Tuesday, May 20, 2008
3I06 / The Age of Elizabeth
Lecture Notes
John Skelton, The Tunning of Elinour Rumming
Thomas Nashe, The Terrors of the Night
Lecture Outline
*test details - see post here.
The Tunning of Elinour Rumming
*A celebration of the exuberant (low)life of London
*Repicated in Jane Holland’s work, here: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/04/poem_of_the_week_36.html
Note the kinds of responses people give to the poem!
*“Skeltonic” verse
*blazon (definition courtesy of http://www.columbia.edu/itc/english/w3263y/poetry_defs.html )
Blazon. (Fr. Shield or “coat of arms”). As a literary term it was used by the followers of Petrarchanism to describe verses which dwelt upon and detailed the various parts of a woman’s body; a sort of catalogue of her physical attributes. Such a catalogue was a convention established in the 13th c. and often used after Marot published his Blason du Beau Tetin (1536). As a rule there was nothing original in this form of conceit
Spenser, Epithalamion (1595)
Her goodly eyes like sapphires shining bright,
Her forehead ivory white
Her cheeks like apples which the sun hath rudded,
Her lips like cherries charming men to bite
And it was easily mocked
Greene, Menaphon (1598)
Thy teeth like to the tusks of the fattest swine,
Thy speech is like the thunder in the air:
Would God thy toes, thy lips, and all were mine.
Compare to the description of Elinour Rumming, lines 1-90
Question (similar to medium answer question on test):
Identify three features of Skelton’s verse in this passage. Using one of the features you’ve identified, state how it amplifies or undercuts the content of the passage.
Why does Skelton use such detail?
*the catalogue of worldly goods
*alehouse as women’s space
* “Fit the Seventh” and the sense of community
Terrors of the Night
*The core ideas of the text: Nashe’s text is poised between the supernatural belief systems of medieval Christian and earlier pagan thought on the one hand, and a newly developing scientific perspective
*although these two categories of thought seem like they might be in conflict, Nashe holds them simultaneously
*this is evident through his exploration of the different sources of apparitions / bad dreams:
208 “The night is the devil’s Black Book, wherein he recordeth all our transgressions”
Devils / The Devil
209 “the devil is a special predominant planet of the night, and…our creator for our punishment hath allotted it him as his peculiar signory and kingdom
212 “There is not a room in any man’s house but is pestered and close-packed with a camp-royal of devils”
Transitions into the idea of “spirits”, 214 and following, a discourse on the spirits of fire, water, earth, and air
Representation of the four types of spirits that can possess men closely mirroring the core ideas of the Galenic medical model - this is the source for Nashe's ideas about the emotional and physiological dispositions produced by the spirits of fire, air, earth, and water.
The Galenic medical model
Galen, 129-200-ish AD
*idea of the four humours
*composition of the body - a porous bag of fluids
*can be disrupted by a large number of factors – environment, food, emotional disturbance
*reciprocally, an imbalance in the humours can cause emotional disposition or disturbance
Detailed info on the four humours and how they work, including the diagrams I showed in class, can be found here.
Find out what your predominant humour is! Take the quiz found here.
*in Terrors, note that the story of the “gentleman of good worship and credit”, beginning pg 241, ends with an explanation that combines a number of factors (central paragraph pg. 246)
*a note on “quintessence” pg 245
*Nashe also works to debunk the idea that some people have access to the secrets of the future / association with devils, in the example of the “conjurors and cunning men”, pg. 226-230 “In secret be it spoken, he is not so great with the devil as you take it. It may be that they are near akin, but yet you hae many kindrid that will do nothing for one another; no more will the devil for him, except it be to damn him.
*231 Association / collapse of the devil with old ideas of household fairies
*234 collapsing the superstition of dreams
Physical illness / disturbance
*Overlap with the idea of devil / devils:
211 “even as ruptures and cramps do then most torment a man when the body with any other disease is distempered, so the devil, when with any other sickness or malady the faculties of our reason are enfee bled and distempered, will be most busy to disturb us and torment us.”
*Note that there is an intimate connection in the period between sin and physical illness; evident from Lady Margaret Hoby’s Diaries, Broadview antho 103-104
From her entry marked 1599 [Friday August 17]
As well as page 104, 1601, December 26
*218 physical disturbance is noted as being the predominant influence on dreams: “A dream is nothing else but a bubbling scum or froth of the fancy, which the day hath left undigested; or an after-feast made of the fragments of idle imaginations”
*219 dreams as the echo of outside noises or influences
*220 food: “Any meat that in the daytime we eat against our stomachs, begetteth a dismal dream. Discontent also in dreams hath no little predominance; for even as from water that is troubled, the mud dispersingly ascendeth from the bottom to the top, so when our blood is chased, disquieted and troubled all the light imperfect humours of our body ascend like mud up aloft into the head.”
Guilty conscience / psychological reasons
Sample short question:
On page 221 of The Terrors of the Night, Nashe writes, “If [a man] chance to kill a spider, he hath suppressed an enemy; if a spinner creep upon him, he shall have gold rain down from heaven. If his nose bleed, some of his kinsfolks is dead; if the salt fall right against him, all the stars cannot save him from some immediate misfortune.” What is the purpose of this list of supersitions in the context of his overall argument?
*236+ like long sickness is to death, fear is to the reality
*241 And as the firmament is still moving and working, so uncessant is the wheeling and rolling on of our brains, which every hour are tempering some new piece of prodigy or other
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