom, even though they could have given the colony a hundred other slaves as a ransom.  (From a pragmatic point of view, why the people in charge wouldn't trade two troublesome slaves for a hundred more docile ones is something I'll never understand.)  I agree with his determination to live free or die, as did the founders of this country under much less harsh treatment than he suffered.  What's more, the manner of his death justified his choice to me fully; if they would go so far as to cut off his genitals and other parts of his body and burn them in front of him, I cringe to think what they would have done to his wife and unborn child.

Oroonoko's death scene, to me, was the ultimate revelation of who is "civilized" and who is "savage."  Part of why I view Oroonoko and Imoinda as so high on the "civilized" scale is because of where they started in relation to where they ended up, in terms of morality and personal growth and character.  If you are raised in a civilized culture, with an emphasis on right and wrong, a strong moral code, and a high degree of organization, I think it is far worse for you to sink to the barbarous level of Oroonoko's grandfather than it is for someone raised in a less civilized culture.  Basically, I think you should be measured by the culture you were raised in.  Of course, the natives in this story present an interesting dilemma.  They have a strong moral code and a good understanding of right and wrong, but they don't have a lot of organization.  Does this make them more civilized or more savage?  The definition you use has a great effect on how they are categorized.  Personally, I consider morality to be the most important product of culture, so I consider a highly moral society to be a civilized one.  How about you?

(4 out of 5)

Gulliver's Travels (Houyhnhnms and Yahoos)

As I was reading Book IV I had to constantly remind myself that the Houyhnhnms were horses because they have so many human characteristics. I believe Swift wanted his audience to realize how selfish and self-absorbed humans can be. Also, Swift brings attention to the fact that humans(Yahoos) only value their honorable characteristics rather than the characteristics of others. It seems that humans constantly take advantage of things that are major components to their societies.
When Gulliver describes to the Master Houyhnhnm that horses are "creatures" where he comes from. The Master Houyhnhnm is somewhat applaud by his words. Gulliver then explains that horses are used for traveling, racing, and drawing chariots. The Houyhnhnms are in disbelief because they would rather not be weak like Yahoos (humans). This is very ironic because in the Houyhnhms society humans are weak creatures and in the Yahoos society the horses are weak creatures.
The Houyhnhms are very intelligent and concerned more with a collectivist attitude rather than an individualistic attitude.  Also, they breed cleanliness and civility in their young, and exercise them for speed and strength. However, what about the Yahoos? Gulliver states that the Yahoos were unable to learn, cowardly, hostile, and filled with rage. When Gulliver entered the house of the Houyhnhnms, he noticed that the Yahoos were all tied up and they had no way to escape. I know Dr. MB mentioned slavery and that is actually a brilliant point. Although these Houyhnhms are very unique and clever, could they also act as slave masters? I believe this is a strong possibility. The horses label themselves as superior and intelligent-- basically perfect. On the other hand, the Yahoos are weak and insufficient. The Houyhnhms have the ability to delete all Yahoos from their society and treat them as if they are unworthy. This to me sounds somewhat like slavery.
Overall, Gulliver's Travels is a brilliant book! I absolutely enjoyed it because it brings a lot of attention to certain problems different societies and humans have. In addition, Swift makes the content even more interesting because of the satire.

Measure for Measure... and Music!

While I was in the shower, I started to think about how lonely a quiet shower is, especially in the morning, when I'm trying to get energized and ready for the day ahead. I wished that my iPod had better portable speakers so that I could wrap it in a plastic bag and listen to my music in the shower so I wouldn't have to hear the extremely annoying muffled conversations of every other person in the bathroom with me.

Then I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if the books we read in class had a soundtrack?" This thought was born out of desperation, I'll admit, and the need to talk about other things for this blog. But hey, music!

 Also, I don't remember if anyone else has done this before. If so, thank you so much for inadvertently inspiring me! You are a magical human. If not, then cool, too, because I sort of borrowed the soundtrack idea from Tumblr, as well.

So here's  my music series for "Measure for Measure". I came up with songs that I think say a lot about the three main characters: Angelo, Claudio, and Isabella. They might be songs that have to do with their characters, or songs the characters might listen to, were the play set in modern times.

Angelo (the dirty bastard)
"All These Things That I've Done"-- The Killers
"Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone you Shouldn't?)" -- The Buzzcocks
"Turn Me On" -- Bromheads Jacket
"Arabella" -- Arctic Monkeys

Claudio (ya hecked up big time, buddy)
"Apple Tree" -- Wolfmother
"World Spins Madly On" -- The Weepies
"The Lion and the Wolf" -- Thrice
"Older Brother" -- Pepper Rabbit

Isabella (oh girlie, ya got some decisions to make)
"Almost Pretty" -- The Perishers
"Awake my Soul" -- Mumford&Sons
"Dead Sea" -- The Lumineers
"Mace Spray" -- The Jezabels

Back to Utopia

While I was reading "Utopia", my mind, as it often does, drifted. (Not the "Pacific Rim" sort of drift, but rather the "hey, this sounds like this! There's food there in that place. I want food..." sort of deal.) However, unlike the desperate, hunger-driven drift that is my norm, my mind wound up drifting all the way to my sociology 101 class that I took first semester freshman year.

Even though I wound up skipping half of that class (I did not have time for useless Friday morning student-run-lectures, thank you!) I distinctly remember learning about "ideal places" that people create, and the internet's role in creating this sort of "utopias". There was an entire section on other lives people lead on the internet, and how platforms like Sims and SecondLife allow people to create places, people, and situations that they find ideal, and live vicariously through their fictional alter-ego.

This got me thinking about how Utopia, to us, is not necessarily the greatest place on Earth. It's really more of a dystopia, with slavery and women's rights, as well as a strange lack of will. But it's only a created place. Yes, there are elements of satire, but it's still an entire fictionalized universe. A historical AU of how England might go. Man, Thomas Moore would have loved the Sims.

The game is set up so that you can create your own little universe bubble, essentially, and create people with personalities and aspirations that you want them to have. The annoying part is taking care of all of your citizen's basic needs, but it turns out okay. There are a lot of hacks to make your SimWorld ultra-customizable, which is something that a lot of people really enjoy.

People live in their versions of paradise online, and often are subject to a lot of criticism because their ideal utopia does not line up with another person's... but that's the whole point.

The Little People and the Horses - Are they 'Good'?

Are the Lilliputians inherently bad? I know that they’re supposed to be caricatures of the modern English folk for Swift’s time, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s more to them than that. Granted, they’re at times just as petty and odd as our own race is, what with the pointed shoes and eggshell crackings, but I would still argue that the Lilliputians are not as bad as we are or could be, at the very least.

 It’s in the way that they interact with Gulliver himself that makes me think this, at least marginally. Aspects of their society, while somewhat barbaric compared to ours, could also be seen as somewhat favorable as being good intentioned (the main example being how children are separated from their parents for so long). Their society almost in some ways mirrors the society of Utopia, albeit the Lilliputians are much more materialistic and focused on wealth and conquering other nations.

As Jordan mentioned in another blog post, Gulliver himself is very much a caricature of a middle class of people, with his naturally submissive nature and gullibility towards the Lilliputians. Yet, at first, the Lilliputians treat Gulliver pretty darn kindly. Sure, they make him follow certain rules that may seem a bit tyrannical, but if they’re willing to take the momentous effort to maintain him and feed him, then doesn’t that almost make them more selfless than anything else? After all, one can only imagine how much food it takes for Gulliver to survive on a daily basis. Just how would that end up affecting the economy and farmers’ livelihoods?

Is Gulliver really worth the amount of effort that’s being put into his caretaking? Granted, it must be creating a ton of new jobs in getting waiters and attendants for him, but all he ever really did was put out a fire (in the worst way possible) and seize the entire Navy of the enemy island. Granted, the latter of the two is pretty gosh darned important, but even that can only go so far.

Until some of them plot to kill Gulliver, the Lilliputians honestly seemed like pretty swell people. Their society is one that, while I wouldn’t want to live in it, I’d certainly want to visit. They seem like they’d be pretty nice if you kept on their good side.

It’s the same with the horse people. Those guys, while extremely egotistical and haughty, have a certain elegance to them that reminds me a lot of the English upper class. There’s a certain superiority about them that would make them, at the very least, fun to hang around. Even their language sounds super pretentious, and I can only imagine it being spoken with a kind of pish posh British drawl that would make it especially amusing.

Granted, they have a concept of slavery same as the Lilliputians, but both races seem much more civilized than our own Yahoo race. It’s odd considering that they both represent certain characteristics of human society, but have perfection in almost everything else that makes them seem all the more idyllic.

Recap of the Semester!

Well, the semester is basically over. All that's left are finals, and then we're done for winter break. I just wanted to say that I've enjoyed taking this class, despite my never talking! I didn't think I was going to be all that interested in the course material, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of what we went over in class I had a genuine interest in. Of everything we've read this semester, Beowulf is by far my favorite. To be honest, everything was pretty boring compared to Beowulf, although I enjoyed much of everything else we read! I just think that Beowulf was the most badass, and kept me turning the page the most out of any of the other books as I read on. I liked the style it was written in, how seemingly simple yet complex the characters were, and the themes that it went over, especially pride and human folly. It was crazy how Seamus Heaney was able to decipher the old English and translate it into an order of words that actually made sense. Beowulf was easy to read compared to the Canterbury Tales and Paradise Lost, so, props to Seamus.  

I think that understanding how our language has evolved into what it is today is very important. Seeing how literature has developed over hundreds of years is crazy to think about. As an English major especially, I believe that it's vital to my college education to learn about how the more modern literature I love has come to be. By taking this class, I've learned more about English, England, how different life was leading up to the 18th century, and how different our language today is from how it used to be hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

In closing, I want to say that it's been a pleasure learning with all of you in this class, and I hope to see you all around campus next semester. Thanks especially should go to Dr. Mitchell-Buck for making a subject that I thought I would have no interest in interesting. I know that I didn't do as well in this class as I probably could have, but at least I managed to show up to every class, and I still enjoyed myself!

Have a great winter break everybody!

So I wrote this a few days ago and forgot to publish it....

The houyhnhnms! These horses were one of my favorite parts to read about when I first read Gulliver’s Travels. However, the Yahoos were among my least favorite parts of reading the novel. Either way I found myself marveling at the genius of Jonathon Swift using these stories to display his discontent with England. When Gulliver first gets to the land of the Houyhnhnms he meets the Yahoos first which are ugly creatures that look part goat and part human. The worst part of this though was when they tried to defecate on Gulliver. I think Swift has a slight obsession with bodily functions…

But anyways, based on what Gulliver says in the text, comparing the Yahoos to the people that run the government at home, it is clear that Swift doesn’t like the people in charge of England either. Another aspect of book IV that I found interesting was the part where Gulliver and the leader of the Houyhnhnms were talking about Gulliver’s homeland and the leader had a hard time understanding a lot of his customs. Such as horse riding, “My Master, after some Expressions of great Indignation, wondered how we dared to venture upon a Houyhnhnm’s Back, for he was sure, that the weakest Servant in his House would be able to shake off the strongest Yahoo, or by lying down, and rolling on his Back, squeeze the Brute to Death.” (222- Penguin classics edition) He made such a good point that I hadn’t thought of before and I think that was Jonathon Swift’s aim, to get the reader to think about our own societies actions.

We Did It :)

We made it. Well I guess we can’t really say that until the final, but overall we actually did it!

When I signed up for this class I was not exactly sure what to expect. The last English class I’ve taken was in high school; it was my very first college level class. My senior year, our English class was solely about British Literature so I was somewhat prepared for what we were going to read. I was excited to see Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales on the list because I had already read them. However, I was a little weary about the other texts especially the tougher ones like Paradise Lost or Utopia. Nevertheless, I still went into it with an open mind and it seems to have to turn out for the better.

Beowulf has always been my favorite, mostly because this naked man takes on a man-eating monster with his bare hands. I learned to love it more and more though after doing close reading in class. In high school, we had the modern English version, so it wasn’t that hard to decipher what was being said. The same can be said about The Canterbury Tales; we definitely did not have the Middle English version. At first the language scared me and I could barely understand it but after awhile I actually started to get the hang of it. Many people fear Chaucer because of the Middle English, but personally, I love him way over Shakespeare. Unlike like Shakespeare, Chaucer says what he wants to say without making it so confusing. You still have to think about it, but it doesn’t take you forever to decipher what he is actually trying to say.

Talking about hard to read text, that was a good bit of the readings. For some reason I just couldn’t grasp Paradise Lost, more so Utopia. I didn’t give up hope though. After reading over and over again I slowly got it. It wasn’t until we discussed certain passages when I finally grasped it. Prose is definitely not my forte.

I said Beowulf was my favorite, but that was before this class. Now, at the end of the term, I would have to say my preference has swayed to something way darker. Honestly, I really liked Dr. Faustus because I felt like for me personally it was the most relatable. I must make it clear I’m not interested in selling my soul to the devil or in hopes of a demon prankster. I loved Dr. Faustus only because I can relate to his character. I completely understood his boredom, loneliness, curiosity, and even his pride to an extent. That is about it though, thankfully. You will not see me signing anything with my blood anytime soon.

I’m just glad that I made it through this semester. Like Dr. MB said, we did indeed read some tough material but it will totally make us sound so much smarter in a conversation; it’s definitely a great nerdy icebreaker.

Best of luck to everyone :)

How Gulliver Changes

At the end of Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver is a completely different person compared to the man he was at the beginning of the story. In the beginning, Gulliver is this friendly, curious, explorer type. For one thing, once he comes to on the beach to find that he's been tied down by a legion of Lilliputians, he doesn't at once destroy them all. Even after he find the Lilliputians to be spiteful, nasty little creatures, he still sticks around for a bit and manages to get on the court's good side. He even helps them out with the Blefuscu-ites. He does everything he can to remain civil towards the Lilliputians. He saves the capital by pissing on it, the only logical thing to do in order to put out a miniature fire with no water around. And despite all Gulliver's done for the Lilliputians, the accuse him of treason for him not wanting to make Blefuscu a territory of Lilliput, and for defacing the capital, even though he saved it from burning to the ground. Gulliver's a good guy who seems to find the best in people, despite their being complete dicks. 

Towards the end of the book, however, Gulliver's character changes drastically. After his crew leaves him for dead on the island of the Houyhnhnms and go off to live the life of pirates, Gulliver comes into contact with the Yahoos and the "perfect" race of horses that rule the island. Gulliver comes to love this race of horses, and his despising of men continues to grow as he is convinced that he and every man he's lived with back home are all complete yahoos. Gulliver ends up being rescued unwillingly and taken back home, where he becomes a shut-in, neglecting his family, friends, and acquaintances and instead chills in the stables, talking to his horses for several hours a day. Gulliver, through his travels, becomes disgusted with the human race to the point of insanity. Witnessing all of these strange lands and comparing the creatures that live there with his own species turns him against everyone he knows once he returns, even his own family. This is where the satirical nature of Gulliver’s Travels is most apparent. The reader is able to, through Gulliver, see how crappy people are when set against all these other creatures that Gulliver meets.  

Oroonoko: Civil or Savage?

When we discussed the civility and savageness of the characters in Oroonoko a few classes ago,I think that most of the groups agreed that the king and captain were savage, and that Imoinda was one of the more civilized of the characters. Oroonoko's place on the chart in all of the groups seemed to fall in the Most Civil to Neutral range. I forgot to write it down and my memory is hazy, but I believe that my group placed Oroonoko closer to the most civilized end of the spectrum.

After our class discussion, it did not seem so clear to me where all the characters should be placed, especially Oroonoko himself because he has changed so much by the end of the story. By our society's standards, it would be agreed that slavery is bad, and therefore the English should be considered savage in this story as they are trading, and killing, African Americans as slaves. But in the time period that this story takes place, slavery was a common and mostly accepted thing, wouldn't the English be considered civilized as an organized society?

In Oroonoko's case, he at first seems to be one of the most civilized characters, and one of the reasons being that he fell in love with Imoinda and decided that he wanted to be with her and only her. Though this appears to be civilized to us, in his culture, it was common for men to take many girlfriends, so Oroonoko was actually going against his society's standards. At the end of the book, when he realizes that he will never escape and that his son will be born into slavery, Oroonoko decides to, with her permission, kill Imoinda and later allow himself to be killed. By the end, Oroonoko seems to have lost all civility, but when you look at it from his perspective, he did the only thing he felt was right in his situation. He did not want his child to live his life enslaved, and felt that it would be better to die than live a life without freedom. This may come across as selfish, for taking the lives of not only himself, but also Imoinda and their unborn child, however, he genuinely believed that there was no other way out. Imoinda also agreed with Oroonoko's plan, so he did not commit these acts without her consent, so he cannot be definitely described as completely savage towards the end. It is difficult to clearly define a character as civilized or savage in this story, because it really just depends on the perspective of the reader, as well as the characters.

Turning the tables back a bit... A Homily against Disobedience

     Going through everything that we have read in this course, I stumbled upon the sermon that had to be read in England once a month, every month during the sixteenth century. For a little recap on what it was about: the sermon was composed of twelve different parts; one for each month of the year essentially. These sermons highly emphasized the divine authority given to the monarchs of England. This caused uprisings from the Catholics, and England continually swayed between Catholicism and Protestantism with the rise and fall of different monarchs.

     That being said, analyzing the first Homily that was provided for us on blackboard, I am astonished that people would have to listen to this once a month. The consistency of the sermon probably played the role of "brain-washing" to the British people. It speaks about obedience above all other virtues and specifically obedience to the monarch of England. Listening to this would be tough once Gutenberg invented the printing press and people started reading the Bible for themselves. Some Bible verses that oppose what the homily says are:

Proverbs 29:2, "When the godly are in authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked are in power, they groan." (New Living Translation)

Acts 5:29b, "We must obey God rather than any human authority." (New Living Translation).

     These words oppose much of what the homily says, yet there are also verses that support the homily as well...

Romans 13:1-2, "Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.  So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished." (New Living Translation)

     This verse takes the homily and pretty much summarizes it into two sentences. So it is good that the homily has Biblical verses to back up what it is saying, but it does not take into consideration everything the Bible has to say about authority, and more specifically God's authority.

     In addition, the homily is written in lofty, "chuch-y" words that make people think that what is being said really is truth. People did not talk that sophisticated then, and we still do not achieve that extent of loftiness in today's society either. The language itself makes it hard to dispute, but surely there were people who analyzed the sermons for what they really were.

     If this were to be preached in today's society, I highly doubt the pastor would be able to make it through the first page without people walking out of the door or standing up to protest. Christianity in general has changed drastically, and one of the biggest differences has been the fact that people can read the Bible for themselves. This keeps pastors and priests accountable for their sermons, and monarchs cannot persuade churches as much nowadays as they did in the sixteenth century.

  It is crazy how much society has changed, and I have truly enjoyed looking at the progress of British society in this class through a literary standpoint.



Blog challenge: 6 of 5... say wha'?? :)

Why are only the Lilliputians popular??

     Reading Gulliver's Travels I went into it expecting that the book was going to be entirely about mean little people with a giant Gulliver washed up on their island. This may or may not have been from the movie I had seen a few years back starring Jack Black...

 

Reference: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfXsxVsX8Eu0qTlANXT53XuO-IlQ09k4yKNqtEvkH5zxgKeuIk2pOb0VQaWfuOkPydjxA0FYe-yJy934Up3VrY_OoX8eFQrpXROoXYkpkwT5LKPiGJTDxA_CwZnqT87hdoTi7fCs-w7EWt/s400/gullivers-travels.jpg 

 

In this movie, I think Jack Black does a good job at portraying Gulliver's naiveté, but the entire movie is focused on the Lilliputians. Everything I have heard or learned about has been about a washed-up giant on a island filled with little people. But class and actually reading the book made me realize that there is much more to this book that Jonathon Swift wanted to say.

    

     The book is about the MANY travels of Gulliver, not just one. This makes me think about why the Houyhnhnms are not as popular. One reason could be the fact that they are horses and not actual people. The Houyhnhnm part of the novel makes fun of all of human nature whereas the Lilliputian only focuses on select flaws that humans tend to display.

 

     This circles back to the fact that one of the greatest flaws is human pride according to the fourth part of the book, and human pride is what keeps that part of the novel from being popular. People do not like to be told that they are in the wrong and that a different way of doing things may be better than theirs. Humans do not like to be under submission to other animals; that is not how the animal kingdom works. However, humans find it more "normal" to submit to the tiny Lilliputians just because they are technically the same animal as humans.

 

     Overall, I think that both parts are just as humorous, and that Swift does a great job of portraying the Houyhnhnms to see how ridiculous some of human culture is and how pride gets in the way of success and greatness.

 

 

Reference: http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs4/i/2004/254/1/e/Houyhnhnm_and_Yahoo_by_EmperorNortonII.jpg

 

 

*On a side note: I also believe that Swift is trying to portray the cruelty and inhumanity of enslaving human beings, but that is an entirely different blog.

 

**On a second side note: Spelling Houyhnhnms is extremely difficult.

    

Brutal Civility?

Just what does that mean anyways?

"Brutal", according to Google, means "savagely violent". "Civility" means "formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech." or "polite remarks used in formal conversation."

These are the two terms that came into my mind when reading the end of Oroonoko. On both sides of the story, there were perfect examples of those being "brutish" or "barbaric" and of those being "civil". However, even though there were plenty of disturbing images throughout, it was the end that sent chills down my spine.

I'm sure you all know how this went by now. Oroonoko is lied to about being returned to Africa with his family. He is brutally whipped and had pepper poured into the open wounds by Byam. After the beating, Oroonoko realizes he will never be free and his unborn child will never be free as well. He decides to kill his pregnant wife and then himself and...well...the rest is fictional history.

But here is what disturbed me:

Just imagining someone being whipped like how Oroonoko was whipped sends goosebumps up my arm. Tack on the fact that pepper is poured into the open wounds and I am visibly cringing. In my head, I'm imagining something along the lines of The Passion of the Christ with an extra guy in the mix just adding some spices to the newly tenderized meat that was a human being.

And all of this came from someone who was a member of those who are considered "civil". This brutal and apparently unwarranted (at least in my personal opinion) punishment is terrible enough, but to have been doled out by someone of such a prim and proper class is just downright scary.

I have no idea who this gentleman is, but I do know he is dressed appropriately for the time that Oroonoko was set. This guy is in military gear fitting of the time and, even though he is obviously a military guy, this guy doesn't look to be the kind of guy who can whip a man as brutally as Oroonoko was whipped and then proceed to pour pepper into the broken skin. Imagining this man doing what he did and then probably going off to enjoy his afternoon tea with blood still on his face, gloves, and fancy clothes just sends chills up my spine.

 

Yet, he is a member of "civilized" society.

 

Oroonoko, on the other hand, is "brutal". Somehow, this former African prince turned slave turned whipping post is the one who is the brute. Even when he informs his pregnant wife that he is going to slit her throat and then kill himself, he is the one who is still in chains like some kind of animal.

 

Also, it is even creepier that his wife basically replies with "Do what you must and thank you for letting me die with some dignity." He then slits her throat and CUTS OFF HER FACE?! I'm surprised we didn't open that can of worms in class. Or maybe we did...it's been a while since we all discussed this as a class.

 

However, he doesn't go into a brutal rampage against Byam. He does not engage in any further violence at all. Instead, he stays by his wife's side until her decomposing corpse alerts Byam's men of their location.

 

From there, Oroonoko is basically cut apart like some two year old's Ken doll. Yet, he still does not react violently. He just stands there, smoking his pipe while his nose, ears, and one leg are chopped off. This is a man who, unlike Byam, has every reason and right to unleash unholy Hell upon them. He lost everything, but remains calm and, dare I say it, civil?

 

However, he may have been calm and "formal", but slitting his pregnant wife's throat and then cutting off her face hardly seems like "civil" behavior (that's the key word).

 

 

I think that through these two characters, Aphra Behn made a very poignant declaration about humanity as a whole: "we are all brutally civil". Yes, of course, not all of us would turn to violent words, actions, or thoughts as a way to attain some kind of personal gratification, but it is the ones who do that make society this way. And through the actions of both the white and the black characters of this play, Behn shows that this "brutally civil" society is no just limited to one race or another. Every human being is victim to it.

 

To me, this is a very stunning revelation, especially during a time where the white man was considered to be the epitome of all that is good, right, and proper in the world. And to be made by a white woman?! Now, you're just talking crazy.