'Mummy' in Donne's "Love's Alchemy"

이병은 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2006 중세근세영문학 Vol.16 No.2

The term "mummy," which figures in the crucial metaphor of Donne's "Love's Alchemy," has been the subject of some scholars. This paper purports to survey scholarly comments on Donne's use of the "mummy" and to offer an eclectic interpretation of the mummy metaphor based upon the scholarship and upon my reading of the poem.Literally here "mummy" means mindless dead flesh, and the image of conjugal union with a corpse is horribly repugnant; yet his basic point in the poem is just such a bitter recoiling from the horrible bestiality that he perceives love to be. "Mummy" also is a medicinal whose efficacy Donne seems to have believed in. Women are a sort of purgative for lust after all Platonic foolery is stripped away; they are mummy or dead flesh which men lust to possess.At yet another level "mummy" can be seen as pun on "mommy" without any Freudian ramifications. Such a pun is not unreasonable in view of Donne's penchant for the device and also in view of his "pregnant pot" and "hoarse minstrelsy" earlier in the poem. "Mommy possest" sounds as the mindless behavior of the female in mating season.(Hansung University)

리시다스의 천국에 나타난 밀턴의 프로테스탄티즘

이병은 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2007 중세근세영문학 Vol.17 No.2

An early Miltonic concept of Heaven is present in lines 173-79 of Lycidas. This paper suggests that the passage describing Heaven was influenced by Milton's Protestantism and was an indirect warning to the Roman Catholics and high-church Anglicans through Milton's encouragement of his fellow Protestants in their faith. The encouragement is made manifest in the lines that parallel certain passages in the book of Revelation which sixteenth-century Protestants, including John Bale, Thomas Brightman, Johann H. Alsted, and Milton, considered to be anti-Roman Catholic in nature. Since the Apocalypse ignores church administrative officials.

Scottish Presbyterian Piety: Samuel Rutherford and the Literature of Civil War-era Puritanism

통스폴 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2007 중세근세영문학 Vol.17 No.1

영국 사회와 궁정에 대한 풍자: 존 던의 『풍자시』 읽기

최재헌 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2009 중세근세영문학 Vol.19 No.2

Donne’s Satires, which satirize contemporary London of its follies and vices and attack the Elizabethan court, have received little attention and been underestimated. Only “Satire 3” has properly been appreciated from the critics. His satires are the first formal satires written in English. Although he owes to the tradition of Roman satiric writers, such as Horace and Juvenal, Donne does not simply imitate his predecessors, but modifies the tradition of Roman satire, developing a unique style of his. The Satires are said to have been written probably over the period 1593 to 1598. In Donne’s time, satire was not a respectable mode of writing and even dangerous if it circulated outside the circle of friends, which might get him into serious trouble. In one of his letters to his friend, he wrote he felt some fear because of his satires, and shame because of his elegies. He had the free spirit of the young intellectual, but felt the distrustfulness by late Elizabethan society and its court and law. Donne’s five satires written in his early twenties are all concerned with presenting an idealistic defense of spiritual values against the encroachment of sixteenth-century materialism. He bitterly criticizes materialism of his time and the vanity and corruption of the court. The satires mock the fashionable excesses of Elizabethan costumes, hyperbole in romantic poetry, courtly flattery and corruption of lawyers and law enforcement officials. Of Donne’s five satires, “Satire 1” is closely related to “Satire 4”, and “Satire 2” to “Satire 5”. The theme, touched on lightly in “Satire 1”, is developed in greater detail in the more sombre “Satire 4”. That is, “Satire 4” articulates openly what “Satire 1” only suggests. Donne’s courtier possesses characteristics of the most hated and feared members of Elizabethan society. His rejection of the Court can be read not only in satires and verse letters but also in the lyrics.

Belief and Learning in Milton's Paradise Regained

구영회 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2009 중세근세영문학 Vol.19 No.1

Milton's Paradise Regained is a biblical epic poem which dramatizes the Son's unwavering religious faith that leads him to resist all the temptations, including the irresistible lure into knowledge. However, its reader is sometimes at a loss by its strident denunciation of the traditional Greco-Roman learning. Milton's commitment to the traditional humanist studies (he owns the influence of Spenser, an author, on him) from his childhood and the Renaissance respect for classical literature make us somewhat doubt the explicit renunciation of classical learning. His shorter epic is so deeply embedded in the Western classical culture that the poem cannot be adequately appreciated without the knowledge of it. The poem is written in the form of an epic, whose origin is Greek literature. Milton conveys his Christian ideas through the epic form. The characterization of the protagonist, the Son, is noteworthy because despite his harsh attacks on classical literature and philosophy, he resembles some Greco-Roman figures, like the Greek heroes, Hercules or Oedipus, and the Roman Stoic, who represents endurance and reason and humanist knowledge. Endurance is a significant virtue to Christians and Stoics alike. However, the crucial Christian virtue like mercy, sacrifice, crucifixion, or resurrection is lacking in the epic's characterization of Jesus The very beginning of the poem echoes the Spenserian imitation of Virgil's Aneid. Also a great number of literary allusions to Spenser testify the influence of the secular literature on Milton's works. No matter how harshly the Son renounces the classics in praise of Christian values, the reader's knowledge of the humanist learning is necessary in order to understand the religious meaning. And the reader gets confused by Satan's characterization as having some rational traits. Paradise Regained emphasizes the worth of religion that we should prioritize over secular learning, but sometimes its reader may be uncertain about the claims.

Milton's Tree of Knowledge: Why "Sacred" Fruit?

Hodges, Horace Jeffery 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2006 중세근세영문학 Vol.16 No.2

John Milton has Adam describe fruit from the tree of knowledge as "sacred fruit" (PL 9.924), which raises three questions. (1) Does Adam express Milton's own view? Answer: yes, but whether Adam shares Milton's understanding of two sorts of sacredness remains unclear. (2) What might "sacred" mean here? Milton seems to mean not the dynamic power of holiness but the holy as pure and set apart, whereas Adam's view on this point remains unclear. (3) Would the fruit remain sacred after being taken? Milton portrays the fruit as no longer sacred after its plucking but as "unhallowd" in the strong sense of being imbued with a force of impurity, a point that Adam fails to recognize. An excursus on chaos and evil follows after these points and argues that chaos is not intrinsically evil, for it is not intrinsically impure, but also that it can be misused for impure, evil purposes.(Korea University)

"My Fruits Are Only Flowers": A Reading of Andrew Marvell's "The Coronet"

임성균 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2008 중세근세영문학 Vol.18 No.1

As a Protestant, and especially a Puritan, Andrew Marvell finds the problem of glorifying God with human arts a very difficult task to practice. On the one hand, he has to do his best to achieve something beautiful and great to reveal God’s supremacy or Grace; on the other hand, however, he must be cautious not to make his own works too admirable, so that the work itself may not intercept the praises which is to be directed to God and God only. “The Coronet” is unique in the sense that it manifests Marvell’s dilemma as a Protestant humanist. The poem is self-reflective and confessional. It becomes in itself the poet's coronet to glorify his Saviour, but the poet realizes that his work is contaminated by his own worldly desire. Compared to that of Donne or Herbert, Marvell’s awareness that his own artistic endeavor is ultimately insufficient to praise God seems more intense and pervasive. What is “crooked winding ways” to Herbert becomes “the Serpent old” to Marvell. It is ironic that the poet should recognize the serpent when his confidence in his work reaches its highest point. And to make the dramatic moment more catastrophic, this serpent appears to be closer to the poet himself than to Satan, and this makes the poet’s dilemma more difficult to resolve. Andrew Marvell’s “The Coronet,” although it inherits metaphysical conventions of Donne and Herbert in its style and metaphors, must be read within the tradition of Spenser and Milton. Marvell’s political stance and his pastoral sensitivity, together with his mild scepticism―as we can see in “To His Coy Mistress”―may have located him in the line of Cavaliers or metaphysical poets. But his keen awareness of the dilemma between Christianity and human aesthetics and the way he proposes to resolve it clearly position him within the Protestant humanism of the early modern period.

Edmund Spenser's Class-Consciousness in the Squire of Dames' Tale of The Faerie Queene

박윤희 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2006 중세근세영문학 Vol.16 No.2

The Squire of Dames' tale is a tale adopted from one of Ludovico Ariosto's indecent novelle, Orlando Furioso, 28. The Squire of Dames' cynical attitude toward women and love undercuts Spenser's idealistic celebration of chastity in Book III of The Faerie Queene. However, the most problematic question in this tale of the Squire is Spenser's choice of a country damsel, instead of a noble lady, as the only chaste woman who refuses the Squire's lewd temptation for the sake of chastity itself. This choice is indeed strange, for Spenser was one of the most conservative Elizabethans who were keenly conscious of the hierarchical structures of society or different qualities of human blood.This paper is to bring to light Spenser's class-consciousness reflected in this tale by examining several points at issue: how Spenser has dealt with his source, why he has chosen a country girl as a model of chastity, and whether she is really a woman of low degree or not. On the whole, it is hard to believe that the country damsel is really of low degree. One should therefore consider that the damsel might have an unidentified noble origin like Pasrorella. And Spenser himself might not have felt the necessity to reveal her secret origin as he does in the case of Pastorella in Book VI, for the Squire of Dames is never equal to Sir Calidore (the Squire is even a man base enough to visit the whorehouse), and he is a man of low quality and degree, who cannot be matched with the gentle chaste country damsel.(Dongguk University)

The Varieties of Sexual Abstinence in the Middle Ages

노이균 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2009 중세근세영문학 Vol.19 No.1

The subject of sexual abstinence holds up a mirror to medieval views about sex. Some forces regulating sexual activity created pressure to abstain from sexual activities; others created pressure to engage in them. The tension between reasons for and against abstinence forms the field on which religious, social, and medical concerns met and in the process uncovers differences between the sexes. Virginity was the crowning jewel of sexual continence. The religious value of virginity was composite. In its literal form it was the absence of the experience of intercourse. In its heroic form it was a source of Christian martyrdom. It was an active expression of the love of God, a vehicle of humility, a token of the rejection of the world [sex], and a representation of mystical purity. The social value of virginity in the Middle Ages resided mainly with females and women's sexuality was subject to greater social control. The basis for the social value of female virginity was the security of legitimacy for children born in a subsequent marriage. The strongest form of sexual abstinence in the Middle Ages was the vow of permanent sexual continence associated with full membership in religious orders. The number of men and women who took vows of chastity as members of religious communities was not negligible. Sexual restraint was an element of social order in the lives of those devoted to religious service, and the enforcement of restraint was an important aspect in the administration of Church institutions. In certain respects, vows of chastity and their enforcement constituted an aspect of the larger social order as well. Considerable family control over the marriage of children continued to exist and was widely considered appropriate. For young people, especially young women, withholding consent might be effective in postponing marriage or in vetoing a particular marriage. In these situations, a vow of chastity might be an attractive alternative, even a way of exercising power. In the Middle Ages three particular concerns with marital relations stemming from the physical condition of the woman were taken up: (1) intercourse immediately after childbirth, since it is prohibited in the Law (based on the purification rules of Leviticus 12.1-5); (2) intercourse during menstruation, since it poses dangers of contagion to the male seed which doctors say corrupts the fetus (fear of leprosy and of physical deformity); (3) during pregnancy (since there is danger of abortion). Women were allowed to refuse their husband during these periods. Many medical works include recipes for anaphrodisiacs but there are many more recipes for aphrodisiacs. The recipes for anaphrodisiacs suggest that people[men] need medical help in the pursuit of abstinence.

The "Tragedy" of Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage and an Afterthought on Current Literary Historicism

임이연 한국고전중세르네상스영문학회 2009 중세근세영문학 Vol.19 No.1

The story of Dido and Aeneas offers a handy plot for a love tragedy: a man torn between love and duty, a woman abandoned immolating herself for love, a heartrending tale of unrequited love. Christopher Marlowe's play, Dido, Queen of Carthage resists such amorous expectation, weaving its erotic thread with the discourse of gender, race and politics. In the past two decades, Elizabethan politics has been the most important key to the understanding of the play and the period that produced it. However, it yields little understanding for the present and ourselves. This essay is a search for the juncture where the historicity of Marlowe's text intersects with ours. The first half locates the play in the moment of its production in the milieu of Elizabethan empire. Refuting some critics's opinion of Aeneas as incompetent coward, I argue that Marlowe presents Aeneas as real-politic manipulative prince and Dido as barbarous queen that adores Troy. Thus, to the Elizabethan audience, Dido stages the importance of Troy, participating in the imperialist discourse of the Troy legend. In the latter half of the essay I reverse the Elizabethan reading of the play from Dido's position of inferior race and gender, which is often obscured by the current historicist fad. Thus, I argue that the play is about a wronged woman, her disillusionment and belated recognition of her racial identity. Marlowe makes the play Dido's tragedy not so much as of unrequited love as of identity crisis. I also relate Dido's failure to my position as Third-world academic in relation to historicism, and urge for the need of "local" reading.