English Lit - 12 Fishbowl - June 16

Death

• Death of Beowulf and Grendel

• Introduction of Christianity: Burning of Beowulf's body

• Differences between Pagan and Christianity rites

• Reacting to death important: death is decided by fate (different from the other poems)

• [remember to think what is this course about?  Connection to each other, culture, history - shared experience"

• "Bonny Barbara Allan" - John turns his face to the wall - becomes a rose, she becomes a briar - their souls continue into the after life
• ["I'll love you more after death" - Sonnet 43]
• Something after death ["Death be Not Proud," "Because I Could Not Stop for Death"]
• Death is personified

• Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 - Death is personified (first time we see this)

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - his head is in his hands - Green Knight is not afraid of death - Sir Gawain (whose head will not talk in his hands) is afraid of death because he values his life

• "When I have Fears.." afraid of death - not finished

• Coming to terms with one's own mortality
• "On Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three" - Milton worries about his accomplishments
• "death is slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men"
• "Ode to Nightingale" - "I have been half in love with easeful death"

• Moving on together - "Because" - death becomes more inviting

• "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" - society set up in classes - but "the paths of glory lead but to the grave" - society is the same in death "animated busts and storied urns" don't change anything
• As people evolve, there's more room for sympathy and equality
• "Rime" - there are things worse than death (Life in Death)
• In Paradise Lost - Satan is in adamantine chains, darkness visible, misery never ends [look up quotes]

• Authors who are religious - views on death - have more comfort - after life

• Doubt and uncertainty are still present - example: Milton in "On His Blindness"

• Death is the one certainty in death

• Many authors come to the same conclusion despite their ideological differences
• Lack of achievement is something ("wise men") what authors worry about
• "'til love and fame to nothingness do sink" - why would an author be scared if they mean nothing?
• Wasted time and potential is a big concern
• Timelines throughout English literature - Beowulf - that thought isn't there - day by day is brutal and fast - no worries
• "Ulysses" - he wants to "sail beyond the sunset" not "rust unburnished"

• "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" - speaker doesn't want his father to give up - seems like he's having a harder time than his father.

• "Song" - reflecting on death - the speaker is worrying - thinks no one else cares - nature comforts her in the end
• Extremely religious - death almost seems like a reward ( life in death is worse - Adam and Eve suffer) - "Rime" - mariner has to repent for the rest of his life
• "A Modest Proposal" - joking about death a bit (killing children) - death of an innocent (like the albatross)

Society

• Aristotle: "he who cannot live in society must either be a beast or a god"

• People need to work together

• Beowulf and Paradise Lost

• "Disembarking at Quebec" - feels alienated from society [which is different from not needing society]

• Which characters only depend on themselves (Grendel)

• Grendel is a beast (but people fear him) - healthy respect

• Who can live on their own - tiger? Superior to society - the lamb needs others - these are not literal - they are symbols

• Tigers may live on the edge of society - but may not need it
• Ironic - in PL - Satan thinks he doesn't need God, but he spends so much time trying destroy society
• Blake: "without contraries, there's no progression" - can you have the good without the bad or do you need both?
• Satire - Chaucer - need people who are not respected to see what is expected, wouldn't know what is beautiful if never seen ugly
• "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity" - WB Yeats - tigers are full of intensity?  Sheep?

• "The Hollow Men" T.S. Eliot: sheep are the ones who are "groping on the shore" with "no direct eyes" "headpiece filled with straw"

• Chaucer - second piece we read - already trying to change society

• Beowulf - written (but Monks wrote in Christianity)

• Whenever there's a divide between rich and the poor - there's need for change

• Paradise Lost - struggle for power - hierarchy - capitalist ideals - Satan wants to overcome God [but it's not for equality]
• Shakespeare works about power

• One established force struggling against another one - schism - dichotomy - former friends/allies turn enemies

• When someone is in a position of power - change/thirst for power

• Society is a cycle

• Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, "A Modest Proposal,"

• "absolute power corrupts absolutely" - Satan

• "better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven"

• Selfish , vicious cycle - lose friends and hurt people [same as rich?]
• "To the Ladies" - Lady Mary Chudleigh - first poem by a woman in our course: "Wife and servant are the same, They only differ in the name"
• Literature changes

• ["My Last Duchess"

• "Disembarking" - women being disconnected by society: "the rocks ignore" "I am a word in a foreign language"

• Society advances, but still afflicted by "simple problems" (gender inequality)
• "Disembarking" - women sold off to husbands (like Pride and Prejudice) - people still exploit others

• People only want to change what they're directly affected by SELF INTEREST

• People rationalize
• ["greed is good" idea]

• Can  a lamb turn into a tiger?

• Tiger is solitary - hunts by itself
• "The World is Too Much with Us" - frustrations with people being concerned with "spending and getting" relates to today

• Artist stands outside of society - criticizes - explain why they don’t agree with it

• "Pretty" - nature is so nice - but people don't see the ugliness - stop following the crowd

Morality

• Based on today's standards, is it moral for Beowulf to kill Grendel (what about Anglo Saxons)

-today we would see Grendel as an outsider (not to bully) - we don't kill loners and losers - we accept people and rehabilitate

• Anglo Saxons couldn't afford to  have a weak link

• We have the energy and means to help those who are weaker

• We are sympathetic now
• We wouldn't celebrate and rejoice in Grendel's pain and misery
• [we have a court system]
• We have justice
• Do people enjoy killing? (our art - movies and TV shows say that we do) - we still enjoy violence in our fiction

• Beowulf doesn't use a weapon because he believes in equality

• Beowulf's sense of morality morphs in morality

• Chaucer's sense of morality: work hard, not duplicitous - genuine - satire is about corrupt morals - the pilgrims whom we hold to a higher moral standard (The Pardoner, Summoner, Friar, Monk, Nun) - people are supposed to trust them (compare to the Parson)

• Wife of Bath (first strong woman in our course) - woman are allowed to be independent - expectations
• We hold, for example, the government to a higher standard than our Starbuck's barista
• Religion influences morals - Sir Gawain is forgiven for flinching, punished for lying, he's able to make amends - he repents, he's human and he has flaws

• "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" - morals - isn't absolved, but able to repent - Christian influence = albatross compared to Christ

• "Whoso List to Hunt" - men have different morals - the woman is a deer the men have to hunt - an object to own (necklace says "noli mi tangere," for Caesar's I am) - "owned" by King Henry VIII

• "To the Ladies" - "fatal knot" - death sentence - would rather not marry [unlike "To the Virgins" by Robert Herrick] - not much time has gone by

• Growth of society

• Female writers - things are changing - women are educated, have the vote

• "A Modest Proposal" - Swift's use of satire - English Protestants - absentee landlords rip off the poor, Irish Catholics - rich people don't care; poor people don't help themselves - don't use birth control - not doing anything to stop the problem - not helping themselves
• ["The Rape of the Lock" - rich people not using their time and money to do anything important or valuable]
• Paradise Lost - Beelzebub "foul defeat" - Satan condemns himself to Hell, but also the others - can see someone else's suffering but doesn't help or change it
• Our era of literature - personal morals "Ulysses" - he works his work, I, mine"
• Morals shift - religion - society solely based on Christianity - criticizing - science questioning - World Wars - now about what people decide is right
• Morals are not quite set ["The Lottery"]
• "On His Blindness" - "that one talent which is death to hide" - is it immoral to have a talent and not put it to use

• If it would help people, then it would be immoral

• "justify the ways of God to man"