EN2010 Renaissance Literature 2005.
Assignment 1, Autumn Term.
A main point of this
assignment is to ensure that you have access to, and some knowledge of, the
various on-line resources of the RHUL library. Once you have an
Choose TWO of the following six
texts.
(TEXT 1 is from
Donne’s ‘Songs and Sonnets’, TEXT 2 is one of his love elegies. TEXT 3 is a song
lyric by a poet-composer; TEXT 4, written by a scholar-poet, has a song lyric’s
stanza form, but is perhaps more discursive in nature. You will note that TEXT 5
is by an aristocratic woman writer, TEXT 6 is by a Caroline
courtier.)
TASK
1 Visit the
TASK 2 Do an image search http://www.google.co.uk/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&q= , and print out a portrait of at least one of your authors.
TASK 3 Visit the MLA Bibliographical database http://firstsearch.oclc.org/ . Find on the database two recent (post 1990) journal articles or essays in books about any of your authors, or the common theme of these poems. Journal articles should be in either English or American academic journals. E-mail to yourself the bibliographical citation (author, title, journal, date, page). Copy and paste the two relevant citations you have found. It might look like this
Author(s): Findlay, Alison Title: 'I Hate Such an Old-Fashioned
House': Margaret Cavendish and the Search for Home Source: Early Modern Literary Studies: A
Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature 14, (2004
May): p. 14 paragraphs Acronym: EMLS ISSN: 1201-2459 Language: English Peer Reviewed: Yes SUBJECT(S) Descriptor: English literature -
1600-1699 - Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle (1624?-1674) - The
Religious (1662) - The Several Wits (1662) - The Unnatural Tragedy (1662) -
drama - treatment of household - relationship to female sex
roles
TASK 4. Visit the
2. To assign (an event) to an earlier date.
a1631 DONNE Poems 4 Wilt thou then antedate some new~made vow? 1775 Fielding's Life in Wks. I. Pref. 19 Having often ante-dated, and sometimes post-dated, the matter which he found in the Spanish history. 1872 E. ROBERTSON Hist. Ess. 193 The struggle..began in the reign of Edgar and was antedated long afterwards..to throw odium upon Edwy.
(If there are other words that are unfamiliar, or where you suspect that there may have been some semantic shift, why not look them up too?)
TASK 5. Write 400 words on how the two poems your have chosen handle the theme of inconstancy.
John Donne, ‘Woman’s
constancy’.
Now thou
hast lov'd me one whole day,
To morrow when thou leav'st, what
wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then Antedate some new-made vow?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons, which we were?
Or, that
oathes made in reverential feare
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forsweare?
Or, as true
deaths, true marriages untie,
So lovers’ contracts,
images of those,
Binde but till sleep, Death’s
image, them unloose?
10
Or, your owne end to Justifie,
For having purpos'd
change, and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true?
Vaine lunatique, against
these scapes I could
Dispute, and conquer, if I
would;
Which I abstaine to doe,
For by
to morrow, I may thinke so too.
John Donne. Elegy III, ‘Change’
Although thy
hand and faith, and good workes too,
Have seal'd thy love which nothing should undoe,
Yea though thou fall backe, that apostasie
Confirme thy love; yet much, much I feare thee.
Women, are like the
Arts, forc'd unto none,
Open to'all searchers, unpriz'd, if
unknowne.
If I have caught a bird, and let him
flie,
Another fowler
using these meanes, as I,
May catch the same bird;
and, as these things bee,
Women are made for men, not him, nor mee.
10
Foxes and goats - all beasts - change when they please,
Shall
women, more hot, wily, wild then these,
Be bound to one man, and did Nature
then
Idly make them apter to'endure then men?
They'are
our clogs, not their owne; if a man bee
Chain'd to a galley, yet the galley'is free;
Who hath a plow-land, casts all his seed
corne there,
And yet allowes his ground more corne
should beare;
Though Danuby into the sea must flow,
The sea receives the
Rhene, Volga, and Po.
20
By nature, which gave it, this liberty
Thou lov'st, but Oh! canst thou love it
and mee?
Likenesse glues
love: and if that thou so doe,
To make us like and
love, must I change too?
More then thy hate, I hate'it, rather let mee
Allow
her change, then change as oft as shee,
And soe not teach, but
force my'opinion
To love
not any one, nor every one.
To live in one land, is captivitie,
To runne all
countries, a wild roguery;
30
Waters stincke soone, if in one place they bide,
And in the vast sea
are more putrifi'd:
But when they kisse one banke, and leaving this
Never looke backe, but
the next banke doe kisse,
Then are they purest; Change'is
the nursery
Of musicke, joy, life, and
eternity.
Thomas Campion, ‘Now let her change and spare
not’
Now let her change and spare not;
Since
she proves strange I care not:
Fain'd love charm'd so my delight
That still I doted on her sight.
But she is gone, new joies imbracing
And my desires
disgracing.
When did I erre in blindnesse?
Or vexe her with unkindnesse?
If my cares serv'd her alone,
Why is shee thus untimely
gone?
10
True love abides to th'houre of dying;
False love is ever flying.
False, then farewell for ever:
Once false proves faithfull never.
Hee that
boasts now of thy love
Shall soone my present fortunes prove:
Were he as faire as
bright Adonis,
Faith is not had where none is.
TEX
Thomas Stanley,‘Chang'd, yet Constant’
Wrong me no
more
In thy complaint,
Blam'd for Inconstancy;
I vow'd t'adore
The fairest Saint,
Nor chang'd whilst
thou wert she:
But if
another Thee outshine,
Th' Inconstancy is onely
Thine.
To be by such
Blind Fools admir'd
Gives thee but small esteem,
By whom as much
Thou'dst be desir'd
Didst thou lesse
beautious seem;
Sure why they love they know not
well,
Who why they should not
cannot tell.
Women are by
Themselves betray'd,
And to their
short joyes cruel,
Who foolishly
20
Themselves perswade
Flames can outlast their fuel;
None (though Platonick their pretence)
With Reason love unlesse by Sence.
And He, by whose
Command to Thee
I did my heart resigne,
Now bids me choose
A Deity
Diviner far then thine;
30
No power can Love from
Beauty sever;
I'm still Love’s
subject, thine was never.
The fairest She
Whom none surpasse
To love hath onely right,
And such to me
Thy Beauty was
Till one I found more bright;
But 'twere as impious to adore
Thee now, as not t'have don't before.
40
Nor is it just
By rules of Love
Thou should'st deny to quit
A heart that must
Another’s prove
Ev'n in thy right
to it;
Must not thy Subjects
Captives be
To her who triumphs
over Thee?
Cease then in vain
To blot my name
50
With forg'd Apostasie,
Thine is that
stain
Who dar'st to claim
What others ask of Thee?
Of Lovers they are onely true
Who pay their Hearts where they are due.
Margaret
Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle
‘The Feminine Description’
A Man
a-walking, did a Lady spy;
To her he went: and when he came hard by,
Fair Lady, said
he, why walk you alone?
Because (said she) my Thoughts are then my own:
For in a Company my Thoughts do throng,
And
follow every foolish babling Tongue.
Your
Thoughts, said he, 'twere boldness for to ask.
To
tell, said she, it were too great a task:
But yet to satisfie your Mind, said she,
I'le tell you how our Thoughts run commonly:
10
Sometimes they mount up to the Heavens high,
Then straight fall
down, and on the Earth will lye;
Then circling run to compass all they may,
And then sometimes they all in heaps do stay.
At other times they run
from place to place,
As if they had each other in a Chace.
Sometimes they run as Phansie doth them guide,
And
then they swim as in a flowing-Tide:
But if the Mind be discontent, they
flow
Against the Tide, their Motion's dull and slow
20
Said he:
I travel now to
satisfie my Mind,
Whether
I can a Constant Woman find.
O Sir, said she, it's Labour without end,
We cannot
Constant be to any Friend:
We seem to love to death, but 'tis not so,
Because our Passions still move to and fro:
They are not fix'd, but do run all about;
Every new Object thrusts
the former out.
Yet we are fond, and for a time so kind,
As nothing in the world should change our Mind:
30
But if Misfortune come, we weary grow;
Then former Fondness we
away straight throw:
Although the Object alter not, yet may
Time alter
our fond Minds another way.
We love, and like, and hate, and cry,
Without a Cause, or Reason why.
Wherefore go back, for you shall never
find
Any Woman to have a Constant Mind:
The best that is, shall hold but
for a time,
Wav'ring like wind, which Women hold
no Crime.
40
William Habington,
‘To CASTARA: What Lovers will say when she and he are dead’
I wonder
when w'are dead, what men will say;
Will not poore Orphan Lovers weepe,
The
parents of their Love’s decay;
And envy death the
treasure of our sleepe?
Will not each
trembling Virgin bring her feares
To th' holy
silence of my Urne?
And
chide the Marble with her teares,
'Cause she so soone faith's obsequie must mourne.
For had Fate
spar'd but Araphill
(she'le say)
He had the
great example stood,
10
And
forc't unconstant man obey
The law of
Love’s Religion, not of blood.
And youth by female perjury
betraid,
Will to Castara's shrine deplore
His injuries,
and death upbrayd,
That
woman lives more guilty, then before.
For while thy breathing
purified the ayre
Thy Sex (hee'le say) did onely move
By the chaste
influence of a faire,
Whose vertue shin'd in the bright orbe of love.
20
Now woman, like a
Meteor vapor'd forth
From dunghills, doth amaze our eyes;
Not shining
with a reall worth,
But
subtile her blacke errors to
disguise.
Thus will they talke, Castara, while our dust
In one darke vault shall mingled be.
The world will
fall a prey to lust,
When Love is
dead, which hath one fate with me.
Note:
‘Araphill’ is the author’s poetic name for himself, as
‘Castara’ is a typical poetic
mistress-name.