Literature, English

The moon as a symbol reflects the social, religious and historical
tumult of Ben Jonson's day. In Cynthia's Revels, the moon is a
highly mannered, religious symbol with classical overtones. It paid
tribute to Elizabeth, another virgin ruler, as well as providing
the audience with an ideal of chastity to emulate. In Masque of
Queens, the black face of the moon rather than the white appears.
Spouting common superstitions of the day, the witches bring to mind
the then current religious inquisitions and King James I's fascination
with demonology. Last but not least appears Ursula in
Bartholomew Fair. Lusty and capricious, she projects the image of the
moon promoted by astrologers. Her lunatic influence on her "customers"
underlines the impact of the telescope, which by revealing imperfections
on the lunar face, brought the moon down to earth. The symbol begins
as a transcendant emblem and ends as a mundane caricature.

Though William Blake's The Four Zoas is not a finished, illustrated work, it does present the complete story of the fall, death, and redemption of the eternal figure. Blake's characters, equal and interdependent in their gender, ultimately reabsorb into the Eternal Male, Urthona, who lives within the Eternal Female, Jerusalem. Jerusalem and Urthona together create the bi-gendered, eternal figure, or the ultimate eternal state. The original fall from Eternity creates a war against Eternal Death, in which the original eternal figure separates into zoas and emanations, and then into spectres and shadows; the further away from the eternal figures the characters move, the further debased and corrupted their characters become. The characters ultimately achieve bi-gendered redemption through interdependent cooperation and the use of states.

A recurrent condition plaguing many of James's characters can be diagnosed as an aesthetic dependency. These characters turn their back on "the real thing" and exist in a precarious world of beauty and misplaced ideals. The novels examined present various methods James's characters utilize to elude the actual world. In The Tragic Muse, the line that separates mimetic art and actuality is nonexistent. Through imitation and performance characters create and represent what ought to be. Aesthetic immersion and imaginative constructs are opposed methods of escape in The Spoils of Poynton. The Ambassadors depicts a world where characters conspire to disguise the truth. Lambert Strether's imagination is stimulated by this milieu and takes flight. Similarly, the characters in The Wings of the Dove go to extreme lengths to realize their aesthetic visions. Ultimately, each character in these novels must deal with the sacrifices that are made when one chooses to exist in a world consisting solely of beauty and imagination.

Edward Frederic Benson's Lucia novels are comic commentaries on social change and the fragmentation of English society from the end of the Edwardian era into the Georgian, especially reflecting the disenchantment of the English people with their traditional beliefs, roles, and class structure. What Matthew Arnold referred to as the Philistines of England--the newly-risen bourgeois--struggle to imitate the upper classes and to emulate their use of leisure time. Benson's characterizations of the villagers of Riseholme and Tilling match closely the descriptions of those Philistines; however, we cannot dislike them for their weaknesses. The positive change in the author's attitude toward them compels us to cheer them on as the victors of the twentieth century.

For Henry James, artistic vision is essentially revision. It is a process of transformation: of literal experience to "felt life," of pictorial presentation to dramatic representation, of the past to the present. This process is a central element of James's fiction. The "meaning" of stories such as "The Real Thing" and "The Middle Years" and novels such as The Ambassadors depends on a growth of vision. Their protagonists must be able to overcome the limits of their imaginations. They must be reflective, both intellectually and mimetically. In demanding a finer kind of artistic perception, James pointed the way for a younger generation of writers and critics. James's vision was broad enough to encompass classic critical ideals and artistic goals that would be achieved years after he struggled with them.

When a boy's mother is absent--either dead or lacking in the maternal graces--it is natural for him to look to his father for additional love and guidance. However, if the father is equally ineffectual, the child may seek outside sources to fill the parental void. Natural parents do not guarantee a nurturing atmosphere. Charles Dickens's novels exhibit this form of familial erosion over and over again; his substitutes for marginal mothers (and, consequently, failing fathers) are aunts and uncles, sisters, friends, sweethearts, employers, servants, and, in some cases, the child himself. Primary substitutes are not satisfactory either; Dickens's protagonists must usually go through a couple of failures before the right one is found. It is through this process that the parental vacuum is filled. The works reflect a "Nature vs. Nurture" tug-of-war, with nurture far and away, the winner.

Arguing that "Tam o' Shanter" is a mock epic, this thesis defines the major epic conventions that Robert Burns uses in his masterpiece. As well as using epic features in the action portions of the narrative, Burns uses epic convention to craft a subtle episodic structure. In addition, throughout his poem, Burns subverts epic conventions associated with the epic hero as a way to create his anti-hero, Tam. Comparing Burns's poem to Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" (the standard for English mock-epic poetry), shows Burns's familiarity with the mock-epic genre generally and with Pope specifically (Burns read and especially admired Pope). The commonalities between the two poems are too numerous to be coincidental; in fact, many times Burns is parodying Pope's poem, thereby parodying a parody.

The Battle of Maldon is a poem of change, a pivot point in the English literary tradition. It lies between Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, both in time and in intent. The Maldon poet created finely interrelated philosophic and social commentary in his poem, playing the epic hero against the newer Christian martyr. He used both characterizations to create a picture of Byrhtnoth as a political martyr. With some understanding of the historical and religious perspectives of tenth century England, it is possible to begin to appreciate The Battle of Maldon and to understand its pivotal role in artistic evolution. The poet integrated disparate ideas to produce an Anglo-Saxon work of surprising complexity that has survived for one thousand years.

Gabriel Conroy in "The Dead" appears to be the boy of the first three stories in adulthood. The boy's artistic mind is formed and limited by adult influences so that he dreams of escape. Gabriel has the same artistic disposition and has developed a limited outlet for his talents. He, too, envisions escape. Gabriel's epiphany and his sense of insecurity and pride are so like the boy's that the similarity suggests one character who has developed a habit of introspection. Finally, Gabriel's sexual anxiety implies that he fears women and fears his own sexuality. Joyce repeats patterns of imagery in "The Dead" that echo the boy's developing sexuality, indicating that the boy and the man suffer the same fears. Seeing Gabriel Conroy as the boy-narrator of the first three stories creates closure for Dubliners, and it gives the reader insight into the character of Gabriel.

In his poetry, Thomas Hardy creates his own theory of the sublime based on the theories expounded in the eighteenth century. By questioning the miracles, mysteries, and purpose of nature, hardy creates the terror of unknowing that produces the sublime. Hardy's theory of the duality of nature, of its grandeur and its sorriness, is also a characteristic of his sublime. By uncovering the grandeur and latent beauty in disaster, death, the little things, and the ordinary, Hardy generates the pleasure needed to give sublimity to the negative. His descriptions of the sorriness of the destructive powers of winter, time, and war create terror at the realization of the destruction of grandeur, and transform the simply beautiful into the sublime.