from "On Sublimity"

"The universe is not wide enough for the range of human speculation and intellect. Our thoughts often travel beyond the boundaries of our surroundings. If anyone wants to know what we were born for, let him look round at life and contemplate the splendour, grandeur, and beauty in which it everywhere abounds. It is a natural inclination that leads us to admire not the little streams, however pellucid and however useful, but the Nile, the Danube, the Rhine, and above all the Ocean. Nor do we feel so much awe before the little flame we kindle, because it keeps its light clear and pure, as before the fires of heaven, though they are often obscured. We do not think our flame more worthy of admiration than the craters of Etna, whose eruptions bring up rocks and whole hills out of the depths, and sometimes pour forth rivers of the earth-born, spontaneous fire. A single comment fits all these examples: the useful and necessary are readily available to man, it is the unusual that always excites our wonder."

--Longinus (first century C.E.)

Milton's Paradise Lost (Book I)

Paradise Lost Book I: The Soaring Song

The most basic story of our civilization is embedded in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The narrative is in the most demanding genre of the time—in epic form, that man had developed and elaborated. Anticipating too much from this piece is nearly unconceivable; rather expecting the inaccurate things is not difficult. Paradise Lost has its similarities to the classics: The Aeneid, The Odyssey, and The Illiad; however, reading this blazing work of art only through its predecessors is nearly a crime. For doing so prevents the reader to live its artistic originality and its pedantic resoluteness. For Milton, “Truth is his aim and the elimination of untruth is essential” (French 470). The cognition of truth and beauty is the suitable way to patch the blemishes of humanity. The chronology of events in this work is crucial for observing significant effects and helps to draw parallels and contrasts throughout the epic. It is not an easy task to hold the events of Paradise Lost, particularly Book I, in mind and approach the piece as a coalesced body of work. Sin, death, and deception mould together as one entity and venture forth for more destruction. Bringing Satan to the reader’s attention as the Fiend of Book I, Milton clearly deprives him of being the hero; although that is not the case in Books II to IV. Milton justifies the ways man has disobeyed God, but at the same time emphasizing the significance of obeying the Omnipotent.

Only God has both the sovereignty and the worry for man that is indispensable, if connotation is to be made of the conspicuous rudimentary. The first twenty-six lines of the poem are like the prelude to an oratorio; they hold the intonations and dominant designs that appraise its thematic tautness. The lines display Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience and the paradise that soon to be lost. “The beginning corresponds to the sequence in Virgil’s Aeneid, from the fall of Troy through the journey to the founding Rome” (Kerrigan, et. al 12). The lines “At last within a land delectable/Their journey lay, through pleasurable bowers/Of groves where all is joy,—a blest abode!’ (Virgil 6.639-41) correspond with “Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,” (Milton 1.5). By translating Virgil’s epithet, Milton is acknowledging he is informed of the classics and indicating that he has mastered their format. Later, Milton invokes the “heavenly Muse” (1.6) as the divine entity of the Trinity showing that his muse (poetic inspiration) is above the classics and surpasses Virgil, Homer, and others. On the other hand, Milton’s supplication is exceedingly modest, indicating his everlasting dependence on God.

The purpose of the beginning of the poem is apparent to the reader: “. . . justify the ways of God to men” (Milton 1.26). However, some critics are not so sure of this utterance. C. S. Lewis asserts that “the real function of these twenty-six lines is to give us the sensation that some great thing is now about to begin” (41). Along with the sensation of the good thing to come, there is also the spiritual preparation: “And chiefly thou O Spirit, that dost prefer” (Milton 1.17), and also perpetuating in “. . . what in me is dark” (Milton 1.22). Milton’s optimistic views on humanity are heartening; nevertheless, Miltonic metaphors and similes do not always succor furnishings what it pretends to be furnishing. Although it has been asserted that Milton is justifying the ways of God to men; sometimes the idea seems hazy and dubious. Many times it takes on a polar form which will assert: justifying man’s ways to God. “[The infernal serpent] first seduced them to that foul revolt?” (Milton 1.33) suggests that Milton defends the faulty humans. His word “seduces” is chosen carefully, in which Milton tries to indicate the humans’ partial innocence. However, the word also connotes a deviation of the will and a turning from the right reason. Its physical connotations are to be developed in two aspects: first, Satan’s conversation with Eve while seducing her, instigates nightmares of serpents engaging sexually with women; yet the other view is more unambiguous: Adam is not deceiving or deceived, but plainly overcomes with female allurement. In this remark, another possible conflict is instituted: reason and order versus passion and chaos. According to David M. Miller, Milton’s argument is, “the fall occurs not because the flesh gives pleasure but because sense usurps the place of reason and lures the will to act against man’s best interest” (83). This tentatively answers the question “Why did they commit the sin?” implying the illogicality and the contrariness of disobedience.

Despite the fact that one of the themes of Book I, especially the opening part is man’s disobedience, Milton refuses to start his poem with man. His poem begins in medias res, pushing all the existence theories beyond the known in a strenuous attempt to have the macrocosm of evil and agony comprisable, and an extraterrestrial agent is customarily at fault. The serpent is the agent in Genesis, yet there is no clue whether the serpent embodies the Fiend. Milton impels the evil canon a step further, for not only the snake is a physical, sensual organism—an animal and beyond human analysis, it is undeniably possessed by Satan: “[God] had cast [the serpent] out from Heav’n, with all his host/Of rebel angels . . .” (Milton 1.37-8). Milton here is concerned with serious metaphysical question as how is it possible for such a celestial entity as God to have created such an imperfect being as man?

The paradox of good and evil appears to be ineluctable as one might as well ask the question as to why God creates an angel who tempts him? The malicious being exists prior to the creation of mankind; therefore, the worry should not be concentrated upon the origins of evil, but upon man’s foremost encounter with a given power of wickedness. There is nearly no information on Satan’s fall until we are solidly fixed in Eden; pride is what leads Satan, previously known as Lucifer, to envy God and therefore to revolt, revolt to be expelled from heaven. The poem does not begin with Satan’s rebellion, although it would make more sense in terms of chronology. However, Milton’s goal is not in starting the poem with the origin of evil, but trying to teach of man’s disobedience. Milton does not attempt to justify God’s ways to devils. Satan is already fallen: “Nine times the space that measures day and night/To mortal men, he with his horrid crew/Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf” (Milton 1.50-52). The fall of the demonic angel manifests the evil’s existence in opposition to good. If the epic is to prolong our curiosity, a credible controversy must exist to divert the notion that the Fiend might succeed. At least in the upcoming Books, Milton describes Satan as the hero. However, a solution to the paradox is adroit. The strategic outcome of the conflict is given, absolute in the nature of Milton’s universe, Satan has to lose. On the other hand, the tactical product of the conflict is also given, Satan has to win.

A simile intended to focalize our prospect of the countless stunned legions of hell, right before they are stirred by Satan, at the same time focalizes our sense of the tranquil order of the creation, and of coming of the dark clouds, also and of man’s endurance through God’s prudence and his will. Satan, positioning himself clear of the rout, contrives to provoke his legions to novel evil deeds: “Of that inflamed sea, he stood and called/ His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced/Thick as autumnal leaves . . .” (Milton 1.300-03). The scenes Milton indicates, mimic hell’s defeat before the Fiend’s voice is heard. Whatever seeks to demolish the tranquility of “autumnal leaves” lies lifeless as “scattered sedge” (Milton 1.304). The continuity of the similes hinges on the middle image of Orion, which sketches both Satan’s power to rouse the fallen hordes and God’s power to scatter and destroy them: “Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed/Hath vexed the Red Sea coast,” (Milton 1.305-06). A further instance compares the legions of hell to “bees in springtime” (Milton 1.768-69). It is plainly a simile that diminishes hell while it amplifies creation. The absurdity of Satan’s condition makes him to submit to the destructive element. Milton’s cosmos is nothing if not purposive; liberty and independence lie in obedience to God, living under his providence, not in self-assured rebellion. Decisively, the Fiend is caught in a paradox: he only exists in self-assurance, yet for this assurance not to be fake, there must be no God; and if God does not exist then what is the Fallen Angel doing in hell? Milton, through his verse, tries to assert that nothing and no-thing exist outside of God.

The significance of Milton in the literary tradition cannot be overestimated. In his Paradise Lost, he adapts the diminished view of man’s place in the grand scheme of universe. The posing of eternal, paradoxical questions as to the nature of man, of his place in the cosmic mass, and his relationship to transcendence seem to be Milton’s greatest achievement, at least in Book I. The integration of fundamental questions into a talking piece is starkly modern. Milton’s blank verse has so many interwoven patterns that at some instances one may regard the work as non-English verse. As one editor puts it: “The way the world is imaged in Paradise Lost, in passionate fullness of detail, isoriginal. Milton’s cosmos; however, orderly, has always something of life’s capacity to surprise” (Carey et. al. 447).

Works Cited

Carey, John, and Alastair Fowler, eds. The Poems of John Milton. London: Longman

Group Ltd., 1968. Print.

French, Milton J. “Milton as a Historian.” PMLA 50.2 (1935): 469-79. Print.

Lewis, C. S. “The Stule of Secondary Epic.” Paradise Lost: A Collection of Critical

Essays. Ed. Louis L. Martz. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Print.

Miller, David M. John Milton: Poetry. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978. Print.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. John Leonard. London: Penguin Group, 2000. Print.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Eds. Kerrigan, William et. al. New York: Modern Library,

2007. Print.

Vergilius, Publius Maro. The Aeneid of Virgil. Trans. John Connington. Ed. Edgar S.

Shumway. Boston: The Macmillan Company, 1910. Print.

On Marxism

A Tale of Two Cities: Through A Marxist Lens

The range of emotions of the rich and the powerful, who have no experience of the hard work and drudgery of a working man, is narrow, limited, and insignificant compared to the range of feelings of the simple laborer. Full of constant discontent and turmoil of trivial events, a simple day of a rich being becomes complicated by insignificances; therefore, unworthy of praise. On the other hand, a peasant’s day is unembellished and ordinary so that a small description provides much detail. Charles Dickens’s famous phrase—“ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” does not purge every characteristic of the French Revolution depicted in his novel A Tale of Two Cities; rather offers a Marxist perspective on the bloody events and social realities of eighteenth century England and France. The character of Charles Darnay becomes insignificant in the midst of manipulations of the bourgeois society in the area of politics, economy, government and acts as a tool for the unfolding of the events. The French Revolution—the seemingly main enterprise of this novel, is just a stylistic device, but its proximate and staggering causes and implications leave the reader metapmorphosizing her speculations. The novel dramatizes the natural and fundamental human need for liberation of social strains, the evils of capitalism, and the means by which the bourgeois keep the proletariat oppressed.

The lavish representation of a French Court authority’s family, called Monseigneur, paints the divided line with utmost clarity between the two societies—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Dickens’s social-exposure technique depicts the harsh reality of the lower classes’ dehumanization. Monseigneur’s narrow thoughts are satirized by Dickens in a moment of choice to further emphasize the ravages of class distinction: “Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that the world was made for them” (106). Each action of the “noble” group embeds larger historical controversies—the “superior” beings only defined in terms of their class. This kind of consciousness fits into Marxian view of the masses and enforces the following analogy: “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (Marx and Engels 658). Being defined through property which has “every device of decoration that the taste and skill of the time could achieve” (Dickens 107), generates conflicts, a high to a low ratio, and an absurd differentiation. One of the guests at Monseigneur’s, named Marquis Evremonde further proves the above noted Marxian passage, by running over a little boy with his carriage and showing his “compassion” towards the lower class. Preceding the incident, Dickens describes the man as “handsomely dressed, haughty in manner . . . A face with transparent paleness; one set of expression on it” (110). Evremonde, taking his place in the respected and “excepted” class, is just a collection of atoms ornamented with abundant commodities. Despite the entire negative aura caused by the incident; the noble Evremonde only adds another vulgar and despising phrase as a result of his reaction to the incident: “It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live” (Dickens 112). The fact that there are no common bonds of humanity, but only an obvious protection of status relations manifested in this dreadful event.

Charles Darnay’s (Marquis Evremonde’s nephew) return to France from England, most clearly dramatizes another implication by the great divide—the alienation in the area of family and relationships caused by the invisible, yet real borders between the two classes. However, unsurprising, the estrangement occurs in the bourgeois family and the conversation between an uncle and a nephew (the former has not seen the latter for a while) is anything, but familial or depicted with positive connotations. Evremonde’s seemingly indifferent advice, in the midst of the stupor conversation “a good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude might influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it for yourself” (Dickens 123) further fits the Marxian notion of capitalism causing disaffection. The alienation depicted here is not a given, but it formulates via giving individuals certain titles as for instance referring to Darnay as “Evremonde’s nephew” and not by his real name. The situation is clearly depicted in The Communist Manifesto as “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation” (Marx and Engels 659). Evremonde’s impulses and hatred towards his nephew not only reveals the atrocity of his nature, but also elucidates the ruthlessness of the French influential classes on its dependants. In the stage-play of alienation, the players or the participants wear masks of the estrangement, in order to hide their real essences behind it; whether they are a slave, a master, or a master’s relative. Darnay’s realization of Evremonde’s “fine mask looking at him sideways” (Dickens 124) and of the evils of his uncle, slowly makes him to recede from his family and from the class where he originate. Evremonde’s other passages such as “repression is the only lasting philosophy” or “the dark deference of fear and slavery” (Dickens 124) only contributes to Darnay’s withdrawal from the structure. The main cause of the event is “the intensity of alienation in response to a problematic social reference” (Twining 421). Such response is a foreshadowing of the French peasantry’s rebellion.

Alongside the influentials and the elites, there are characters like Charles Darnay’s father-in-law, a poor man called Dr. Manette whose wheel of fortune turned dramatically from the once doctor to a shoemaker. The long imprisonment in Bastille, France of this now low-class being separates him from his daughter Lucie Manette and is representative of the fate of the proletariat, enclosed within the barricades of an incompliant social system. He is the dehumanized by the system and the result is a complete loss of the self. In order to find himself again, Dr. Manette busies himself with an every day task of shoemaking to fulfill his rather empty existence. Noted in The German Ideology as “what is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal” (Marx and Engels 655) describes the absurdity of such oppression which destroys the “naturalness” of an individual. The shift from the human to a machine is evident; the single effectual cause that differentiates one person from another; one set of ideologies and beliefs that goes against another, Marx believes is the result of the economic environment. Manette; therefore, is that deprived individual whose “essence,” as Isaiah Berlin notes in his understanding of Marxism “as a human being is to be social in order to develop freely and fully” (100). Nonetheless, Manette’s miserable state is uninfluenced by his will and is due to the economic structure of the given (French) society because of which his machine-likeness and desensitization emerge: “ . . . and the haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull, mechanical perception” (Dickens 43). The events that the “crazy” man witnessed as a prisoner in Bastille, are laid out in court as an accusation against Marquis Evremonde: “We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs are by those superior Beings—taxed by him without mercy, obliged to grind our corn at his. . . I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed” (Dickens 323). Manette also tells the story of a woman who is raped by Evremonde, also implying that the kind of deed is another form of social exploitation. Evremonde’s absolute power to commit any deed with no punishment angers the peasantry against the rulers at an instance, where revolution is inevitable.

Darnay’s continuous imprisonments and punishments due to his going against the social norms, the elite, and for trivial matters, is a fitted depicting of Michel Foucault’s philosophy of mechanism and theories behind the penal systems. The jails are epitomes of oppression and a place for rulers to deprive the weak. The coldness and ugliness of jails in Dickensian descriptions reflect upon the rigid-clod detachment of souls.The absurdity of courts is manifested in the courtroom where Darnay has to be found guilty in order for the court to prove its superiority over such trivial beings as him: “Mr. Attorney-General concluded on the faith of his solemn asseveration that he already considered the prisoner as good as dead and gone” (Dickens 69) and the jury “must positively find the prisoner Guilty” (Dickens 65) seemingly it having mandatory connotations. Darnay’s fault rests upon his return to France from England and arrested as an emigrant. Foucault’s passage of “the power that applied the penalties now threatened to be as arbitrary, as despotic, as the power that once decided them” (129) is appropriate for such court dealings. There is the restorative construct of a right to disciple that belongs to society as a whole. The relationship of a prisoner and an authority is comparative with the class relationship of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Those who secure the means of production (the rich) oppress those who are the producers. In the same manner, those who secure their seats in the high ranks of society (the authority) are able to control the lives of those who lack such seats. Hence, those who govern a given society, who grow wealthy and therefore powerful, dominate many influential institutions, possessing much control.

The subjectification and materialization of not only the prisoners, but also any class members as being prisoners of that particular class, advances ideologies in certain social structures. Madame Defarge’s and her husband’s wine-shop is a representation of the evils of capitalism and the tumult of the French revolution. Her quiet knitting in the wine-shop depicts her oppression by Darnay’s aristocratic clan. The vengeance she carries towards the oppressor Evremondes makes her another oppressor, subjectifying her being as a mere tool of Repressive Ideological Apparatuses, in the hands of police to capture the revolutionaries. Her knitting consists of the secret names of the revolutionaries that ought to be executed and along those is Darnay’s name. In the court “placing the [knitting] in her leutienant’s hands,” (Dickens 358) makes Madame Defarge a subject and a possession of that authority. The high ranking officials at the court where Darnay is executed to death are the bourgeois themselves who make their system to appear as the only logical one, trapping weak and irrational beings like Madam Defarge. Her conformity to the State Apparatus, which Louis Althusser defines as “in the form of distinct and specialized institutions . . . that function massively and predominantly by repression” (1344), shows the repressive characteristics of such apparatuses and their causes of the clash between the two main classes. Unlike other characters who rebel against the capitalist evils, thus establishing the “self,” Madame Defarge is and dies as the repressed conformist, not escaping her ideology—the cherished idea of her taking vengeance against the Evremondes and the other oppressed. She is trapped in an institution that uses her as a tool. These institutions do not only exist as social mechanisms, but also penetrate into the very essence of their preys, making substantive modifications impossible. They operate according to their own inner logic and not to satisfy the individual’s needs.

Unlike every other character, who are products of their classes, the peculiar character of Sydney Carton, an attorney who later saves Darnay from execution, disguising himself in Darnay’s clothes, breaks the social barriers which enclose and keep him in the limits of bourgeois society. Carton’s “breaking away” is portrayed in his extraordinary deed on the day of Darnay’s execution, in his evasion from the forces of bourgeois individualism. Carton is the individual, that Antonio Gramsci speaks of in his The Formation of the Intellectuals, who “puts [himself] forward as autonomous and independent of the dominant group” (1003). Carton, possessing no other character, than his own, partakes in an operation, overpassing the smothering barricades of the bourgeois self. He is described by Dickens as someone “with wonderful quickness, and with strength both of will and action that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes upon him” (348). In difference with other characters, who are constantly deprived by social strains, lacking the fundamental entity of will, Carton possesses the aims and desires to make a change. The French Revolution’s imperativeness and message lays in the actions of this man, as he withdraws from the repressor class. He sees the disintegration of the conventional barriers, insuring the safety of the other oppressed characters like Darnay, his wife, and Dr. Manette.

Considering the Marx’s perspective on Sydney Carton’s dynamic character; rather viewing him from Gramsci’s lens, completely shifts the interpretations of his actions. Carton’s execution in the end of the novel, manifests his self-destruction because he does not flow along the class where he originated. In Isaiah Berlin’s passage on historical Marxism, the idea comes to be more lucid: “if you know in what direction the world process is working, you can either identify with it or not; if you fight it, you thereby compass your own certain destruction, being defeated by the forward advance of history” (114). However, looking at Carton’s decisions as merely independent is a fallacy because his actions might also derive from the oppression of his own class—being the lawyer whom no one trusts, working for an influential law firm that regards him as an instrument who accomplishes the “dirty” work. Carton’s suicidal nature and unhappiness with his being and life comes into surface in his conversation with Charles Darnay at a bar: “Nothing in life! I am a disappointed drudge . . . no man on earth cares for me” (Dickens 87). Perhaps his martyr actions toward Darnay (taking his execution on his shoulders) are a result of his deprived state and not his will. Nonetheless, even if these events are “indispensable and independent of [his] will” (Marx and Engels 662) and as Marx puts it—“men are themselves the product of objective conditions” (qtd. in Berlin 100), those actions still create patterns of change. This change is brought forward by Carton’s death. His public execution is an ineffective way to try to control the revolutionaries, as it only encourages more rebellions. As Foucault notes in his Discipline and Punish, this kind of execution is just another way for the highly ranked classes to manifest their power: “in a penalty employing public torture and execution is to show the sovereign power that mastered it” (93). Using power to strain the masses evidently reveals the suppression of the “weak” class by the “superior class,” however, in the novel; the revolution does not stop with Carton’s execution, proving such punishment as just another nonsensical action by the upper class.

Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities paints the atrocious reality of eighteenth century England and France rather obviously through the events of the bloody French Revolution. The characters of this novel, from the two main classes within the Marxian framework—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, are caught in an inexorable tsunami of historical and social proceedings that dehumanize and destroy their very essences. Charles Darnay, his wife, Dr Manette, and Madame Defarge are oppressed by societal evils like Marquis Evremonde who manipulate every social institution. To people like Evremonde, society is something that is based on commodities, rather than values or ideals. The constant conflict, between the two groups is depicted in massive imprisonments of the low-ranking class members such as Charles Darnay. The social turbulence is a direct result of the revolutionaries’ rebellion; however, even more directly— is a response to the inhumanity of aristocracy and the exploitation of the poor. In the novel, the Marxian lens (including Marx’s, Engel’s, Gramsci’s Althusser’s philosophies) overlaps with Michel Foucault’s structural perspective and his understanding of social institutions, their categorizations, and the penal systems which Dickens portrays here with constant recurrences of jail imagery. The forces between the two classes become stronger, emphasizing the line of division in between. The individual’s actions are a result of the dictations of their own class. The point is clearly manifested in Engel’s passage: “In nature these forces are physical, chemical, biological: in society they are specifically economic and social” (qtd. in Berlin 92). The individuals are left to act upon not on their will but as products of the system.

Works Cited

Althusser, Louis. “From Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” The Norton

Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton

& Company Inc.: New York, 2001. 1335-60. Print.

Berlin, Isaiah. Karl Marx. 4^th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Print.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan.

New York: Random House, Inc., 1995. Print.

Gramsci, Antonio. “ The Formation of the Intellectuals.” The Norton Anthology of

Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company

Inc.: New York, 2001. 1002-08. Print.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “From The Communist Manifesto.” The Norton

Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton

& Company Inc.: New York, 2001. 657-60. Print.

Marx Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “From Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of

1844.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd

ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 651-55. Print.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “From The German Ideology.” The Norton Anthology

of Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company

Inc.: New York, 2001. 655-56. Print.

Twining, James E. “Alienation as a Social Process.” The Sociological Quarterly 21.3

(1980): 417-28. Print.

Ethnicity Studies and Post-Colonial Theory

Act 1, Scene 1

IAGO

'Zounds, sir, you're robb'd; for shame, put on
your gown;
Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;
Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is topping your white ewe. Arise, arise;
Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,
Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you:
Arise, I say.

*************************************

Act 1, Scene 2

BRABANTIO

How! the duke in council!
In this time of the night! Bring him away:
Mine's not an idle cause: the duke himself,
Or any of my brothers of the state,
Cannot but feel this wrong as 'twere their own;
For if such actions may have passage free,
Bond-slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be.

Othello: The Outsider

The constant oppression of the orients by Europeans is manifested through centuries of colonization, wars, and invisible boundaries. The West and the East are separated through prejudiced borders that create more and more tension. Edward Said takes the subject of the civilized vs. uncivilized—the “European” terms and in a way investigates the misconceptions and justifications of Europeans of such discord in his Orientalism. Europeans in his view come to define themselves by first defining the eastern civilizations. Comparing the East to the West and stereotyping it as the “inferior” group, the West does nothing more than enlightening its bias and making it apparent. The disconnect of such dissension is lucid in Shakespeare’s Othello where the tragedy of the Moor is a result of misconceptions in regards to his origins and race.

Desdemona’s fater Brabantio acts against his own self-interest and operates irrationally by attacking Othello with irreverence in Duke’s court: “. . . if such actions may have passage free,/Bondslaves and pagans are statesmen be” (Shakespeare 1.2.98-9). Brabantio who is originally from Venice, Italy sees himself as a superior human to Othello despite the fact that Othello’s rank is incomparable with his. For Brabantio, Othello is someone he started as—an Ottoman, a Turk. Iago, who represents the evils of western culture engineers this opposition yet again, twisting Brabantio’s thoughts: “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram/Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!” (Shakespeare 1.1.87-8). In Said’s perspective, Brabantio is the one for whom “the ‘East’ has always signified danger” (1886). Brabantio’s expressions addressed to the Moor seem irrelevant to him and he remains collected as expected; however, later the words come to haunt him and become the recipe for his destruction.

Shakespeare’s profound thoughts then in Victorian England raise analogies as ”society and literary culture can only be understood and studied together” (Said 1887). The generalizations by Europeans, in this case, Brabantio’s obnoxious phrases of “bondslaves” and “pagans” portray the artificial characteristics that are inscribed to orientals, discrediting their “humanness.” Brabantio’s expressions act against Othello cracking his shell, getting to the weak, inner reality of his mind. They find place in Othello’s realm and he claims, “And yet, how nature erring from itself—” (3.3.227). Othello’s insecurities come to the surface, and he becomes incapable of focusing his thoughts. Branatio is acting upon impulse without giving much thought to the accomplishments and the entire being of Othello. His narrow and dusted ideas are merely a result of the societal prejudices planted in his mind. The western dehumanization of this Shakespearean easterner is complete and the result is tragedy.

Works Cited

Said, Edward. “From Orientalism.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed,

Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company Inc.: New York, 2001. 1866-

88. Print.

Shakespeare, William. “The Tragedy of Othello The Moor of Venice.” The Complete

Pelican Shakespeare. Eds. Stephen Orgel, et al. Penguin Books Inc.: New York,

2002. 1402-1444. Print.

Feminism

The Piano: Speaking Through

Rather than plainly assuming that The Piano is about female deprivation, because the protagonist is a mute and therefore does not have a voice, we ought to weigh the structure of the film as a whole. The piano acts as a tool of expression for Ada (the woman playing), whose main goal in the film seems to be retaining the instrument at any cost. This clearly raises questions such as: is Ada’s disadvantage because of her disability or does her disadvantage originate from her inequality with her so-called husband Stewart? Only because her contributions as a wife are not valued and she is sold to marriage by her father is enough for Ada to feel as if she lacks the necessities of life—the being-able-to-express essential.

Ada’s passion of playing the piano comes from her need to have a voice as a woman no matter the slurred layers of social repression. Despite Ada’s mute appeals, Stewart disregards the pleadings giving her the simple excuse of it being “too heavy” and “too few of [them] to carry it” (The Piano). The viewer immediately notices Stewart’s fake excuse as the New Zealand beach in this scene is full of people who get ready to depart. Stewart does not try to take a journey in her mind and find reasons as to why she insists on bringing the piano; rather, he takes the easy path—the rejection, which only emphasizes his narcissism. However, for Ada, the piano is not just another instrument that she naively tries to carry with her, but her repressed speech that is converted to musical notes. Simone De Beauvoir notes in The Second Sex that “ . . . [a woman’s] body does not seem to her to be a clear expression of herself; within it she feels herself a stranger” (1268). Ada feels like an outsider both in her role and in this particular society. Her expressions are limited, and her oppressions are unjustified.

Ada’s sad gaze on the piano once more from afar indicates the feeling of abandonment—as if she lets go of something significant. Nonetheless, she does not cancel her commitment of keeping what is hers, by recognizing what is problematic. Ada sees her way out of such oppression through playing the piano: “According to her moods [a woman] will view her own sentiments in different light” (Beauvoir 1269). It is in these very instances of playing when Ada feels “free” and creates a fantasy wondering the possibilities of her being and existence. These created fantasy-moments are what Judith Butler calls “performative” in her Gender Trouble. Ada does not want to vanish in the framework of Stewart’s degradations. The “performative” instances of the self are, in terms of Butler, “the essence or identity that is purported to express fabrications and sustained through corporeal signs and discursive means” (2548). For Ada, the “fabrication” is the piano, but later this object may be replaced by another object that will enable fake self-expression in a passive manner.

The Piano carries universal messages and layers of understanding the oppression of women. The theme of feminism is constantly present in this starkly real film by Jane Campion. The protagonist’s (Ada) muteness suggests woman’s role as just an object which is not granted the freedom of speech. Her husband, being the representative of narcissism, disregards her feelings and opinions, even rejecting her only tool for expression—the piano. However, despite her disability, Ada stands up for her essential and basic right by staying behind her wordless statements.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. “From Gender Trouble.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company Inc.: New York, 2001.

2540-53. Print.

De Beauvoir, Simone. “From The Second Sex.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and

Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New

York, 2001. 1265-73. Print.

The Piano. Dir. Jane Campion. Perf. Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, and Anna

Paquin. Ciby 2000, 1993. Film.

Marxism

Desensitized State

In Glengarry Glan Ross, a hot-shot salesman, Blake, who is supposedly encouraging the three sales men to sell out the leads in the office in this particular scene, is in Marxist terms the “bourgeois” and the others are the “proletarians.” He is the face of the company Mitch and Murray which demeans the workers ruthlessly. Blake savors his privileged and potent state and is able to adamantly exploit the others by degrading their positions in life. He is the one who enjoys the profit by extorting money from the leads. These three men, who are degraded by Blake, are selling their labor in order to earn a living. They do not have free access to the leads because they do not own the products. Therefore, a great gap is created which is obvious between these two different and alienated social groups—Blake and the three sales men.

In Blake’s view, the sales men in this scene are commodities, only there to satisfy his needs. He makes it clear that they are no more than objects, and their worth is insignificant: “You see this watch? It costs more than your car . . . That is who I am, and you are nothing” (Glengarry Glan Ross). Blake’s relation to wealth is lustful as he speaks and acts in terms of money. He sees all the others in the room—“the labourers [but] nothing else” (Marx 671) and “the worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object” (Marx 653). Money is penetrated deep beneath Blake’s skin and is adhered onto it. He sees no value in people, except their ability to work: “You got leads, can’t close the leads? You can’t close nothing? You are nothing” (Glengarry Glen Ross). This is the “real” man’s game for Blake. If one cannot handle the “game” then he can “tell his troubles to his wife” or “play with his kids at home” (Glengarry Glan Ross). Blake influences his robot-like attitude which is monotonous and suitable for machines. Family and merits are at no importance, and touch with human nature is lost. Decisions here are made in profit and loss terms.

Why are the salesmen in this scene not leaving? Why are they taking all the humiliation from the man who not only looks down upon them; moreover, sees himself too as an object? The salesmen are made to believe by society that they are “free” to be whoever, and they are “freely” accepting their role in this situation—as nothings. Is Blake here Antonio Gramsci’s “intellectual?” Would Gramsci note here that everyone in this scene is an intellectual, but “not all . . . have the power in society the function of intellectuals” (Gramsci 1004)? They are all intellectuals in a desensitized state, and it is in this state where all are separated and alienated from each other by private leads, sales, and property. They are value-objects in a cruel market.

Works Cited

Glengarry Glen Ross. Dir. James Foley. Perf. Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan

Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, and Jonathan Pryce. New Line Cinema,

1992. Film.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “From Capital, Volume 1.” The Norton Anthology of

Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company

Inc.: New York, 2001. 663-674. Print.

Marx Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “From Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of

1844.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd

ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 651-655. Print.

Psychoanalysis

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" by John Keats

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
'I love thee true'.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

The Interpretation of Dreams: The Other Side

The cryptical and esoteric world of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats is not so obscure; moreover, it can lead us to a gratifying description of how human psyche functions. The poem seems to be a dream vision of a knight where his most unaccepted and repressed ideas come to life. The unconscious stores these ideas and then represents the outcome of desires. Not only do the oppressed wishes embed in themselves the unconscious, but they are its cause. The meaning of this poem is the desire for the lady who has no mercy. The knight’s dream or the discourse he produces revolving around the lady is subject to no other reason than to fulfill unconscious desire, more specifically, to exhibit in phantasm the atonement of such crave.

Instead of searching answers where the words of this poem come from, let us first examine why they were chosen among the many. The phrases here are highly improbable, “brief, meager and laconic” (819) as Freud would have put it. There are three striking scenes in this dream-structured poem typifying the memory that is dreamt: the desolate lake where “no birds sing” (Keats line 4), the sweet relationship between the knight and the lady, and again back to the desolate lake with one distinction—visions of “pale kings, and princes too/Pale warrior . . .” (Keats 37-38) are present. Between these three scenes, able to be divided into sub-scenes (or dream inside a dream), what is the relationship? For Freud, these scenes with their relative sub-scenes can represent “foreground and background, digressions and illustrations, conditions, chains of evidence and counter arguments” (821). It can be the undertaking of psychoanalysis to discern what cohesiveness conjoins these seemingly disconnected moments, thus getting closer to an apprehension of the fantasy that is the originator of this dream.

The repetitions of the lines in the opening and ending stanzas “Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,/And no birds sing” (Keats 47-48) and their relationship to a more positive image of “I met a lady in the meads,/Full beautiful, a fairy’s child;” (Keats 13-14) indicate a longing for a caring woman figure (the repressed wish) as opposed to the one with no mercy. In the ninth stanza it becomes apparent that the dreaming night is falling asleep inside a dream. The mood and tone changes here are indisputable. What is left of previous pleasures is now only pale, horrid, and dying, which make the moments portrayed here as less real and “appearances [being] deceitful” (Freud 822). The desolate lake is still here, but only followed by additional elements that bring forward instances from the other dream. The knight that is already in a dream is dreaming inside his dream: “And there I dream’d—” (Keats 34). This moment indicates the knight’s strife to recapture the preceding dream by vaguely realizing that this cannot be achieved. What has changed in this second dream is that it is another representation and this other representation does not demand to be something other than it is.

Could we say that something that was once the knight’s desire is now presented under a rather different lens? From Freudian viewpoint, the daily residues stored in the knight’s mind become to represent his most repressed desires in the form of several dreams. Although, different in content, “the portions of this complicated structure stand . . . in the most manifold logical relations to one another” (Freud 821). Above and beyond, the representations in various scenes of this poem denote in its dramatic configuration present some essences from Freudian psychoanalysis.

Works Cited

Freud. Sigmund. “From The Interpretation of Dreams.” The Norton Anthology of Theory

and Criticism. Ed, Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.:

New York, 2001. 814-824. Print.

Keats, John. “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad. ”The Norton Anthology: English

Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et. al. 8^th ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.:

New York, 2006. 899-900. Print.

Enlightenment

The picture--"Primary Chaos" by C.S. Bauman

Labyrinthine associations in the mind . . . Reason? Insanity? Awareness? All? All that breathes, all that walks, all that becomes . . . Making sense . . . Sensing the moment, feeling as if destined to serve, to be . . . To be unique. A complete lack of understanding the systematic arrangement of order itself. Randomness of thoughts . . . Preferring one over the other . . . Actions . . . The next one, and the next one, as if the chain is linked to an unbounded space . . . A host of fortuitous molecules and random elements that form this matter . . . Is it like the haphazardly disposed accumulation of water droplets that form a cloud? No . . . No affinities . . . It is more complex . . . The knot is not being untied . . . Why can’t others see the variations? Perhaps those are not as scientific as the vacillation of a pendulum in a clock, or the billowing of a rock down a versant, or the crushing of surf on a cliff. They are not linear for them to see the horizon of this divide. The expected and the random . . . Anything that can possibly ever take place, will take place next . . . How random then are thoughts? Knowing the probability of any event, depending on what just happened. My mind is determined to possess a tenuous amount of rationality. Yet it won't. It is complete chaos . . .

Daintiness and Antipathy: Burke’s Sublime

All that ensues from one’s sentient relationship to the world, with the fashion reality inflicts the body on its centripetal surfaces—aesthetics is born. As a social phenomenon, this branch of axiology takes significant room in the Enlightenment. “Primary Chaos” by C. S. Bauman represents the beautiful and the sublime, which for Edmund Burke are bases of “pain and pleasure” (460). The constant state of interior change in this “chaotic” painting is uniform and universal. It gives rise to emotions such as pain, pleasure, terror, delight, joy, and grief. One’s social life, as well as imaginary thoughts are portrayed here. Burke is enchanted by what one feels when he sees the daintiness and antipathies for instance in this particular painting.

The aesthetic experience is limited to the few. The intricate ideas of “Primary Chaos” create turmoil in the mind which evokes the sublime in the viewer. It crushes one into venerating compliance, resembling a forceful as opposed to a consensual sovereignty: “The ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure” (Burke 459). Why does one feel more disturbed when looking at this painting than delighted? The sublime is correlating with venture, antagonism, and individualism. It is the armor that builds itself when confronted with danger. Nonetheless, the danger that is encountered ornately and vicariously is in the pleasurable realm of human comprehension that no harm will take place.

Work Cited

Burke, Edmund. “From A Philosophical Enquiry into theOrigin of Our Ideas of

the Sublime and Beautiful.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed,

Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 454-

60. Print.

CRITICISM OF FORMALISM

"Butterflies" by Unknown Author

The Narrative:

Mere butterflies . . . Camouflaged in the man-made, squared and stony walls. A flight towards the artificial, the unnatural. By not simply standing on the wall, the butterflies indicate the non-harmonious relationship between them and the wall. Nature in its tiniest elements is endangered by the dominative blue shades of the wall which try to swallow the butterflies, vanquishing them in its cold pretense. Negative effects of man, his habitat and his attempt to bring the artificial with the organic create environmental catastrophes. Soft lines of the butterflies are in strict contrast with the sharp squares of the walls manifesting the same notion—the impossibility of the clash of their universes. The natural is always superior to the artificial. Is this to suggest that humans are unnatural? No. Human constructs are and so is the synthetic and bare effort of human intelligence to break any natural law.

"Papillon" by Salvador Dali

Just a note . . .

The author of the "Butterflies" painting recreated Dali's "Papillon" in a new light by using cooler colors as opposed to Dali's painting's warm shades. Dali's "Papillon" serves as a "foil" device in this essay, by shaping the interpretations of the "Butterflies" painting in criticizing formalism.

Art as Technique: Eccentric Notions?

Disregarding any instances of author’s life or historical period may seem ignorant, yet it empowers one to confront the work as a self-contained, independent unit. Is formalistic emphasis on the form of the work too imprecise? It is strictly going against empiricism, disregarding any sense experiences. For instance, the authors in this case have thought of butterflies. One may ask, what are the authors’ premises? Looking at the work from a formalist viewpoint, the question will vanish in the vacuum. However, insufficiencies generate for explications of fundamental questions of the work’s and its author’s reality and the reality of their comprehension.

Examining this particular painting, “Butterflies” by an unknown author, formalistically, one may distinguish two butterflies and square-colored walls. It is unknown whether the butterflies are physically standing on the wall or flying towards it. This is just an unlively observation which Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky in his Art as Technique may refer to as “algebraic” (1). Through perception, one sees art as just an untarnished entity of figures. Shklvosky talking about objects, notes that “we do not see them in their entirety but rather recognize them by their main characteristics” (1). The technique or form of this particular painting as a dynamic structuring principle is a fundamental question of artistic creation. Also, the systematic series of transformations are embedded with technical elements. Nonetheless, these technical elements by themselves do not elucidate the character of the artistic process. This operation is carried about by means of the artistic device, but cogitates far more than its prolific processes.

Only objects . . . No feelings, no emotions, and no intertwined thoughts about their histories. Mere butterflies and walls . . . This stupor or “defamiliarization” (2) as Shklovsky calls it, is not the central point in an artistic device; rather the significance lies in object’s complexity. This requires an abstract lens, discrete from the standpoint of the object of inquiry, more specifically, discrete from the self-apprehension of the prolific proceedings in art. One may conclude that there is the need of aesthetic experience. Shklovsky is faltering in his rigorous explanations of art as technique by generalizing his examples. For instance, in his expression “art exists . . . to make the stone stony” (2), Shklovsky neglects the role of emotion by pushing forward the unsteady notion of making the object more inanimate than it already is. The “stoniness” of a stone, used by Shklovsky as a general concept in his dissection of formalism, does not apply to any and every work of art. Does art in Shklovsky’s perception exist to make these butterflies more “butterfly-y” or the walls more “wally?” And does this “butterfly-yiness” or “walliness” consist in butterfly’s shape or wall’s stoniness? Or does the wall particularly act as an endpoint or purpose for the butterfly to fly towards or act as a resting point for it? In order to find answers to such questions in the frames of this painting, one should study the object as a part of a larger context, such as author’s viewpoints, emotions and not only observing the work as an independent creation.

The undisclosed author imitated Salvador Dali’s “Papillon” painting, in order to represent it through his/her perspective. Why did the author choose these particular shades and colorings as opposed to something else? If one is to view both paintings as a formalist, he will see the same butterflies—the same objects. However, these two paintings are very distinct considering the stories of their foundations behind their mere objectification. In examining the “Butterflies” painting, one may ask about the absence of shadows of the butterflies, as opposed to Dali’s butterflies in “Papillon.” Scrutinizing the latter only by its form is an absurd. Formalism, here, fails by completely neglecting Dali’s Freudian viewpoints on the painting and as Ignacio Javier Lopez suggests in his essay “Film, Freud, and Paranoia: Dali and the Representation of Male Desire in ‘An Andalusian Dog’” there are technically four butterflies representing his family, including the shadows (47). Again, formalism fails in the “Butterflies” painting by disregarding the author’s attempt to bring nature and the artificial together—the butterflies representing the former and the man-made lines and walls representing the latter. The absence of shadows from the “Butterflies” painting indicates that the two butterflies are not on the wall, but indeed they are far away from the wall; however, flying towards it. It, as mentioned above, is a mere attempt to bring the organic and the artificial together, but as seen in the painting , is yet to be accomplished; however, impossible at the moment.

Formalism views art as a technique void of emotions, going against all aesthetic notions of art representing something that is present which was not there before. Literally, the word “art” in Latin and Greek means “trade,” “know-how,” and “skillful transformation” (Gortais 1241). According to Shklovsky’s doctrine, a vision is created in viewing the object of the object itself, rather than attempting to find means of knowing the object (6). This is literally contradictory to the definition of art and theoretically seems like an eccentric notion. Formalism fails to note that art, in both paintings, is a mimesis itself in a form of an object or an event of a subjective reality by means of idioms that are perceptible not only to the senses, but to the whole transcendent realm.

Works Cited

Gortais, Bernard. “Abstraction and Art.” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences

358.1453 (2003): 1241-49. Print.

Lopez, Ignacio Javier. “Film, Freud, and Paranoia: Dali and the Representation of Male

Desire in ‘An Andalusian Dog.’” Diacritics 31.2 (2001): 35-48. Print.

Shklovsky, Victor. “Art as Technique.” 15 July 2010

<http://vahidnab.defam.htm>. Web.

Classical Literary Theory

On Sublimity: The Vastness of Human Contemplation

Shakespeare’s King Lear’s last words before his death prove that madness attached to his name has much ponderous content; moreover, proving that his deep and earnest feelings transcend any bathetic emotions. Longinus’s “sublimity” is no stranger in the end of King Lear, as it is pregnant with instances of expropriation and designation. The speaker of Lear arrives and vanishes into his own text, leaving his audience in the midst of traumatic experience as his sublime effect outlives his vocalization. The author, in this case, has already accomplished what seems to be an essential point of sublimity—painting the picture on a canvas that he has intended himself.

Lear’s ending is not in the redemptory manner brought about by gleams of apprehension; nonetheless, it is occasioned by his profound spirit. He represents the one with lofty thoughts, effects, the unusual, and the absolute. Lear’s capacity to imitate these marvelous prospects of nature and their sermon to captivate all aspects of representation in grandiloquent tones is something extraordinary. His words, while holding Cordelia’s dead body, “O, you are men of stones. / Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so / That heaven’s vault should crack. She is gone forever” (Shakespeare 5.3.262-64), tag the borders of reason and manifestation with a signification of what might be anticipated beyond those borders, tangenting the transcendent.

Longinus’s comment on Sappho’s poem; it bringing togetherness to the senses, also to the body and mind, can as well mark Lear’s words from the above (Longinus 140). The “tongues,” “eyes,” from the senses and “stones” representing the feeling of senselessness, cultivate the experience that escapes from ordinary understanding. When the power of this situation is such that vernacular phrases and strong comparisons embedded in metaphors are not enough; it is then when the sublime resorts. The notion of the infinity surpasses emanation. However, Longinus’s all five sources of sublimity are present, emphasizing the effectiveness of it. King Lear has the natural genius whose “words [are] great [because] thoughts are weighty” (Longinus 139). His noble and inspirational diction, word choice, and elysian emotions are well within the frames of Longinus’s idea of sublimity.

Audience’s fictitious affiliation with the speaker is the result of the speaker’s power to carry his listener into his message. This very occurrence is the result of what Longinus calls “phantasia,” in which “enthusiasm and emotion make the speaker see what he is saying and bring it visually before the audience” (Longinus 143). This is not in much contrast with what might be called the more modest everyday instances of citing. In truth, the design of quotation comes to be incorporated in the very idea of sublimity, while the sublime might as well be distinguished in terms of inescapability of reiteration or citation. King Lear’s tone stays the same towards the end, “And my poor fool is hanged: no, no, no life? / Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, / And thou no life at all?” (Shakespeare 3.2. 312-13). Longinus notes that “real sublimity contains much food for reflection . . . makes a strong and ineffaceable impression on the memory” (138). It is through repetition of the same-toned utterances that the speaker inscribes sublimity not only within himself but also lasts in the memory of the audience.

Sublimity . . . contained in the vastness of human contemplation found its place in one of the works of Shakespeare, King Lear. It is on a sense another tragedy, but seems more because of the immense sublimity presented in itself and concealed like a great work of art. There is a much deal of treasure intertwined: character, compelling emotions, poignancy, and philosophy. Yet everything has its decent place and everything is where it is ought to be. It has the quality of the sublime—united and harmonious in and out of itself.

Works Cited

Longinus. “On Sublimity.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed, Vincent

B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 136-154.

Print.

Shakespeare, William. “King Lear.” The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen

Orgel and et. al. Penguin Books Ltd.: New York, 2002. 1574-1615. Print.