SYLLABUS OF M.A.

ENGLISH

SEMESTER I
Course I History of English Literature from Chaucer to 1800
(Questions will be set on movements and trends and not on individual authors)
Course II Poetry from Chaucer to Pope:
Chaucer: ‘The Prologue’, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’
Donne: ‘The Sun-Rising,’ The Extasie,’ ‘The Canonization,’ ‘The
Anniversary, ’ ‘The Flea,’ ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,
Milton: Paradise Lost, Bk. I, and ‘Lycidas,’ ‘L’ Allegro’
Pope: The Rape of the Lock, ‘Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’
Course III Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
Marlowe: Doctor Faustus
Shakespeare: Tempest
Shakespeare: Twelfth Night
Ben Jonson: Volpone
Course IV Nineteenth Century Fiction
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Charles Dickens: Hard Times
George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss
Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D’Urbevylles

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 COURSE INTRODUCTION
COURSE II: POETRY FROM CHAUCER TO POPE

Welcome students to Course II entitled Poetry from Chaucer to Pope. This material that you hold in your
hand contains twelve lessons in all. We have taken up four major poets ?? Chaucer, Donne, Milton and
Pope. I’m sure you’re all familiar with these names as you must have come across them while studying
Course I i.e. History of English Literature from Chaucer to 1800.
In this course we’ve covered a period from the 14th century till the 17th century i.e. approximately 400
years. You must bear in mind that even though we’ve taken up these four representative poets ? there are a
great number of equally important poet that we’ve had to leave out. This in no way diminishes their importance
or contribution to literature. Constraints of space and time is what led us to choose these four and leave out
the others. After all how much can one teach in a single course?
Let me begin by giving you a general idea to the lesson plans that form part of this course.
We begin with three lessons on Chaucer. The first contains a background to the age, the poet’s life and
times as all these have a tremendous bearing on the works of an individual. In the second lesson on Chaucer,
we’ve taken up the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales for detailed study. And the third lesson is devoted to
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, which is one of the most interesting tales of the whole series. We have built in
“Check Your Progress” exercises throughout the lesson and also provided “Answers” at the end of each
lesson. Finally after the third lesson on Chaucer we have given you a list of “Suggested Readings” as well
as a few “Terminal Questions.” This pattern has been repeated for the other three poets as well.
We’ve begun with Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) who was a Medieval or Middle English Poet. This
period in European history roughly indicates the time span from the collapse of the holy Roman Empire to
the rise of the Renaissance (a revival of interest in Greek and Latin classics). Culturally this period is
characterized by the dual power of the Church and the petty landlord who controlled all the land and in
return bestowed serfdom on the common people. Illiteracy was common and the priest was the sole interpreter
of the word of God-for the common people. Reading of literature becomes more enjoyable and thought
provoking when you have a knowledge of the society and the major social events of the period in mind.
After Chaucer, we have three lessons on John Donne. In the first we’ve talked about his age and works
and in the next two lessons we’ve taken up the following poems by him: In lesson two we have “The Flea”,
“Extasie” and “Canonisation.” And in lesson three we’ve taken up “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”,
“The Sun Rising” and “The Anneversaire.” Since these poems are not very long, we’ve provided the text
within the lesson itself. We have not done that with the texts of the other poets as their poems are quite
lengthy.
John Donne’s (1572-1631) age was a period of great upheavals in England in almost all spheres of life,
whether social, political religious or scientific. All these had an impact on poetry, which showed many
innovations in content and technique. Around this time new assumptions about life came into being. These
sprang from the emergence of the empirical science that relies solely on experiment. Thus the medieval
world order which was based on faith faced a challenge. This you will see reflected in the poetry of Donne.

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 Then we go on the John Milton the great and most outstanding poet of the seventeenth century. Following
the set pattern in the first lesson on Milton, we’ve talked about his age, life and works. In lesson two we’ve
taken up two of his poems: “L’ Allegro” and “Lycidas”. And in lesson three we’ve dealt with Book I of his
magnum opus Paradise Lost. Milton (1608-1674) has been called the last Renaissance poet-even though he
does not strictly belong to the period conventionally identified as the Renaissance. But the strains of the
thinking of the renaissance had a lasting effect on Milton and this is seen in his works. Therefore a confluence
of diverse factors are woven in his work. The consequences of the Reformation (growing of Puritanism) also
impacted his works.
Last but not the least, the fourth poet that we’ve studied is Alexander Pope. Again- lesson one provides a
background while lessons two and three deal with his two famous poems, “The Rape of the Lock” and “An
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” respectively. As mentioned before, there are “Check Your Progress” exercises in
all the lessons with their “Answers.” Terminal questions and suggested readings come at the end of the last
lesson on each poet.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is the representative poet of the first half of the 18th Century –also called
the Augustan or neoclassical age. This was because the imitation of classical models became a common
phenomenon in English literature and Pope’s poems that you will be reading reflect this tendency though he
satirized them to reflect the ethos of his age.
This is basically the overall lesson plan for this course. A few suggestions here would not be out of place.
The poems/text should be the focus of your attention. You may consult some good annotated edition of
the prescribed poems, and read each one of them. Our lessons would then be able to put the poems in
perspective for you. While reading the poems if you feel unable to deal with them – do not get discouraged.
Once you begin to read the lesson explaining the poem, things will get easier. So it will not really matter if
the meanings of each and every line and word is not clear. Also you must remember that even though we
have provided critical analyses of all the longer texts, these are in no way exhaustive. They are intended as
pointers for you rather than as full explications of the poems. Here, you should be ready to undertake the
analyses of the poems and also try and relate them to their social and cultural context. Out intention is to
provide you with the guidelines to understand the poems in a historicized and socially sensitive manner
rather than providing explicit analyses. We would like to state here that these lessons do not claim to be
entirely comprehensive – an impossible task anyway in the case of these multi dimensional and versatile
poets – so you all need to complement the information provided in these lessons with exhaustive reading of
your own.
We sincerely hope that you all enjoy the process of studying these four great poets and their works.
Good Luck!

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 LESSON-1
CHAUCER: AGE, LIFE AND WORKS

STRUCTURE
1.1 INTRODUCTION
1.2 OBJECTIVES
1.3 AGE OF CHAUCER
1.3.1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
1.3.2 CULTURAL BACKGROUND
1.3.3 INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND
1.3.4 LITERARY BACKGROUND
1.4 LIFE OF CHAUCER
1.5 CHAUCER’S LITERARY OUTPUT
1.5.1 FRENCH PERIOD
1.5.2 ITALIAN PERIOD
1.5.3 ENGLISH PERIOD
1.6 CANTERBURY TALES: MIRROR OF MEDIEVAL SOCIETY
1.7 SUMMARY
1.8 GLOSSARY
1.9 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1.10 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
1.11 SUGGESTED READINGS
1.1 INTRODUCTION
It is often said that the Canterbury Tales are a picture or mirror of the Middle Ages. And when you read
the Prologue in the next lesson, you’ll see how the historical, cultural and social background is reflected in
it. It was an age of transition from declining feudalism to an emerging money economy characterized by the
rise of the middle class. The growth of trade and commerce had led to the growth of the city of London.
Although the English people still largely lived in villages, the fact that Chaucer was an urban poet, already
suggests a change.
Chaucer belonged to that growing class from which so many great writers sprang. He was the son of a
man engaged in trade. His father was a wine merchant. The young Geoffery was to learn a lot about the
aristocracy by becoming a page to the Countess of Ulster. Promotion and foreign service as a young soldier,
marriage into the family of the great John of Gaunt, the opportunity to observe polite manners, to study the
sciences and the arts, the literatures of France and Italy – all these played a part in making Chaucer one of
the best equipped English poets. A keen intelligence, a strong sense of humour, a fine musical ear and the
ability to tell a story – how could the young poet not make a mark for himself?

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1.2 OBJECTIVES
Through this lesson our aim is to introduce you to an outstanding English poet of the late Middle ages:
Geoffrey Chaucer. Since literature and society are closely related, it would also be our endeavour to provide
an overview of the age in which Chaucer lived and wrote. This would help you to understand Chaucer’s
poetry better. We also intend to briefly introduce you to the main works written by Chaucer and a detailed
background and introduction to the Canterbury Tales will also be provided.
Therefore, by the end of this lesson you will be able to have a clear understanding of the Medieval world,
which in turn would help you to understand Chaucer’s poetry with special reference to the Canterbury
Tales.
1.3 AGE OF CHAUCER
Chaucer’s poetry is best understood by keeping in mind the age in which he lived. Let us take a look at
the major historical, cultural, intellectual and literary changes that were taking place during that time.
1.3.1 Historical Background
As I said before Chaucer’s times were transitional times. And there were three historical events that
accelerated these changes: The Hundred Years’ War, the Black Death and the Peasant’s Revolt.
The Hundred Years’ war between England and France (beginning in 1337) is rooted in the feudal
structure of European society. Till then Kings were feudal lords of land and property in foreign countries
and often laid claim to their thrones.
The basic cause of dispute between England and France was thus the English possessions on French soil.
War with France and Scotland brought honour to the English monarchy but drained the resources of the
Crown, making the barons more powerful. A series of victories bolstered English pride in the mid-fourteenth
century. The victory at Crecy (1346), where English yeomen archers and Welsh knifemen routed French
chivalry, was immediately followed by the crushing defeat of the Scots at Neville’s Cross. Ultimately what
the Hundred Years’ War did, was to change the old code of chivalry: Shakespeare brings this out ironically
in his history plays (the second tetralogy from Richard II to Henry V). Edward I and Edward III in a sense
created the modern infantry. The yeoman archer, the development of a local militia at home and something
akin to modern conscription gave the English soldiers a definite edge over the French. The situation on the
battlefield contributed to the emergence of democratic forces in England. The sense of a people’s will,
representing the rise of the English people with all their proud defiance, presents a sharp contrast to the
French peasants’ situation, and adds new life to the poetry of Chaucer. More immediately, the looting and
pillage of France by English soldiers, that Chaucer must have witnessed in his French campaigns, may well
have resulted in his sympathy for the helpless.
The war, which had brought prosperity to various classes in England because of the rich booty and high
wages for soldiers, suffered a severe check from the Black Death (1348-49), a deadly form of the highly
infectious bubonic plague carried across Europe by black rats. Because of insanitary conditions, it affected
towns more than villages, and the poor died everywhere like flies. Probably one-third of England’s population
perished in the plague. Abating towards the end of 1349, the epidemic revived in 1361, 1362 and 1369,
continuing to break out sporadically until the late seventeenth century, when medical science improved and
the black rat was driven out by the brown rat, which did not carry the disease.
The high mortality at once increased the demand for labour on the farm and weakened the obligations of
feudal tenure. This situation found a parallel among the clergy. Many ecclesiastical posts fell vacant, and
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the clergy often supported the labourers’ demand for higher wages. It is thus not surprising that Chaucer’s
Franklin was a freeholder and that even his Plowman had acquired a new freedom enabling to offer his
services to others. The devastation, however, failed to dampen the martial ardour of the king and his barons.
Even as the Black Death was raging, Edward III developed his Order of the Garter which became the model
for all later chivalric orders.
It was thus a time of political unrest and uncertainty: we must not forget that two kings, Edward III and
Richard II, were deposed and murdered in the fourteenth century. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 has to be
seen in this background. But first let us have some idea of the condition of the poor in England. In 1381,
more than half the people did not possess the privileges that had been guaranteed to every ‘freeman’ by the
Magna Carta (1215) in the reign of King John. The poor had to pay fines for marriage or sending a son to
school, and the inhuman heriot or mortuary tax exacted at the death-bed was responsible for much resentment.
The immediate provocation for the revolt was the Poll Tax or head tax. The financial burden of the wars
forced the government to ask Parliament to allow heavy taxes. In 1380, taxes were levied on even the
poorest. The sudden outbreak of rebellion under the leadership of Wat Tyler resulted in the peasants,
accustomed to levies for French campaigns, attacking London, destroying property and putting the Archbishop
of Canterbury to death. The uprising collapsed equally suddenly, partly because of the shrewdness and
courage of King Richard II, who promptly went back on his promises as soon as the rebels had dispersed.
Although the movement failed, it was for the first time that the poor peasant had fought for the basic right of
freedom; there was very little looting in the Revolt. There is a brief reference to it in The Nun’s Priests’s
Tale, which you will be studying in this course.
Check Your Progress 1
(i) Describe the effect of the Hundred Years’ war on 14th century life.
(ii) What do you understand by the Black Death?
1.3.2 Cultural Background
We get to know a lot about the cultural background from Chaucer’s works. Chaucer divides society into
the three conventional estates-the knight (nobility), the working man (the third estate) and the ecclesiastic
(the church). The fact that he leaves out the two extremes of aristocracy and serfdom suggests a deliberate
choice of a bourgeois perspective: he observes society mainly through the eyes of the rising middle classes.
At the same time, his irony is also directed at them. This technique enables him to capture the old and the
new in his time with rare subtlety. He begins The Canterbury Tales fairly high in the ecclesiastical hierarchy
with the Prioress and the Monk, then come the Friar and the Nun’s Priest or Chaplain, then the Parson and
the Clerk, then the Summoner and the Pardoner.
Perhaps no other element in Chaucer’s world brings out the gap between the ideal and the actual as the
code of chivalry and the conventions of courtly love. From the earliest age of chivalry, chroniclers and
observers have pointed out so many inconsistencies and corruptions that one is left to question the entire
social code. Despite the values of moderation, magnanimity and protection of the weak, the chivalric ideal
presupposed a society where serfs outnumbered freemen. The code did reach a high point in the first half of
the thirteenth century. But even here the decay began soon enough, caused by the decline in crusading zeal
and by the rising wealth of the merchant classes. Instead of fighting the infidel for the possession of the
Holy Land, Christians either fought among themselves or led a life of pleasure. The rich citizens brought
much material comfort but their wealth weakened the feudal aristocracy: they began to buy for themselves

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the ranks of knighthood. In the Hundred Years’ war, the knights made themselves suddenly rich by looting
efficiently; certainly, the custom of ransoming prisoners brought a commercial element into knightly life.
The real trouble between Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Hotspur begins, we may briefly note, with the ransoming
of prisoners.
Marriages were negotiated with great haste on purely commercial motives; this was also the reason for
the many child-marriages. A woman could inherit property but in order to defend it she needed a husband.
Divorce was easy, though only for rich people who were scheming for larger inheritance. The idealized
woman of courtly love who was put on a pedestal to be worshipped by the knight, contrasts violently with
the widespread practice of beating wives, sisters and daughters.
Perhaps the idealization was the natural outcome of the unbearable harshness of actuality. There being
little privacy in the medieval castle, and women being debarred from the masculine recreations of physical
exercise, drinking and war, they were confined to an intolerable boredom that often encouraged furtive
debauchery. Since marriage was inimical to romantic love, illicit love was idealized in the courtly convention.
This fact is evident in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. Although Criseyde can marry as a young widow, her
love with Troilus begins and ends in secret. Even when Troilus comes to know that Criseyde is to be handed
over to the Greek camp in exchange for the Trojan prince Antenor, he does not make public their love. That
would have at once made them man and wife.
1.3.3 Intellectual Background
The intellectual milieu of Chaucer was ultimately controlled by a religious vision common to medieval
culture. It is of course to be found in the Retractation at the end of The Canterbury Tales, where the poet
prays that his sin of writing secular and courtly literature may be forgiven. Similarly, gentilesse or nobility
and courtly love acquire a deep spiritual content. This is hardly surprising since the Christian church played
a central role in the life of the people, and the parish priest, even more than the passing friar, was the chief
instructor.
Astrology and medicine were closely related in Chaucer’s world. Each of the twelve signs of the zodiac
was thought to control a different part of the human body. Moreover, the physical characteristics and nature
of each person were determined by his horoscope at birth. This gave rise to the four medieval ‘humours.’
Physicians treating a patient would first cast his horoscope; then combining this with the positions of the
stars when the illness began and when the doctor paid his visit, they would attempt to heal. Related to
astrology was the pseudo-science of alchemy. Chaucer’s yeoman in The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
knowledgeably refers to the four spirits and seven bodies.
Chaucer’s doctor refers to many learned authorities on medicine. The human body was believed to have
four fluids or ‘humours’ of which one would always predominate. If blood was predominant, we would
have a ‘sanguine’ person; if phlegm, a ‘phlegmatic’ person, if choler, a choleric person and if black bile, a
‘melancholic’ person. Chaucer’s Reeve is choleric, Franklin melancholic. Humours determined temperament
and physical make-up, and the latter was also shaped by the stars.
Another medieval science in which Chaucer had an interest was the science of dreams. Here, his source,
Macrobius’ commentary on The Dream of Scipio, lists five types of dream: the Somnium, the visio, the
oraculum, the insomnium, the phantasma or visium. The somnium is a dream requiring symbolic interpretation
by an expert. The visio reveals a coming event exactly as it will be. In the oraculum a spirit or relative or an
important person appears to the dreamer and announces what is to happen. By contrast to these prophetic
dreams, the insomnium and the phantasma indicate nothing apart from the dreamer’s physical state. The
former may be produced by fear or worry or digestive disturbances; the latter is a kind of delusion.
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 The cosmos of the middle Ages was providentially ordered and harmonious. The earth was the point-
sized centre of a system of crystalline concentric spheres for the planets to go around. This Ptolemaic,
geocentric model was displaced in the Renaissance by the Copernican heliocentric (sun at the centre) universe.
But in the Middle Ages it was held together by Gods’ love, which controlled all the cycles of seasons, tides,
birth and death. According to medieval belief, the stars as agents of Destiny combined with Fortune as
powerful influences on human life. Of course, God’s providence worked in everything, although men could
not grasp its ways.
1.3.4 Literary Background
The Middle Ages are usually held to begin in England with the Norman Conquest (1066-87) and end
with the Reformation (1533-59). In terms of the literary output, this time-span could be divided into three
periods. In the first period, up to 1250, religious writings predominate, in the second (1250-1350), romances.
In the third period we have Chaucer, Langland, Gower.
All medieval literature offers a sharp contrast to modern literature in its impersonality, religious feeling
and didactic content. Much of this literature is in fact anonymous, and the conditions of publishing and
book reproduction (before the printing press) give it a communal character. The medieval author also did
not place value on originality as we now understand it: an old and authoritative source only heightened the
appeal of literature.
The fertility and variety of literature around Chaucer’s time ? romance, lyric, drama, mystical meditation
are evident also in the alliterative revival of the fourteenth century. This meant primarily the revival of the
old four-beat alliterative measure of old English poetry, of Beowulf, for instance. The twenty odd poems
written in this older metre in Middle English mostly came form the north and the north-west of England,
although Piers Plowman originated in the west Midlands. From the west also came four poems in the north-
western dialect contained in a single manuscript. Originally untitled, they are now identified in the order in
which they appear, as Pear, Purity, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
As a mature poet Chaucer was able to combine the courtly and bourgeois conventions of literature. The
aristocratic, secularized literature, imported from twelfth-century France, is built around the themes of courtly
love, courtesy and chivalry.
Allegory was a distinctive technique of medieval literature common to courtly romance, alliterative
satire and the Miracles and Moralities. A human figure may stand for a vice (Gluttony, Lechery, Idleness
and so on in the Seven Deadly Sins) or for an institution like the Church, a thing like a pearl can mean purity
and so on. In Chaucer’s Nuns’ Priest’s Tale or Parliament of Fowls, animals represent in secular allegories,
human beings or social classes. The allegorical habit began perhaps from interpreting the Bible for a wide
variety of people: this produced the many levels of meaning. Gradually, the literal meaning became a kind
of disguise which had to be removed in order to reveal the higher meaning.
The courtly style learnt to include within it its opposite, the realistic style. Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
and The Canterbury Tales represent this amalgam between the realistic style and can be related to the
emergence of the new middle classes. Its commonest genre is the fabliau, the short, humorous verse tale
often marked by coarseness; others include the mime, the beast epic, the fable and so on. The fabliau is
characterized by a certain animal vitality and grotesque exaggeration: it is impolite, irreverent, often vulgar
and obscene. The fabliau setting is economical and precise.

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 Check Your Progress 2
(i) What were the four ‘humours’ that were present in the human body?
(ii) What were the supposed effects of these ‘humours’?
1.4 LIFE OF CHAUCER
Although not much is known of Chaucer’s life, official records give us a good idea of his public career.
He was born about 1343-44 to John and Agnes Chaucer in London. The name Chaucer (French ‘Chaussier’)
suggests that they were a shoe-making family, but his immediate ancestors were prosperous wine-merchants
with some standing at court. Beginning as a page in the household of Prince Lionel and Elizabeth, Countess
of Ulster, Chaucer went to France in the English army, was taken prisoner near Reims and ransomed. He
seems to have risen to the service of the king, undertaking a series of diplomatic missions for ten years
which exposed him to Continental culture. He was married probably in 1366 to Philippa, daughter of Sir
Payne Roet and sister of Katherine Swynford, afterwards the third wife of John of Gaunt. From 1 December
1372 till 23 May 1373, he was once more on the Continent, his first Italian journey. This visit which took
him from Genoa to Florence had a decisive influence on him. Florence was already a centre of art, architecture
and literature; it brought him into contact with the writing of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. In other
words, the Italian journey took him from the Middle Ages to the threshold of the Renaissance.
Shortly before going to Italy, Chaucer wrote The Book of the Duchess, an elegy on the death of Blanche,
the wife of John of Gaunt. His important connections made him in 1374 controller of the Customs and
Subsidy on wool, skins, and hides in the port of London. After some fluctuation of fortune, in 1389, when
Richard II asserted his position, Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the King’s Works, in charge of the upkeep
of the royal buildings. When he lost his Clerkship he again went through financial uncertainties until the
new King Henry IV gave him an annuity of 40 marks. But the poet died soon after, in 1400.
From this brief sketch it is clear that, despite the cultivated ironic image of himself as a dreamer withdrawn
among his books (as, say, in The Hous of Fame), Chaucer was an active man of affairs, mixing freely in
government and courtly circles.
1.5 CHAUCER’S LITERARY OUTPUT
Chaucer’s early work is often referred to as his ‘French” period because of the influence of some
contemporary French poets like Deschamps and Froissart. His ‘Italian’ period begins with The Hous of
Fame. Without rejecting the French and Italian elements, Chaucer enters his ‘English’ period with Troilus
and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales.
1.5.1 French Period
The Roman de la Rose (or The Romance of the Rose is Chaucer’s incomplete translation) was the most
popular and influential of all French poems in the Middle Ages and marks the new taste for dreams and
allegories.
The earliest of Chaucer’s original poems of any length is The Book of the Duchess. We have already seen
why Chaucer wrote the elegy. For this poem, he mainly drew upon the poetry of Guillaume Machaut. It is
both an eulogy (formal praise) of Blanche and a consolation addressed to her bereaved husband. Chaucer
accomplishes this double purpose by adapting the love-vision poem to the elegy.

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 1.5.2 Italian Period
Ten years later he wrote another long poem, The Hous of Fame. In the interim period he had been to Italy
and his reading of Dante probably gave him the idea of a journey to unknown regions. In the poetic
development of Chaucer, this poem has a transitional role. Chaucer draws upon Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid and
other medieval Latin writers. The work lacks homogeneity partly because the centre of interest shifts from
love to the uncertainties of fame. The poem is in three books. In the first book, the poet dreams that he is in
the temple of Venus where the love-story of Dido and Aeneas is related. As he steps out, a huge golden eagle
seizes him and carries him to the House of Fame where we are promised but never told the tidings of loves
folk. Do they refer to the marriage of Richard and Anne or the expected betrothal of Philippa, the daughter
of John of Gaunt? What stands out in the poem is the eagle’s flight in Book II: the poet’s speechless terror
contrasts comically with the friendly talkativeness of the eagle who anticipates the Chaunticleer of Nun’s
Priest’s Tale.
In The Parliament of Fowls, we find that the poet has been reading lately a famous work, the Somnium
Scipionis. In this work, the elder Africanus appears to Scipio the younger in a dream, takes him up into the
heavens, where he shows him the mysteries of the future life.
The Parliament is a work of freshness and assimilation. The work may be an allegory on the betrothal of
Richard II to Anne of Bohemia in 1381; the rival suitors were Friedrich of Mejssen and Charles VI of
France. Other allegories have been suggested. But the poem’s appeal is independent of allegory. While the
lovers’ contest or the parliament of birds is conventional, the social and political satire is a new element. In
contrast to the rival eagles, the other classes of birds ? worm-fowl, water-fowl, seed-fowl-clearly represent
the humbler ranks of human society, and their discontent seems to allude to the Peasants’ Revolt. While the
high-born suitors expound idealized courtly love, some of the lower representatives have little respect for it.
The detached and dramatic presentation of opposed values and points of views looks forward to The
Canterbury Tales.
Around this time, in the early eighties, Chaucer translated the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius.
The popularity of this philosophical work is proved by the fact that in England alone, King Alfred had
translated it and centuries later, Queen Elizabeth undertook another translation.
In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer reaches a stylistic culmination, or he finally finds his distinctive narrative
style, characterization and verse form. Only the Knight’s Tale can compare with the sustained narration of
Troilus. The immediate sources of both poems are in Boccaccio and both re-work material from the ancient
cycles of romance.
Troilus remains the ideal courtly lover. Criseyde is also a truly complex character, even contradictory in
her motives. Her love is sincere and she has a mind of her own, taking her own decisions. But tender
passion cannot cloud her unsentimental and practical intelligence without which a woman may not be able
to survive. She is somewhat skeptical and disillusioned, a type portrayed again in Pertelote of the Nun’s
Priest’s Tale.
1.5.3 English Period
Although The Canterbury Tales is Chaucer’s most mature work, it includes some of his earlier writings.
The plan of the tales was probably adopted soon after 1386, and the General Prologue composed in 1387.
Chaucer may have himself taken part in a pilgrimage in April of that year because of the illness of his wife,
Philippe, who probably died soon after. Instead of the original plan of 120 tales, only 24 are told of which

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two are interrupted before the end and two broken off soon after they begin. The group of pilgrims includes
a wide cross-section of English society: a knight and a squire (his son), professional men like the doctor and
the lawyer, a merchant, a shipman, various representatives of the religious orders like the prioress, the
monk, the friar, the parson, a substantial farmer, a miller, a reeve, a cook, several craftsmen, and so on.
1.6 CANTERBURY TALES: MIRROR OF MEDIEVAL SOCIETY
As it has been said, The Canterbury Tales is a veritable anthology of medieval literature. Chaucer’s idea
of the pilgrimage as a narrative framework enables him to bring together the widest possible cross-section of
medieval society. What binds these ‘sundry folk,’ this motley crowd, is what gives unity to a heterogeneous
variety: the pilgrimage easily relates the material with the spiritual, the mundane with the religious. It also
gives the Tales a dramatic power, especially in the comments, exchanges and jibes that enact ongoing social
relationships in a microcosm. Of course, the secular and clerical aristocracy is left out as they would not
have mingled with Chaucer’s company. Similarly, the real poor are excluded as they would not be able to go
on such a pilgrimage. It offers a comic pageant of fourteenth century life with the pilgrims revealing their
habits, moods and private lives indirectly through the stories they tell.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s “General Prologue” presents a highly realistic representation of society during the
14th century. The change that was taking place in values, and the behaviour of the people is vividly depicted,
leading to genuine concern for the state of society as a whole. Based loosely on the form of estates satire,
which was traditionally used by medieval satirists in their criticism of society, Chaucer’s “General Prologue”
conveys the manifestation of deceit, corruption, and the growing tendency to sin. During a time when the
Church was the institution with the greatest influence over the people, the questions of morality is certainly
brought to the forefront. Society is continually compared against the strict ideals of the Church, which
results in criticism of those who ignore its moral superiority. However such criticism is also aimed at many
of the Church’s own representatives, which complicates the matter.
In Chaucer’s “General Prologue”, it is the feudal system that dominates our first impressions. There is a
clear acceptance of hierarchy, and the ordering of the portraits is mainly one of descending social class.
However, there is often a blurring of distinctions, due to the emergence of the middle-class, and tradesmen
such as the merchant, who continuously comments on “th’encrees of his wynnyng”. It is this particular
structure that divides humanity into groups, enabling Chaucer to study its individuals. The Knight is the
first to be mentioned, followed by the Squire and the Knight’s Yeoman. These are followed by the Prioress,
(and her nun and three priests), the Monk and the Friar. Next comes the Merchant, the Clerk, the Sergeant
(Man) of Law, the Franklin, Haberdasher, Carpenter, Arras-maker, Dyer and Weaver. These are then followed
by the Cook, Shipman, Physician, Wife of Bath, Parson, Plowman and the Miller. Finally, Chaucer lists the
Manciple, Reeve, Summoner and Pardoner.
The Canterbury Tales has earned ageless fame for the brilliant cavalcade of human types that it presents
to the reader. Though the work is mainly a series of tales, Chaucer’s subtle art has woven into the fabric of
this work, unforgettable portraits of men and women drawn from the various walks of society of Chaucer’s
time. In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer has concerned himself with presenting a crowd of people as they
would have actually lived and acted in his own time near his own hometown London. To bring thirty people
together from various walks of life and put them together, journeying, talking quarreling and telling tales on
their way to Canterbury was a particularly happy idea which gave to English Literature one of the greatest
social comedies of the later Middle Ages.

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 The tales have come down to us in a series of fragments in manuscripts of which the Ellesmere manuscript
is the basis for modern editions. Fragment I, contains The General Prolgue, The Knight’s Tale and the tales
of the Miller, the Reeve and the Cook. Fragment II, contains The Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale which
presents the adventures of Constance, a kind of allegorical figure of fortitude. The tale shows Chaucer’s
legal knowledge. In Fragment III, we have The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale followed by the tales, both
fabliaux, of the Friar and the Summoner. The fourth fragment contains The Clerk’s Tale and The Merchant’s
Tale. In Fragment V we have The Squire’s Tale which tells a story of adventure and enchantment in a distant
land. The fragment also has The Franklin’s Tale.
Fragment VI contains The Physician’s Tale and The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale. The former tells an
old Roman story taken from the Roman de la Rose with a long digression on the character and education of
young girls. The Pardoner’s memorable tale embodies in it as an illustrative example, the old story of the
three revelers who discover death in a heap of gold. In Fragment VII we have The Shipman’s Tale, a popular
fabliau about a merchant being cheated of his wife’s favours and his money by a monk. The Prioress’s Tale
which follows is marked by elegant religious devotion, although the story about a schoolboy murdered by
the Jews, betrays Christian bigotry. The Rime of Sir Thopas is a literary and social satire on the average
popular romance, especially involving the bourgeois intruders into chivalry and knighthood in Flanders.
Chaucer’s following prose tale, The Tale of Melibee, seems to be full of dull moral instruction but the Host,
who found the former boring, is enthusiastic. When the Host requests a jovial hunting tale from the Monk
in keeping with his character, the latter relates (The Monk’s Tale) a series of boring tragedies, that is, in the
usual medieval sense, tales of the fall of fortunate men.
The next story, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, is one of Chaucer’s best. Here we have a character, not sketched
in the General Prologue, being brought out vividly through the tale itself. The beast-fable tells the familiar
incident of the cock, seized by a fox, escaping by tempting his captor to open his mouth to speak. Fragment
VIII contains The Second Nun’s Tale and The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale. Like the Prioress, the second nun
relates a Christian legend of the life of the famous Roman martyr, St. Cecilia. The Canon’s Yeoman tells a
contemporary anecdote of an alchemist trickster (possibly the Canon himself). The Yeoman and his master
had overtaken the pilgrims after a mad gallop, but as soon as the Canon fears exposure in the tale, he runs
away. In Fragment IX we have The Manciple’s Prologue and Tale. The subject of the story is the tell-tale
bird, famous in popular tradition, in the romance of the Seven Sages, as also in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The
final fragment contains The Parson’s Prologue and Tale and Chaucer’s Retractation. The Parson delivers a
long prose discourse on the Seven Deadly Sins. This is followed by Chaucer’s repudiation of all his writings
on the vanity of romantic love, sparing only his religious and philosophical work.
We also come across vivid descriptions of the different orders of society and the use of physical and
temperamental characteristics to classify men and women. But they are so vividly imagined and individualized
that scholars have searched for real life parallels of sources. Small but closely observed details and peculiarities
of dress, physiognomy, speech and so on make the portraits come alive. Chaucer’s pilgrims are equally
representative of social groups and professions. These figures are generalised through typical features of
character and conduct: the gentle knight, the corrupt Friar, the hypocritical Pardoner. Even their dress,
appearance and physiognomy have a typical quality. In a large number of cases, a pilgrim described in the
General Prologue relates a tale in keeping with his character and calling.

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 Check Your Progress 3
(i) What purpose was served by the idea of having a pilgrimage as a framework for the tales?
1.7 SUMMARY
In this lesson you have learnt about the age in which Chaucer lived and worked. You learnt about the
lives and values of the people of that age. We also told you about Chaucer’s life and his poetic works with
special reference to his most famous work-The Canterbury Tales.
1.8 GLOSSARY
Annuities - a fixed sum of money paid to someone each year, typically for the rest of their life.
Cosmology - the science of the origin and development of the universe.
Ecclesiastical - relating to the Christian Church
Friar - a member of any of certain religious orders of men, especially the four mendicant
orders (Augustinians, Carmelites, Dominicans, and Franciscans).
Mercantile - relating to trade or commerce
Parson - any member of the clergy
Ptolemaic - relating to the Greek astronomer Ptolemy or his theories.
Physiognomy - a person’s facial features or expression, especially when regarded as indicative of
character or ethnic origin.
Summoner - One who summons or evokes, particularly in legal contexts.
1.9 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
(1) Comment on Chaucer’s Prologue as a paired of fourteenth century society.
(2) Write a note on Chaucer’s Historical and literary background.
1.10 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Answer 1:
(i) The old code of chivalry changed. Democratic forces on the battlefield emerged. Various classes
became prosperous.
(ii) Black Death was a deadly form of the bubonic plague carried by black rats.
Answer 2:
(i) The four humours were the four fluids present in the human body of which one could be predominant
which in turn would effect the temperament and physical make up of the person.
(ii)The humour’s would effect the temperament of the person.
Answer 3:
(i) The pilgrimage framework enabled Chaucer to bring together a wide cross-section of people,
which represented medieval society.
1.11 SUGGESTED READINGS
(i) Cohhill, Neirll. “The Poet Chaucer”.
(ii) French, R.D. “A Chaucher Handbook”.
*****
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 LESSON-2
PROLOGUE TO THE CANTERBURY TALE
STRUCTURE
2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.2 OBJECTIVES
2.3 OPENING LINES OF THE PROLOGUE
2.4 THE VARIOUS CHARACTERS
2.5 THE CONCLUDING SECTION OF THE PROLOGUE
2.6 HUMOUR AND IRONY
2.7 LANGUAGE AND VERSIFICATION
2.8 AS AN ALLEGORY
2.9 SUMMARY
2.10 GLOSSARY
2.11 TERMINAL QUESTIONS.
2.12 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
2.13 SUGGESTED READINGS
2.1 INTRODUCTION
The Prologue is Chaucer’s own introduction to his Canterbury Tales, a series of tales told in a
dramatic setting. The dramatic setting is that of a pilgrimage in which are gathered men and women from
different walks of life, in England during Chaucer’s lifetime. Chaucer’s primary purpose is to tell a series of
tales but in order to make the telling as dramatic as possible; he puts them in the mouth of several characters.
These characters interact among themselves. This point will be clear to you if you read some of the tales, and
compare them with the character of the people who tell them.
The Prologue is a primary character sketch of these people. In this part of the Canterbury Tales,
Chaucer not only tells us who the people were in the company, he sometimes even names them. Also through
a subtle and deliberate art of characterization, he sets up each as a character by himself, barring some whom
he describes collectively, for example, the guildsmen, and some whom apparently he had no time to describe,
for example the “Priests thre” and the Nun who were in the train of the prioress.
The work has been called by many as a veritable portrait gallery of the Middle Ages. The pilgrims
are so felicitously and so vividly described by Chaucer that they stand out almost as living personages. The
pilgrims are an intensely alive group and communicate with us in living languages from a bygone era. As a
critic has remarked, they are timeless creations on a time bound stage.
For the students of literary history, the outstanding achievement of the Prologue is that through it
Chaucer succeeds in giving almost the whole panorama of the late medieval society. Except for the very top
and the very bottom, namely the royalty and the serfs, almost every other member of the medieval social
hierarchy has been represented in the Prologue.
Now let us take up the Prologue line by line.
2.2 OBJECTIVES
In the previous lesson we spoke to you about the life and times of Chaucer. We also gave you a brief
overview of the Canterbury Tales. In this lesson we would be concentrating on the Prologue to the Canterbury
Tales. Our aim would be to give you a detailed analysis of the Prologue and also provide you with a paraphrase
and annotation of most of it. This would help you in understanding Chaucer’s skill of characterization and
social commentary as well as his ironic tone.
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2.3 OPENING LINES OF THE PROLOGUE
The opening lines of the Prologue deal necessarily with the spiritual journey which caters to the
upliftment of the soul and, rebirth of the spirit as nature pours its regenerative sap into the world. It talks of
the whole landscape emerging into life. Each and every part of nature seems to throb and pulsate with life.
The soft breeze, the young sun, the birds, even the flowers that sleep with the eyes open seem to be responding
to spring. Perhaps the most obvious device seen in the prologue is personification. This is more a medieval
habit of mind than a literary device as there is a natural tendency in medieval art to embody abstract principles,
to allegorize
2.4 THE VARIOUS CHARACTERS
Chaucer’s outstanding technique is to bring each character alive by a few deft touches. Each portrait
is delineated in three major aspects: (1) description of the physical appearance, which is often regarded by
Chaucer to be a reflection of the character, (2) description of the clothes the subject is wearing, which
indicate his social status, and also his taste and predilections, and (3) the inclusion in the portrait of some
strikingly individual characteristics.
The Knight is the first pilgrim that Chaucer describes. The Knight represents the ideal of a medieval
Christian man-at-arms. He has participated in no less than fifteen of the great crusades of his era. He is
brave, experienced, prudent and worthy. The Knight has spent a long time away from home campaigning.
Chaucer has portrayed him as a person who is both a warrior and a pilgrim and as one who has put his duty
before reward and external appearance. We see the Knight as an ideal character, a defender of Christian
chivalric values, brave, modest and soft spoken.
A Squire is supposedly an apprentice whose main calling is to accompany the master. Now in this
case, the Squire happens to be the Knight’s son, so he has to be endowed with a youthfully handsome
demeanour and shown to be fond of dancing and courting. The sober achievements of the father have to be
balanced against the light hearted potential of the Squire. To borrow an expression from the poem, with his
“locks Cruller”, the Squire here typifies the hero in courtly romances. His manifold endearing skills become
even more admirable when his humanity along with his sense of duty towards the father are so reflected that
they make him even more, lovable. He is described as:
Embrouded was he, as it were a meede
Al ful of fresshe floures, white and reede.
He is delightfully embroidered, the flowers significant in their colours: white for purity, red for
passion. All the exuberant and joyous energy of the “lusty bachelor” serving out his probation for knighthood
is summed up in that superbly evocative line: “He was as fresh as is the month of May”. Chaucer has
described in this portrait a natural vital energy that is directed and aware of social and filial obligations:
Curteis he was, lowely, and servisable,
And carf biforn his fader at the table
Just as the Squire could be both a hero as well as a keeper to his master, the Yeoman too was both a
servant and a forester. In times of war and travel he looked after the Knight and during peace times he
protected the deer in the royal forests. Chaucer builds up the characterization of the Yeoman by using
significant details. Thus the usage of green colour, the close-cropped head, the sun burnt face, the
appropriateness of the description of his equipment i.e. “mighty bowe”, decorated wrist guard, finely mounted
dagger etc. are all helpful in conveying, a very clear visual impression of the man’s appearance and his
nature of profession.

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 The Prioress is described as modest and quiet. This Prioress (a nun who is head of her convent)
aspires to have exquisite taste. Her table manners are dainty, she knows French (though not the French of the
court), she dresses well, and she is charitable and compassionate. Much of the first part of the description of
the Prioress is gentle comment. But the fascinating thing is to see how Chaucer establishes the norm and
how he uses both the narrator and his own attitude to create patterns of judgment. Her dubious name of
“Madame Eglantine” with its associations with heroines in courtly romances and the fact that she, as Prioress,
should not be on a pilgrimage begins to suggest some “duality” in character. An interesting point to be noted
in the characterization of the Prioress is the fact that while there is a sort of straightforward endorsement
from the complaisant narrator, the same becomes a strong irony from Chaucer the poet. Thus while the
narrator is defending the harmless nature of her oath, Chaucer knows that the audience are aware that the
Prioress should not swear at all. While the narrator admires her charitable and pitying nature the audience is
made aware of its total misdirection towards animals. Thus in the characterization of the Prioress, the technique
of putting across a seemingly straightforward commendation and then immediately undercutting it by a line
to alter the impression, has been very subtly and finely used. The same type of subtleties can be noticed in
the description of the Prioress’s physical attributes also. The medieval reader may consider her broad forehead,
shapely nose and her soft mouth as signs of a worldly, rather than spiritual nature, but Chaucer finishes the
description by drawing our attention to the symbolically decorated rosary. The predicament of the Prioress,
who may be misplaced but is not evil, has been established very subtly and in a very compassionate manner.
The motto of the broach-love conquers all-presents the delicate balance between Carnal versus. Divine love
and which Chaucer wishes to interpret in a manner where the character is depicted in a balanced way
without any suggestion of any sort of banality.
The ambiguity of the human and divine love as embodied in the Prioress’s broach is evident in the
Monk’s love-knot used to fasten his hood. This Monk does not adhere to the rules of Saint Augustine or
Saint Benedict: He is in total defiance of rules and regulations and prides himself as a self indulgent man,
‘therefore he was a ‘prikasor aright. When the Monk is portrayed as a man to whom the bridle of a horse
seems more significant than the sound of the Chapel bell, the unsavory fact of the growing tension, between
the Church as a political institution and the Church as a divine instrument of Salvation, at once comes to the
mind. Chaucer’s Monk is established as an ‘outrider’ whose attention is more fixed on administrative rather
than spiritual concerns. He takes pleasure in the new world of wealth, luxury and pleasure. Thus we see that
Daun Pier’s vitality and healthy appetite for life are truly suggestive of a world which is slowly changing
from a medieval one to a hitherto unknown world where social and ideological transformations are creeping
in. The Monk’s defiant and amoral energy is concentrated in his eyes, indicating a psychological and social
tendency towards disorder.
In the likeness of the Monk, the Friar, or the limiter i.e. licensed to beg within a certain limit, also
expresses a new kind of power through his eyes. Chaucer’s Friar, Hubert, is an example of the corruption of
the mendicant orders. His soft white neck and habit of lisping are signs of lechery. Chaucer’s criticism of the
Friar surpasses that of the Prioress and the Monk. The latter two may have shifted from ordained practice
but in the case of the former, Chaucer takes the criticism to a different level. There is a fundamental evil at
the core of the Friar. And what makes this evil even worse is that it has been made so plausible, that the evil-
doer is made to look ‘worthy’. The Friar thus is depicted as a depraved man, full of arrogance which,
ironically disappears the moment there is a chance to make money.

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 The Merchant is part of a powerful and wealthy class in Chaucer’s society. The Merchants belonged
to two groups: i.e. Merchant Adventurers importing English cloth into foreign cities and Merchants of the
staple who exported English wool abroad. The Merchant’s attire consisting of his beaver hat and expensive
boots enhances his position and status. Although depicted as a ‘worthy’ man, he is pompous, boring and
creates an illusion of affluence with his skilful and devious financial dealings. The ‘bargains’ and
“chevissounce”, refer to devices which enabled financiers to overcome the strict laws against money-lending,
for profit. The Merchant’s highly irregular financial transactions can be spotted by Chaucer’s audience and
it becomes clear to them that he is a self-obsessed man whose only aim in life is to see that his trade of
export-import is flourishing at all costs.
Chaucer depicts the Clerk in a thoroughly transparent manner, with no false front and no false
facades. Just as the Knight demonstrates Christian virtues in chivalry, the Clerk embodies the Christian
values in learning. His clothes are threadbare, he has no “gold in coffer”, and his hollow cheeks and skinny
horse make him a total contrast to characters like the Monk and the Friar. But this character heeds the voice
of authority in his studies of Aristotle and his philosophy. He does not hesitate to pay back his beneficiaries
who finance his studies by praying for their souls. He, therefore, comes out as an open and selfless character
in total contrast to the deceptive Merchant and Sergeant of the Law. He is nowhere near the excessive
indulgence of the Franklin, the pretentious concerns of the Guildsmen or the financial exploitation of
knowledge as practiced by the Doctor of Physic. The clerk’s portrait shows that unworldliness kept him
poor, but his erudition gave him great happiness within and makes him an embodiment of Christian virtuosity.
The Sergeant of the Law - a successful lawyer has been commissioned by the King. He upholds justice in
matters large and small and knows every statute of England’s law by heart. Once again in this character, we
find the faint reflection of a weakening feudal system. It was seen that many times a buyer of land was not
the client but this sergeant himself who then would fit himself neatly into the group of professionals who
were lining their own pockets, climbing through the social strata towards the status of landed gentry. Land
purchase was easy money and such was his skill that he managed to secure unrestricted rights and absolute
possession. Chaucer’s praise of his knowledge and wisdom is somewhat ironic, for the lawyer put on an air
of being busier than he actually was.
‘No wher so bisy a man as he ther nas,
And yet he semed bisier than he was.’
and this gap between appearance and reality is perhaps the key to the characterization.
Franklin denotes a “freeman” and in Chaucer’s society a Franklin was neither a vassal serving a
lord nor a member of the nobility. He, at one time, held important offices, presided at sessions, of the justices
of peace and had been a Member of Parliament. This particular Franklin is a connoisseur of food, a famous
epicure taking great delight in food and wine. His table remains laid and ready for food all day. His menu
changed according to the seasons of the year. In short, this Franklin was renowned for his prodigious hospitality
and his dress was indicative of the gentry class. He can be called a medieval forerunner to the country
squire.
The five Guildsmen belonged to different trades but wore the livery of a single social and religious
guild which would protect their well being. They had the requisite property. Chaucer uses them as an
opportunity to present the nouveaux riches, with their social aspirations and self conscious taste. Their
wives were also equally ambitious but the social gap between these ladies and the royalty makes their
aspirations openly ridiculous.

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 Perhaps as a mark of status, the Guildesmen brought their own Cook with them. No doubt he is
professionally competent, but he is shown to be unhygienic and unscrupulous. Apart from the sore on his
chin which makes him not exactly likeable, his unhygienic habits and sometimes serving contaminated food
go against him.
Chaucer’s Shipman seems to have been based on a real person-a certain Peter Risslenden. The
shipman is proficient as a seaman but very inept on a horse. The Shipman can be balanced against the
Yeoman. Both are deeply tanned by the elements and are craftsmen in their way, the essential difference
being the quiet competence of the Yeoman and the blatant lack of scruples shown by the Shipman. He would
tap the wine-casks in mid sea when seasickness had sent the merchant and his men to bed. The cask would
then be delivered half empty. He proved freely from the South to the North, from Spain to Sweden.
The Doctor of Physic is extremely proficient in his work but highly dubious in moral and spiritual
matters. He is rich, well dressed, knowledgeable in medieval medicine, but is dedicated to money. While the
Franklin may be “somewhat redeemed by his generosity, the doctor is a tight fisted old scrooge.” Compared
to the Shipman though both are similar in their disregard to others. The Doctor is ruthless in his greed to
enrich himself which makes him offensive. Chaucer, through this character, shows good knowledge of
medieval medicine. The Doctor’s method gives one a great insight into the medicinal practice. We see the
importance of choosing the most astrologically auspicious time for starting any treatment combined with
making charms that had astrological symbols engraved on them. The balance between the four elemental
qualities - hot, dry, cold and moist, was also taken into consideration to diagnose the disease.
The Wife of Bath is one of the most captivating figures and many of her characteristics could be
traced to the configuration and placement of the planets and zodiac signs. She has been given a will and
energy to be an avid traveler. She has a great sexual appetite and refuses to be dominated by men. She is
physically unattractive but nonetheless she could be a successor to the Amazonian heroic woman located
now in a middle class milieu where martial qualities are expressed in the domestic world of gender relations.
Everything about this woman is larger than life-her voice, her sexual experience, and her taste in clothes. It
may suggest a coarseness and vulgarity but with these there also exists a vitality and passion and experience.
The Parson’s portrait is an idealized one of what a good parish priest should be. The Parson is everything
that the other clerics are not. He fulfills himself through his duty to his flock. He is not the slightest bit
interested in advancement or money. If we compare him to the Knight, the Clerk or the Plowman, we find
that the Knight’s surrender of self to his faith, the Clerk s devotion to learning and the Plowman’s selfless
practical love for his neighbor, all find a righteous echo in the nature of the Parson. The central thrust of the
character is that he teaches by example. There is no separation between what he says and what he does. Holy
in thought and work, he is devoted to his pastoral responsibilities. Benign, patient and diligent, he takes part
in no idle pleasures. The Parson’s character appears to be the epitome of morality depicted in the poem and
comes out as the most virtuous of all.
The Plowman is the representative of the peasantry on whom the stability of the nation depended.
He is another idealized figure, a fitting brother to the Parson. Along with the Knight, the Clerk and the
Parson, he completes the idealized representation of the four estates. As these were times of social and
political unrest, the pious portrait of the Plowman could well be suggestive of a wish that all peasants were
as piously motivated as the Plowman. Along with the Parson, the Plowman stands as a beacon of light,
illuminating the landscape around him with his integrity and virtuosity. Dressed in the unfashionable tabard,
he led his life in perfect charity, unruffled by pain and pleasure, loving God and his neighbours. His sympathy
and empathy towards the poor peasants, who were in difficulty, and the desire to labour for any poor peasant
without payment, makes him a true representative of rustic life.
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 In the portrait of the Miller, we can trace Chaucer’s lively awareness of the cheating and frauds
practiced in his time. The readers can easily identify his aggressive, argumentative and lecherous type of
nature from the descriptions of his red-sparse beard, his flattened nose with its wide nostrils, the wart on his
nose and the mouth gaping like a furnace. He is totally indicative of a kind of coarseness.
The character of the Manciple is described entirely through his deeds. He bought provisions for a
college or an inn of court. The “heap of learned men” who employ this “lewed” Manciple, are cheated by
him easily and profitably. He belongs to a fast emerging milieu of society where native wit of these cheats
and deceptive people could be ironically described as wisdom. Chaucer finds it astonishing that the learned
lawyers could be easily fooled by the craftiness of the Manciple. It is as though Chaucer laments the fact that
for many the ideal is no longer honour but money.
The Miller’s devious dealings find a parallel bearing with the Reeve’s dubious ways. He too, like
the Miller and the Manciple, is a cheater of those he is out to serve. He is placed somewhere between a
steward and a bailiff in his management of his lord’s estates. His meticulous cheatings has brought him
riches and a fine house. He is certainly not one to achieve success through honourable means. He balances
his accounts in such a way that no one suspects him of embezzlement and he knows all the frauds that might
be practiced by the workmen. He is such a smart operator that he feels a sense of triumph in sending to the
master what in fact already belongs to him. These crafty ways in return earn him the master’s thanks and
accommodation.
The Summoner is in sinful camaraderie with the Reeve just as the Parson and Plowman are two
linked brothers in virtue. He is, as his name suggests someone appointed to call to ecclesiastical courts those
who had transgressed against the laws of the Church. The post offered considerable scope for corruption and
abuse of power. Every physical detail about the Summoner is disgusting. His ignorance and drunkenness
make him even more revoking. He knew the unsavory secrets of other people’s lives and is thus able to hold
the young men and women at his mercy, under control.
The Summoner’s special friend is the Pardoner. He is a seller of papal indulgences out of which
many were wholly unauthorized. They exploited the poor helpless and ignorant people and did greater harm
to their souls than even the Summoners. They sold indulgences without insisting on confession or repentance
and very frequently they pocketed the money given to Church in exchange for pardons. The Pardoners,
many a times abused their calling to such an extent that they sold bones and rags in the name of saints and
relics. The details of the Pardoner’s description are repelling. With his glaring, eyes and sexual ambivalence,
he seems to be spitting out his venom and disguising it as holiness. The ultimate irony is that such a loathsome
and immoral creature could be so convincing in Church. The subtle irony in the Summoner’s character is
that if he believed in Divine Judgment and Christ’s pardon, he should have know that it is he himself and not
the poor souls whom he is selling fake salvation to, who needs this pardon the most.
2.5 THE CONCLUDING SECTION
After giving us the character sketches Chaucer returns to the inn where all the pilgrims are staying.
They sit down to a meal presided over by the host Harry Bailly. He is one person whose voice we hear
directly. Chaucer uses the narrator to report what he has gleaned from the other travelers. And then it is
appropriate for the narrator to take his place with the other pilgrims. The Host is seen as being complementary
to the narrator. The host is endowed with coercive qualities. He is a robust and hearty person who can
suggest the idea of telling stories, intervene effectively and hold the framework together.

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Check Your Progress 1
(i) Why does the pilgrimage begin in Spring?
(ii) Name two portraits which Chaucer presents in an ironic manner.
(iii) Chaucer presents a few idealized portraits. Name two of them.
(iv) Who among the pilgrims are the most devious cheats?
2.6 HUMOUR AND IRONY
Humour is an essential ingredient of Chaucer’s poetry and the back-bone of the Prologue and the
Canterbury Tales. All the characters in The Prologue have been humorously described. Humour, in fact,
makes Chaucer’s characterization distinct. A humorist is one who is quick to perceive the funny side of
things and who has the capacity to laugh and makes others laugh at what is absurd or ridiculous or incongruous.
Chaucer is called the first humorist of English literature. No English literary work before him reveals
humour in the modern sense. And Chaucer is a greater humorist than Boccaccio. Chaucer’s humour is
consistent, all pervasive and intense as we find in. Shakespeare’s plays. He paints all the characters in The
Prologue in a humorous manner. The Knight is as gentle as a maid; the Squire is too sentimental in his love
to sleep at night; the Friar has relations with the bar-maids instead of the poor; the Parson is too innocent and
Clerk is too studious. Chaucer even does not spare himself and says:
“My wit is short, ye may well understand”
His humour has refined and sophisticated touches and it does not offend anybody. For example,
when he tells us that the Prioress is so amiable and pleasant in her manners that she takes pains to imitate the
manners of the court, we cannot know whether he is praising her or laughing at her affection:
And full pleasant and amiable of port;
And peyne hire to counterfete cheere
Of court, and been es ’ attich of manere,
But his humour is of the finest type. It is pleasant and sympathetic because he is a man of pleasant
temperament. He knows that every human being has one type of defect or another. He pinpoints the defect in
a light manner with a view to cure, not degrade the victims. His attitude is positive. So, when he says that the
Friar lisps a little out of affection and when he plays on a harp, his eyes twinkle in his head like sparkling
stars on a frosty night, we do not hate him or his affection, rather we just laugh at him at this weakness.
Chaucer’s humour is also tinged with pity. It makes us sensitive towards the weakness of his victims and we
start pitying them. For example, when he tells us that the Monk is more interested in riding, hunting and
other worldly pursuits than in religious activities we pity him and wish him better. It means that his humour
carries a sound message.
Chaucer’s humour is, of course, satirical but it is sugar coated. His purpose is to awaken the people
to the realities of life. His age was of romantic idealism and ‘people were blind to the realities of life. His
satire is not corrosive but gentle and mild. He is also not a zealous reformer. He satirizes only those characters
that cannot be reformed at any cost, e.g. the Summoner, and the Pardoner who are extremely corrupt. Here
he openly passes remarks about their dishonesty and corruption.
Most of the time, Chaucer’s humour takes the form of irony because it relieves the bitterness of
satire. For example, the use of the word “Worthy” for the most unworthy characters brings a tickling irony.
But for the “Worthy Knight, Chaucer employs a different sorts of irony. For example, after talking about the
bravery, skill, experience and grandeur of the Knight, he tells us that in his behaviour he is as gentle as a
maid and cannot harm anyone.

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 “And of his port as meeke as is a mayde”
For the Prioress, he points out that she bears on her breast the inscription amor vincit omnia. (Love
conquers all). But in her case, this love turns out to be much more fleshly and worldly than spiritual or
heavenly.
He creates irony by situation too. For example, he describes those qualities of the Monk, which are
not worthy of his religious rank i.e. he is a good rider and brave man.
A monk there was, a fair for the maistrie,
An outridere, that lovede venerie;
A manly man, to been an abbot able.
In this way, he creates an ironical situation, which makes us think since he is a Monk, he should not
do this. His actions are set in contrast with his situation as a Monk.
Similarly about the Friar, Chaucer says
“He knew the taverns well in all toun
And everich hostiler and tappestere
Bet than a lazar or a beggestere”
The ironic signal here is set in the contrast between what the Friar does and what everyone knows
his order is expected to do.
Chaucer’s humour is wide in range. It covers all kinds of humour from downright jokes to good-
natured strokes when he paints the physical appearances of characters. For example, he describes the Reeve:
Full longe were his legges and ful lene,
Y-lyk a staf, ther was no calf y-sene.
The Wife of Bath’s gaudy dress is obliquely commented upon and so is her quarrelsome nature. In
one of the best examples of mock pathos in the Prologue, Chaucer lays her sexual life completely bare:
She was a worthy woman all her life
husbands at the church door she ha five
not to speak of other companions in her youth
But he also immediately informs that “Three times she’d journeyed to Jerusalem”.
It is obvious that Chaucer’s intention is not solely ironical, but to a great extent humorous, always
having sympathy for the fallibility of human nature. While he describes the Miller’s animal-like coarseness
and dishonesty, he does add that,
“a bagpipe he could blow well. “
With the lesser ecclesiastical characters, Chaucer’s irony becomes sharper and more devastating
though he maintains a note of gentle humour, as befits his role as a good — humored and gracious observer.
This type of approach is foreshadowed in the portrait of the Monk. Although Chaucer outwardly pretends to
admire this earthly Monk’s lordly conduct of life, he mockingly dwells on his philosophy, which is opposed
to the Augustine’s rules for the conduct of the monkish life. Instead of spending his days in honest labour
farming and religious studies in the cloister.
He was pricasour aright
Grehoundes he hadde, as swift as fowel in flight.
With respect to the Friar, the Summoner and the Pardoner, Chaucer uses an even sharper irony and
exposes their greed, and downrightly rascality, although never losing his sense of humour, using irony rather
than invectives. The same potent irony exposes the greed and dishonesty of the Miller, Reeve and Manciple.
He also takes a few oblique shots at the Doctor of Physic’s unscrupulous love of money:
21
 Because gold in disease was Cordial.
Therefore he loved gold in special.
Another interesting creation of Chaucer’s humour is Harry Bailey, the shrewd inn-keeper, bursting
with good-humour and a zest for life.
A seemly man our host was with-all
For to has been a marshal in an halle
It is he who organizes the pilgrims into a group and sets up the plan of storytelling in which each
pilgrim would have a share.
In the description of the Shipman, he creates humour by incongruity when he says that he is a good
fellow because he steals wine and has no prick of conscience.
About the Sergeant of Law, he says,
“Nowher so bisy a man as he there was
And yet he semed bisier than he was. “
Chaucer was a secular writer whose attitude to life was based on the principle of a broad minded
acceptance. A large part of any narrator’s criteria for judging people is usually their success in social
relationship at a personal level; they are judged on pleasantness of appearance, charm of manner, social
accomplishments. But this does not apply to Chaucer who at all times seemed aware of the vices and abuses
of his times. He was conscious of all these and has pinpointed them in the poem, but in a manner which is
subtle and varied.
Check Your Progress 2
(i) What are the different shades of Chaucer’s irony?
(ii) What individualizes the portraits and what makes them typical?
2.7 LANGUAGE AND VERSIFICATION
Until the Norman Conquest in 1066, the prevalent language was Anglo-Saxon (or Old English), a
Germanic language; Latin was available for the clergy and a few highly-educated laymen.
With the Norman Conquest came an abrupt change with the imposition of Norman French as the
‘official’ language, the language of the court and courtly literature. It was only spoken by a minority, but it
affected everybody and meant that ‘English’ became a ‘submerged language for the over two centuries.
By the fourteenth century, things changed. During that century English re-emerged as the language
of the court, of law and of literature, but it was now greatly modified by the mixture of French elements and
by Latin from its long contact with the Church. In the second half of the century came a great flourishing of
English literature, encouraged by growing literacy and its recovered position as the prevalent language of
the country once again.
A separate strand emerged with the appearance of writers like Chaucer, courtly poets whose style
was a continental one based on metre and rhyme, and whose language was the ‘new’ English of London and
the court.
This ‘new’ English was very different from that of the previous poets, and its growing predominance
during the fifteenth century meant that the alliterative tradition faded. This new English led on in unbroken
succession to our modern English, and this is why Chaucer is the most accessible of all medieval poets for
us, and also why he is now most widely read. Indeed, for a long time he was the only major medieval poet
studied, which is why he is sometimes called the father of English poetry.

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 As the Middle Ages progressed, a gradual change took place. The monasteries acted as centres of
education and book-copying, and the extent of literacy and the availability of texts slowly grew. Poets
became ‘makers’, craftsmen who produced poetry not only orally but also on paper. As so often, Chaucer
stands at a point of change. He is now firstly a writer, and his work has all the features of a written language.
2.8 AS AN ALLEGORY
It is probable that the pilgrims’ journey from London to Canterbury represents another journey that
was very important to a medieval person: the journey from Earth to Heaven. As the journey begins, we have
a sinful group of pilgrims, many of whom are hiding various vices and dirty secrets. Their pilgrimage is
meant to be a journey of repentance, so that by the time they reach Canterbury, they will be fully cleansed of
these sins. Thus, in this allegory, the tavern represents the sinful life on Earth, while Canterbury represents
the sin-free life in heaven that all people are trying to reach.
2.9 SUMMARY
In this unit a fairly detailed annotation of the Prologue has been provided so that apart from Chaucer’s
skill in characterisation you may also grasp the larger social and intellectual issues and of course the comic
strategies involved.
2.10 GLOSSARY
Amazonian - relating to or denoting the River Amazon or its surrounding region. Ambivalence the
state of having mixed feelings.
Amoral - lacking a moral sense: unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something.
Broach - raise (a difficult subject) for discussion.
Coarseness - the quality of being rough or harsh.
Dubious - hesitating or doubting./ not to be relied upon
Nouveaux - derogatory term to describe those whose wealth has been acquired within their own
generation, rather than by familial inheritance. The equivalent English term is the “new
rich” or “new money”
Prodigious - remarkably or impressively great in extent, size, or degree.
Rascality - mischievous or dishonest behaviour or activity Veritable- used for emphasis, often to
qualify a metaphor.
2.11 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1. Attempt an analysis of the following characters-
a) The Prioress
b) The Monk
(c) The Wife of Bath
2. Discuss Canterbury Tales as an allegory.
3. Bring out different shades of irony as in same in ‘the Prologue’.
2.12 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Answer 1
(i) With the April showers, Nature and human nature sort of revived and with it revived the spiritual
yearning to go on pilgrimage - after a bleak dreary winter.
(ii) Wife of Bath and Prioress.
(iii) Parson and Plowman.
(iv) Manciple, Reeve, Summonerand Pardoner.

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Answer 2
(i) Broad and subtle irony
(ii) The individual elements may include physiognomy, dress, eccentricity but these could also be
representative of class or social groups. Perhaps individuality comes from Chaucer’s vividness of
imagination.
2.13 SUGGESTED READINGS
(1) ‘Chaucer and Medieval Sciences’ by W.C. Curry.
(2) ‘The Poetry of Chaucer’ by R.K. Root.

*****

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 LESSON-3
NUN’S PRIEST’S TALE

STRUCTURE
3.1 INTRODUCTION
3.2 OBJECTIVES
3.3 SUMMARY OF THE NUN’S PRIEST’S TALE
3.3.1 PROLOGUE OF THE NUN’S PRIEST’S TALE
3.3.2 MAIN TALE
3.3.3 EPILOGUE
3.4 ANALYSIS
3.4.1 MOCK HEROIC
3.4.2 HUMOUR AND SATIRE
3.4.3 FABLE
3.4.4 MORALS AND EDUCATIVE VALUE
3.5 LEVELS OF MEANING
3.6 LEARNING AND ALLUSIONS
3.7 SUMMARY
3.8 GLOSSARY
3.9 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
3.10 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
3.11 SUGGESTED READINGS
3.1 INTRODUCTION
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is one of the best-loved and best known of all the tales. It is not an isolated
tale but belongs to a series of tales. It comes just after the Monk’s tale and before the Doctor of Physics’ tale.
It functions on several levels and is an outstanding example of Chaucer’s literary style. Perhaps in no other
tale is Chaucer so constantly present, showing us his shrewd understanding of human nature and at the same
time his genial tolerance of human frailty, his keen sense of the ridiculous, well stored mind, and his deceptively
easy narrative manner, seeming to digress without prescription, yet being in perfect control of his story all
the time.
3.2 OBJECTIVE
In this lesson we propose to teach you the Nun’s Priest’s Tale which is one of the most interesting
tales of the collection. We will also be touching upon the various literary aspects of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale,
apart from giving you a detailed analysis of the tale. By the end of this lesson you will be able to understand
how this tale has been told in a mock heroic style and how there are elements of humour present in it. You
will also understand the allusions present in it as well as see how the characters have been developed.

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 At the end of this lesson we have also provided the names of certain books (Suggested Readings)
which would be immensely helpful to you as reference material. We do hope you will make an effort to refer
to them for a better understanding of Chaucer. Also, please keep the terminal questions in mind while
preparing for the exams as they would cover all the essential aspects of what has been taught to you in these
three lessons on Chaucer.
3.3 SUMMARY OF THE NUN’S PRIEST’S TALE
Even though we are providing a. detailed summary of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, it is no substitute for
a first hand reading of the text. So do read the original text and then follow it up with a reading of this
summary. This would help you to understand the meaning of the text.
3.3.1 Prologue to the Nun’s Priest’s Tale
After the Monk has told his tale the Knight praises the Monk, but says that he has heard quite
enough about men’s sudden falls from high status and grace, and would far rather hear about men climbing
from poverty to prosperity.
The Host steps in to concur, telling the Monk that his tale is boring the company, and that his talk is
worth nothing, because there is no fun to be had from it. The Host asks the Monk to tell another tale - and the
Monk responds that, having no desire to play and have fun, he has said all he has to say. The Host then turns
to the Nun’s Priest, asking him to draw near, and asking him to be merry of heart in his tale. “Yis, sir”, says
the Nun’s Priest - and, described as a “sweete preest” by the narrator, the Nun’s Priest begins his tale.
3.3.2 Main Tale
A poor widow, rather advanced in age, had a small cottage beside a grove, standing in a dale. This
widow led a very simple life, providing for herself and her daughters from a small farm. In a barn yard which
she kept, enclosed all around with palings and with a ditch outside it, she had a cock called Chaunticleer,
who was peerless in his crowing. Chaunticleer was beautifully coloured, with a comb redder than coral, and
a beak as black as jet, and he had under his government seven chickens, who were his paramours, of which
his favourite was Dame Pertelote.
One morning, Chaunticleer begins to groan in his throat, as a man who is troubled in his dreams
does, and Pertelote, aghast, askes him what the matter is. Chaunticleer replies that he has a bad dream, and
has prayed to God to help him to correctly interpret it. He had dreamt that he, roaming around the yard, has
seen an animal “lyk an hound” which tried to seize his body and have him dead. The “hound’s” colour was
somewhere between yellow and red, and his tail and both his ears were tipped with black.
Pertelote mocks him, telling him that he is a coward. Pertelote then argues that dreams are meaningless
visions, caused simply by ill humors (bad substances in the body) - and quotes Cato at length to demonstrate
her point. Her solution is that she will pick herbs from the yard in order to bring his humors back to normal.
Chaunticleer disagrees, arguing that while Cato is certainly an authority, there are many more
authorities available to be read who argue that dreams are significations - of good things and bad things to
come. He states the example of one man who, lying in his bed, dreamt that his friend was being murdered for
his gold in an ox’s stall, and that his body was hidden in a dung cart. Remembering his dream, this man goes
to a dung cart at the west gate of the town, and finds the murdered body of his friend. Chaunticleer then tells
the story of two men, who were preparing to cross the sea. One of them dreamed that, if he crossed the sea
the next day, he would be drowned - he told his companion, who laughed at him, and resolved to go anyway.
The ship’s bottom tore, and his companion drowned. Chaunticleer also cites the examples of Macrobius,
Croesus and Andromache, who each had prophecies in their dreams.
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 Then, however, Chaunticleer praises Pertelote, asking her to speak of “mirth”, and stop all this talk
of prophecy. The beauty of her face, he says, makes him feel fearless. He then quotes the proverb “Mulier est
hominis confusion”, translating it as “Woman is man’s joy and all his bliss’, when it actually translates
“Woman is man’s ruin”. Chaunticleer then flies down from his beam, calls all of his hens to him, and reveals
that he has found a grain lying in the yard. He then clasps Pertelote to him with his wings and copulates with
her until morning.
When the month of March is over, Chaunticleer is walking in full pride, ail of his wives around him,
when a coal fox (a fox with black-tipped feet, ears and tail) breaks through the hedges and into the yard. He
bides his time for a while. The narrator then goes off into an aside, addressing Chaunticleer and wishing that
he had taken “wommennes conseils” (woman’s counsel)-before he moves back into the tale, reminding us
that his tale “is of a cok”.
Chaunticleer sings merrily in the yard, and casting his eyes among the cabbages, catches sight of the
fox. He would have fled, but the fox addresses him, asking where he is going, and claims to be his friend.
The fox claims to have met Chaunticleer’s mother and father, and talks of his father’s excellent singing
voice, and the way his father used to stretch out his neck and stand on his tiptoes before singing. The fox
then asks whether Chaunticleer could sing like his father - and Chaunticleer stands on his toes, stretches out
his neck, closes his eyes, and, as he begins to sing, the fox grabs him by the throat and runs off into the
woods with him.
The poor widow and her two daughters, hearing the cry of the chickens, run after the fox toward the
grove, and many other men and animals run after them. Chaunticleer manages to speak to the fox, and
encourages him to turn to his pursuers and curse them, telling him that he is going to eat the cock. The fox
agrees - but as he opens his mouth to agree, the cock breaks free from his mouth and flies high up into a tree.
The fox tries to persuade him to come down, saying that he has been misinterpreted, and that Chaunticleer
should fly down in order that he might “seye sooth” (tell the truth) about what he had meant, but Chaunticleer
knows better this time. The fox finally curses all those who “Jangleth whan he sholde holde his pees”
(chatters when he should hold his peace).
The narrator then addresses everyone who thinks the tale is mere foolery, asking them to take the
moral of the tale, rather than the tale itself: taking the fruit, and letting the chaff remain. And the moral being
never to trust a flatterer. Thus ends the Nun’s Priest’s Tale.
3.3.3 Epilogue to the Nun’s Priest’s Tale
The Host, praises the tale as “myrie”, and then, as he did with the Monk, suggests that the Nun’s
Priest would be an excellent breeding man (trede-foul) if only he were allowed to breed _for the Nun’s Priest,
the host continues, is brawny, with a great neck and a large chest.
Check Your Progress 1
(i) Where is the setting of this tale?
(ii) Who is the hero of this tale?
(iii) Who is Chauntecleer’s favourite wife?
(iv) Chauntecleer falls prey to the fox because of?

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3.4 ANALYSIS
3.4.1 Mock heroic
The Nun’s Priest’s Tate is told using the technique of the mock-heroic, which takes a trivial event
and elevates it into something of great universal import. Alexander Pope’s poem The Rape of the Lock is an
excellent example of a mock-heroic composition; (you will be reading this poem in the course as well) it
treats a trivial event (the theft of a lock of hair, in this case) as if it were sublime. Thus when Don Russel, the
fox, runs off with Chaunticleer in his jaws, the chase that ensues, involves every creature on the premises,
and the entire scene is narrated in the elevated language found in the great epics where such language was
used to enhance the splendid deeds of epic heroes. Chaucer uses elevated language to describe a fox catching
a rooster in a barnyard a far cry from the classic epics. The chase itself reminds one of Achilles’ chasing
Hector around the battlements in the Illiad. To compare the plight of Chaunticleer to that of Homer’s Hector
and to suggest that the chase of the fox is an epic chase similar to classical epics indicates the comic absurdity
of the situation.
The mock-heroic tone is also used in other instances: when the Nun’s Priest describes the capture of
Don Russel, the fox, and refers to the event in terms of other prominent traitors (referring to the fox as “a
new Iscariot, a second Ganelon and a false hypocrite, Greek Sinon”) and when the barnyard animals discuss
high philosophical and theological questions.
3.4.2 Humour, Satire, Irony
For Lady Pertelote and Chaunticleer to discuss divine foreknowledge in a high intellectual and
moral tone in the context of barnyard chickens is the height of comic irony. We must also remember the
cause of the discussion of divine for knowledge: Lady Pertelote thinks that Chaunticleer’s dream or nightmare
was the result of his constipation, and she recommends a laxative. Chaunticleer’s rebuttal is a brilliant use of
classical sources that comment on dreams and is a marvelously comic means of proving that he is not
constipated and does not need a laxative. Throughout the mock-heroic, mankind loses much of its human
dignity and is reduced to animal values.
The Nun’s Priest’s ideas and positions are set up in his genially ironic attitude toward both the
simple life of the widow, and the life of the rich and the great as represented by the cock, Chaunticleer (in
Chaucer’s English, the name means “clear singing”). The Nun’s Priest’s opening lines set up the contrast. A
poor old widow with little property and small income leads a sparse life and it does not cost much for her to
get along. The implication is that living the humble Christian life is easier for the poor than for the rich, who
have, like Chaunticleer, many obligations and great responsibilities (after all, if Chaunticleer does not crow
at dawn, the sun cannot rise).
Chaunticleer has great talents and grave responsibilities, but the cock’s talent (crowing) is a slightly
absurd one, however proud he may be of it. (In middle English as in modern, “crowing” can also mean
boasting or bragging.) And Chaunticleer’s responsibility, making sure the sun does not go back down in the
morning, is ludicrous. His other responsibilities - taking care of his wives - are equally silly. Part of the
Nun’s Priest’s method in his light-hearted analysis of human pride is an ironic identification of Chaunticleer
with everything noble that he can think of. His physical description, which uses many of the adjectives that
would be used to describe the warrior/knight (words such as “crenelated,” castle wall,” “fine coral,” “polished
Jet,” “azure,” “lilies,” and “burnished gold,” for example) reminds one of an elegant knight in shining
armor.

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 The reader should be constantly aware of the ironic contrast between the barnyard and the real
world, which might be another type of barnyard. That is, the “humanity” and “nobility” of the animals is
ironically juxtaposed against their barnyard life. This contrast is an oblique comment on human pretensions
and aspirations in view of the background, made clear when Don Russel challenges Chaunticleer to sing,
and the flattery blinds Chaunticleer to the treachery. Here, the tale refers to human beings and the treachery
found in the court through flattery. Chaunticleer’s escape is also affected by the use of flattery. Don Russell
learns that he should not babble or listen to flattery when it is better to keep quiet. And Chaunticleer has
learned that flattery and pride go before a fall.
3.4.3 Fable and Allegory
The Nun’s Priest’s Tate is a fable, a simple tale about animals that concludes with a moral lesson.
Stylistically, however, the tale is much more complex than its simple plot would suggest. Into the fable
framework, the Nun’s Priest brings parodies of epic poetry, medieval scholarship, and courtly romance.
Most critics are divided about whether to interpret this story as a parody or as an allegory. If viewed as a
parody, the story is an ironic and humorous retelling of the fable of the fox and the rooster in the guise of,
alternately, a courtly romance and a Homeric epic. It is hilariously done, since into the squawkings and
strutting of poultry life, Chaucer transposes scenes of a hero’s dreaming of death and courting his lady love,
in a manner that imitates the overblown, descriptive style of romances. For example, the rooster’s plumage
is described as shining like burnished gold. He also parodies epic poetry by utilizing apostrophes, or formal,
imploring addresses: “O false mordrour, lurkynge in the den!. And O Chauntideer, accursed be that morwe/
That thou into the yerd fiaugh from the bemes” If we read the story as an allegory, Chanticleer’s story is a
tale of how we are all easily swayed by the smooth, flattering tongue of the devil, represented by the fox.
Other scholars have read the tale as the story of Adam and Eve’s (and consequently all humankind’s) fall
from grace told through the veil of a fable.
3.4.4 Moral and Educative Value
As the Nun’s Priest reminds his audience at the end, those who would think the story to be a foolish
one, should mind the moral of it. Because of this content of a moral, the story does not remain a simple story,
but becomes a sermon. The story-teller himself being a priest, is trying to admonish his audience on flattery.
Flattery is a sin, it lets down the guard of our character for the devil to get in. Medieval Christianity laid a
great stress on preaching on the vices and frailties people would find themselves prey to.
The moral of the story is that flattery blinds people to their well being. Persuaded by flattery the
cock closes his eyes at a time when he should have never done so, and the fox opens his mouth, when he had
everything to gain through keeping it shut. This moral, as some of the students may be interested in probing
further, itself is amenable to allegorical interpretation.
The priest, in order to bring out the moral implication of the story alludes to the Biblicat text which
says. “Take the fruit, and leave the husk (chaff).” This “fruit and chaff” interpretation has been carried to
great lengths by modern scholars in their discussion of the significance of much medieval literature including
the works of Chaucer. But it would suffice here to say that the Nun’s Priest’s Tale as an example of the
popular literature of the medieval era, quite naturally lends itself to moralistic interpretation. Much popular
literature especially of the pulpit variety, in that era was concerned with the education of the laity. Those
were not the days of the printing press, schools and colleges. The common people often derived their education
through popular literature and sermons.

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 Talking of education, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale is replete with a learning that would be considered to
be an excellent kind in that age though Chaucer has injected that into the story in a humorous vein. The
topics of discussion and debate between the cock and hen are the controversies of scholars of that age: Do
dreams foreshadow truth? Are they to be traced to the four humours? What medicines are to be recommended
in sickness like the cock’s as the hen identifies it?
Check Your Progress 2
(i) Which prominent traitors is the fox compared to?
(ii) Give a few examples of the satirical way in which Chaunticleer’s talents and responsibilities have
been projected.
3.5 LEVELS OF MEANING
On the primary level the Nun’s Priest’s Tale is a brilliant and complex exposure of vanity, self-
esteem, and self-indulgence through the mock-heroic treatment of a beast fable. On the secondary level, the
Nun’s Priest joins the discussions of the Pilgrims on poverty (Man Law, Wife of Bath), women’s advice
(Merchant), rhetoric (Host and Squire), and marriage. He is also presenting in the contrast between the
widow and Chantecleer, a veiled comment in his position vis-a-vis the Prioress. Finally, on the level of
involuntary revelation, he falls into the same pedantry that he is ridiculing, and uncovers for a moment in his
confusion the feelings of a misogynist dependent on a woman. In this moment there is revealed a second
conflict, the conflict between the artist, building with the materials of his art a world where his feelings
achieve symbolic and universal expression, and the man, expressing his feelings directly.
3.6 LEARNING AND ALLUSIONS
The Nun’s Priest’s Tate is a work of learned allusions. In the medieval era the clergy represented the
only learned class of society. The fact that the Nun’s Priest’s Tale is told by a priest makes it very appropriate
that such learned material should enrich the general fabric of the story.
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is the only one of all the tales to feature a specific reference to an actual late-
fourteenth-century event. This reference occurs when the widow and her daughters begin to chase the fox,
and the whole barnyard screeches and bellows, joining the fray. The narrator notes that not even the crew of
Jack Straw, the reputed leader of the English peasant’s rebellion in 1381, made half as much noise as did this
barnyard cacophony: Cedes, he jakke straw and his meynee/Ne made nevere shoutes half so shrille/ Whan
that they wolden any Fiemyng kille, /As thilke day was maad upon the fox”. This first and only contemporary
reference in The Canterbury Tales dates at least the completion of the tale of Chanticleer to the 1380s, a time
of great civil unrest and class turmoil.
There are references to the Greek epic by Homer Iliad. Aeneid, the Latin epic by Virgil, and to an
obscure History of the Trojan War by Dares Phrygius. To give the tale an atmosphere of learning, reflection
and a philosophical context, appropriate to the narrator who is a priest there are also references to Christian
myth revolving around the loss of Paradise. The debate between destiny and free will and to St. John is also
alluded to.. Many traitors of history are referred to and the following learned allusion should be studied by
you:
(i) the medical theory of dreads.
(ii) the medieval theory of four humours.
(iii) Judas Iscariot, Genclon and Sinon.

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 (iv) the comment of the vice of flattery.
(v) the character of Pyrrhus and Priam in the Trojan War.
(vi) Hasdrubal and the war between Carthage and Rome and the suicide of his wife.
(vii)the burning of Rome by the emperor Nero.
(viii) the peasant’s revolt.
(ix) Knuliphus, King of Marcia.
(x) Physilogus.
(xi) the theories of fore-ordination and freedom.
Check Your Progress 3
(i) Although on the surface the Nun’s Priest’s Tale is a simple fable with a moral, how does the poet
raise it to a higher level?
3.7 GLOSSARY
the equinoctial wheel - imaginary band encircling the earth and aligned with the equator.
The equinoctial wheel, like the earth, makes a 360-degree rotation
every 23 hours: Thus, fifteen degrees would be the equivalent to
one hour. It was a popular belief in the time of Chaucer that cocks
crowed punctually on the hour.
azure - a semi-precious stone, today called lapis lazuli. In the description
of Chaunticleer, the use of azure reinforces his courtly appearance.
humors (humours) - in Chaucer’s time and well into the Renaissance, “humors” were
the elemental fluids of the body-blood, phlegm, black bile, and
yellow bile - that regulated a person’s physical health and mental
disposition.
Cato - Dionysius Cato, the author of a book of maxims used in elementary
education (not to be confused with more famous Marcus Cato the
Elder and Marcus Cato the Younger, who were famous statesmen
of ancient Rome).
tertian - occurring every third day.
lauriol, centaury, and fumitory - herbs that were used as cathartics or laxatives.
Kenelm - a young prince who, at seven years old, succeeded his father but
was slain by an aunt.
Macrobius - the author of a famous commentary on Cicero’s account of The
Dream of Scipio.
Daniel - See Daniel viii
Joseph - See Genesis xxxvii and xxxix-xli.
Crosus (Croesus) - King of Lydia, noted for his great wealth.
Andromache - wife of Hector, leader of the Trojan forces, who one night dreamed
of Hector’s death.

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 In principio/Mulierest hominis - a Latin phrase meaning “Woman is the ruin of man.” Chaunticleer
confusion plays a trick on lady Pertelote and translates the phrase as “Woman
is man’s joy and bliss.”
Taurus, the bull - the second sign of the zodiac.
Lancelot of the lake - the popular knight of King Arthur’s legendary Round Table.
Iscariot, Judas - the betrayer of Jesus to the Romans.
Ganelon, Geeniloun - the betrayer of Roland, nephew of Charlemagne, to the Moors in
the medieval French epic The Song of Roland.
Sinon - a Greek who persuaded the Trojans to take the Greek’s wooden
horse into their city, the result of which was the destruction of
Troy.
Physiologus - a collection of nature lore, describing both the natural and
supernatural.
Don Brunei the Ass - a twelfth-century work by the Englishman Nigel Wireker. The tale
refers to a priest’s son who breaks a rooster’s leg by throwing a
stone at it. In revenge, the bird declines to crow in the morning of
the day when the priest is to be ordained and receive a benefice;
the priest fails to wake up in time and, being late for the ceremony,
loses his preferment.
Geoffrey - reference to Geoffrey de Vinsauf, an author on the use of rhetoric
during the twelfth century.
Pyrrhus - the Greek who slew Priam, the. king of Troy.
Hasdrubal - the king of Carthage when it was destroyed by the Romans. His
wife screamed so loudly that all of Carthage heard her, and she
died by throwing herself upon Hasdrubal’s funeral pyre. The
comparison to Lady Pertelote is apropos.
Nero - A tyrant who, according to legend, sent many of the senators to
death accompanied by the screams and wailing of their wives. Thus,
Lady Pertelote will be similar to the Roman wives if she loses her
husband, Chaunticleer.
Jack Straw - a leader of the riots in London during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.
3.8 SUMMING UP
In this lesson, we introduced you to one of the most widely read and enjoyed tales of the Canterbury
Tales. You were also given a detailed summary and a critical analysis of the tale to help you to understand its
various aspects. A glossary at the end explained some of the not so common terms that appear in the tale.
3.9 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1. “Chaucer makes allowances for human imperfection.” Discuss this statement with reference to
the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
2. Describe the effects on fourteenth century life and literature of the following:

32
 1. The Hundred Years War.
2. The Peasant’s Revolt.
3. The Black Death.
3. What was the relationship between astrology and medicine in Chaucer’s time?
4. What elements of Chaucer’s life helped his poetry?
5. Describe the narrative plan of the Canterbury Tales and say who devised it? Critically examine
the author’s management of the plan.
6. Describe the complexity of the form of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale.
7. Write a note on the mock heroic elements of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale.
8. Write a note on Chaucer’s interpretation of dreams. Do you think Chauntecleer expresses the
poets point of view.
9. What are the main themes present in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale?
10. Discuss the use of humour and satire in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale.
11. Discuss the Nun’s Priest’s Tale as an animal fable.
3.10 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Answer 1
(i) In a barnyard
(ii) A cock name Chauntecleer
(iii) Pertelote
(iv) Flattery
Answer 2
(i) Judas Iscariot the betrayer of Christ and Sinon the Greek who persuaded the Trojan’s to take the
Greek wooden horse into their city. The result was the destruction of Troy.
(ii) The cock’s talent of crowing without which the sun would not rise and his physical description
using adjectives which would be more suitable for knights and warriors.
Answer 3
(i) By bringing in parodies of epic poetry, medieval scholarship, and courtly romance. There are also
a number of learned allusions present in the tale which raise it to a higher level, (refer to 3.5)
3.11 SUGGESTED READINGS
1. Bowden, Muriel. A Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. New York, 1948.
2. A Reader’s Guide to Geoffrey Chaucer, London, 1965.
3. Coghill, Nevill, The Poet Chaucer. Oxford, 1949.
4. Coulton, C .G. Chaucer and His England. 6th edn. London, 1937.
5. Life in the middle Ages. 4 vols. Cambridge, 1928.
6. Curry, W.C. Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences, 2nd edn. New York and London, 1960.
7. French, R.D. A Chaucer Handbook. 2nd edn. New ork, 1947.
8. Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages. Trans. F. Hopman. London 1924.
9. Root, R.K. The Poetry of Chaucer. 2 nd edn. Boston, 1922.

*****
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 LESSON-4
JOHN DONNE: AGE, LIFE AND WORKS

STRUCTURE
4.1 INTRODUCTION
4.2 OBJECTIVES
4.3 AGE AND LIFE OF DONNE
4.4 DONNE’S POETIC CRAFT
4.5 METAPHYSICAL POETRY : FEATURES
4.5.1 CONCEIT
4.5.2 VERSIFICATION
4.5.3 WIT
4.6 ASSESSING DONNE
4.7 SUMMARY
4.8 GLOSSARY
4.9 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
4.10 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
4.11 SUGGESTED READINGS
4.1 INTRODUCTION
About the beginning of the seventeenth century, appeared a group of writers that came to be called
“metaphysical poets.” They were men of learning and they endeavored to show this learning through the
writing of verse. However, the modulation of these verses was sometimes so imperfect that only by counting
the syllables could they be said to be verses.
As the name suggests the ‘Metaphysical’ movement deals with subjects on a philosophical rather
than a physical level. The work of the poets belonging to this age is characterized by an inventive use of
conceits and by speculation about topics such as love and religion. Samuel Johnson who coined the term
metaphysical poets, disapproves of their works which are often intellectually but not emotionally stimulating,
whereas T.S. Eliot praises the anti-romantic and intellectual qualities of these poets.
John Donne was a poet, satirist, lawyer and cleric and we will see the important themes in his
poetry. Donne affects the metaphysics in his satires and his amorous verses where he gives more weightage
to philosophical speculations rather than expressing softness of love. Donne employs a device which is
considered characteristically “Metaphysical” which we will explain in details later in this lesson.
4.2 OBJECTIVES
The primary objective of this lesson is to introduce you to John Donne, the celebrated metaphysical
poet. To understand his poetry, it is necessary to have a fairly comprehensive knowledge of his age, life and
times. Therefore, in this lesson we would be providing you with a detailed background of his age and his
life. We would also be explaining certain essential aspects of his poetry to you and it is against the scaffolding
of this, that you should read his poems.
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4.3 AGE AND LIFE OF DONNE
The 17th century was one of the most troubled times in the history of England. The Civil War
between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians took the toll of many a life. The Thirty Years War between
the two wings of Christianity engulfed almost the whole of the Continent. The contemporary man was torn
between influences and counter-influences from the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Ptolemaic theory,
the Royal Society, the Bible and so on. There was a conflict in the mind of man between faith and science
and body and soul. The picture of the horror is best mirrored in the continental baroque and the Jacobean
drama. The Metaphysical poets strike a balance between the ugly and the beautiful, as it is exemplified by
Donne’s key image in The Relique: “a bracelet of bright hair about the bone”. Even in his religious poetry
Donne brings together the two apparently antagonistic worlds: the fleshly and the spiritual. In his religious
sonnet, “Batter my Heart” he imagines himself to be a bride wedded to’1 God but being placed under the
spell of her worldly seducer. This was the state of the contemporary man. (A Short History of English
Literature by Michael Alexander)
John Donne (1572-1631) was born to Catholic parents and he lost his father at the age of four. His
mother brought him up single handedly and taught him the basics of the Catholic religion. It is not clear
whether he went only to Oxford or to both Oxford and Cambridge. Between 1588 to 1591, he traveled
extensively on the European Continent. Between 1592- 1596 he studied law at Lincoln’s Inn. This was the
time when we catch glimpses of his multi-faceted personality. He wrote verses, went to plays and at times
gave the impression of being a bohemian too. But this did not deter him from being a voracious reader and
an earnest student not only of law studies but also of the religious doctrines.
In the next phase of his life, John Donne is seen as a Parliamentarian for Brackley, a constituency
controlled by Egerton. Soon after, two incidents in his life proved disastrous. One was his branding Catholicism
as “corrupt” and the second was his clandestine marriage to Anne More. Not only did he lose his secretaryship
to Thomas Egerton, but he also invited the wrath of his father-in-law who plotted for his imprisonment.
These incidents left him a bitter man and for the next 13 years from 1602 till 1615, he kept experimenting
with a desire to find the true calling of his life. He even wrote to his wife saying, “John Donne, Anne Donne-
Undone!” This phase of his life left a scar on his psyche that was difficult to heal. However, his love for his
wife remained constant. Perhaps it even provided him with an escape from worldly tensions. This is reflected
in his poem “The Canonisation” which you will be reading in the next lesson.
He moved to the house of his wife’s cousin at Pitford in Surrey, to explore new vistas of employment.
He studied Canon and Civil law here, and was constantly in search of an employment in state and, therefore,
he refused to take orders from the Church even though he was King James’ most favoured chaplain, Thomas
Morton and the King himself wished him to do so. The curtain came down on the second act of his life when
in 1614, his second parliamentary stint came to an abrupt end as the Parliament was dissolved after two
months only. J.B. Leishman has rightly spoken of this period of Donne’s life (1602-1615) as one where he is
“without a part.”
In 1615, Donne again reverted to the Church and theology and become the Dean of St. Pauls. From
1615 till his death in 1631, Donne lived mainly as a preacher in what can be called the third phase of his life.
Perhaps it was these twin strains of a secular preferment on the one hand and the call of theology
and service of the Church, on the other, which left a deep impression on him. This fact, therefore, finds a
prominent place in his poems where he is seen reflecting over the idea of “body and soul” and trying to
figure out which of the two is more important.
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 So Donne was a man who vacillated between two masters within him. One pulled him to a life of
sensual pleasures and the other led him to disenchantment and detachment. It is, therefore, a logical conclusion
that his poems from time to time have reflected what the poet was going through in the various stages of his
life at that particular phase. Thus his early poems like “The Flea” and “Go and Catch the Falling Star” are a
reflection of his early life, and are impudent and outrageous. The poems such as “Litanie”, give an altogether
divine connotation to his works when he found the true calling of his life as a preacher. Thus we can see how
the life of a poet has a definite bearing on his poems.
4.4 DONNE’S POETIC CRAFT
Any consideration of Donne as a poet of love must start with his rebellions stance and his attempt to
break new ground both in substance and treatment. The prestigious vogue of poetry against which he reacted
strangely is generally referred to as “Petrachanism.” A style of love poetry after the manner of Petrarch,
characterized by a lofty note of idealism. Sidney and Spenser were the most important Elizabethan poets
who practiced this kind of poetry. There was also another important tradition of love-poetry derived from
“classical” marked by simplicity and directness and a fine chiseled beauty of form, (Ben Jonson’s famous
lyric: “Drink to me only with thine eyes and I will pledge with mine” is in that style, generally associated
with the name of Catullus). Donne seems to have found his own genius out of tune with both these traditions
that had flourished immediately before his time. But more particularly it is the Petrarchan sentiment and the
Petrarchan idealization which seems to have repelled him in Spenser’s poetry.
In Donne’s love poetry two strains figure prominently the strain of the subtle play of argument, wit
and erudition, and the strain of a vivid realism of passion-love as an actual experience in all its moods and
vicissitudes: gay angry, rapturous scornful, touched with tenderness and darkened with sorrow. If the first is
an inheritance from the Middle Ages the second is a characteristic product of the Renaissance and the
irrepressible love of life. And though the old form of the plantonic Patrarchan adoration of woman is largely
superseded in Donne by this conviction that the inconsistencies of love are an aspect of the flux of Nature,
we still hear an echo in Donne’s poetry of an old persistent dualism.
Donne’s love poetry, then, has a distinction of its own; it has a ragged kind of strength and dynamism
about it. It rarely achieves the simpler lucidity of the classic vogue nor does it possess the Ovidian
mellifluousness. In that respect Donne’s poetry may be even less classical than that of Marlowe and
Shakespeare. There is none of their “charm” except for a few lines; but there is sudden brilliance and
striking force. Grammar and syntax are put to unorthodox uses and often syntax is deliberately run up
against the stanza form. Passion is reflected in the fracture of rhythm. In both mood and expression Donne
perhaps comes extremely close to the Shakespeare of the sonnets. And yet if wit, scorn or cynicism is not the
dominant note in Donne’s love poetry there is nothing of the really out-raged heart as in the sonnets of
Shakespeare. The ground note and the under-current of Donne’s love poetry is joy and celebration-even
when it might sound unashamedly bawdy. The dominant impression is intensity and there is always something
of the physical quality along with infusion of reflection and an analytical and philosophical verse. What is
markedly absent is the tranquility of Spenser.
4.5 METAPHYSICAL POETRY FEATURES
Metaphysical poetry is a device one could say which uses an elaboration of a figure of speech to the
farthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it. Cowley too uses this device and in his poem “To Destiny” he
compares the world to a chessboard. Donne in “A Valediction” makes the comparison of two lovers to a pair
of compasses. There is, therefore, a development by such rapid associations that it requires a great deal of
36
agility on the part of the reader. We may mention here that this sort of telescoping of images and multiplied
associations is characteristic of the phrase of some major dramatists of the period as well. Shakespeare,
Webster and Middleton too used such a type of vitality in language.
According to T.S. Eliot, a “thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his f sensibility.” He
thought that when a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate
experiences. The ordinary man’s experiences are often chaotic, irregular and fragmentary. He goes on to
illustrate this by saying that the ordinary person reads Spinoza, or falls in love and these two experiences
have nothing to do with each other or with the noise of a typewriter or the smell of cooking. However, he
concludes that in the mind of the metaphysical poet, these experiences are always forming new wholes.
Metaphysical poetry as differentiated from Romantic poetry is more profound in thought and emotions
as it digests the complex and varied facets of reality. It does not perceive life only as passion and beauty and
adoration at the cost of neglecting the other stark realities of life that can be brutal and dark. In this poetry,
the emotions are placed in the wider sphere of life and the connection of one emotion to the other is also
highlighted. Thus a metaphysical poet’s world is composed of innumerable diverse worlds. The realities of
these varied worlds are incorporated into a metaphysical poet’s works with a searching mind. There do exist
the private emotions which form the genesis of a poem, but these emotions are judged and evaluated in a
bigger pattern.
In John Donne’s poems one finds a beautiful blend of emotions and thoughts. Thus metaphysical
poetry is a highly intellectualized poetry which abounds in bold and ingenious conceits. The subtlety of
thoughts takes a predominant place rather than mere passions or adoration on a worldly plane. It also makes
use of paradoxes. The poets often indulge in deliberate harshness or rigidity of expression.
4.5.1 Conceit
A conceit is a far-fetched comparison between dissimilar things. A conceit may be brief or elaborate.
Conceits used by Donne are drawn from a wide range of subjects and they add an intellectual tone to the
poems. Conceits are like a spark made by striking two stones together. After the flash the stones are just two
stones.
Helen Gardner defines conceit as:
.... a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness, or, at least, is more immediately
striking.
One of the stock devices used by a poet is imagery. Images which are just and natural are employed
by all the poets; conceits, however, are unusual and fantastic similes.
Donne’s conceits are metaphysical because they are taken from the extended world of knowledge,
from science, astrology, astronomy, scholastic philosophy, fine arts etc. They are scholarly and learned
conceits and much too far-fetched and obscure. Moreover, they are elaborate. The well-known conceit of the
two lovers being compared to a pair of compasses, where one leg remains fixed at the centre and the other
rotates is an elaborate and extended conceit. Similarly, the comparison of the flea to a bridal bed or a
marriage temple is another example of an elaborate conceit. In “The Sun Rising”, the beloved’s bed is the
universe and the walls are the sphere.
Donne’s conceit is not a decoration, a piece of super-imposed machinery or setting but an organic
part of the poetic process. While the Elizabethan conceit is traditional and ornamental, the metaphysical
conceit is basic and structural. It plays a vital role in proving the thesis of the poet. In this connection Helen
37
Gardner writes: “In a metaphysical poem the conceits are instruments of definition. The poet has something
to say which the conceit explicates or something to urge which the conceit helps to forward. I have said that
the first impression a conceit makes is of ingenuity rather than of justice: the metaphysical conceit aims at
making us concede justness while we are admiring its ingenuity.”
Although Donne’s conceits are rugged, coarse and far-fetched, yet they impart a sense of pleasure
and exaltation as it has an astonishing link with the whole poem. In other words, an image cannot be detached
from its context. It emerges out of a certain situation of high emotional tension.
4.5.2 Versification
Donne seems to invent a new verse form for almost every one of his songs and sonnets. He successfully
bends and breaks up the metrical pattern to accommodate the varied swings of his mood. For example, he
uses a Trochaic beginning’ (strong and weak meter) in his poem ‘“The Sun Rising”, followed by a spondaic
foot (stressing both syllables) and the total effect on the reader is one of wondrous amazement at the way
Donne heaps indignity at the sun.
Donne’s varying of lengths of lines gives naturalness and directness to his thoughts. Donne’s
versification does not subscribe to any regularity perhaps for the simple reasons that as the ever fleeting
nuances of the human heart and its feelings are never in a regularized mood and are constantly changing;
these have to be depicted in a verse medium which can catch these swinging moods.
To conclude we can say that Donne’s verses are freely divided and are of varied lengths. They
approximate to the speaking voice and have the vigour of colloquial speech. We can say that they do not
have the solemn and dignified march of verse which is associated with Spencer in Amoretti sequence, where
the versification is in an elevated key and lines are of equal length. This regularity of mood and lines was not
for Donne. This is because Donne had a realistic perception of man caught in the web of the intricacy of the
human heart. This perception he sought to present in a verse medium which would catch the fleeting nuances
of feelings and thoughts and embody them in the tone, gesture and movement of the speaking voice.
4.5.3 Wit
Pope described wit as “that which has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed.”
Sometimes the reader was left wondering by what perverseness they were found. But wit can be considered
as a kind of discordant harmony - a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances
in things apparently unlike. According to Samuel Johnson, the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by
violence together. Nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons and allusions. Hyperbole was
often used, which is an image heightened beyond reality.
Donne has been called the “monarch of wit.” Dr. Johnson felt that Donne’s wit lay in the discovery
of hidden resemblances in dissimilar things. Donne’s wit is revealed in the unusual and ingenious use of
words as well as subject matter. His was a wit of higher order whereby he discovered conceits and assembled
and synthesized ideas which appeared to be dissimilar or incongruous. Lishman says that Donne’s wit lies in
his imprudent and shocking language. If in the Elizabethan poets, wit is decorative and ornamental, in
Donne, it is the result of weighty thought and brooding imagination. It is also an embodiment of a living
image and a subtle conceit, coloured with the quality of his thought.
Donne’s wit expressed all moods from gay to the serious and from the happy to the pessimistic. In
the “Flea” he defines a flea and calls it a ‘marriage temple.’ In this analogy which is like a compressed
syllogism, Donne says –

38
 All that is lovable is wonderful
The mistress is wonderful
Therefore the mistress is lovable
And then he compresses the above argument in the two lines:-
“All love is wonder; if we justify
to Account her wonderful, why not lovely too ?
And at times his wit takes the form of epigram:-
if things of sight such Heaven be,
What heavens are those we cannot see?”
To some critics, Donne’s wit is one of the means of escaping boredom and depression which afflicted
him during his creative years. But he avoids both self pity and frustration. His wit is symbolic of his spirit of
interrogation and discovery. It is also the embodiment of introspection and intellectualism.
Check Your Progress 1
(i) What are some characteristics of Metaphysical poetry?
(ii) Which of the two is the basic ingredient of a conceit-likeness or incongruity?
(iii) What is hyperbole?
(iv) Define wit as Donne used it.
4.6 ASSESSING DONNE
Johnson criticizes the metaphysical poets mainly for a lack of harmony in poetic expression. What
he probably missed in them was the new force brought into poetry by them. All would depend upon how
they use what they bought from distant “unpoetical” sources. Johnson’s contention was that the nature of the
image introduces and element of distraction, a weaning away of attention to discursive aspects of knowledge.
But Donne’s position can be defended by saying that actually a great concentration and intensity is achieved.
The breaking up of the effete regularity of rhythm gives rise to a stronger pattern of sound which evokes
stronger and more basic emotional responses. Donne has in this respect a more “dramatic” concept of the
rhythm of poetry.
What Johnson failed to see came to be appreciated in the altered climate of modern poetry. There
was general recognition for the robust originality of Donne’s verse. As E. R. Leavis puts it.
“The extraordinary force of originality that made Donne so potent an influence in the 17th century
makes him now at once for us, without his being the less felt as of his period contemporary obviously a
living poet in the most important sense.”
There may be many reasons for this modern interest in Donne on the part of both poets and readers.
One of them is perhaps that there are many similarities and affinities between the mental climate of Donne’s
time and ours. As far as poetic technique was concerned, what appealed to the new poets was the peculiar
mingling of the intellectual and the emotional in Donne’s powerful verse. His poetry evokes an intellectual
and emotional response simultaneously in such a way that thought and emotion interinanimate each other.
This was the point forcefully made by T.S Eliot when he remarked on the “unified sensibility that these
metaphysical poets show. Eliot felt that after the 17th century a “dissociation of sensibility” had set in the
work of the poets, whereas for Donne, he said, a thought was as immediate an experience as the odor of a
rose. It is the kind of effect that is referred to when a beautiful woman is described in the words: “Her very
body thought.”
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 The peculiar fusion of passion with intellectual ingenuity in poetry is often baffling. Referring to
Donne’s religious verse Lytton Strachey asked: “By what perverse logic were intellectual ingenuity and
theological ingeniousness intertwined in John Donne”? It is as if the excitement of high emotion sets his
mind working furiously in intricate thought, so that a curiously elaborated “conceit” in his poetry is able to
convey the height and depth of that emotional experience. It is not always that the metaphysical poets
succeeded in doing this, sometimes, as Yeats said,:”The intricacies and subtleties of Donne’s imagination
are the length and depth of the furrow his passion makes.” They may over indulge their clever manipulation
of an image that might convey the impression of playful fancy.
Check Your Progress 2
(i) What is the reason of a renewed interest in Donne’s poetry in modern times?
(ii) Who were Donne’s detractors and supporters?
4.7 SUMMARY
In this unit you learnt about John Donne’s life age, works and poetry. You were initiated into the
poetic art of Donne, who broke with the ruling conventions of his time and forged a poetic medium expressive
of his sensibility. You also learnt about terms like metaphysical conceit and Donne’s versification, and wit.
This would help you a lot when you read the next two lessons on Donne’s poems.
4.8 GLOSSARY
Agility - ability to move quickly and easily and also to think fast
Bawdy - humorously indecent.
Exaltation - a feeling or state of extreme happiness
Colloquial (of language) used in ordinary or familiar conversation; not formal or literary.
Discursive - digressing from subject to subject.
Ingenuity - the quality of being clever, original, and inventive.
Scaffolding - a temporary structure on the outside of a building, made of wooden planks and metal
poles, used by workmen while building, repairing, or cleaning the building.
4.9 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1. Comment on Donne’s Poeh’c Craft.
2. Bring out the element of modernity in Donne.
3. Discuss features of Metaphysical Poetry.
4.10 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOU PROGRESS
Answer 1
(i) Metaphysical poetry uses an elaboration of a figure of speech to the farthest stage to which
ingenuity can carry it. It has a telescoping of images and multiplied associations.
(ii) The basic ingredient of a conceit is likeness.
(iii) Hyperbole is when an image is heightened beyond reality.
(iv) Donne used wit in discovery of hidden resemblances in dissimilar things. There is unusual and
indigenous use of words and subject matter.

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Answer 2
(i) There are many similarities and affinities between the mental climate of Donne’s times and ours.
(ii) Johnson, Dryden and Yeats were detractors to some extent, and T.S. Eliot a supporter.
4.11 SUGGESTED READING
(i) ‘John Donne’ by Frank Kermode.
(ii) ‘The Metaphysical Poets’ by C. Helen White.
(iii) ‘The School of Donne’ -A J Smith.

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 LESSON-5
DONNE’S POETRY-I

STRUCTURE
5.1 INTRODUCTION
5.2 OBJECTIVES
5.3 “THE FLEA”
5.3.1 TEXT
5.3.2 SUMMARY AND COMMENTARY
5.4 “EXTASIE”
5.4.1 TEXT
5.4.2 COMMENTARY
5.5 “CANONIZATION”
5.5.1 TEXT
5.5.2 SUMMARY AND COMMENTARY
5.6 SUMMING UP
5.7 GLOSSARY
5.8 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
5.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
5.10 SUGGESTED READING
5.1 INTRODUCTION
The poems that you’ll study in this lesson deal with John’s metaphysics of love, and in the true style
of the meta poets, he is at times ruthless or brazen, at times varying and adjusting with a sensitive precision,
but most of the time it is his witticism that comes to the fore. Any consideration of Donne as a poet of love
must start with his rebellious stance and his attempt to break new ground both in substance and treatment.
The vogue of poetry against which he reacted strongly is generally referred to as Patriarchian - which was
characterized by a lofty note of idealism. Sidney and Spencer were the most important Elizabethan poets
who practiced this kind of poetry. There was another important tradition of love poetry which was derived
from the “classical”, marked by simplicity and directness and a finely tuned beauty of form. Donne, however,
as we shall see when we read his poems, found his own genius out of tune with both these traditions that
flourished immediately before his time. But more particularly he was repelled by the Petrarchan sentiment.
His poetry is expressive of intense personal emotions in a conversational idiom, expressed with detachment.
Let us now take up the three poems for detailed study.
5.2 OBJECTIVES
In the previous lesson we spoke about the life and times of John Donne, a great metaphysical poet,
in this lesson we will take up three poems by him: “The Flea,” “Extasie” and “Canonization”. By giving you
the text of the poem and then analyzing it for its significant features, we will teach you how to critically
appreciate Donne’s poetry. The metaphysical elements that we spoke about in the previous lesson will now
be easily* discerned by you in these poems.
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5.3 “THE FLEA”
5.3.1 Text of “The Flea”
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
5.3.2 Summary And Commentary
The argument of the poem begins and ends with a flea bite. The flea has bitten the lover and the
beloved in turn and now contains a mixture of their bloods. Thus the flea has brought about a. union which
the lover desires. When the beloved threatens to kill the flea, he restrains her, for the flea is now filled with
their two bloods. The flea now contains three lives. In this stanza, the poet is addressing his beloved and
putting forth an argument on a rather trivial, and to many perhaps, a repulsive little act as a flea-bite. When
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the flea has bitten the lover and the beloved by turn, it is through his sheer wit that the poet visualizes how
this little flea could accomplish a feat i.e. love making, which the lover and the beloved could not perform.
The flea has brought about a union of the two by carrying in its body the mixture of their blood. Thus
through this very trivial and perhaps not very romantic act, the poet nonetheless succeeds in transmuting the
ugly material into an engrossing image. He restrains the beloved when she tries to kill the flea as now the
latter is not a single flea anymore but is harboring the blood and the lives of three beings i.e. the lover,
beloved and its own. The three lives now are at stake, should the beloved dare to kill it.
He carries the argument to the next level when he says that the mingling of the blood inside the flea
is certainly not “sin, shame or loss of maidenhead.” The flea has, in its own way, mingled their blood in its
being, so why can’t the lover and beloved also perform their own union and join their beings into one. Thus
in his coaxing way he is telling her that since the flea has surpassed them by mingling their blood in its body,
the beloved should also allow the lover to let him make love to her.
To restrain the beloved from killing the flea, the poet now tries to elevate the existence of the flea by
attaching a loftier image to it. As his beloved moves to kill the flea, the speaker stays her hand, asking her to
spare the three lives in the flea: his life, her life, and the flea’s own life. In the flea, he says, where their blood
is mingled, they are almost married—and the flea is their marriage bed and marriage temple mixed into one.
Though their parents grudge their romance and though she will not make love to him, they are nevertheless
united in the body of the flea. She is apt to kill him, he says, but he asks that she not kill herself by killing the
flea that contains her blood; he says that to kill the flea would be sacrilege, “three sins in killing three.”
In the third stanza the beloved has swatted the flea and killed it. “Cruel and sudden,” the speaker
calls his lover, who has now killed the flea, “purpling” her fingernail with the “blood of innocence.” The
speaker asks his lover what the flea’s sin was, other than having sucked from each of them a drop of blood.
He says that his lover replies that neither of them is less noble for having killed the flea. It is true, he says,
and it is this very fact that proves that her fears are false: If she were to “yield to me”, she would lose no
more honor than she lost when she killed the flea.
Commentary
This poem exhibits Donne’s metaphysical love poem mode, his aptitude for turning even the least
likely images into elaborate symbols of love and romance. This poem uses the image of a flea that has just
bitten the speaker and his beloved to sketch an amusing conflict over whether the two will engage in premarital
sex. The speaker wants this to happen but, the beloved does not, and so the speaker, uses the flea, in whose
body his blood mingles with his beloved’s, to show how innocuous such mingling can be. He reasons that if
mingling in the flea is so innocuous, sexual mingling would be equally innocuous, for they are really the
same thing. By the second stanza, the speaker is trying to save the flea’s life, holding it up as “our marriage
bed and marriage temple.”
But when the beloved kills the flea despite the speaker’s protestations (and probably as a deliberate
move to squash his argument, as well), he reverses his argument and claims that despite the high-minded and
sacred ideals he has just been invoking, killing the flea did not really impugn his beloved’s honor—and
despite the high-minded and sacred ideals she has invoked in refusing to sleep with him, doing so would not
impugn her honor either.

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 This poem is the cleverest of a long line of sixteenth-century love poems using the flea as an erotic
image, a genre derived from an older poem of Ovid. Donne’s poise of hinting at the erotic without ever
explicitly referring to sex, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to exactly what he means, is as much
a source of the poem’s humor as the silly image of the flea is; the idea that being bitten by a flea would
represent “sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead” gets the point across with a neat conciseness and clarity
that Donne’s later religious lyrics never attained.
Check Your Progress 1
(i) Why does the poet say that he and the beloved have become one in the flea?
(ii) What according to the poet is their marriage bed and temple?
(iii) Do the girl’s parents approve of their supposed marriage?
(iv) How does the poet argue that in killing the flea, the girl commits triple murder?
5.4 “THE EXTASIE”
5.4.1 Text of “The Extasie”
Where, like a pillow on a bed
A pregnant bank swell’d up to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to intergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As ‘twixt two equal armies fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung ‘twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.
If any, so by love refin’d
That he soul’s language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
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He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we love;
We see by this it was not sex,
We see we saw not what did move;
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mix’d souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are compos’d and made,
For th’ atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They’ are ours, though they’ are not we;
we are The intelligences, they the spheres.
We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses’ force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven’s influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air;
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.

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 As our blood labors to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes us man,
So must pure lovers’ souls descend
T’ affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love reveal’d may look;
Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we’ are to bodies gone.
5.4.2 Commentary
According to medieval mystical conception, ‘ecstasy’ means a trance-like state in which the soul
leaves the body, comes out, and holds communion with the Divine. In Christianity also, it denotes the state
of mystic/religious communion with God. Donne uses the religious and philosophical term with religious
and philosophical connotations to build his own theory of love.
The poem “The Extasie” begins by describing the state of two lovers who are sitting on a bank with
no more bodily contact than holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes, while their souls hold intense
communion. Donne speculates on this spiritual experience and expresses his unique and unconventional
ideas about love. For Donne, true love only exists when both bodies and souls are inextricably united.
Donne criticizes the platonic lover who excludes the body and emphasizes the soul. Donne believes that
there is a parallel movement in which the bodily life must aspire towards higher realms of the spiritual, and
the soul must descend to affections and sensations of the flesh.
Donne believes that true love is spiritual, it is a union of the souls. But he doesn’t entirely ignore the
claims of the body. The poem presents itself is in an unbroken series of narration, arguments and even
contemplation. He delves into diverse fears to draw out a wealth of images. Donne focuses on the relationship
of the soul to the body. The setting is natural, and very calm and tranquil, it is as if the spirituality is
dominating the serene ambiance just before the quiet intrusion of the suggestive earthy and sensual description
of the scenery. The scenery however, is described in erotic terms: the riverbank is “like a pillow on a bed”;
it also is “pregnant”. The reference to pillow, bed and pregnancy suggest sexuality, though the poet says that
their love is ‘asexual’. It is springtime, and violets are in bloom. To a Renaissance reader, the image of
violets symbolizes faithful love and truth. The lover’s eyes meet and reflect the images of each other, and
their sights are woven together. They become ecstatic because their souls have escaped from their bodies to
rise to a state of bliss. When love joins two souls, they mingle with each other and give birth to a new and

47
finer soul, which removes the defects and supplies whatever is lacking in either single soul. The new
re-animated soul made up of their two separate souls gives them the ecstasy. But when the soul is being
talked about can the body be left behind? It certainly cannot be for the simple reason that it acts as the house
of the soul. It is akin to being the vehicle and the container in which the soul resides. So they cannot forget
the body. Donne uses metaphors of alloys, celestial spheres and a violet to make his point.
Donne refers to a violet to tell us that the fusion of the lover’s soul produces a new “abler soul” like
the violet, which doubles its vigor when it is grafted together with another. The united soul is perfect,
unchanging and also transcends the “defects of loneliness”, or the single soul. Souls are spiritual beings.
They move with the help of the bodies. Body is the medium of contact of the two souls. Therefore, the lovers
turn to their bodies and try to understand the mystery of love. Body is the medium to experience love. So
spirits must act through bodies. If love is to be free, it requires physical as well as spiritual outlets.
The poem is also a criticism of the conventional idea of love that supports the separation of the
bodies, from the souls. The religious institutions are also censured for having supported blind thoughts that
divide the body and the soul. Donne finally appeals to his readers to nourish their souls through their bodies
in order to reach towards the point of extreme joy, or ‘ecstasy’.
On a metaphysical plane this poem can be said to bring together opposites. The poet has also reconciled
such opposites as the medieval and the modern or the spiritual and the physical.
Making use of his swift imagery and usage of conceits in his ingenious manner, Donne has brought
together the abstract and the concrete, the remote and the familiar, the ordinary and the metaphysical.
Check Your Progress 2
(i) What does the army image stand for in the poem “The Extasie”?
(ii) Explain three important images in the poem.
5.5 “THE CANONIZATION”
5.5.1 Text of “The Canonization”
FOR God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout;
My five gray hairs, or ruin’d fortune flout;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;
Or the king’s real, or his stamp’d face
Contemplate ; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.
Alas ! alas ! who’s injured by my love?
What merchant’s ships have my sighs drown’d?
Who says my tears have overflow’d his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill

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Add one more to the plaguie bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
Call us what you will, we are made such by love ;
Call her one, me another fly,
We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th’ eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,

And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love ;

And thus invoke us, “You, whom reverend love

Made one another’s hermitage ;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;
Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes ;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize—
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your Love.

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 5.5.2 Summary and Commentary
This poem, like many other poems of Donne, eulogizes the love of the poet for his beloved. At this
time he was experiencing a personal low phase in his marital life with Anne. But in spite of that the poets
intensity, and ardor could not be cooled down. Even though his detractors could carry on with their criticism,
the poet couldn’t care less about their opinions and was totally impatient and defiant towards such people.
The first line of the poem clearly denotes this and is a testimony to his great impulse of love. The poet says
that he does not envy those who amass fortune by currying favour with royalty. He is disdainful of their
cravings for earthly gains and forbids them to interfere with his love making. He is willing to be criticized
for any of his other shortcomings like his palsy, his gout or graying hair or even his ruined fortune. But he
wants no interference to come between his beloved and him.
His tone is emphatic when he questions “Who’s injured by my love?” In a defiant mode he addresses
his detractors by saying that his sighs have not drowned ships, his tears have not flooded land, his colds have
not chilled spring, and the heat of his veins has not added to the list of those killed by the plague. Soldiers
still find wars and lawyers still find litigious men, regardless of the emotions of the speaker and his lover.
He dares his opponents to “Call us what you will,” for it is love that makes them so. He says that the
addressee can “Call her one, me another fly,” and that they are also like candles (“tapers”), which burn by
feeding upon their own selves (“and at our own cost die”). In each other, the lovers find the eagle and the
dove, and together (“we two being one”) they illuminate the riddle of the phoenix, for they “die and rise the
same,” just as the phoenix does—though unlike the phoenix, it is love that slays and resurrects them.
He says that they can die by love if they are not able to live by it, and if their legend is not fit “for
tombs and hearse,” it will be fit for poetry, and “We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms.” A well-wrought urn
does as much justice to a dead man’s ashes as does a gigantic tomb; and by the same token, the poems about
the speaker and his lover will cause them to be “canonized,” admitted to the sainthood of love. All those who
hear their story will invoke the lovers, saying that countries, towns, and courts “beg from above / A pattern
of your love!”
This poem is seemingly addressed to someone who disapproves of the speaker’s love affair, is
written in the voice of a world-wise, sardonic courtier who is nevertheless utterly caught up in his love. A
seemingly interesting aspect of the poem is that while the old notions of love are parodied, some new ones
have been elaborately coined. The eventual conclusion is that even if the love affair is impossible in the real
world, it can become legendary through poetry, and the speaker and his lover will be like saints to later
generations of lovers. (Hence the title: “The Canonization” refers to the process by which people are inducted
into the canon of saints).
In the first stanza, the speaker refers to his relationship with the world of politics, wealth, and
nobility; by assuming that these are the concerns of other people. He indicates his own background amid
such concerns, and he also indicates the extent to which he has moved beyond that background. He hopes
that the listeners will leave him alone and pursue a career in the court, to aristocrats, preoccupied with favor
(the King’s real face) and money (the King’s stamped face, as on a coin). He parodies contemporary Petrarchan
notions of love and continues to mock his addressee, making the point that his sighs have not drowned ships
and his tears have not caused floods. (This is a dig at Petrarchan love-poems which were full of claims like
“My tears are rain, and my sighs storms.”) He also mocks the operations of the everyday world, saying that
his love will not keep soldiers from fighting wars or lawyers from fighting court cases—as though war and
legal wrangling were the sole concerns of world outside the confines of his love affair.
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 Donne uses a number of metaphors that help explain the intensity and uniqueness of his love. First,
he says that he and his lover are like moths drawn to a candle (“her one, me another fly”), then that they are
like the candle itself. They embody the elements of the eagle (strong and masculine) and the dove (peaceful
and feminine) bound up in the image of the phoenix, dying and rising by love. Then he explores the possibility
of canonization in verse, and finally, he explores his and his lover’s roles as the saints of love, to whom
generations of future lovers will appeal for help. Throughout, the tone of the poem is balanced between a
kind of arch, sophisticated sensibility (“half-acre tombs”) and passionate amorous abandon (“We die and
rise the same, and prove / Mysterious by this love”).
“The Canonization” is one of Donne’s most famous and most written-about poems. Its criticism at
the hands of Cleanth Brooks and others has made it a central topic in the argument between formalist critics
and historicist critics; the former argue that the poem is what it seems to be, an anti-political love poem,
while the latter argue, based on events in Donne’s life at the time of the poem’s composition, that it is
actually a kind of coded, ironic rumination on the “ruined fortune” and dashed political hopes of the first
stanza. The choice of which argument to follow is largely a matter of personal temperament. But unless one
seeks a purely biographical understanding of Donne, it is probably best to understand the poem as the sort of
droll, passionate speech-act it is, a highly sophisticated defense of love against the corrupting values of
politics and privilege.
Check Your Progress 3
(i) How does Donne parody Petrarchan notions of love?
(ii) Has the poet used the image of the fly and the taper in the conventional way or has he made a
variation?
5.6 SUMMARY
This unit has familiarized you with three ‘love-poems’ of John Donne -‘The Flea”, “The Extasie”
and “The Canonization”. In “The Flea” the poet reacts against the love connections of the time; in “The
Extasie” the focus is on the creation of a world of love resulting from an attempt to strike a balance between
body and soul; and in “The Canonization” there is a shift from the fullness of love expressed on the metaphor
of ‘subtle knot’ to a greater exaltation of the mind where love attains a quality of sainthood.
5.7 GLOSSARY
Arch - a curved symmetrical structure spanning an opening and typically supporting the
weight of a bridge, roof, or wall above it.
Defiant - showing resistance Discern - recognize or find out.
Exaltation - a feeling or state of extreme happiness.
Innocuous - not harmful or offensive.
Swatted - hit or crush (something, especially an insect) with a sharp blow from a flat object.
5.8 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
(1) Give a critical appreciation of ‘The Extasie’.
(2) Bring out the themes in ‘Canonization’.

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5.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Answer 1
(i) Because of the mingling of their blood in the flea.
(ii) The flea’s body.
(iii) No, they disapprove.
(iv) She would be killing the lover, herself and the flea as their blood has mingled together inside the
flea.
Answer 2
(i) When two armies are at war, the outcome is not known. The lovers are like two armies poised for
a victory against each other, negotiating for a settlement.
(ii) Image of a jeweler threading pearls on a string compared to the lovers eyes which are gazing so
intently at each other that it is as if their eyes are on a double string. This is also a hyperbole.
Second is the image of two armies arrayed against each other which represents the two lovers.
Third is when the lovers are compared to statues in a tomb from where the soul has gone out.
Answer 3
(i) He says his sighs have not drowned ships and his tears have not caused floods. Petrarchan love
poems were full of such claims i.e. “My tears are rain, and my sigh, storms.
(ii) The fly and the taper are conventional images for lovers. (Shama and Parwaana) The lover is the
fly who gets drawn to the taper i.e. the beloved in the conventional sense. However, Donne makes
a variation and says that both of them are the taper and the fly in turn as both of them have made
sacrifices in love.
5.10 SUGGESTED READING
(1) ‘The Metaphysical Poets’ by C. Helen White.
(2) ‘The Love Poetry of John Donne’ by Joan Bennett.

*****

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 LESSON-6
DONNE’S POETRY-II

STRUCTURE
6.1 INTRODUCTION
6.2 OBJECTIVES
6.3 “A VALEDICTION : FORBIDDING MOURNING”
6.3.1 TEXT
6.3.2 SUMMARY AND COMMENTARY
6.4 “THE SUN RISING”
6.4.1 TEXT
6.4.2 SUMMARY AND COMMENTARY
6.5 “THE ANNIVERSARIE”
6.5.1 TEXT
6.5.2 SUMMARY AND COMMENTARY
6.6 SUMMARY
6.7 GLOSSARY
6.8 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
6.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
6.10 SUGGESTED READINGS
6.1 INTRODUCTION
When we speak of Donne’s poetry, it is inevitable that we speak of what is called “metaphysical
wit.” Although we have explained this in the introductory lesson on Donne, a quick recap would be in place
here. The tendency among the metaphysical poets to use farfetched ideas, images and analogies drawn from
diverse areas of knowledge and scholarship and use them in their poems was referred to as “wit” or “conceit”.
Critics like Dryden and Johnson disliked this tendency and thought that the poets only used it to show off
their knowledge and that this kind of thing was highly unnatural. He thought that poetry should have a sort
of harmony which the metaphysical poets completely destroyed by introducing incongruous kinds of material.
Donne of course was revolutionary in the sense that he ventured out to gain for poetry a new sort of perfection.
It is not always true that poetry has to be simple in order to be sensuous and passionate. Nor that because it
arouses our intellectual energy the feelings are less than genuine. We also learn that poetry need not always
have a smooth and melodious voice. On the contrary in may achieve a stronger hold on our imagination
through a conversational idiom. Donne uses this with a masterly skill and his technique shows an exquisite
variation of tone and moods. Keeping this in mind let us take up three more poems written by Donne and see
how he works his craft through them.

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6.2 OBJECTIVES
In the previous lesson we took up three poems by Donne, “The Flea”, “Extasie” and “Canonisation”.
In this lesson we will be taking up another three poems by Donne. These are “A Valediction : Forbidding
Mourning”, “The Sun Rising”, and “The Anniversarie”. We intend to again point out certain dimensions of
Donne’s poetic craft that are amply visible in these poems. His peculiar mingling of the intellectual and
emotional, his “unified sensibility” and his robust originality in his turn of phrase, is what we will be
pointing out to you.
6.3 “A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING”
6.3.1 Text of A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“The breath goes now,” and some say, “No,”

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,

Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which alimented it.
But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
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 If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do;

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
6.3.2 Summary and Commentary
This poem is addressed to a woman by the poet lover who is about to leave on a journey or voyage,
which would separate them for some considerable time. The poet’s idea is to define the relationship in such
a way so as to make this separation unimportant. For this purpose Donne works out analogies from fields
like science and craftsmanship.
The speaker explains that he is forced to spend time apart from his lover, but before he leaves, he
tells her that their farewell should not be the occasion for mourning and sorrow. In the same way that
virtuous men die mildly and without complaint, he says, so they should leave without “tear-floods” and
“sigh-tempests,” because to publicly announce their feelings in such a way would take away from the reverence
of their sacred love. The speaker says that when the earth moves, it brings “harms and fears,” but when the
spheres experience “trepidation,” though the impact is greater, it is also harmless. The love of the ordinary
mortal lovers cannot stand separation as it is experienced only at a physical level. Therefore, when the
physicality of the bodies is no longer present, the very basis of love is removed. The poet opines that he and
his beloved cannot be harmed merely by physical separation because theirs is a sublime love which cares not
so much for the nearness of physical bodies as it dwells mainly on the two souls that cannot be effected by
physical separation. It is not about missing eyes, lips and hands denoting a carnal feeling, but rather an
“inter-assurance of the mind” which is of a sublime nature.
Though he must go, their souls are still one, and, therefore, they are not enduring a breach. They are
only experiencing an “expansion”. Just as gold can be stretched by beating it “to airy thinness,” the soul they
share will simply stretch to take in all the space between them. Donne argues that their individual souls are
firmly joined together like the two legs of a compass His lover’s soul is the fixed foot in the center, and his
is the foot that moves around it. The firmness of the center foot makes the circle that the outer foot draws
perfectly: “Thy firmness makes my circle just, and makes me end, where I begun.”

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 “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is one of Donne’s most famous and simplest poems and also
probably his most direct statement of his ideal of spiritual love. For all his erotic carnality in poems, such as
“The Flea,” Donne professed a devotion to a kind of spiritual love that transcended the merely physical.
Here, anticipating a physical separation from his beloved, he invokes the nature of that spiritual love to ward
off the “tear-floods” and “sigh- tempests” that might otherwise attend on their farewell. The poem is essentially
a sequence of metaphors and comparisons, each describing a way of looking at their separation that will help
them to avoid the mourning forbidden by the poem’s title.
To make their separation look sublime, the poet calls for a farewell that should be as mild as the
uncomplaining deaths of virtuous men, for to weep would be “profanation of our joys.” Next, the speaker
compares harmful “Moving of th’ earth” to innocent “trepidation of the spheres,” equating the first with
“dull sublunary lovers’ love” and the second with their love, “Inter-assured of the mind.” Like the rumbling
earth, the dull sublunary (sublunary meaning literally beneath the moon and also subject to the moon) lovers
are all physical, unable to experience separation without losing the sensation that comprises and sustains
their love. But the spiritual lovers “Care Jess, eyes, lips, and hands to miss,” because, like the trepidation
(vibration) of the spheres (the concentric globes that surrounded the earth in ancient astronomy), their love
is not wholly physical. Also, like the trepidation of the spheres, their movement will not have the harmful
consequences of an earthquake.
Donne has brought out and efficiently used the conceit of the twin compasses when he declares that,
since the lovers’ two souls are one, his departure will simply expand the area of their unified soul, rather
than cause a rift between them. If, however, their souls are “two” instead of “one”, they are as the feet of a
drafter’s compass, connected, with the center foot fixing the orbit of the outer foot and helping it to describe
a perfect circle. The fixity of the leg of the compass represents the constancy and fidelity of the lady, and the
assurance of her firmness gives Donne the power to come full circle. The compass is one of Donne’s most
famous metaphors, and it is the perfect image to encapsulate the values of Donne’s spiritual love, which is
balanced, symmetrical, intellectual, serious, and beautiful in its polished simplicity.
Like many of Donne’s love poems (including “The Sun Rising” and “The Canonization”), “A
Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” creates a dichotomy between the common love of the everyday world
and the uncommon love of the speaker. Here, the speaker claims that to tell “the laity,” or the common
people, of his love would be to undermine its sacred nature, and he is clearly contemptuous of the dull
sublunary love of other lovers, which is dependent on lesser factors. The effect of this dichotomy is to create
a kind of emotional aristocracy that is similar in form to the political aristocracy with which Donne has had
painfully bad luck throughout his life and which he commented upon in poems, such as “The Canonization”:
This emotional aristocracy is similar in form to the political one but utterly opposed to it in spirit. Such
emotional aristocrats who have access to the spiritual love of the spheres and the compass; are very few in
number .Throughout Donne’s writing, the membership of this elite never includes more than the speaker and
his lover—or at the most, the speaker, his lover, and the reader of the poem, who is called upon to sympathize
with Donne’s romantic plight.
Check Your Progress 1
(i) Who are the “dull sublunary lovers”?
(ii) How does a virtuous man go from the world?

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 (iii) Can you recall another poem by Donne in which the images of ‘teare floods’ and ‘Sigh tempests’
appear in an identical way?
(iv) The statement “inter-assured of the mind/ care less, eyes, lips and hand to miss,” gives us an
idea of the love ethic of Donne. Comment.
6.4 “THE SUN RISING”
6.4.1 Text of “The Sun Rising”
Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys, and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country wants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both the lndias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear: ‘All here in one bed lay.’

She is all states, and all princes I,

Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compar’d to this,
All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere
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 6.4.2 Summary and Commentary
The scene is that of the speaker lying in bed with his lover. The speaker chides the rising sun, calling
it a “busy old fool,” and asks why it must bother them through windows and curtains. Love is not subject to
season or to time, he says, and he admonishes the sun—the Saucy pedantic wretch”—to go and bother
others like late schoolboys and sour apprentices, or to go and tell the court-hontsmen that the King will ride,
and to .call the country ants to their harvesting. In short the poet wants the Sun to go anywhere else but not
bother him and his beloved.
He then goes on to ask why the sun should think that his beams are strong? The speaker says that he
could eclipse them simply by closing his eyes, except that he does not want to lose sight of his beloved for
even an instant. He asks the sun—if the sun’s eyes have not been blinded by his lover’s eyes—to tell him by
late tomorrow whether the treasures of India are in the same place they occupied yesterday or if they are now
in bed with the speaker. He says that if the sun asks about the kings he shone on yesterday, he will learn that
they all lie in bed with the speaker. Therefore he praises his beloved to the skies.
The speaker explains this claim by saying that his beloved is like every country in the world, and he
is like every king; nothing else is real. Princes simply play at having countries; compared to what he has, all
honor is mimicry and all wealth is alchemy. The sun, the speaker says, is half as happy as he and his lover
are, for the fact that the world is contracted into their bed makes the sun’s job much easier—in its old age, it
desires ease, and now all it has to do is shine on their bed and it shines on the whole world. “This bed thy
centre is,” the speaker tells the sun, “these walls, thy sphere.”
One of Donne’s most charming and successful metaphysical love poems, “The Sun Rising” is built
around a few hyperbolic assertions— the first of which is that the sun is conscious and has the watchful
personality of an old busybody. The second would be that love, as the speaker puts it, “no season knows, nor
clime, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time”. The final assertion would be that the speaker’s
love affair is so important to the universe that kings and princes simply copy it, that the world is literally
contained within their bedroom. Of course, each of these assertions simply describes figuratively a state of
feeling. To the wakeful lover, the rising sun does seem like an intruder, irrelevant to the operations of love;
to the man in love, the bedroom can seem to enclose all the matters in the world. The inspiration of this poem
is to pretend that each of these subjective states of feeling is an objective truth.
Accordingly, Donne endows his speaker with language implying that what goes on in his head is
primary over the world outside it For instance, in the second stanza, the speaker tells the sun that it is not so
powerful, since the speaker can cause an eclipse simply by closing his eyes. This kind of heedless, joyful
arrogance is perfectly tuned to the consciousness of a new lover, and the speaker appropriately claims to
have all the world’s riches in his bed (India, he says, is not where the sun left it; it is in bed with him). The
speaker captures the essence of his feeling in the final stanza, when, after taking pity on the sun and deciding
to ease the burdens of his old age, he declares “Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere.”
Check Your Progress 2
(i) Why does the poet feel that the sun is not so powerful?
(ii) How does the poet glorify and extol his love?

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6.5 “THE ANNIVERSAIRE”
6.5.1 Text of “The Anniversaire”
All Kings, and all their favourites,
All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,
Is elder by a year now than it was
When thou and I first one another saw:
All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay;
This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.
Two graves must hide thine and my corse;
If one might, death were no divorce.
Alas, as well as other Princes, we
(Who Prince enough in one another be)
Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,
Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears;
But souls where nothing dwells but love
(All other thoughts being inmates) then shall prove
This, or a love increased their above,
When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.

And then we shall be thoroughly blessed;

But we no more than all the rest.
Here upon earth we’re Kings, and none but we
Can be such Kings, nor of such subjects be;
Who is so safe as we? where none can do
Treason to us, except one of us two.
True and false fears let us refrain,
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.

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 6.5.2 Summary and Commentary
In this poem, yet again, the poet eulogizes the immortality of his love that knows no mortal boundaries
and in spite of the fact that bodies are given to death and decay, the souls shall forever remain eternal. The
poet begins by referring to the passage of time. A year has passed, and “all other things” including royal
courts and the very sun itself have grown older by a year, drawing that much closer to their end. In contrast,
the one ageless thing is the unchanging love the poet shares with his lover. Although their bodies will be in
separate graves when they die, their eternal souls will be reunited along with “all the rest” when they are
resurrected. For now, the two are kings in their world of love, secure in their faithfulness, and he hopes that
they will be together for sixty anniversaries.
In this three-stanza poem, the poet commemorates the, first anniversary of seeing his beloved. He
begins by using imagery from the political world: the royal court of kings. He juxtaposes this image with the
supreme nature image, the sun, to encompass the highest concepts of the whole world (royalty and the life-
giving sun)—only to point out that these things are mortal and have come one year closer to death since he
first laid eyes on his beloved. He claims the only thing not subject to “decay” is the love that he and the
object of his affections share. Their passion has “no to-morrow .... or yesterday” and is therefore timeless
and beyond the reach of mortality.
It is interesting that this stanza argues for the constancy of their love, rather than a love that grows
over time. While it does not decay, it also does not increase; he is satisfied with it. There is no “tomorrow”
or “yesterday,” and the “first” and “last” day are kept all the same. Also to be noted is the fact that unlike
infidelity poems, in this poem the poet expects that both he and his beloved are faithful in their mutual love.
In the second stanza, however, Donne acknowledges that while their love is timeless, the lovers’
physical bodies are not so fortunate. One day each of them will die—this death will force them to “leave at
last in death these eyes and ears,/Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears”. Thus, their physical
bodies—the instruments through which they enjoy their love—will fail them, ending in a kind of “divorce”.
Donne turns this loss around, however, by reminding his beloved that their bodies may be subject to corruption,
but not their souls: “When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove”.
As with much metaphysical verse, the focus is on the non material and spiritual over the physical
and mortal. This poem explicitly refers the audience to the eternal life of the soul. Their love will live on in
their souls, and these souls will be reunited after their bodies are moved to their graves.
The final stanza points out that at this point, the lovers will be like “all the rest,” thoroughly blessed
in the Afterlife. Thus, they will no longer have a unique and ageless relationship, yet, while they remain on
earth, they are in the special realm of constant love which is available to “none but we.” The stanza returns
to the royal court motif, this time placing the lovers squarely in the seat of sovereignty in a kingdom made of
their love, subject to no one but each other.
The lovers are subject to the progress but not the depredations of time. He concludes that they
should “love nobly, and live, and add again/Years and years unto years” (“Nobly” carries both of its meanings
here; they should love as the nobility they are, and with noble hearts.) His call to add “years unto years” is
his way of embracing the passage of time but in a positive way. He sweetly remarks that they will celebrate
one anniversary after another until sixty years have passed—and therefore sixty anniversaries. For now, he
and his beloved will begin the second “year” of their reign. Presuming that sixty years is a long enough
earthly life, the poet promises a very long reign of love. It is interesting to note that the haunting image of

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death recurs again and again in Donne’s poetry. So also in this poem he goes into details— each love rotting
away in different graves.—the eyes that beamed love and ears that devoured words of love are all sealed in
dust. From the idea of death, he soon rises to ideas of eternal love. The love he talks about knows no
annihilation as it transcends the earth to reach heaven where they’ll love again.
Check Your Progress 3
(i) What argument has the poet put forward in his poem “The Anniversaire”?
(ii) What lines make you think that Donne has used death imagery?
6.6 SUMMARY
This lesson completed your initiation into the poetic art of John Donne who broke with the ruling
love conventions of his time and forged a poetic medium expressive of his sensibility. The close reading of
his poems makes it manifest that though they fall within the class of love poems; they are not exactly alike
and vary with the poet’s mood. None of the mellifluous expressions of the Elizabethan era are seen here.
Donne writes in a simple direct manner and infuses passion into his poetry. He introduces a personal note
and expresses varying moods and sentiments.
6.7 GLOSSARY
Admonish - warn or reprimand someone firmly.
Alchemy - a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination. Carnality
pertaining to or characterized by the flesh or the body, its passions and appetites;
sensual.
Incongruous - not in harmony or keeping with the surroundings or other aspects of something.
Mellifluous - (of a sound) pleasingly smooth and musical to hear.
Pedantic - excessively concerned with minor details or rules Profanation - the act of defilement.
Trepidation - a feeling of fear or anxiety about something that may happen.
6.8 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1. Comment on “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” as a metaphysical poem.
2. What would you say is the theme of “The Sun Rising?”
3. Discuss Donne’s concept of love.
4. Discuss how the sacred and the profane are harmoniously blended in Donne’s love poetry with
reference to the poems you have studied.
5. What does Samuel Johnson find lacking in the works of the metaphysical poets?
6. How can we justify that metaphysical poetry is highly intellectualized poetry?
7. Explain the main elements of metaphysical poetry with reference to metaphysical wit and conceit.
6.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Answer 1
(i) Those lovers who are interested only in physical love and indulge in sensual delight.
(ii) Silently. A similar idea is expressed by Pope when he says in his poem “Ode to Solitude” that
he wants to “steal” away from the world.

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 (iii) In “The Canonisation”, the poet expresses the same images when he asks - what merchant
ships have my sighs drown d? Who says my tears have overflow’s his ground?
(iv) Donne’s love ethic lays stress on the importance of the mating of the mind and union of the soul
rather than on the physical demonstration of passion. Therefore this poem is different from
“The Extasie” in which the poet speaks of the union of the body and soul.
Answer 2
(i) Because the speaker can cause an eclipse simply by closing his eyes.
(ii) By saying that his love is so important that kings and princes copy it and the world is literally
contained within their bedroom.
Answer 3
(i) That all things are capable of changing, growing older, of being destroyed except their love.
(ii) He uses the terms graves, corpses in the second stanza which revolves around death imagery.
6.10 SUGGESTED READINGS
AUTHOR TITLE
A.J. Smith, A Celebration of Donne
A.AIvarez The School of Donne
Basil Willey, Seventeenth Century Background
C.Helen White The Metaphysical Poets
C.S. Leavis Donne and Love Poetry in the Seventeenth Century
F.R. Leavis Revaluation
Frank Kermode John Donne
Frank Kermode Discussion of John Donne
Joan Bennett The Love Poetry of John Donne
J.B. Leishman The Monarch of Wit
M. Praz Donne’s Relation to the Poetry of His Time
Samuel Johnson Lives of the Poets
T. Spenser A Garland for John Donne
T.S. Eliot Selected Essays

*****

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 LESSON-7
JOHN MILTON : AGE, LIFE AND WORKS

STRUCTURE
7.1 INTRODUCTION
7.2 OBJECTIVES
7.3 BACKGROUND TO MILTON’S AGE
7.3.1 THE RENAISSANCE
7.3.2 THE REFORMATION AND THE PURITAN NOTE
7.4 MILTON AS A LATE-RENAISSANCE POET
7.5 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT
7.6 MILTON’S LIFE AND WORKS
7.7 A BRIEF APPRAISAL OF MILTON AS A POET
7.7.1 BLENDING OF THE RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION ELEMENTS
7.7.2 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NATURE OF HIS POEMS
7.7.3 MUSICALITY OF HIS POETRY
7.8 SUMMING UP
7.9 GLOSSARY
7.10 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
7.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
7.12 SUGGESTED READING
7.1 INTRODUCTION
No writer can live in an ivory tower, but is invariably influenced by the moods and events of the
society he lives in as much as he is influenced by the circumstances and events of his personal life. Milton
is no exception. This lesson will, therefore touch briefly upon all those momentous events and circumstances
that conditioned Milton’s life and times and impacted his literary output.
In putting together these lessons, we assume that you have already done a preliminary reading of the
three poems we have prescribed for you i.e. ‘Lycidas’, ‘L’ Allegro’ and Paradise Lost Book 1, We advise you
to go through these at least once and then read these lessons for a better understanding. If on reading these
poems you feel that you are not being able to grasp their meaning, do not get discouraged. Remember,
Milton was not writing for a 21st century reader, but for a 17th century one - and it may be some consolation
to know that even, some of his contemporaries found him to be a daunting poet to read! In fact his display
and use of classical and Christian themes and subjects may seem oppressive to you at the moment. But once
you get an overall view of the age, etc. the meaning and concerns of the poems will fall into place. For this
reason, the current lesson is very important.
7.2 OBJECTIVES
In this first lesson on Milton our primary objective is to introduce you to John Milton, one of the
most outstanding poets of the seventeenth century. We also intend to familiarize you with the background to
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the late Renaissance period, i.e.; Milton’s Age. The political, social and literary aspects of the age, especially
those that have a relevance to, and provide an understanding of Milton’s poetry will also be discussed. A
comprehensive view of Milton’s life and works and a brief appraisal of Milton as a poet will be taken up as
well.
7.3 BACKGROUND TO MILTON’S AGE
Milton has often been referred to as a representative of the late Renaissance- which is the period
from the early to the middle decades of the seventeenth century. His works also carry the effects of the
Reformation in the form of his soft and steady Puritanism. To help you understand Milton’s works better, we
shall now review in detail the salient features of the two movements Renaissance and Reformation-that
formed the background to Milton’s age.
7.3.1 The Renaissance
‘Renaissance’ is the term commonly used by historians to refer to the period in European history,
dating from the late fourteenth century in Italy, covering other countries like Germany and France in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and probably reaching its culmination in the seventeenth century England
with the works of John Milton, who is often called the last great Renaissance poet.
The most striking feature of the Renaissance was the revival and popularization of Classical learning.
Renaissance (which means re-birth) was literally a re-birth of a new interest in ancient Greek and Roman
literature and learning. The advent of the printing press (circa 1450) diffused this learning faster and on a
larger scale among the reading public.
Another important feature of the Renaissance was the development and centering of intellectual
attention on human rather than divine objects, celebrating the virtues and potential of the human individual.
This concept of Humanism and consequently of Individualism, that arrived with the Renaissance, taught
that the universe was not, as the Middle Ages had believed, theocentric (centered in God), but homocentric
(centered in man). Much emphasis came to be laid upon, man, human life, the material world, and man’s
activity in this life as opposed to the “other” life i.e. eternity. In other words, emphasis was on “this
worldliness” rather than on other worldliness”. The humanistic thinking gave special importance to self-
culture which meant the cultivation of Christian virtues as also a harmonious development of the human
personality on all planes of thought, feelings and action.
As the Renaissance arrived in England through Italy (and to some extent, France), it brought with it
certain Italian characteristics as well, foremost among which was a keen appreciation of beauty, generally of
the physical kind. Some other characteristics included a reckless spirit of adventure, a taste for pomp and
splendor, and a general love of luxury. Consequently, the English Renaissance writers assimilated all these
features and hailed not only the ancient Greek and Roman writers like Plato, Aristotle, Homer and Virgil,
but also the Italian poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth century like Ariosoto, Petrarch, Tasso and Machiavell,
who themselves had written under the impact of the classical masters. Renaissance in England was marked
by an impatience for all letters — intellectual, religious and even moral and developed a craving for sensuous
thrills. The Renaissance elements in Milton manifest themselves in the form and style of his many works.
An avid reader and a great admirer of the ancient masters, he picked up the framework for most of his major
poetical works from the classical models. His Nativity poem is an ode based on the classical ode; “Lycidas”is
a pastoral elegy in the manner of elegies written by Theocritus and Bion; Paradise Lost is an epic that
conforms strictly to the classical epic of the kind of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Virgil’s Aeneid; Samson
Agonistes is a classical tragedy composed strictly on the principles enunciated by Aristotle in his Poetics.
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Milton also used a profusion of pagan mythology, imagery and allusions drawn from his extensive reading
of classical literature, as you will certainly gather from the reading of Milton’s poems prescribed in your
course.
However, even though Milton used his profound and vast knowledge of pagan mythology, he was
no votary of paganism. Moreover, though he respected the dignity of human beings, a Renaissance trait, yet
he stood for their acquiescence in the will of God. Thus, the Renaissance spirit in Milton was influenced and
modified by his ingrained Puritanism which we shall now discuss.
7.3.2 The Reformation and the Puritan Note
A companion movement of the Renaissance was the Reformation which signified an upheaval in
Christianity and the generation of several breakaway sects within Christianity that were together referred to
as Protestantism.
A German clergy, Martin Luther (1483-1546), was the first and the most influential critic of the
Church. The fundamental observation of the Protestants was that the path to salvation did not lie through the
Church, which had become corrupt and licentious, but through the individual’s acceptance and adherence to
the Holy Scriptures. Salvation was, thus, a matter of the individual’s direct, unmediated relation to God.
The impact of the Reformation can be seen in Milton’s poetical as well as prose works. In “Lycidas”
Milton takes the opportunity to denounce the degenerate clergy who led a comfortable life while the people
-”The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.” His prose works like ‘Of Reformation’, ‘Prelatical Episcopacy’,
and The Reason of Church Government’ all deal with the need for Church discipline.
An off shoot of the Reformation movement, Puritanism appeared as a moral and social force that
conditioned most of Milton’s works. Puritans were those splinter sects among the Protestants themselves
that rose against the Protestant Church of England which they thought was not yet fully reformed. The
Puritans had a firm faith in the supremacy of God and the word of the Bible. They condemned the British
bishop (episcopacy), and every institutionalized religion. They favoured a life of austerity and spiritual
discipline. They advocated the “other worldly” outlook and frowned on all amusements and pleasures of
this world. As such, all artistic and literary pursuits like painting, sculpture, music, dance, drama etc. were
denounced by the Puritans.
Milton lived and wrote when Puritanism had taken a hold over religion and politics in England.
Born in a Puritan family and surrounded by Puritan ideology and way of life, his works represented the
Puritan spirit. While contemplating the writing of Paradise Lost, Milton had toyed with the idea of writing
an epic based on King Arthur, but his Puritanism made him gravitate surely and steadily towards the biblical
theme of the Fall of Man; his purpose in writing the epic was, in his own words, to “justify the ways of God
to men”: the Muse he invokes is not the conventional Muse of epic poetry but the Holy spirit; instead of
pagan marvels, we have Christian miracles wrought by God and His Son. The Nativity ode is the dedication
of his poetic art to celebrate the birth of Christ; Milton expresses his intention to devote himself to serious
and religious poetry in “Lycidas Paradise Regained’ a sequel to Paradise Lost; is imbued with a religious
spirit from first to last. Samson Agonistes is a classical tragedy but its protagonist is a biblical character.
Milton’s unswerving faith in God is echoed in Samson’s words: “Just are the ways of God/And justifiable to
men/unless there be who think not God at all.”
Milton was, however, not a rigid Puritan and his Puritanism was tinged by his love of the classics,
the love of nature, of beauty, and the Renaissance humanism. For instance, his pastoral lyric Allegro “describes
a young man who is filled with the joie de vivre and who abandons himself to those pleasures which were
anathema to the gloomy Puritans and thus the idyll strikes a positively anti-Puritan note.
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Check Your Progress 1
(i) What would you say was the most striking feature of the Renaissance?
(ii) What was the Reformation famous for bringing in?
(iii) Who were the Puritans?
7.4 MILTON AS A LATE-RENAISSANCE POET
The impact of the Renaissance and the Reformation could still be felt at the time Milton was writing.
However, his period is also marked by the simultaneous presence of several new historical trends that
actually came to define the following age —the Age of Enlightenment - which spans the latter part, of the
seventeenth century and much of the eighteenth century. Chief among these are the celebration of reason, of
scientific method in the pursuit of knowledge, and a civic rationality that tried to outline the relations of
individual to society. The last was manifested largely through the genre of political and cultural criticism
practiced, first of all, by Milton in his pamphlets and religious and political tracts. In his poetry, the power of
reason is explored in Book I of Paradise Lost that you are to study, in Satan’s attempt to rationalize his fall
from heaven and the consequences for him. The engagement with Science is evident in Milton’s metaphors
and similes.
Despite showing a fondness for logic and reason, Milton renounces rationality in favour of the
Renaissance trait of celebrating the human as a “divine being” rather than as a “rational being”, as can be
seen in Paradise Lost. The same theme appears to preoccupy Milton, more than rationality, in his poems
“L’Allegro “and ‘II Penseroso” Milton also did not employ the new scientific methods in his works.
Although Milton stands midway between two periods in history and carries in his works the defining
intellectual and cultural traits of both, yet it is more appropriate to associate him with the Renaissance than
with the Age of Enlightenment, because of his own leaning towards the intellectual preoccupations of the
former period. Thus it is safe to identify him as the last major Renaissance writer.
The peculiar position Milton occupies nevertheless needs to be further understood in the light of the
political and historical circumstances of his writing, which we will now explore.
After Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1603, James IV of Scotland became the King of England, taking
the title of James I. His reign saw the alienation of the court from the subjects and that of the King from the
Parliament. It also saw the emergence of a new trading middle class and the landed gentry. Charles I, who
followed James I, established a reign of decadent opulence and arbitrary power. The Puritans, who dominated
the Parliament, sought his removal, suspecting him of being pro-Catholic. By 1641, civil war had erupted
between the Royalists and the leaders of the House of Commons, Cromwell being a prominent leader.
Charles I was captured and later executed in 1649. England was declared a Republic called “the
Commonwealth”. Subsequently, Cromwell used his forces to disband the Parliament on corruption charges
and became the Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1653. Cromwell’s eventual removal and
the dissolution of his government in 1659 brought Charles II, in exile in France, to the English throne in
1660. A landmark political and social transition, after the Restoration of Monarchy, was the subordination of
the king’s power to that of the Parliament.
Milton was both an observer and a participant in the historical and political events of his times.
Right from the Civil War (1641) till the Restoration of Monarchy (1660), he put his poetic ambitions on hold
and wrote a total of eighteen major prose works defending the Puritan rebellion and the regicide of Charles
I. A great admirer of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, he glorified the government of the day in his prose
writings, working as the Latin Secretary. His anti-episocopal sentiments are reflected in four of his pamphlets
written in 1941-42.
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7.5 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT
Alongside the political and historical changes that came as a result of the civil unrest in England,
society was also witnessing radical transformation which explains Milton’s heavy use of ancient learning in
his works. The discovery and colonization, especially of the two Americas, the eventual settling and
exploitation of the colonies, and the expansion of trade enriched the European nations besides enriching the
imagination of the people through new geographies and peoples. The new religious ideologies of the period
challenged the existing order -ecclesiastical and political authority — as also attitudes to private property
and the relations between the sexes. Much literature of the period stems from these diverse challenges, often
taking the form of pamphleteering, political treatises and tracts like some of Milton’s works, that sought to
influence public-opinion and thereby bringing political and social change. However, the dominant theme
was the rights of the individual vis-a-vis the State, Church and Society, and its formulation drew heavily on
the Renaissance and the Reformation discourses of humanism and individualism. In many ways, this question
is at the heart of Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Check Your Progress 2
(i) Why do we call Milton the last major Renaissance writer?
(ii) Why do you think Milton heavily used ancient learning in his works?
7.6 MILTON’S LIFE AND WORKS
Milton was born in London on December, 9, 1608. His father, John Milton Sn. was a man of culture,
a classical scholar, and a musician of no mean ability. His mother was the daughter of a Welsh gentleman.
After being disinherited by his Roman Catholic father for turning a Protestant, Milton’s father moved to
London and became a successful notary and money-lender. He paid a great deal of attention to his son’s
education. Milton learnt several modern languages from private tutors at home. In 1623, Milton was sent to
St. Pauls School, London, where he followed the regular curriculum Of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. The
following year he joined Christ’s College, Cambridge. Here he made the acquaintance of Edward King,
whose death he mourns in “Lycidas”(1637). Milton was nicknamed the “Lady” by his college for his singularly
pleasing appearance. He also shaped well as an organist but his wholehearted allegiance was given to literature.
Milton’s initial years at Cambridge displayed little love for scholastic logic; he preferred and
celebrated instead the ideas and literature of Renaissance humanism. While at Cambridge, he composed
most of his Latin poems that were highly sensuous in style. His fascination for the sensuality of Ovidian and
Roman poetry was, however, soon replaced by a greater interest in the idealism of Dante, Petrarch and
Edmund Spenser. He soon turned to Platonic philosophy and finally to the mysticism of the Biblical Book of
Revelations. Consequently, he foreswore the life of sensuality in the pursuit of the higher ambition of becoming
an epic poet. He conceived as lofty a view of the poet’s calling as did Wordsworth two centuries later, and,
like Wordsworth, felt himself to be a consecrated spirit.
Milton received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1629 and his Master’s degree in 1632. Two of his
English poems survive from his Cambridge days: “On the Death of a Fair Infant” and “At a Vacation Exercise”
both written in 1628. His first great poem in English “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”, celebrating the
birth of Christ and recording the dismay of pagan deities at His birth, was written in the Christmas season of
1629-30. Besides showing him as a devout Christian, the ode also shows the maturity of his poetical craft
and his hold over the pastoral from as well as the meter, anticipating the work of his later days. “L’ Allegro”
(chosen for your detailed study) and its companion piece, “II Penseroso” both written in 1632, were less
ambitious than the Nativity ode, but showed the same mastery over the pastoral form.
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 On leaving Cambridge, it was assumed Milton would join the Church but he stood by his decisions
of becoming a poet and scholar, and of deprecating the tyranny of the Church. This meant he had to depend
on his father for financial assistance. He stayed with his parents at Horton from 1632 to 1638. This six-year
Horton period proved very productive. Milton wrote “Ad Patrem” (To Father), an expression of his gratitude
to his father and a defense of the career he had chosen. Here, he also wrote “Arcades “(1633), “Comus”
(1634), and “Lycidas” (1637). “Comus” is a masque that first dramatized his favoured theme of the grand
conflict between good and evil, while “Lycidas”, employing the form of the classical pastoral elegy, may be
seen as his first attempt to justify ‘God’s ways to man’. At Horton, besides studying intensely the Greek and
Latin writers, Milton also read extensively diverse disciplines like religion, politics, philosophy, geography,
history, astronomy, mathematics and music, that were unavailable to him at Cambridge. This extensive
reading probably was the reason for his failing eyesight and the subsequent blindness at the age of forty-four
In 1638, Milton traveled to Italy where he met the imprisoned astronomer, Galileo Galilei, a meeting he
found significant enough to have mentioned it in his prose work ‘Areopagitica’. Civil and political strife at
home forced him to cut short his tour and return home the next year, 1639, to settle in London and work as
a tutor.
In 1642, Milton married Mary Powell, the seventeen year old uneducated daughter of an Oxford
shire royalist gentleman who owed his father money. The incompatibility of the partners was evident from
the start and six weeks after the marriage, Mary went back to her family. Milton contemplated divorce and
wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce’ (1643). Based on his own personal crisis, this tract on
divorce also raised social issues. Mary and Milton were reunited after five years, in 1645, by friends and
subsequently Milton had three daughters by her. Mary died in 1652.
Among Milton’s other prose works may be mentioned his very popular ‘Areopagitica’ (1644) which
was a speech addressed to the Parliament for the liberty of unlicensed printing; ‘of Education’ (1644) which
is a typically Renaissance humanist text on the ideal Christian education, for young boys; and The Four
Chief Places of Scripture’ (1645) which dealt with the subject of marriage. Milton’s only poetic output
during 1641-1645 was the versification of a few psalms and the writing of seventeen sonnets, ranging in
subjects from deeply personal to the political.
In 1649, Milton was offered Latin Secretary ship by Cromwell. His chief duty was to translate
foreign dispatches into “dignified Latin”, as also to defend and support the Government which he did admirably
in ‘Eikonoklastes’ in 1649, followed by several other tracts. However, the success of these was marred by
his blindness in 1652. Despite his blindness, he continued to write his political tracts, in 1656, he married
Katherine Woodcock and had a daughter by her, only to see them both die in 1658. At this time he was also
working on the important ‘A Treatise on Christian Doctrine’; finished around 1659-60, that offers many of
the theological arguments that were to form the core of the debate in Paradise Lost.
All of Milton’s prose work reflected a stern and ardent concern with the protection of individual
freedom of speech and dignity and condemned tyranny of any kind, whether by the Church or the State. He
repeatedly and insistently demanded the separation of religion from politics.
The Restoration of Monarchy in 1660 was a deeply disillusioning moment for Milton, although he
continued to argue for the Commonwealth form of Government that he had so arduously supported in his
last political pamphlet written in 1660. With the return of Monarchy, Milton was arrested but was later
released on the intervention of friends.

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 From 1660 to 1665, Milton concentrated on further study with the aid of his third wife Elizabeth
Minshull, whom he married in 1663, and his three daughters by his first wife, who also took the dictation of
his magnum opus, Paradise Lost, which in twelve Books depicts the fall of Satan and through him the fall of
Man. It’s purpose, as Milton himself said, was “to justify the ways of God to men”. It was published finally
in 1667 to be followed in 1671 by the publication of Paradise Regained in four Books that describe the
temptation of Christ by Satan who fails in his attempt, and Samson Agonstes, which is a classical tragedy
based strictly on the principles stated by Aristotle in his Poetics.
Milton did not survive long after this, and already severely ill with gout, he died on November 8,
1674, and was buried in St. Giles’, Cripplegate, besides his father.
7.7 BRIEF APPRAISAL OF MILTON AS A POET
In his literary parentage Milton owes somewhat to both John Donne and Edmund Spenser, but his
debts are small as compared to the rich legacy he gave to English poetry. He had a lasting impact on the
works of Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson and Yeats.
7.7.1 Blending of the Renaissance and the Reformation Elements
Milton had once admitted to Dryden that Spenser was his original. He saw himself as the true
successor of Spenser in that he wanted to fuse the classical heritage of the Renaissance with the Christian
spirit of the Reformation, while remaining quintessential an English poet.
The spirit of the Reformation provided the content of Milton’s poetry and the spirit of the Renaissance
classicism its mould and pattern. In other words, Milton, produced beautiful poems in correct classical
forms and into these he poured the in tensest spirit of the Protestant movement. Both Puritanism (a product
of the Reformation) and Hellenism (a product of the Renaissance) were closely harmonized in his genius, as
has been discussed in 1.2 of this lesson.
7.7.2 Autobiographical Nature of His Poems
Milton was an intensely self-reflexive poet, whose poetry is suffused with the awareness of his own
ambition and vocation. Beginning with his sonnets, one can trace how his works are autobiographical and
reveal his intellectual and spiritual character. The sonnet “On His Twenty-third Birthday” expresses his
melancholy feeling that his genius has not ripened even though he has turned twenty-three: “My hasting
days fly on with full career, /But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’ th.” In his best-known sonnet “On
His Blindness”, he expresses his inability, now that he has gone blind to serve his “maker” and present his
“true account” to Him. “L’ Allegro” and “II Penseroso”, companion poems of the early Horton period, is
Milton himself in two different moods - the happy, and the pensive. “Lycidas” is both a lament for his friend
and an exposition of his old preoccupation with the nature of fame and the rewards of a poetic profession. As
a champion of personal liberty, that was suppressed by the king, Milton gives vent to his anti-royalist feelings
through the rebellion of Satan against the Almighty in Paradise Lost. In Samson’s agonized cry, in Samson
Agonistes, we can hear the complaint of Milton himself: “Of loss of sight of thee I must complain! /Blind
among enemies! O worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!”
7.7.3 Musicality of His Poetry
Almost all of Milton’s poetry is suffused by a musicality that enhances the poetics of the English
language. That is, the rhymes and rhythms native to English are explored and exploited with lyrical skill in
all his poems, whether in the lighter mode of the shorter poems or in the more weighty and sonorous tones
of Paradise Lost. The following lines from the poem “L’ Allegro” illustrate this point.
While the Cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
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 And to the Stack, or the Barn dore,
Stoutly struts his Dames before,
Oft list’ning how the Hounds and horn,
Chearly rouse the slumbring morn,
From the side of som Hoar Hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill.
This ear for sound and the consequent enhancing of the musical potential of the English language
was one of the lasting legacies of Milton to the succeeding generation of poets. The musicality of his poetry
was sometimes conjoined with a striking sensuality of imagery as seen in the following lines from “Lycidas”.
That on the green terf such the honied showres,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Gessamine
The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat,
The glowing Violet.
The Musk-rose, and the well attir’d Woodbine.
With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed.
This sensuality grew into an important dimension of his poetry especially after his blindness set in,
and is in evidence in the early parts of Paradise Lost.
7.8 SUMMING UP
In this lesson we identified some of the main features of the Renaissance and the Reformation that
were still evident when Milton was writing, and examined their relevance to understanding his literary
output. We also tried to locate Milton historically. We also saw how the seventeenth century was a period
torn by civil war, and political and religious turmoil and how these affected Milton. We took note of the
literary and cultural climate of the period and its influence on Milton’s poetry. After a comprehensive study
of his life and works, we undertook a review of some of the characteristics of his works.
7.9 GLOSSARY
Arbitrary - based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or.
Civic - relating to a city or town.
Daunting - seeming difficult to deal with in prospect; intimidating.
Episcopal - of a bishop or bishops.
Unswerving - not changing or becoming weaker; steady or constant.
Quintessential - representing the most perfect or typical example of a quality or class.
7.10 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1. Identify some of the main features of Renaissance that influenced Milton’s Poeh’c works.
2. What are some of the cultural and political factors that led to the making of Milton as the first
major English epic poet?
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7.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Answer 1
(i) Revival of Classical learning.
(ii) An upheaval in Christianity.
(iii) A sect which rose against the Protestant Church which they thought needed reforms.
Answer 2
(i) Because his intellectual preoccupations leaned more towards the Renaissance then towards the
Age of Enlightenment (late 17th and early 18th Century).
(ii) Because during the Renaissance these was a good deal of revival of learning of classical languages
and literature. Therefore many writers knew that their readers would grasp the meanings.
7.12 SUGGESTED READING
(i) ‘John Milton: A Literary Life’ by Cedric C. Brown.
(ii) ‘The Life of John Milton’ by Lewalski Barbara.

*****

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 LESSON-8
“L’ALLEGRO” AND “LYCIDAS”

STRUCTURE
8.1 INTRODUCTION
8.2 OBJECTIVES
8.3 “L’ ALLEGRO”
8.3.1 PARAPHRASE
8.3.2 ANALYSIS
8.4 “LYCIDAS”
8.4.1 PARAPHRASE
8.4.2 ANALYSIS
8.5 AS A PASTORAL ELEGY
8.6 SUMMING UP
8.7 GLOSSARY
8.8 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
8.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
8.10 SUGGESTED READINGS
8.1 INTRODUCTION
The diversity of themes and poetic techniques in “L’ Allegro” and “Lycidas” make them quite the
opposite of each other, but the similarity of the rural setting in both the poems points to their having been
composed during the same period (1632-1638), when Milton was residing in the countryside at Horton. The
mode in the poems differs vastly, making “L’ Allegro” a pastoral lyric and “Lycidas” a pastoral elegy. The
contagious mirth of a cheerful man, full of the joy of life, which pervades the first poem, is in sharp contrast
to the heavy and serious mood of the mourner in the second. However, both poems showcase Milton’s
erudition and are replete with allusions from the Classical and Christian sources and, as in the case of “L’
Allegro”, from the English folklore and the Medieval Romances.
8.2 OBJECTIVES
In the previous lesson we gave you the salient features of Milton’s age, life and works. In this lesson
we intend to familiarize you with two of Milton’s well known poems, “L’ Allegro” and “Lycidas”. In analyzing
the poems, we will examine the generic forms that Milton employs and reworks to his own specific ends.
The lesson will also focus on the relationship between Classical and Christian traditions of thought in
Milton’s works. Some observations on the two poems will help you to understand the poems better.
8.3 “L’ALLEGRQ”
8.3.1 Paraphrase
Let us begin with a paraphrase of the poem:
The poem opens with an address to Melancholy in the first ten lines which have a staccato effect
expressing the sense of revulsion towards Melancholy. The rest of the poem has a more relaxed tone in
dealing with the subject of Mirth.
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 Lines 1-10: The persona in the lyric banishes Melancholy, the child of the ‘blackest midnight’ and
the three-headed dog, Cerberus, guarding the gates of hell, to the perpetual darkness of the Cimmerian
desert.
11-24: Following the traditions of the pastoral lyric, Milton begins his idyll with an invocation. The
cheerful man invokes Euphrosyne, the goddess of Mirth, to come to him. He traces her parentage to Venus,
the goddess of love and beauty, and Bacchus, the god of wine. An alternate ancestry makes Euphrosyne the
daughter of Zephyr, the god of west wind, and Aurora, the goddess of dawn, who conceived her “blithe and
debonair” daughter (Euphrosyne) on a bed of early summer flowers.
25-40: The cheerful man then requests the goddess to bring her companions with her, like Jest,
Jollity, Quips, Cranks, Wanton Wiles, Nods, Becks, Wreathed Smiles, Sport, and her chief companion the
Mountain Nymph - Sweet Liberty. He requests her to make him a part of her crew, so that he can freely enjoy
the innocent pleasures of life.
41-68: For L’ Allegro, the innocent pleasures would consist in getting up early to enjoy the song of
the lark, flying high in the sky, till dawn appeared through his creeper-covered window. With the crowing of
the cock, which he would hear, the darkness of the night is entirely dispelled. Sometimes he would hear the
hounds and horns of the hunters from a nearby dew- covered hill. While walking on the green hills he would
enjoy the beauty of the rising sun. He would also take delight in watching the milkmaid, farmers and shepherds
carrying out their morning activities.
69-90: Some other pleasures that would delight the cheerful man, (L’ Allegro), are the beauties of
the landscape around him that he would see in his early morning walk - the russet lawns: fields full of
grazing sheep; the heavy clouds resting on the hill tops; meadows covered in daisies; brooks and rivers; and
perhaps a tower rising above the tree tops where some beautiful lady lives. Milton uses conventional names
for shepherds and shepherdesses that were used in ancient pastorals by Theocritus and Bion. For instance,
walking through the countryside at noon, L’ Allegro would come across Coryon and Thyrsis eating dinner
prepared by Phyllis who quickly proceeds to the fields with Thestylis to bind the corn or hay, into sheaves.
91-116: Attracted by the sound of bells and fiddles, the mirthful man would then visit a village in
the hills where he would enjoy the dance and revelry of the young boys and girls till night. He would drink
ale in their company and listen to the fairytales of these country folk. Perhaps a girl would narrate how the
fairy queen, Mab, pinched and pulled her for being naughty, and ate up her cakes, while a man would narrate
how he was led astray by a flickering light and came upon Puck, the goblin, toiling and sweating while
threshing corn, in order to earn a bowl of cream. After warming himself along the chimney, the goblin
vanished before the cock crowed. When the story session got over, and the villagers went to sleep, L’ Allegro
would leave the village.
117-134: The happy man would then proceed to enjoy the pleasures of the towered city. He would
go to tournaments that are well attended by crowds of royal men and beautiful ladies, where the knights
would compete with each other to win the hand of their lady-loves. Milton’s cheerful man being fond of
social life and human company would also attend marriages, feasts, revelry and pageants which the young
poets write about. L’ Allegro would then go to the theatre to watch the comedies of Ben Jonson or the plays
of Shakespeare.

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 135-152: The cheerful man would wish to listen to sweet music that would soothe him - music that
is skillfully rendered and touches the very soul. L’ Allegro wants the highest kind of music - music so divine
as would move Pluto, the god of the underworld, more than the music of Orpheus could move him, to release
Eurydice (Orpheus’s wife), unconditionally. In other words, if L’ Allegro were to master the “Lydian Aires”,
he might be able to free Eurydice himself. L’ Allegro concludes that if these are the delights that Mirth can
offer him, he would happily live with her.
8.3.2 Analysis
“L’ Allegro” and for that matter its companion piece “II Penseroso”, were composed during the time
Milton was living at Horton, which accounts for the breath-taking descriptions of the English countryside
contained in them. “L’AIIegro” gives an account of the happy person, imagined in the poem as spending an
idyllic day in the country, followed by a joyful evening in the city.
The titles of both the poems are derived from Latin. “L’ Allegro” in Italian means roughly “the
cheerful man” and “II Penseroso” “the pensive man.” “Allegro”, a term used in English Classical music,
suggests a fast-paced musical piece which hints at the lightness of the subject and a brisk movement. As a
pastoral lyric which is full of light, a fast tempo and bright and happy images, “L’ Allegro” is the exact
opposite of its twin, “II Penseroso” which has a slow pace and dark images.
(I suggest that you give “II Penseroso a reading as well, which will help you understand “L’ Allegro”
better).
Like with many of Milton s poems, there is a strong yet subdued element of sensuality in his
descriptions of the rural scenes in “L’ Allegro”. The sensuality is enhanced by the trope of the union or
coupling that haunts the poem. For instance, in lines 73-80, the mountains and clouds are a pair, while the
battlements “boosom’d” with tufted trees lead easily onto the figure of the beauty lying in wait within -
almost as if the battlements were the external manifestation of the beauty within. This subtle emphasis on
sensuality and sexual union is never elaborated into a full-fledged theme but remains a condition of the
possibility of Mirth.
The poem does not embody any one strain alone, of either the classical or the Christian, but weaves
the two together, in addition to displaying snatches of the English folklore and medieval romances. The
poem is the easiest of Milton’s works but it still carries the weight of his phenomenal learning. There are
allusions to Greek and Roman gods and goddesses- Euphrosyne, Bacchus, Zephyr, Venus, Aurora, Hymen-
and to the myth of Orpheus. The fairy- queen - Mab, Puck the goblin, the “friar’s lantern” possibly denotes
the will-O’ the wisp are characters picked up from the English folklore. He also refers to the English dramatists
like Ben Jonson and Shakespeare whose plays L’ Allegro would like to watch. The tournaments, where the
knights displayed their valour, were a part of medieval romances that Milton was familiar with.
The first ten lines of L’ Allegro have an irregular meter, while the rest of the poem is in octosllabic
couplets whose tripping sweetness pleases the ear after the rough cadence of the opening ten lines of the
poem.
The poem’s structure is chronological: it begins with the “dappled dawn” and moving through a day
of pastoral activities, ends in the activities of the night. However, the question that has often been asked is
whether the pleasures mentioned in the idyll are the pleasures enjoyed by L’ Allegro on a single day or the
pleasures he habitually likes to enjoy. If we take it to be a single day, we cannot explain how the man can
attend a tournament, a marriage feast and also visit the theatre, all in the space of one night as each of these

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occasions needs a considerable time for watching and enjoying, Perhaps the use of the words “Some Time”
in line 57 and “sometimes” in line 91 makes it clear that the poem does not describe the activities of a single
day. The enjoyments described are not successive but they are alternative - one day it is one activity the
cheerful man takes part in and the next day it is another pleasure he enjoys. Therefore, it is more natural to
suppose that Milton is actually describing the main tenor of L’ Allegro’s life - the happy experiences and
pursuits not of any particular twelve hours but of his career as a whole.
Check Your Progress 1
(i) What does L’ Allegro mean?
(ii) What is its companion piece called?
(iii) What pleasurable activity does L’ Allegro undertake?
(iv) List some allusions present in the poem.
8.4 “LYCIDAS”
Written in 1937, “Lycidas” first appeared in a 1938 collection of elegies entitled Justa Eduardo
King Naufrago, commemorating the death of Edward King, a collage mate of Milton’s at Christ’s College,
Cambridge, who drowned in a shipwreck in 1637. Milton, who had been very close to King, volunteered or
was asked to make a contribution to the collection, and used the occasion to reflect his own current emotional
conflicts, specifically about poetry. King, who like Milton, had apparently devoted his short life to poetry,
becomes the basis for Milton’s searching questions on the worth of poetic vocation, in the face of the
unpredictability of death. Providence is initially questioned, doubted and even accused by Milton for his
friend’s death, but in the end faith is restored and the divine motive is justified - a theme Milton later
developed fully in his epic Paradise Lost. The elegy is thus both a conventional lament for one deceased, as
also the gradual spiritual and intellectual revelation of the individual faced with the frailty of mortality.
Lycidas also has political overtones and is fierce in its dedication to and defence of the true Protestant faith.
8.4.1 Paraphrase
Let us begin with a paraphrase of the poem:
The very name, “Lycidas”, is a conventional one used for a shepherd, and frequently occurs in the pastoral
elegies of Theocritus and Bion. The poem begins with an epigram which labels “Lycidas” a ‘Monody’ (a
lyrical lament for one voice), and states the reasons for its writing - to bewail a learned friend, Edward King,
and by occasion to foretell the ruin of the corrupt clergy of the poet’s times.
Lines 1-24: Milton as the shepherd-poet invokes the gods Apollo, Aphrodite and Dionysus, through
their attributes of laurel, myrtle and Ivy, respectively, and apologises for having to pluck their unripe berries,
thereby implying that though he had resolved not to write any poetry until his poetic talent had matured
fully, yet Lycidas’ untimely death compels him to sing for one who himself was a poet of repute. Lycidas
must not remain unwept and unsung. Casting aside his reluctance to sing, the persona invokes the “Sisters”
- the Muses of poetic inspiration - to help him sing his lament.
The imagery in these lines is autumnal - mellowing year, brown myrtle, harsh berries, parching
winds, and leaves that shatter to the touch. He thinks of his own death which, he is sure, Lycidas would have
lamented had their positions been reversed. The double tragedy of Lycidas - he has died young before
reaching his full potential as a poet and man, and is drowned at sea without a proper Christian burial -leads
Milton to question the justification both of the loss and of the Divine Will.

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 25-36: The shepherd - singer then presents an idyllic picture of life he and Lycidas spent in the past.
Both he and King (imagined as shepherds) were nursed upon the “self-same hill” (Christ’s College,
Cambridge). Together they spent the morning tending their flocks and listening to the sounds of nature till
the evening. At night, they listened to the rural songs and the flutes and watched Satyrs (goat-men), fauns
and shepherds dancing together in harmony. Milton presents a safe world - the “Cosmos” - of the pastoral
world in these lines where nature and shepherds live in complete harmony and where no discord can arise.
37-49: However, the “Cosmos” of the pastoral world is transformed into a “Chaos” with the death
of Lycidas. Woods and caves are now overgrown with wild thyme and vines and their echoes mourn the dead
shepherd whose loss is compared to the frost that destroys the vegetation or to the canker worm that kills the
young herds.
50-63: In these lines the mourning shepherd both accuses and excuses Nature for causing Lycidas’
death, in the same breath. He accuses the Nymphs of the mountains and the rivers for being absent when
Lycidas drowned. But then he excuses their absence by saying that they could not have done much to save
Lycidas even if they had, been present because even gods are helpless before the Divine Will. He cites the
example of Calliope- the Muse who bore Orpheus-who could not save her own son from being killed.
One cannot fail to notice here the comparison of Edward King to Orpheus - the gifted singer who
could charm even the inanimate things in nature with his songs (refer to lines 42-44). Likewise, King could
evidently captivate an audience with his poems. Both are lamented by “Universal nature” (line 60) and both
lie in their watery graves.
64-76: In the shadow of death and unintelligible Providence, Milton, in true pastoral tradition,
contemplates destiny and the frailty of human ambition. The two shepherd - poets (Milton and King), while
tending the art of poetry, worked diligently, denying themselves the pleasures others indulged in, to achieve
fame as poets. But just when fame is within reach, Destiny comes and cuts the thread of King’s life. Milton’s
lament is that the pursuit of poetic vocation is futile if the Muses of poetry cannot guard their shepherds
(poets) and reward their dedication.
77-84: However. Phoebus (Apollo), “interrupts” the shepherd - poet’s lament to console him and to
expiain to him the nature of true fame. Fame is not earthly praise but a reward given by Jove (God) in
heaven. God alone judges man’s right to fame and fair reward. It is the ambition of achieving God’s favour
that should be “the spur that the clear spirit doth praise “(line 70).
85-102: Though the poet had digressed in the previous lines and sang like an epic poet- a higher
calling - he now returns to his role of a pastoral singer and calls on the sea-Nymphs to explain their absence
when, the ship sank. Triton, the “Herald of the sea” questions the waves and the winds to explain their role
in the shipwreck. The wind god, Hippotades, denies his role by saying that at the time of the tragedy all
winds were calm and sea-Nymphs played on the calm sea. The tragedy is eventually attributed to the fatal
ship that sank Lycidas. It must have been built during the eclipse and fitted out in the midst of curses.
103-107: In keeping with the pastoral tradition, Milton introduces a procession of mourners. The
first to come is Cam (representing the Cambridge University), and like Apollo, who had accidentally killed
his beloved Hyacinthus, cries out in agony at the death of his most promising student - King.
108-131: The last mourner to appear is St. Peter - “the Pilot of the Galilean lake”. Milton’s introduction
of St. Peter into the list of mourners shows his deepening Puritanical fervour. He shows St. Peter mourning
the death of King because King was intended for the Church and would have certainly set an example of

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purity and devotion to the other priests. St. Peter’s is the voice that utters Milton’s indignation, in a series of
both Classical and ecclesiastical allusions, against the corrupt clergymen of his day. In these lines the note of
keen personal regret is conspicuous by its absence.
In the pastoral mode, Milton through St. Peter, denounces those shepherds who do not know their
art of tending their sheep but have become shepherds through unfair means. They satisfy their own hunger
by pushing aside the deserving shepherds at the shearer’s feast, while their hungry sheep are not fed and die
of disease or else are eaten up by the wolf. In the Christian mode, St. Peter lashes out at the corrupt Protestant
clergy, who know little about their true calling. Their sermons are hollow, their dedication is thin and their
sincerity wretched. Consequently, the spiritually- starved Protestants move over to the fold of the Catholic
faith described by Milton as “grim Wolf with “privy paw”. For such shepherds (clergy) retribution is near, as
St. Peter pronounces, and they shall soon be smitten by the “two-handed engine”- death. In other words, the
domination of the corrupt and corrupting religious leaders is doomed.
132-153: After another digression into the Christian mode, the shepherd-singer returns to the pastoral
strain and once more asks the Muse of poetry to assist him in giving Lycidas a make- believe burial. He bids
the valleys to cover the ground, where the imaginary body of Lycidas lies, with their flowers of thousand
colours. Most of the flowers Milton lists - primrose, hyacinth, jasmine, woodbine, pansy, daffodil and
Amaranths- bear connotation to death and re-birth, and the unending cycle of life. Life has now returned to
the living world; the shrunken waters begin to flow, the winds and shadows begin to play; the valleys burst
forth with the spring flowers; in short, “Cosmos” has been reinstated once more.
154-164: In the conventional manner of a pastoral elegy, Milton ends his elegy on a note of consolation
and hope. After the mock-burial has been conducted for Lycidas, his shepherd- friend can now feel easy in
his mind and can reconcile himself to Lycidas’ drowning at sea. The vision of Lycidas’ body as lying at rest
near Land’s End, is indicative of his re-birth as a guardian angel of England.
165-181: Lycidas’ comparison to the sun in these lines suggests his resurrection. The shepherd-poet
asks his companions to weep no more, for Lycidas’ soul has gone to heaven through the mercy of Jesus “that
walk’d the waves”, to live among the heavenly saints with joy and love. He has been re-born into a better
world.
182-193: The shepherds give up their lament. The poet imagines his friend as the “Genius of the
shore” who will protect the misguided souls and guard Protestant England against the Catholic enemy.
Milton’s faith is restored and he can find full justification for the Divine Will.
The concluding eight lines form a sort of epilogue in which Milton speaks directly, having stepped
out of the character of the shepherd. Having passed through many moods and sung in different strains, the
shepherd draws his cloak around him and leaves the spot for “fresh woods, and Pastures new” - words that
could either be a hint of Milton’s intended voyage to Italy and Greece or his resolve to write poetry in
another vein - no pastorals and idylls for him now but only epic poetry.
Check Your Progress 2
(i) Why did Milton write “Lycidas?”
(ii) What is a pastoral elegy?
(iii) Why do you think Milton chose this form in which to write the poem “Lycidas”?
(iv) Why is Edward King compared to Orpheus?
(v) How does Milton end his elegy?
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 8.4.2 Analysis
Milton’s epigram calls “Lycidas” a ‘Monody’, which is a lyrical lament of one voice. But the poem
has several voices, or personae, including the “uncouth swain” (the main narrator), who is “interrupted” first
by Phoebus (Apollo), then Camus (the river Cam or Cambridge University personified), and then the “Pilot
of the Galilean lake” (St. Peter). Finally a second narrator appears, only for the last eight lines, to bring a
conclusion in a sestet and a couplet. However, by referring to the poem as “monodic”, Milton probably
meant that his poem should be regarded as a story told completely by one person, “the uncouth swain”, as
opposed to a chorus.
“Lycidas” is, unquestionably, a pagan poem, but Milton, the austere Puritan, could not help introducing
Christian element into it which is discernible in the three digressions he made from the pastoral strain: when
Phoebus defines true fame and the true values of life (76-84); when St. Peter pronounces his verdict on the
false clergy (108-131); and when Lycidas’ resurrection is hinted at as an Angel (163), a Saint in heaven
(172-181), and the Genius of the shore (183-185). As a dedicated Christian, Milton’s endeavour was to show
that the spiritual immortality within Christianity is a superior form of immortality to that offered by Classical
thought and literature. Thus, with its curious mixture of pagan loveliness and Christian austerity, the poem
becomes the off spring of Milton’s unparalleled genius.
Milton draws on two traditions of allegorisation of the shepherd: the Classical, in which shepherds
are poets, and the Christian, in which shepherds are spiritual and religious leaders. Both Milton and King
had poetic aspirations - this places them adequately in the role of shepherd -singers. King also had ecclesiastical
ambitions, and, at one time, Milton, too, had contemplated the ministry - this places them as keepers of their
flocks i.e. the Protestants.
Check Your Progress 3
(i) What Christian elements can be discerned in the poem?
8.5 AS A PASTORAL ELEGY
“Lycidas” is a pastoral elegy. The word “pastoral” is derived from the Greek word “pastor” which
means to graze. Hence pastoral poetry is one that deals with the life of shepherds and other humble dwellers
of the countryside.
Pastoralism in literature is an attitude in which the writer looks at life from the viewpoint of a
shepherd. In a pastoral elegy the poet mourns, in the guise of a shepherd, the death of another shepherd, also
a poet. Theocritus of Sicily, Moschus, Bion and Virgil were the great writers of pastoral elegies among the
ancients. Their pastorals are characterized by a rare freshness and a first-hand observation of nature. With
the dawn of Renaissance, the pastoral tradition came to Italy and other European nations and from there the
vogue of the pastoral reached England. Spenser and Sidney were the pioneers of this genre in England, but
the scintillating star in the firmament of pastoralism is certainly John Milton.
Pastoral elegy has its own conventions handed down from generation to generation. In order to
understand “Lycidas” as a pastoral elegy, you must know what these conventions are and, how Milton
follows them:
The pastoral poet begins by invoking the Muses and goes on referring to other figures from Classical
mythology. (“In Lycidas” we find an invocation to the Muses in lines 15 to 22)

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 The mourning in pastoral elegy is almost universal. Nature joins in mourning the shepherd’s death
in “Lycidas”, private sorrow giving place to public sorrow. Lines 37 to 49 describes the mourning. Woods
and caves once haunted by Lycidas now mourn for him.
The inquest over the death is another tradition found in Pastoral poems. (In lines 50 to 63, Milton
charges the Nymphs with negligence. He also questions the tragedy eventually it is blamed on the ill-fated
ship.
A description of the procession of mourners is another convention of elegiac pastorals. (Camus,
representing Cambridge University and leadership, leads the procession. The last among the mourners is St.
Peter mourning the loss to the Church incurred by the death f Lycidas. With the denunciation of the corrupt
clergymen, St. Peter moves away. Lines 88 to 111 are occupied with this description).
Post-Renaissance elegies often included an elaborate passage in which the poet mentions appropriate
flowers of various hues and significance brought to deck the hearse. (Lines 133 to 151 carry such a description.
Among the prioress, the crow toe, the pink and the woodbine, the amaranth alone signifies immortality with
its unfading nature).
In orthodox pastoral elegies, there is a closing consolation and a note of hope. (The poet accordingly
asks the shepherds to weep no more, for Lycidas is not dead, but has merely passed from earth to heaven.
Lines 165 to 185 offer consolation).
The world of the pastorals is the mythic Golden Age where man dwells in complete harmony with
nature and is very close to the divine. In this world (that is often compared to Eden, before the Fall of Man,
by the English pastoralists), the minor Greek deities like the nymphs of pastures, woods, mountains and
waters share their existence with the shepherds and the way faring Gods. It is an animate world which
responds to and echoes the bereaved shepherd’s lament.
The unfortunate death when contrasted to the joy that the dead shepherd offered to the world when
alive frequently turns the lament into a series of serious contemplation on the lot of mortal man. Destiny and
the motives of the Divine Order are the common themes of the pastorals.
Traditionally, the elegiac pastoral also has a description of an idyllic life before the intervention of
death causes the disruption of the universal harmony. This contrast heightens the pathos.
The dead shepherd is conventionally equipped with attributes of youth, beauty, virtue, dedication
and the gift of great poetic and musical talent, and this makes his loss all the more tragic.
The mythical stories of Orpheus and Adonis are recurring themes in the pastoral elegies. Orpheus is
a perfect example of the shepherd-singer, mortal yet divine, who could charm birds, animals, humans, gods
and even the inanimate world with his singing. He was later killed by the Maenads and thrown into a river.
Adonis, the lover of Aphrodite, was untimely killed during a hunt. On the request of Zeus, the lord of the
underworld, Pluto, agreed to return Adonis to spend six months above the ground (signifying spring) and six
months in the underworld (signifying winter).
The form, language and setting of the pastoral tradition, however artificial and seemingly restrictive,
are rich with advantage. It allows humour of pathos, indeed all such methods that define, guide and invoke
human passion and perception. Contemplations on such grave topics as destiny, mortality, temptation and
downfall have all taken place in the history of the pastoral, only proving its capacity. Milton was aware of
this from his study of the Renaissance literature, as well as of the fact that the pastoralist could be both a
satirist and an allegorist who could hide something of a topical nature behind the actions and songs of his
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shepherds. Milton used “Lycidas” as a satire on the corrupt clergy in the Protestant Church. While using the
shepherds’ allegory to lament his dead friend, he also uses the occasion to express some misgivings regarding
the poetic vocation.
Milton was also not blind to the advantages of the mythological and Christian imagery that constitute,
or can be woven into, the elegiac pastoral. The Orpheus myth could certainly also have been a powerful
source of motivation for Milton to have chosen the pastoral version of the elegy. Orpheus was not only a
favourite of the Classical pastoral poets, but also of Milton’s age. Finally, from his extensive reading of the
classics, he was, perhaps, inspired by Theocritus’ Affliction of Daphnis or by Moschus’ Lament for Bion to
attempt a pastoral elegy of his own.
8.6 SUMMING UP
In this lesson, we analyzed two poems by Milton - a lyric and an elegy- which show two diverse
moods of the poet. While analyzing “L’ Allegro”, we observed that the idyll is written in a lighter vein and
contains beautiful and happy images of rural life reflecting the gay mood of the persona. “Lycidas”, too
contains images of the pastoral landscape but they are touched by the sadness of the persona. After listing
the elements of a Classical pastoral elegy, we saw how Milton incorporates these features in the writing of
“Lycidas”. From our reading of the poems we also gathered that Milton’s poetic style is rich with Classical
allusions, yet fundamentally English and Christian in sensibility.
8.7 GLOSSARY
Allusion - an indirect or passing reference.
Conspicuous - clearly visible.
Elegiac - relating to or characteristic of an elegy.
Fiddle - an act of defrauding, cheating, or falsifying.
Myrtle - an evergreen shrub which has glossy aromatic foliage and white flowers followed by
purple-black oval berries
Tuft - a bunch or collection of threads, grass, hair, etc., held or growing together at the base.
8.8 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1. Critically examine 'Lycidas' as a pastoral elegy.
2. Critically analyse the poem 'L'Allegro.
3. Discuss Milton as a pastoral poet.
8.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Answer 1
(i) L’ Allegro in Italian means a cheerful man.
(ii) “II Pensorose”
(iii) Dancing and revelry; drinking ale; listening to fairytales and music; going to tournaments: attending
marriage feasts;
(iv) Reference to some Greek and Roman Gods; Myth of Orpheus; reference to Shakespeare and Ben
Jonson; medieval romances etc.

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Answer 2
(i) He wrote it to commemorate the death of his college mate Edward King, who drowned in a
shipwreck.
(ii) Pastoral poetry deals with the life of shepherds and other dwellers of the countryside. And an
elegy is a kind of lament written on someone’s death.
(iii) Because the pastoral genre can be used in a satiristic and allegorical manner and, therefore, it
could project issues of a topic nature through the songs of his shepards. Therefore, he use “Lycidas”
to comment on the corrupt clergy of the Protestant Church.
(iv) Orpheus could charm even inanimate things in nature with his songs and similarly King could
captivate an audience with his poems.
(v) In keeping with the conventional manner of a pastoral elegy, Milton ends it on a note of consolation
and hope.
Answer 3
(i) Even though it is a pagan poem, Milton introduces Christian elements into it. These are when
Phoebus defines fame and true values of life; when St. Peter gives his verdict on the corrupt
clergy; and when Lycidas’ resurrection is hinted at as an Angel.
8.10 SUGGESTED READINGS
(1) ‘The Cambridge companion to Milton’ ed by Dennis Danielson.
(2) ‘A preface to Milton’ by Lais Poter.

*****

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 LESSON-9
PARADISE LOST BOOK-I

STRUCTURE
9.1 INTRODUCTION
9.2 OBJECTIVES
9.3 BACKGROUND TO THE WRITING OF PARADISE LOST
9.3.1 SOURCES
9.4 COMPLETE STORY OF PARADISE LOST
9.5 ANALYSIS OF BOOK 1 AS A CONVENTIONAL EPIC
9.6 CHARACTER OF SATAN
9.7 MILTON’S GRAND STYLE
9.8 SUMMING UP
9.9 GLOSSARY
9.10 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
9.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
9.12 SUGGESTED READINGS
9.1 INTRODUCTION
After its publication in 1667, Paradise Lost lay unsold in the bookstalls. The story goes that the Earl
of Dorset, looking for books, happened to come across Paradise Lost and was surprised by some passages in
it. He bought the book immediately. After having read it, he sent it over to Dryden, who shortly returned it
with the comment, “This man cuts us ail out, and the Ancients too.” For all the impact Paradise Lost had on
contemporary intellectuals, it fetched for Milton a mere twenty pounds in all, from his publisher.
9.2 OBJECTIVES
In the previous lesson we took up two of Milton’s poems “L’Allegro” and “Lycidas”. In this lesson
we intend to give you a complete survey of Milton’s magnum opus, Paradise Lost Book I. We will begin by
talking about its subject matter, form, language and the sources that inspired him to write it.
We would also be critically analyzing Book I with the main focus on the use of epic similes by
Milton and his observance of the epic conventions. Satan’s character would also be taken up, as Book I deals
primarily with the incident of his ouster from heaven.
9.3 BACKGROUND TO THE WRITING OF PARADISE LOST
Milton lived quietly and frugally after the Restoration. He was blind, infirm and weary but unchanged
in his resolution formed years before, that of writing a poem “as posterity should not willingly let die” as
stated by him in his “Reason of Church Government.” This resolution found expression in Paradise Lost
which consisted of twelve books. Begun in 1638, Milton probably had completed the first two books before
the start of the Civil war in England. Thereafter, he put aside his ambitious project for the next twenty years
to serve the Republican Party through his prose writings. After the Restoration, he resumed the writing of
his epic in a state of complete blindness, completing it in 1664. When it was published three years later in its
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first edition, the poem consisted of only ten books. But as the epics of Homer and Virgil consisted of twelve
books each, in its second edition Milton divided the seventh and the tenth books into two books each to take
the total to twelve.
All through his Cambridge days, Milton was consciously or unconsciously preparing himself to
write a great epic poem. He wanted to rival the fame of Homer and Virgil and become the epic representative
of England. Fascinated as he was by the pageantry and chivalry of the romances he had read, he first thought
of basing his epic on the legendary King Arthur and his hundred Knights. Being an anti-royalist, he decided
against making a king the hero of his poem. Doing so, after the Restoration, would have been an insult to
himself and his fallen party. A committed republican poet also could not celebrate the glories of his national
history when all its past triumphs were indissolubly connected with the names of kings and great barons.
Being thus debarred from choosing a patriotic subject for his great poem, Milton naturally turned to religion
for his inspiration and chose, out of a hundred possible scriptural stories that he had listed in his Cambridge
Manuscript, the subject of the loss of Paradise.
As regards the form of the poem, Milton first thought of writing a drama. In fact, Satan’s address to
the Sun in the beginning of book IV, was originally intended to be the commencement of a tragedy. However,
he shelved the idea and decided in favour of an epic poem, in keeping with his cherished goal.
At first, Milton seems to have contemplated writing his great poem in Latin, the language he had
used in many of his earlier poems. He was tempted to write in Latin so that his poems might be read not only
in England but also by the learned in every nation of the Continent. Fortunately for posterity, he realized that
writing in Latin would get him only the second rank among the Latin writers. He also had the patriotic
conviction that a true poet writes for the instruction of his country. However, his admiration for Latin may be
seen in the predominance of Latin words over the Anglo-Saxon ones in Paradise Lost; as also in the excessive
prevalence of Latin constructions which make the poem read like literal translations of Latin works.
9.3.1 Sources
Critics are divided over the issue of the sources from which Milton derived his inspiration to write
his masterpiece. Some have gone to the extent of showing that Milton borrowed so much from so many
works that Paradise Lost has lost its originality. It should, however, be remembered that since the time of
Homer, epic poets have regarded borrowing their privilege and even prided themselves on their skill in using
ideas of earlier poets. Milton, on his part, defends his borrowing from other sources, with the assertion that
“to borrow and better in the borrowing is no plagiary.”
Voltaire traced the theme of Paradise Lost to an obscure Italian playwright’s comedy Adamo which
Milton perhaps had seen performed at Florence, Italy. The subject of the play was the fall of man and the
actors included God, Angels, Devils, Adam and Eve and the Serpent. Milton may also have read several
poems published in Italy dealing with the same subject, on his many visits to that country, especially a poem
called “Angeleida”. Since the poems are no longer extant, it can only be said with certainty that the subject
of the loss of Paradise was a favourite theme in Italy at that time and it was natural for Milton to pick up
ideas from the Italian works that would be useful in the writing of his epic.
Two modern critics-Gosse and Edmundston find the original of Paradise Lost in a drama called
Lucifer published in 1654 by Vondel, the greatest of Dutch poets, four years before Milton started to write
Paradise Lost. However, Milton’s indebtedness to Vondel can be minimized by two facts, one, that he had
thought of the plan of his poem long before he read Vondel’s dramatic poem and, two, Vondel’s Lucifer

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covers only a small part of the subject matter of Milton’s poem, namely, the rebellion of Satan (Lucifer) and
his war with the angels, whereas Paradise Lost goes much beyond that. Critics have also pointed out the
resemblance of Milton’s lines ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven’ to the two similar lines of
Vondel’s work. But this proves little. Vondel himself may have borrowed this and another idea from Stafford’s
prose work Niobe, published in 1611, in which Satan declares that God drove him to hell in order that he
‘who could not obey in heaven might command in hell.’ Milton may have consciously borrowed these ideas
from Vondel in the same way as he had deliberately borrowed from Homer and Virgil but such borrowings
are hard to establish unless the borrower himself acknowledges in words his indebtedness to other writers.
Among the English writers whom Milton is supposed to have imitated, the first is Caedmon, an
Anglo-Saxon poet who in the seventh century composed a poem which described the fall of angels, the
Creation, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. As Milton had written a history of England down
to the Norman conquest, he was familiar with Anglo-Saxon literature and must have read Caedmon’s poem.
If the melodious flow of verse and the rich illustrations called by Milton from past literatures were taken
away from Paradise Lost, it would still carry a narrative of great power which would read very like the
poetry of Caedmon. However, Milton never mentions Caedmon’s name anywhere in his writings.
Two more English sources were a translated Latin poem “Locustae” by Phineas Fletcher, published
in 1627, in which the speech of Lucifer resembles greatly the speeches of Satan in Paradise Lost. Another
poem “Creation” by the French poet Du Bartas, and translated by Sylvester, perhaps contributed more to the
production of Paradise Lost than any other work. It is also possible that this poem by Du Bartas may have
first suggested to Milton the idea of writing a great poem on a religious subject. This could be mere conjecture
because if Sylvester had not translated Du Bartas, Milton’s choice of subject could be accounted for by his
own character, the theological spirit of the age and the works of a large number of his literary predecessors
in England and the Continent.
With so many poems dealing with the subject of the fall of man and with so much similarity in the
arrangement of the incidents in them, it is difficult to establish Milton’s indebtedness to any particular
author. Milton’s learning was vast and as he had said that he trained himself to become a great poet through
“industrious and select reading”, it was impossible for him not to reproduce in his own verses the fruits of
his extensive study. In order to determine what English poet chiefly attracted Milton’s admiration and gave
a spur to his imaginative genius, we must remember his own statement, as reported by Dryden, to whom he
declared that Spenser was his original.
Check Your Progress 1
(i) Name some sources from whom Milton may have derived his inspiration to write Paradise Lost?
(ii) Whom did Milton acknowledge in his own words, as his original?
9.4 THE COMPLETE STORY OF PARADISE LOST
The story of Paradise Lost is based on the biblical account of the creation of the universe, the
rebellion of the angels against God, led by Satan, the Fall of man and the Christian faith in Jesus Christ as
the Son of God who incarnated himself as the Son of Man to redeem humanity of the Sin committed by
Adam and Eve against God. This story Milton got from the Book of Genesis which is the first book of the
Bible, as also from the books of the two divisions of the bible- The Old Testament (39 books) and the New
Testament (27 books).

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 The Bible (The Old Testament) begins with the story of the creation of the universe. God, through
his Son, created the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, and Man in six days and rested on the seventh (the
Sabbath).
God wanted to send his Son to rule this newly created world. This was resented by Lucifer, the
Archangel, who considered himself a better candidate for the job. God refuted his claim and the enraged
Lucifer gathered some like-minded angles and revolted against God. For three days the war raged in heaven
between God’s army of angels and the rebel angels led by Lucifer. At the end of the third day, Lucifer and his
followers were defeated by the Son of God and thrown out of heaven onto the burning lake of hell.
The Archangel, Lucifer and all the rebel angels lay unconscious on the fiery lake of hell for nine
days and nights. Lucifer (now Satan) was the first to come out of his stupor. He took stock of his situation,
woke up his companions, regrouped his army, constructed a huge palace for himself and established his
kingdom in hell. He divulged to his followers his future plans to pervert God’s new world by fraud and guile
if not by force. He finally called a meeting of all the chiefs of the troops of rebel angels in the vast hall of the
Pandemonium to decide their future course of action.
This is the subject matter of Book I, the opening passage of which compresses a great deal of
information. In its two sentences of twenty-six lines, Milton invokes his Muse, declares his poem’s theme -
the disobedience of God by man, his fall, Man’s redemption by ‘ one greater Man’, namely Christ - and, the
reason for writing his epic which is to ‘assert Eternal Providence’ and to ‘justify the ways of God to men.’
The rest of Book I deals with the description of hell, the plight of the fallen angels, a long list of the chief
angels who later become heathen gods, lengthy descriptions of Satan, his speeches, and the construction of
his temple-like palace-the Pandemonium, which is also the capital of hell to receive all the devils.
In book II, Beelzebub, Satan’s second-in-command, proposes that to take their, revenge on God,
they should seduce the new creature, Man to disobey God. All agree to this proposal but none volunteer to
undertake its execution. Satan offers himself for the task and sets out on his arduous journey. He passes
through chaos from where he picks up Death and Sin as his associates. He then reaches the earthly Paradise
created by God, in order to corrupt Man - God’s new creation.
Book III, is crucial to an understanding of the doctrine from which Paradise Lost derives its moral
significance. God in heaven notices Satan’s journey through Chaos and predicts to his Son that Man would
fall, seduced by Satan, but would ultimately be saved if he could, find a Redeemer. The Son offers himself
as Man’s Redeemer for which he is praised by the angels. Meanwhile, Satan reaches the new world. He
changes himself into a young angel from heaven and deceives Uriel, the archangel who guards the gates,
into letting him enter the earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden, created by God for Man.
Satan reaches Eden and is filled with jealousy to see Adam and Eve leading a blissful existence in
the divinely beautiful Garden of Eden —their Paradise. He overhears their conversation about the apple tree
whose fruit God has forbidden them to eat. Satan perceives at once the means whereby he would contrive
their fall. He changes himself into a toad, and while Eve sleeps, he instills into her mind a terrible dream.
However, Satan’s evil action is detected by angels who chase him out of Paradise.
Eve narrates her evil dream to Adam, that Adam has eaten and shared with her the forbidden fruit.
Adam is upset at this. Raphael arrives from heaven to warn Adam of the imminent danger of his fall and
instructs him to obey God. The discussion between Raphael and Adam continues. Adam recalls his first
experience of Eden; his talk with God about solitude and society which had resulted in the creation of Eve;
as also God’s warning to him to avoid touching the tree of knowledge.
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 Though Satan was driven out of Eden, he sneaks back into it in the form of a serpent and lies waiting
to catch Eve alone. Eve asks Adam to trust her to be on her own to which Adam first objects and then agrees
as his reason was clouded by his love for her. Satan finds Eve alone and tempts her to eat the forbidden apple
by flattering her vanity. Eve’s initial hesitation gives way and she violates God’s injunction by eating the
fruit, much to the elation of Satan. She tells Adam of her transgression and Adam knows that her fate is
sealed. He love for Eve and his fear of life without her make him eat the fruit too. The effect of the eating of
the forbidden fruit is the awakening of the carnal desire in them, which again involves them in crude attitudes
to sex. They feel shame and restlessness in their minds which they never did in their unfallen state. They
became conscious and ashamed of their naked bodies for the first time and run for leaves to cover themselves
up. They also start to blame each other for the sin they have committed.
After Satan accomplishes his goal of wrecking God’s new creation, he returns to the Pandemonium
and reports his achievement to the fallen angles who hail him with a universal hiss as they have now all
turned into serpents— a punishment from God for their rebellion. When God comes to know of Man’s
disobedience, he pronounces His judgment on Adam and Eve. They are to experience pain, sorrow, labour,
old age and death. Adam and Eve are filled with remorse for their action and seek comfort in repentance and
supplication to God.
The Son of God conveys to his father the repentance of Adam and Eve which God accepts but,
nevertheless, orders their expulsion from Paradise. Adam and Eve repent their loss but Michael; another
archangel assures them that God has not abandoned them. Then he takes Adam to a high mountain and
unfolds before him the future history of the world till the Flood.
Michael conveys to Adam the coming of Christ into the world, of his death and resurrection. Adam
realizes that Christ’s role is to restore Paradise and life Eternal to Man. The means of this redemption were
to be patience and obedience, and love of which Christ was an embodiment. After this revelation, Adam and
Eve leave Eden, their blissful home, with a heavy heart, though hopeful that one day their lost Paradise
would be restored to them.
The poem ends tragically in Book XII but the promise of redemption held out by the Son in Book
III, infuses the poem with hope and optimism.
We have provided this overall summary of al, the twelve books to give you an idea of the story line.
However let us now concentrate on Book I for a detailed study.
9.5 ANALYSIS OF BOOK I AS A CONVENTIONAL EPIC
In accordance with the traditions of a classical epic, Paradise Lost begins in medias res- a middle
event. After the statement of is theme and the invocation to his Muse in the opening lines of Book I, Milton
plunges into the middle of his story with a description of Satan and his followers lying on the burning lake of
hell. The full accounts of the war in heaven between God and Satan which leads to this situation, is given in
Books V to VIII. Chronologically, the poem should begin with the Creation of the Universe, which is the very
first event recorded in The Genesis, followed by the revolt of Lucifer and the rebel angels, but it was Milton’s
intent to tell the story dramatically rather than chronologically in the manner of the classical epic poets.
While critically analyzing Book I, you must carefully note how Milton follows the traditions of
classical epics in his poem and how he invariably dilutes the Renaissance elements he so admired, with his
Christian views. Also note carefully all the epic similes (the lengthy and developed comparisons) he employs
to augment and illustrate his descriptions.

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 Lines 1-26: Following the practice of Homer and Virgil, the ancient epic poets of Greece and Rome,
respectively, Milton begins Book I of Paradise Lost with a formal declaration of his theme: Man’s first act
of disobedience towards God in eating the fruit of the forbidden tree that resulted in bringing death and
sorrow into the world and in causing Man’s loss of Paradise, till ‘one greater Man’, Christ, redeemed mankind
and restored paradise to him.
This is followed by an invocation to the Muse, a mystical source of poetic inspiration, to help him
sing about these subjects. This is another convention of epic poetry. However, the Muse whom Milton
invokes is not one of the nine Muses of Greek mythology who dwelt on Mount Helicon (Aonian Mount) and
who traditionally inspired the classical poets, but a different Muse - the Heavenly Muse of religious poetry
(Urania, God’s daughter) - who flew higher than Mt. helicon and had inspired Moses to receive the Ten
Commandments and write The Genesis for the instruction of the Israelites, God’s chosen people. Milton
implies here that since his source of inspiration is greater than that of classical poets, his epic too will be
more sublime that theirs, dealing with a lofty subject - the overthrow of Satan, and the Fall of Man and his
redemption - which none of the classical poets before him had attempted in their epics.
Milton then addresses the Spirit (one of the Christian Trinity), in fact, God Himself, who dwells in
a pure heart more than in a temple and who is responsible for the creation of the universe out of chaos. He
asks God to help him achieve his purpose namely, to ‘assert Eternal Providence, /and justify the ways of
God to men.’
Line 27-49: Immediately after this, Milton raises the question of how Adam and Eve’s disobedience
occurs and explains that their actions were partly due to a serpent’s deception. This serpent is Satan who, out
of his envy of the Son’s chosen status and the desire for revenge on God, had tempted Eve, ‘the mother of
mankind’, to eat the forbidden apple. With an ambitious aim, Satan had vainly raised an impious war in
heaven with the aid of other angels. As punishment for this defiant act, God hurled him and his host of rebel
angels headlong from heaven to the burning lake of hell, the ‘bottomless perdition.’
Lines 5CF191: At this point, the action of the poem begins in hell where Satan and his companions
have just been cast after being defeated by God in heaven. For nine days and nights Satan and his horrid
crew of rebel angels lie stunned and dazed, rolling in the lake of fire that gives off darkness instead of light.
Satan is the first to come out of his stupor and, looking around him, he can see only woeful sights and
regions of sorrow where there is endless misery and torture but no peace, rest or hope. This is the place God
has prepared to punish the rebellions. Satan realizes that their fate has been decided as now they are to live
in a prison of darkness, far removed from God and the light of heaven. He finds his companions lying
confounded in this god forsaken place. Then he discovers his second-in-command, who is later to be
worshipped, in Palestine as the pagan god Beelzebub, lying weltering in the fiery waves beside him. Satan,
who is so named now because he is no longer the Archangel Lucifer but the Arch-Enemy (Satan in Hebrew
means adversary), breaking the awful silence of hell addresses Beelzebub in bold words. In his first speech,
Satan bemoans their terrible plight but does not repent his rebellion against God. He boasts that he has an
unconquerable will, although he has lost the battle in heaven, and has the courage not to yield which God
cannot take away from him. He rejects outright the idea of submission to God which would be a shame
worse than their downfall. He then suggests to Beelzebub that they can still “wage by force or guile eternal
war” against God who must be full of joy as he is not the sole ruler in heaven.

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 Beelzebub flatters Satan by praising him as a fearless commander who led the rebellious angels
against God challenging His supremacy. He expresses his regret that their action has lost them heaven and
laid low all the rebel angels in horrible destruction. He now believes that God cannot be overpowered and
expresses the doubt that their recovered strength and spirit may have been left to them by God only to serve
His purpose. Satan rebukes him for showing signs of weakness and discloses to him new resolve to make
evil his virtue. Henceforth, they shall oppose God’s will and take delight in producing evil. This second
speech of Satan shows him as possessing an evil disposition.
Finding that God’s armies are withdrawn and the fiery hailstorm has stopped, Satan invites Beelzebub
to fly with him to dry land on the shore of the flaming lake, where they will reassess their situation and chalk
out their future course of action.
Lines 192-209: These lines carry two magnificent descriptions of Satan’s hugeness and bulk. When
Satan raises his head, his body lies floating on the burning lake covering a large area measuring many acres.
Using an epic simile, another convention of the classical epics, Milton compares the largeness of Satan’s
body to that of the Titans (a race of gigantic beings inhabiting the earth before the appearance of man) who
waged a war upon Jove, according to Greek mythology. Thereafter he compares it to a Leviathan or a whale
that is so huge that sailors, mistaking it for an island, fixed their ships anchor to it for the night, leaving on
their voyage the next morning. By using these similes, Milton establishes the great size and strength of
Satan.
Lines 210-220: These lines aptly present Milton’s view on the place of evil in God’s scheme for
mankind. Satan lifts himself up from the flames to fly to the dry shore. The poet points out that Satan could
not have done so had it not been the Will of God, who left him free to do evil so that his evil (to seduce Man)
would elicit God’s mercy and grace towards Man, and for himself bring damnation.
Lines 221-241: When Satan rises from the lake, a great void is created in the flaming waves so huge
is his body. He stretches his wings and flies to the shore on winds that feel crushed with his enormous
weight. The dry land where he alights, followed by Beelzebub, has been compared by the poet to the scorched
and smoking bottom of the volcano, Etna, after its eruption. Satan and Beelzebub feel happy to think, though
wrongly, that they have come out of the lake on their own strength and not because of the Divine Will.’
Lines 242-263: The opening lines of Satan’s third speech in the poem are quite reminiscent of
‘Doctor Faustus’ lines about Helen of Troy in Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus: ‘is this the face that launched
a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Ilium!’ As against the Doctor’s wondering astonishment,
Satan’s astonishment is regretful ‘Is this the region, the soil, the clime, ... that we must change for Heaven?
But the regret of Satan at the gloomy sight of his present abode that he and his companions have got in
exchange for the celestial light of heaven, is soon replaced by his stoic acceptance of their changed situation.
He feels it is best to be away from God. He bids farewell to the ‘happy fields’ of heaven and declares himself
the new ‘possessor’ of the ‘profoundest Hell’ who brings with him a mind so determined that no change in
time or place can change it. Through the oft- quoted lines of Satan, ‘The mind is its own place and in itself/
can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven’, Milton is expressing the common psychological truth that the
mind is an independent entity and is not dependent on its circumstances, but on itself, for happiness. Thinking
can convert a good into a bad situation and vice-verse. Happiness or sorrow is a state of mind. Satan boasts
that his thinking can help him create a heaven out- of the hell he is in.

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 Satan considers God his superior only in force and not intellect as he tells Beelzebub. At least in hell
they will rule, without God’s interference. According to him, to rule is a worthy ambition even if it be in hell,
rather than be ruled by others in the best of places. He sums it up neatly, ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve
in Heaven.’ The line reveals Milton’s fierce spirit of independence. In fact, as some critics point out, Satan’s
revolt against God’s arbitrariness is reflective of Milton’s own opposition to the autocratic rule of the kings.
Lines 264-298: Satan suddenly realizes that his faithful followers are still lying dazed on the flaming lake.
He wants to mobilize them to fight yet again with the Almighty. Beelzebub exhorts him to address his
followers remarking that his voice is capable of infusing fresh courage and new hope in them.
At this point, Milton again takes the help of a couple of Homeric similes to describe the armory of
Satan as he moves towards the lake to speak to his followers. The humungous shields he carries on his back
that has been forged in heaven, appears like the magnified disc of the moon that is often watched by Galileo,
the Italian astronomer, through his telescope, to find out what mountains and rivers dot its surface. The spear
that he carries in his hand as a support to walk on the hot and uneven shore is so big that even the tallest pine
tree, felled on the hills of Norway, for use as a ship’s mast, will appear like a small stick when compared to
it. Satan walks unsteadily on the fiery soil very unlike his walk in Heaven, and soon reaches the shore.
Lines 299-313: To describe the multitudes of fallen angels weltering in the fiery waves, Milton uses
two very striking and appropriate images. He first compares their number to the numerous autumn leaves
that thickly cover the streams flowing in the shaded valley of Vallombrosa. The he compares them to masses
of scattered sea-weeds floating on the surface of the Red Sea when the rise of the constellation, Orion, stirs
up a storm at sea.
Milton uses a simile within a simile to describe the countless number of Satan’s followers weltering
in the liquid fire. The mention of the Red Sea reminds the poet of the Egyptian King Bursitis who, while
pursuing the Israelites fleeing from his terror, was drowned in the waves of the Red Sea along with his army.
The masses of the dead bodies of his soldiers, as also their broken chariot-wheels, lay floating on the surface
of the sea watched by the Israelites from the safety of the shore. Milton returns to the first simile with the
words, ‘So thick bestroun....’, comparing Satan’s followers, who lay in thick numbers in the fiery gulf of hell
being watched by Satan from the shore, to the numerous dead soldiers of Busiris floating in the Red Sea.
Lines 314-330: With a powerful voice that reverberates in hell, Satan addresses his comrades in his
fourth speech. He first taunts them that they must be lying supine on the lake to rest their tired limbs after
their battle in heaven or perhaps they are worshipping their enemy, God, lying in that position. He warns
them that if they persist in this passivity, God’s armies will take advantage and crush them with their
thunderbolts. He exhorts them to ‘Awake, arise, or be forever fallen.’ Commanding calls like this present
Satan as a true general of his army, exciting our admiration for him and lending credence to the criticism that
Milton has glorified Satan in his epic.
Lines 331-355: Touched to the quick by Satan’s sarcastic words, all his followers spring to their
feet like watchmen do when caught napping at their post by their master. The way the rebel angles rise from
the lake is aptly described by Milton in two very suggestive similes that also emphasize their large number.
They rise innumerably like the pitch dark swarms of locusts that had been raised by Moses with his mighty
rod and that hung over Egypt as the fifth of the seven plagues that afflicted it. The numberless angels, like
the locusts, keep hovering in the vault of hell till their great Sultan, Satan, signals them with his spear to land
on the beach.

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 Milton here again glorifies Satan. He stresses the sovereignty of Satan by calling him a ‘Sultan’ a
title which implies grandeur and absolute power. The rebel angels outnumber eventhe hordes of barbarians
who, descending like an immense flood from the barren north into the fertile plains of South Europe to
overthrow the Roman Empire, spread beyond Gibraltar, covering a great part of Africa.
Lines 356-521: After alighting on the shore, the leaders from each group of the rebel angels move
to where their great commander, Satan is standing. They look grand and godlike, once the occupants of
heavenly thrones. The poet lists some of the more notable of these chiefs whose names have been erased
from the book of heaven for their having revolted against God. They as yet have no names but later in the
time of man, these devils took different names and came to be worshipped as gods by the pagan population
who deserted the true God. Such gods set up their altars within God’s altar thus defiling it.
By suppressing the original names of the rebel angels, Milton identifies them with heathen gods. In
fact, the traditional Christian view is that the devil (Satan) and his companions were the ones to start all the
false religions as opposed to the true Christian religion.
Milton then introduces the important pagan gods in the manner in which Homer introduces his
warriors in Iliad. He also lists in details the domains of worship of these heathen gods. First among these
deities is Moloch, who was appeased by human sacrifice, especially of children. King Solomon built his
temple next to that of God. Next in line comes Chemo, also called Peor, a lewd and lustful God whom the
Israelites worshipped with obscene rites. Baalim and Ashtaroth are the male and female categories of gods,
respectively, who could assume either sex or any shape they liked. Astoreth was worshipped as the queen of
heaven by virgins through songs. King Solomon built her a temple too. The devil who comes next is Thammus
whom the maids of Syria and Israel worshipped with passionate and licentious rituals.
Thammus is followed in rank by Dagon, the fish-god, half man and half fish, whose idol broke in his
own temple when the Ark of God fell on it. After Dagon comes Rimmon who was worshipped in Damascus.
Following these devils, there appear a group of deities by the names of Osiris, Isis, Orus, with their
attendants. With their animal shapes and magical rites of worship, they seduced the people of Egypt. The
last to come is Belial, who is the most lewd among the fallen angels. There stands no temple for him but he
lives in palaces, courts and cities where lust and violence ruled. Among the remaining bad angels, are the
Greco-Roman gods who had their seats on mounts of Olympus and Delphi, and in all the regions of Greece.
Lines 522-543: In addition to the leaders, many more angels come in droves with eyes downcast
and depressed. But their grief is relived by a little joy to see that their leader is not totally dejected. Satan’s
face wears a similar expression of joy and grief but he recovers his usual pride and speaks to them all, in
words that have no real substance yet they revive their drooping spirits. He orders that his banner be raised
amidst the sound of trumpets. Azazel, being a very tall angel, claims the right to unfurl and hoist the royal
flag on a tall glittering pole. The flag, with its golden hue and studded gems, shines like a meteor. Meanwhile,
the trumpets continue to play the martial tune till the whole army of angels raises a tumultuous shout that
frightens the very realm of hell and pierces its perpetual darkness.
Lines 544-571: Immediately ten thousand banners in bright colours, along with a multitude of
spears, helmets and closely-held shields rise in the air as the rebel angels ready themselves for battle. They
march to Doric tunes of flutes that always infuse courage into the hearts of the ancient heroes and banish the
fear of death from their minds. The Dorian pipes have the power to expel feelings of sorrow and pain from
all minds. The fallen angels march forward with determination to the music of these pipes. They present a
formidable front in their battle gear looking like the warriors of olden days.
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 Lines571-589: Satan surveys his army. His heart is filled with pride and joy to see an army the likes
of which has never been seen before, and he becomes all the more determined to fight God. Even the
greatest of armies, compared with the strength of the fallen followers, will appear like a small infantry of
pygmies that are said to have been easily attacked and defeated by birds. The powerful armies of Greece and
Troy who fought the Theban and Trojan wars, helped by gods are no match to the army of Satan and so is the
case with the renowned armies of British and Armoric Knights commanded by King Arthur. In spite of being
incomparable, the army of the fallen angels is ready to obey Satan their commander, who towers above them
all.
In describing the fallen Archangel, the poet says that Satan retains his original form and looks like
the Archangel of old but for his glory that looks faded. It appears like the sun whose light is dimmed by the
misty air of the morning or by the moon that eclipses it although he still excels his comrades in brightness.
His face bears the marks of thunderbolts that had hit him during the war in heaven. His face looks anxious
but his forehead expresses courage, pride and determination to avenge himself on God.
Lines 589-621: The fifth and last speech of Satan reveals a human touch in his nature. Though his
eyes are cruel, yet he feels deeply for his comrades who have been his partners in his rebellion against God
and are now his co-sufferers in hell. They once lived in heavenly bliss but have now been flung into the
misery of hell all because of him. Yet they stand faithfully by him on the morning merle of the beach. They
have lost their former glory and appear withered like trees struck by lightning. Full of remorse, Satan prepares
to speak to them while they draw nearer in a semicircle around him in complete silence to hear him better.
Three times Satan attempts to speak but every time he feels choked with remorse. Despite his distaste for
crying he cannot help but shed tears. Finally, he begins his stirring speech that is mingled with his sighs.
Lines 622-662: He addresses his fellow-angels, calling them ‘Immortal spirits’ and ‘Powers
Matchless’ and tells them that their fight against God was not inglorious though its result has proved disastrous
for them, it is hard to believe, he says, that a powerful army like theirs could have been defeated, but it is still
possible for them to fight and repossess heaven. Then he excuses his role in their defeat and blames God
who had hidden his real strength from them, tempting them to revolt and causing their subsequent downfall.
They now know God’s real might and their own and shall not risk another war themselves. But if they are
provoked to fight, their best course would be to achieve ‘by fraud and guile’ what they could not achieve
earlier thereby making God realize that defeating an enemy by force is only half the victory.
Satan then discloses to his followers that according to rumors he had heard in heaven, God is
creating new worlds in which he will place a ‘a generation’ who will get as much favour from Him as angels
do. Their endeavour will be to enter this new world to examine it. If they cannot go there, they must find
someplace else for themselves because they cannot allow hell to hold such heavenly spirits like themselves
for long. Then rejecting outright the idea of peace as it will tantamount to submitting before God, he exhorts
them to be ready for war ‘Open or understood.’
Lines 663-669: Satan’s last speech in Book I is approved by the rebel spirits who flash their swords
and raise shouts towards heaven, challenging God. Striking their swords against their shields, they express
their ardor for war.
The episodes contained in these lines establish three things: that Satan is capable of feeling remorse,
that he is soft enough to be moved to tears, and that he is not averse to taking the blame if he is at fault.

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 Lines 670-699: A nearby hill emitting fire and smoke and shining on all sides indicating that it
contains some metallic ore, catches the eyes of these assembled angels. A group led by Mammon, the god of
wealth worshipped by the pagans, hastens towards the hill like a band of pioneers running with pickaxes
ahead of the royal party to dig trenches or erect ramparts of a fort.
Milton takes a pause from the action of the narrative to describe Mammon at length. Mammon is the
most debased of all the fallen angels. Even in heaven, he used to walk with down fixed eyes, admiring the
riches of heaven’s golden pavement rather than the divinity of God that delights the eyes of angels. It is he
who has been responsible for teaching men to plunder the earth’s interior for gold just as he is guiding the
angels now who have made a large opening in the hill and are extracting bars of gold from it. Milton remarks
that one should not wonder that gold is found in hell because hell is best suited to carry this precious but evil
metal. One should also not wonder at the capabilities of these condemned angels. Their creations far excel
those of men who unnecessarily boast of their creations like the architectural works of Babylon and the
pyramids constructed by the Egyptian Kings. These angels can create in an hour what men cannot do in
many years.. And what they are creating now is a fine example of their strength, their art and their speed.
Lines 700-730: These lines show Milton’s love of architecture. He gives a step by step description
of how a second crew of angels prepares cells with liquid fire underneath them, brought from the burning
lake. In these cells they skillfully remove impurities from the gold ore. A third group of angels digs a hollow
mould, with many chambers, in the ground, into which the purified molten gold is then poured. Just as in a
church organ the wind, driven by the bellows in the wind-chest, rushes into the various pipes to produce
music, similarly the molten metal flows into all the hollows of the mould which soon rises from the earth
like a colossal mist-like palace. The palace rises amid musical notes and sweet vices.
These lines (as also the lines 522-543 and lines 544-571) show Milton’s appreciation of music. He
himself used to play the organ. This is remarkable as the Puritans did not favour music and objected to the
playing of the organs in the church.
The palace of Satan looks like a temple and has a roof of gold. Its round and Doric pillars carry
raised sculptures. It excels the magnificence and glories of temples and courts built by the Egyptians in
Cairo, and by the Assyrians in Babylon to enshrine their gods or to seat their kings. The high temple now
stands complete and its brass doors open to reveal a vast interior. From its curved roof hang, as if by magic,
rows of lighted lamps giving off light as from the stars in heaven.
Lines 731-751: Satan’s followers now rush into the palace. Some praise the structure while others
the architect. The architect is none other than the Greek god Hephaestus or Vulcan who had raised many
towering palaces in heaven where angels live like princes and rule areas allotted to them by God according
to their angelic categories. In Italy he is called Mulciber. The story goes that he was thrown down from
heaven by an angry Jove. His fall covered the span from the summer morning, through noon, till the evening.
At sunset he fell like a falling star on the island of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea. The story is incorrect Milton
points out, as Mulciber or Vulcan had fallen long ago with the rebel angels. The high towers he had built in
heaven were of no use to him as they could not save him from the anger of God who threw him headlong into
hell along with his crew.
Lines 752-798: Meanwhile the officers of Satan announce to the army of rebel angels that a meeting
is to be held immediately in the great hall of the Pandemonium, (a word coined by Milton formed on the
analogy of the Pantheon at Rome which is a temple containing the statues of all the gods. Milton’s
Pandemonium is the capital of hell built to receive all the devils).
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 The announcement calls the representatives of each regiment of angels to attend the meeting. This
results in the hundreds of thousands of angels who enter the hall, thronging all its entrances, gates and wide
porches. The spacious hall of the Pandemonium is chiefly crowded and appears like a huge canopied field
where in the olden days the knights used to challenge the mightiest of pagan warriors to bloody duels before
the presence of the Sultan, seated high on his throne.
Emphasizing the large number of Satan’s followers, Milton uses a striking simile. The swarms of
angels on the ground and in the air, their wings brushing against each other with a hissing sound, appear as
numerous as honey bees’ that come out in clusters from their hives in spring. They fly among dewy flowers
around the wooden, planks of their straw beehives and appear to be discussing public affairs.
Just then, at a signal from Satan, a miracle happens. The angles who appeared bigger then earth
giants, now become smaller than dwarfs thronging the hall. They look like pygmies who live beyond the
Himalayas or like the elves whose merry making in the forest or near a fountain is sometimes seen or
imagined by a farmer returning home late. While the moon draws closer to the earth to witness their revelry,
the elves, engrossed in their mirth and dance, charm the peasant’s ears with their gay music and make his
heart beat faster with joy and fear.
In this way the Spirits easily shrink from huge winged creatures to the smallest size, compacting
themselves to enter the Pandemonium, though their number remains the same. The higher order of angels -
Seraphim’s and Cherubs-retain their original size and sit in conference for inside the palace in secret rooms
that too are packed with their large numbers.
After a short silence, the summons are read and the deliberations begin to chalk out their future
course of action, which Milton elaborates in Book II of the epic.
Check Your Progress 2
(i) How does Milton follow the traditions of the classical epics in Paradise Lost?
(ii) List a few epic similes used by Milton
(iii) List a few images that Milton uses.
(iv) Name a few rebel angels whom Milton identifies with heathen gods.
(v) Who s the most debased of all the fallen angels?
9.6 CHARACTER OF SATAN
Milton in his epic Paradise Lost has glorified Satan, the adversary of God, to such an extent that
Dryden and many other critics thought that the great Puritan poet of England actually intended to make
Satan his hero. Abercrombie subscribes to the same view when he says, “... if Paradise Lost exists for any
one figure, that is Satan. Just as Iliad exists for Achilles and Odyssey for Odysseus.” Blake went so far as to
assert that “Milton was of the Devil’s party without knowing it.
There is certainly some plausible ground to believe these statements if we confine our attention to
the grand descriptions of Satan given in the first two books of Paradise Lost. Even in hell, he towers above
all the other fallen angels who look jaded as compared to Satan whose form has ‘yet not lost her original
brightness, nor appeared less than Archangel’ (lines 591-593). Though the excess of his glory has dimmed,
he ‘yet shown/Above them all’ (lines 599-600). Milton’s Satan differs from all other demons that have been
described in literature, by the absence of the grotesque. Whereas Tasso’s Satan has blood-shot eyes and
blood dripping jaws and Dante’s devil possesses three heads, Milton is far too magnanimous to give his
devil a lump or cloven feet or other such horrid physical attributes. Even the huge dimension of his boy,
comparable to the Titans or the Leviathan, is in real it no physical deformity to excite our disgust.
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 Satan may not be virtuous from a theological point of view, but he is certainly admirable from a
worldly point of view. In Book I, Satan appears to be unmatchable in his strength of mind and body. He has
in full measure the grandest of all the virtues i.e. Courage without which no other virtue can flourish. He has
lost the war in heaven but he retains the ‘courage never to submit or yield’ (line 108). He is brave even in
retreat. He tells Beelzebub, his lieutenant, that ‘to be weak is miserable/Doing or suffering’ (lines 157-158).
He has fortitude in adversity and courage where there is no longer hope.
Satan’s resilience, his ability to bounce back, after his ignominious fall, give him a heroic stature.
His momentary despair at having exchanged the light of heaven for the mournful gloom of hell is soon
replaced by his optimism and the stoic acceptance of his situation. He is shown as a great commander and
general of his forces who infuses courage and hope into their minds, dispelling their fears. Satan displays all
of the virtues of a great warrior such as Achilles or Odysseus. He is courageous, undaunted, refusing to yield
in the face of impossible odds, and able to stir his followers to follow him in brave and violent exploits.
When he gives his clarion call, ‘Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!’ (line 330) his followers spring up with
alacrity to obey his command. His quality of leadership is acknowledged by his comrades who look upon
him as their “dread Commander”, ‘mighty Chief, their ‘General’.
Milton has put into Satan’s mouth the most impassioned arguments, eloquently shaped and phrased,
showing his oratorical abilities. Satan convinces Beelzebub that God is their superior only in his physical
strength and not in the strength of mind, which he (Satan) has in abundance. In fact, he has brought with him
a mind that not even the horrors of hell can ever change. Very eloquently he states a psychological truth, The
mind is its own place and, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven’ (lines 254-255),
meaning thereby that no matter where he is placed, his character will remain unchanged and so will his
resolve to fight God. His competence to convince others derives from his logical arguments. He explains to
Beelzebub that since God has not created the infernal world for Himself, they can rule supreme here without
fear or interference from Him because to rule is a worthy ambition even if it in a dreadful place like hell. He
sums up his ambition neatly when he says, ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven’. (line 263)
In delineating the character of Satan, Milton’s genius led him to treat the great enemy of mankind
with a generosity remarkable for a Puritan. He has, in fact, humanized Satan. One reason that Satan is easy
to sympathize with is that he is much more like us than God or the Son are. As the embodiment of human
errors, he is much easier for us to imagine and empathize with thank God.
Some critics are of the opinion that Milton has shown Satan as resembling a tragic hero in a
Shakespearean tragedy, who is more sinned against than sinning. He meets his downfall only because of the
circumstances and destiny that are acting against him. In Book I , Satan gives the impression of being the
aggrieved party, an innocent victim who has been overlooked by God for an important promotion that he
qualifies for i.e., his being sent to the new world to rule instead of the Son. He justifies his revolt against God
because the latter has become a tyrannical ruler of heaven. Milton himself becomes the devil’s advocate
when he squarely puts the blame on God for the conduct of Satan. It was the will of high heaven, he points
out, whom, ‘Left him at large to his own dark designs’ (line 23), and so that Satan would become the cause
of man’s eventual redemption and his own damnation.
On the flip side of the coin are Satan’s own disgusting qualities that make him an archfiend? Satan’s
greatest fault is his obdurate pride and it is this fault that invites God’s wrath against him and his crew of
rebel angels. His confidence in thinking that he could ever overthrow God displays tremendous vanity and
pride. He is also over ambitious, as his aim is no less than the throne of heaven. He is shown to be an
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embodiment of evil who has a commitment to create evil out of God’s good, To do aught good never will be
our task, But ever to do ill our sole delight’ (lines 159-160). His envy of God’s son is his undoing that leads
to his revolt against God that finally lands him in hell.
Milton never meant that any being like Satan ought to be an object of admiration and sympathy on
our part. Milton may have begun by making Satan more glorious that he intended to in the first two or three
books, but then realizing his error, he tried to rectify it by showing Satan’s gradual more degradation in the
remaining books. One possible reason why Milton depicts Satan as a powerful figure is because the Son of
God must have a worthy opponent in Satan.
He succeeds in doing this but adopts a mock-heroic tone in portraying Satan in Book I. The Archangle
is described as an archfiend for fighting an impious war with God. His attempt to dethrone God is termed as
crime. His heroism is depicted as shallow when its strategy is not open but secret war, To wage by force or
guile eternal war, /irreconcilable to our grand Foe (lines 121-122). Someone who has no sense of morality
and fairplay can certainly not be termed as a hero.
When all is said and done, one cannot ignore the role Satan plays in the narrative. He is the main
force behind the action of the poem. He possesses human qualities that help us to identify with him, at times
making us admire him and at others filling us with disgust.
Check Your Progress 3
(i) What qualities of Satan does Milton seem to glorify?
(ii) What qualities of Satan does Milton condemn?
(iii) Why do you think Milton depicted Satan as a powerful figure?
9.7 MILTON’S GRAND STYLE
Milton intended to write in “a grand style.” That style took the form of numerous references and
allusions, complex vocabulary, complicated grammatical constructions, and extended similes and images.
In consciously doing these things, Milton devised a means of giving the written epic the bardic grandeur of
the original recited epic. In so doing, he created an artificial style that very few writers could hope to
emulate though many tried.
In modern times, Milton’s style first received general criticism from T. S. Eliot. Eliot praised Milton
in “A Note on the Verse of John Milton” (Martz 12-18): “(What he could do well he did better than anyone
else has ever done.” Then Eliot added, “Milton’s poetry could only be an influence for the worse, upon any
poet whatever.” The general thrust of Eliot’s criticism is that Milton’s purposely adopted grand style is both
so difficult to accomplish and so complicated (in places) to understand that it causes a deterioration in the
poetic style of those who are influenced by it and cannot meet its demands. “In fact,” said Eliot, “it was an
influence against which we still have to struggle.”
Defenders of Milton quickly appeared to answer Eliot. C. S. Lewis, in his work A Preface to Paradise
Lost, and Christopher Ricks in Milton’s Grand Style both mounted vigorous defenses of Milton’s style.
Lewis in particular argued that Milton needed this particular style for a “secondary epic,” his term for an
epic meant to be read rather than the “primary epic,” which was presented orally in a formal setting and
meant to be heard. Lewis’ basic point was that the grand style provided the formality of setting that the
secondary epic, by the nature of its composition, lost.

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 Both Lewis and Ricks offered numerous counter examples to show that Milton’s style was sublime.
Certainly, aside from Shakespeare, no other writer in English could manipulate the language as Milton did.
Arguments about Milton’s style will persist just as they do about the styles of Henry James, Jane Austen,
even James Joyce.
Let us see what Milton s grand style consists of and how he made use of it in the poem. The first
aspect of the grand style that most readers notice is the number of allusions and references, many of which
seem obscure, along with the arcane and archaic vocabulary. In just the first few lines of the poem references
to “Oreb” (7), “That Shepherd” (8), “chosen seed” (8), “Siloa’s Brook” (10), and “Aonian Mount” (15)
occur. The purpose of the references is to extend the reader’s understanding through comparison. Most
readers will know some of the references, but few will know all. The question thus arises whether Milton
achieves his effect or its opposite. Further, words such as “Adamantine” (48), “durst” (49), “Compeer”
(127), “Sovran” (246) and many others, both more and less familiar, add an imposing tone to the work.
Paradise Lost was not written for an uneducated audience, we must remember.
Besides the references and vocabulary, Milton also tends to use Latinate constructions. English is a
syntactical language using word order in sentences to produce sense. Latin, in contrast, is an inflected
language in which endings on words indicate the words’ functions within a sentence, thereby making word
order less important. Latin verbs, for example, often come at the end of the sentence or a direct object may
precede the subject. In Paradise Lost, Milton seems purposely to strive for atypical English syntactical
patterns. He almost never writes in simple sentences. Partly, this type of inverted, at times convoluted,
syntax is necessary for the poetics, to maintain the correct meter, but at other times the odd syntax itself
seems to be Milton’s stylistic goal.
Another aspect of Milton’s style is the extended simile. The use of epic similes goes back to Homer
in the Iliad and Odyssey but Milton uses more similes and with more detail, A critical exploration of the
simile reveals depths of unexpected meaning about the objects or persons being compared. Once again,
Milton achieves a purpose with his highly involved language and similes. The ability to do this seems almost
unique to Milton, a man of immense learning and great poetic ability. Besides extended similes, Milton also
traces a number of images throughout the poem.
Milton’s style is certainly his own. Elements of it can be criticized, but in terms of his accomplishment
in Paradise Lost, it is difficult to see how such a work could be better written in some other style. Milton
defined the style of the English epic and, in a real sense, with that style, ended the genre. After Milton and
Paradise Lost, the English epic ends
Check Your Progress 4
(i) List some features of Milton’s grand style.
9.8 SUMMING UP
In this lesson, we critically examined Book 1 of Milton’s Paradise Lost. We also learnt about the
background to the writing of this epic poem as well as a summary of all the twelve books. We discussed
Book 1 as a conventional epic and studied the character of Satan. Milton’s grand style was also discussed.
9.9 GLOSSARY
Alighting - descend from a train, bus, or other form of transport.
Convoluted - involving or requiring strenuous effort; difficult and tiring.

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 Convoluted - extremely complex and difficult to follow.
Pageantry - elaborate display or ceremony.
Reverberate - be repeated several times as an echo.
Transgression- an act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offence.
9.10 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1. What in your opinion is explored in ‘Lycidas’, a psychological conflict about the vocation of
poetry or a personal lament for a dead friend? Give reasons for your answer.
2. What are some of the personifications that Milton employs in ‘Lycidas’? Do they add to the sense
of lament or serve another purpose altogether?
3. Through the poem “Lycidas” Milton attacks the clergy of his times.
4. Discuss with examples from the text.
5. Discuss Milton’s use of the Epic similes in Paradise Lost.
6. How does Milton depict Satan in Book I of Paradise Lost.
7. Who is the hero of Paradise Losft Give a reasoned answer.
8. Write a detailed note on Milton’s grand style in Paradise Lost Book 1.
9. What is the theme of Paradise Lost? Give a detailed answer.
10. Irrespective of Satan’s moral character, he is fascinating as a character in Paradise Lost Book I.
Do you agree? Give reasons for your answer.
11. Critically appreciate Paradise Lost as a classical epic.
12. Discuss how the element of the Renaissance and the Reformation are fused in Milton’s Paradise
Lost Book 1.
13. Does Satan attain heroic dimensions in Book 1 of Paradise Lost? Discuss.
9.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
(i) Voltaire attributed the theme of Paradise Lost to the comedy Adamo. Gosse and Edmundston
attributed it to a play by Vondel called Lucifer. It may have imitated the Anglo Saxon poet Caedmon
or “Locustae by Fletcher or even “Creation” by Du Bartes. However, all this is difficult to establish.
(ii) Spencer
Answer 2
(i) He tells the story dramatically rather than chronologically; he uses a number of epic similes; he
begins his epic with a formal declaration of his theme; he invokes the Muse; his subject is lofty.
(ii) Comparison of the largeness of Satan’s body to that of the Titans, or a Leviathan or a whale.
Satan’s shields are compared to the moon, his spear is bigger than a large pine tree. Their rising
from the lake is compared to swarms of locusts, their sheer numbers are compared to honey bees.
(iii) He describes the fallen angels as autumn leaves that cover the streams and compares them to sea-
weeds floating on the Read Sea.
(iv) Moloch, Chemo, Baalim, Ashtaroth, Thammus, Dagon, Rimmon, Osiris and Belial.
(v) Mammon is the most debased - he is the pagan god of wealth.

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Answer 3
(i) His towering personality; no deformity; strength of mind and body; courage; resilience; good
orator.
(ii) His pride; over ambition; envy; no fair play.
(iii) So that the Son of God should have a worthy opponent;
Answer 4
(i) Some features are: use of references and allusions; complex vocabulary; complicated grammar;
use of extended similes etc.
9.12 SUGGESTED READINGS
1. Abrams, M.H. “Five Types of Lycidas” in Milton’s Lycidas: The Tradition and the Poem.
2. Ed. CA. Patrides. Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press 1983: 216-235.
3. Brown, Cedric C. John Milton: A Literary Life. New York: St. Martins, 1995.
4. Corns, Thomas N. “Milton before Lycidas”. Graham Perry and Jeoad Raymond, eds. Milton and the
Terms of Liberty. Cambridge: Brewer, 2002.
5. Danielson, Dennis, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Milton. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP,
1989.
6. Fish, Stanley. “What it’s like to Read L’ Allegro, is there a Text in This Class? Cambridge. Harvard
University Press, 1980: 112-35
7. Lewalski Barbara K. The Life of John Milton. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
8. Potter, Lois. A Preface to Milton. Preface Books. N. York: Longman, 1986.

*****

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 LESSON-10
ALEXANDER POPE: AGE, LIFE AND WORKS

STRUCTURE
10.1 INTRODUCTION
10.2 OBJECTIVES
10.3 AUGUSTAN AGE
10.4 LIFE OF POPE
10.5 WORKS AND STYLE
10.5.1 STYLE
10.6 SUMMING UP
10.7 GLOSSARY
10.8 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
10.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
10.10 SUGGESTED READINGS
10.1 INTRODUCTION
Alexander Pope was a major literary figure in the first half of the eighteenth century, (1688-1744).
This was also called the Augustan Age often identified in England with the age of Queen Anne, and in a way
also the Enlightenment However, the eponym is after the Roman emperor Augustus (27 BC-AD 14) during
whose reign Rome enjoyed literary eminence with poets such as Virgil, Horace and Ovid. It was believed
that with eminent writers like Pope, Addison, Steel and Swift, England reached the same elegance and
eminence that was present in the reign of Augustus in Rome. If the influence of Rome was the criteria, then
this age of Pope and Dryden was the age of classicism or neoclassicism in England. This was because the
imitation of classical models became a common phenomenon in the English Literature of this period. As
Pope put it in his Essay on Criticism;
Those rules of old discovered not devis’d
Are Nature still, but Nature methodiz’d
It was held that the rules of art discovered by the Greek and Roman antiquity were in consonance
with “nature” or truth and to follow them was to portray nature/truth. The spirit of the age finds expression
in the above lines.
10.2 OBJECTIVES
In this lesson, which is the first one on Alexander Pope, we intend to familiarize you with the age,
life and works of Pope - the leading spirit of the Augustan Age. As we have already told you in the previous
lessons on Chaucer, Donne and Milton, knowledge of a poet’s life, age and works, is essential in order to
adequately appreciate his or her art. Therefore, please read this lesson carefully and keep it at the back of
your mind when you read the next two lessons on Pope’s poems.

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10.3 AUGUSTAN AGE
The eighteenth century in English literature has variously been called the Augustan Age, the
Neoclassical Age, and the Age of Reason. The term, the Augustan Age, comes from the imitation of the
original Augustan writers, Virgil and Horace, by many writers of the period.
Specifically, the Augustan age was the period after the Restoration era till the death of Alexander
Pope in 1744.The major writers of the age were Pope and John Dryden in poetry, and Jonathan Swift and
Joseph Addison in prose. Dryden forms the link between Restoration and Augustan literature. But more than
any other, it is the name of Alexander Pope which is associated with the epoch known as the Augustan Age.
The literature of this period which conformed to Pope’s aesthetic principles (and could thus qualify as being
‘Augustan’) is distinguished by its striving for harmony and precision, its urbanity, and its imitation of
classical models such as Homer, Cicero, Virgil, and Horace. In verse, the tight heroic couplet was common,
and in prose, essay and satire were the predominant forms.
‘Neociassicism
The works of Dryden Pope, Swift, Addison and John Gay, as well as many of their contemporaries,
exhibit qualities of order, clarity, and stylistic decorum that were formulated in the major critical documents
of the age, e.g. Dryden’s An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), and Pope’s Essay on Criticism (1711). These
works, forming the basis for modern English literary criticism, insist that ‘nature’ is the true model and
standard of writing. This ‘nature’ of the Augustans, however, was not the wild, spiritual nature the romantic
poets would later idealize, but nature as derived from classical theory: a rational and comprehensible moral
order in the universe, demonstrating God’s providential design. The literary circle around Pope considered
Homer preeminent among ancient poets in his descriptions of nature, and concluded in a circuitous feat of
logic that the writer who ‘imitates’ Homer is also describing nature.
The literary circle revolving around Addison, Steele, Swift and Pope was partially able to dictate the
accepted taste in literature during the Augustan Age. The literary criticism of these writers often sought its
justification in classical- precedents. In the same vein, many of the important genres of this period were
adaptations of classical forms: mock epic, translation, and imitation. A large part of Pope’s work belongs to
this last category, which exemplifies the artificiality of neoclassicism more thoroughly than does any other
literary form of the period. In his satires and verse Epistles,, Pope takes on the role of an English Horace,
adopting the Roman poet’s informal candor and conversational tone, and applying the standards of the
original Augustan Age to his own time, even addressing George II satirically as “Augustus.”
Pope also translated the Iliad and the Odyssey,; and, after concluding this demanding task, he embarked
on The Dunciad (1728), a biting literary satire.
Check Your Progress 1
(i) Why was Pope’s age also called the neoclassical age?
10.4 LIFE OF POPE
A familiarity with Pope’s personal life is essential for an adequate appreciation of his art. Some of
the circumstances of his life have a direct bearing on his poems. We are, therefore, giving you a complete
biographical sketch of Pope so that you understand him both as a man and as a poet.
Alexander Pope, who is regarded as one of the greatest, and certainly the most correct of English
poets, was born on May, 21, 1688 in London, to middle-aged Roman Catholic parents. His father was a
linen-draper in Lombard Street. Born as a sickly and delicate child, Pope was singularly unimpressive in
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appearance. A body of miserable weakness was a heritage from birth, added to which was his inheritance of
headaches from his mother and a crooked figure from his father. An attack of tubercular disease of the bone
at the age of twelve caused a curvature in his spine and left him physically formed and almost an invalid.
With a stunted growth and a humpback, he did not rise above four feet, six inches. In a moment of bitter
insight, Pope once spoke of “that long disease, my life.” By middle life, Pope’s physical weakness was so
constant that he could not dress without help. Extremely susceptible to cold, he was compelled to wear a fur
doublet under his coarse linen shirt. “When he rose, “ writes Johnson, “he was invested in bodices made of
stiff canvas, being scarcely able to hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel
waistcoat. One side was contracted. His legs were so slender that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of
stockings, which were drawn on and off by the maid.”
Pope also faced disabilities other than the physical. He came of a Papist stock in days when English
Catholics were condemned to pay double taxation in addition to being excluded from positions of high
office and forbidden from living within ten miles of London. Perhaps to comply with these anti-Catholic
regulations, Pope’s father retired from business soon after his son’s birth and settled at Benfield, some nine
miles from Windsor.
As a Roman Catholic, Pope could not dream of pursuing a career at one of the great public schools.
His education, thus, was of the most miscellaneous description. Before he was twelve, he had obtained a
smattering of Latin and Greek from the family priest and from a small seminary he went to for some time.
Yet with this “small Latin and less Greek,” he was able to translate Homer’s Iliad and make a name for
himself in the literary world. People also learnt French and Italian in the same way he had learnt Latin and
Greek.
As his education was fragmentary and superficial, all of it that mattered he imbibed for himself.
Thrown on his resources, sickly in body and lonely in spirit, he found his only delight in books, and these he
read, as he tell us, “like a boy gathering flowers in the fields just as they fell his way.” Fashioned for a life of
study, he poured over books at all times-epics and tragedy hp went through in his teens, and throughout his
youth he read untiringly-Homer, Tasso, Ariosto, Horace, Virgil, Ovid-classical and modern writers, poetry,
criticism, drama, either in the original or in translation, until he almost died of overmuch study so much so
that the famous physician, Dr. Radcliffe, whom he consulted, advised him to lay off reading for a time. Dr.
Johnson considered Pope’s excessive literary exertions as a probable cause of his deformity.
Fortunately, the simple life which his family led at Binfield had obvious advantages for one who
wished to write and study in peace. Having read the works of the English poets, Spenser, Milton, Dryden
and Waller, in particular, Pope soon discovered the bend of his real taste and his strongest enthusiasm. He
found a ready ally in his father who fully sympathized with his literary ambitions and corrected some of his
earliest attempts at verse. Pope was also lucky to become acquainted, as a boy, with many of the luminaries
of the literary world. William Wycherley, one of the chief comic dramatists of the Restoration period acted
as his mentor and on his part welcomed Pope’s candid criticism of his latest work. William Walsh and
George Granville were other literary friends he made during this time. It was Walsh who told Pope that they
had had great poets “but never one great poet that was correct.” The hint found its mark and Pope determined
to be a ‘correct poet’. This timely perception of where his true strength lay was perhaps the greatest of all
Pope’s advantages. Thereafter, he was never content with less than the polished best. He perfected his style
while still in his early twenties.

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In April, 1716, Pope’s family left Binfield and settled in Chiswick. After his father’s death in March, 1719,
Pope and his mother moved into a villa on the banks of the Thames at Twickenham, leased by him with the
money he made from selling his translated volume of the Iliad. At Twickenham, Pope spent much of his time
in entertaining his famous friends, translating the remaining volumes Of the Iliad, and landscaping his five
acres of ground, which he converted into two Or three small lawns surrounded by thick woods. He also
fashioned a ‘grotto’ to connect his garden with the river-slopes. The ‘grotto’ was a short underground tunnel,
which he adorned with mirrors, crystals, pieces of marbles, spar and coral. The ‘grotto’, the garden and the
thick woods were an imitation of the estates of the landed aristocracy.
The men of eminence whom Pope entertained in his villa at Twickenham included Lord Bolingbroke
and Peterborough, both statesmen, and writers like Swift, Gay and Arbuthnot. It was these friends who kept
him company and saved him from leading a solitary life after his mother Editha’s death in 1733. Pope never
married but the two women who meant the most to him were Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Martha
Blount, the latter thought to be in a deeper relationship with him and to whom he willed the income from his
property till her death. His earlier attachment to Lady Mary Montagu was apparently a more or less literary
passion which cooled down when she ridiculed his parentage. He inserted a satirical attack on her in his
poem Imitation of Horace, entitled Satire calling her Sappho, after the Greek lyric poetess who is believed
to have thrown herself into the sea in despair at her unrequited love for Phaon.
Where political affiliations were concerned, Pope was a Tory opposed to Sir Robert Walpole’s
twenty-year long Whig administration. Consequently, he could not get the lucrative patronage which writers,
who supported the Whigs, got. He was a Jacobite sympathizer but with the failure of the Jacobite rebellion
in 1715, he retreated from politics for a short while. In the1930’s he became actively involved in politics for
the first time. He supported the alliance of Tories and anti-government Whigs which had planned a Country
Programme to denounce the political corruption and moral degeneration of the Walpole regime. The failure
of the Programme led to Pope’s disillusionment with politics and he went back to his private life at
Twickenham. Though his intellectual powers showed no decline, he wrote little, but what he wrote is
considered his best.
It was at Twickenham, on May 30, 1744, that the restless spirit of the poet finally left this world
which it had never loved. He was buried inTwickenham Church in the presence of his friends whom he most
valued.
Check Your Progress 2
(i) What physical deformities did Pope suffer from?
10.5 WORKS AND STYLE
As your have already read, Pope was first encouraged in his poetic ambitions by a group of older
writers including Wycherley, Congreve and Walsh. They helped to formulate his early critical notion. Pope
was extremely precocious and “lisped in numbers from an early age.” His earliest work a set of Pastorals,
was quite in keeping with the fashion of the day, and was written when he was only sixteen. The verses are
inspired but carefully modulated. There was never anything slipshod about Pope’s work, and his Pastorals
attracted favourable notice especially from Walsh and others. He had his Pastorals printed in 1709 in London.
Pope’s first mature work was An Essay on Criticism, published in 1711, though written in 1709,
which brought him-instant fame and readership. The Essay/exhibits the merits and limitations of the Eighteenth
Century School of poetry. Though it contains no original ideas, the Essay offers in abundance, literary
epigrams that have enriched the English speech. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, “True wit is
Nature to advantage dressed; what oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed” are only some of them.
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 Lines like these form the very fabric of the poem and the work is admittedly a marvelous achievement
for a writer who was little more than a boy. The poem used a metre which pope followed religiously till the
end of his life -the heroic couplet.
The Rape of the Lock, which you will study in the next lesson, was first published in 1712 and again,
two years later, in 1714, with several additions, notably the ‘machinery’ and the ‘Game of Ombre’. This
brilliant poem, written in heroic couplets, brought Pope literary acclaim and the admittance into an intimate
circle of writers like Addison, Steele, Swift, and others. Employing an array of witty and ingenious fancies,
the poet records a trifling incident - Lord Petre’s theft of a lock of hair from the head of Miss Arabella
Fermor. The mock-heroic poem delineates the manners of the eighteenth century high society, its card parties,
toilettes, lap dogs, coffee-drinking and snuff-taking. The artificial tone of the age, the frivolous aspect of
felinity, is nowhere more exquisitely pictured than in this poem. The poem also shows all the best qualities
of Pope’s poetry brought together in the happiest union.
In 1713, Pope published Windsor Forest a descriptive poem which combines pastoral descriptions
with historical and political passages. The poem, however, could not do justice to natural beauty with its
artificial poetic diction.
A few years later, in 1717, Pope tried his hand at writing a dramatic monologue Eloisa to Abelard,
founded on one of the most famous events in the history of monasticism. It is the story of two lovers, Eloisa
and Abelard, who after many trials and tribulations retired each to a different convent and devoted the
remainder of their days to religion. The manner in which Eioisa makes her renunciation has been highly
praised by critics like Hazlitt and Leslie Stephen.
Pope, like Dryden, whom he considered his master, regarded epic-poetry as an established literary
convention but thought himself incapable of writing an original epic. Acting on the advice given to him by
his friend Trumbull in 1708, he embarked upon a translation of Homer’s epic the Iliad that would both
satisfy contemporary taste for epics and, if successfully translated, would give him a rank among writers
which no one living was likely to excel. He issued, in 1715, the first volume of his translations, in heroic
couplets of the Iliad. Bing a very poor Greek scholar, Pope formed his version of the Iliad on the English
translations rather than the original text. A close scrutiny of his translations exposes how frequently he went
wrong over Homer’s sense making Bentley, a great scholar, to remark: “A pretty poem, Mr. Pope but you
must not call it Homer,” However, this very un-Homeric quality brought his work great popularity in its own
day because the educated public wanted to read an epic, with all its stirring speeches and forceful battle-
scenes, without comparing these too closely with their original. Dr. Johnson praised it as “the noblest version
of poetry the world has ever seen,” As already mentioned, it was the commercial success of the translation
that enabled Pope to buy his estate at Twickenham.
The Iliad translation was supplemented, in 1726 by a translation of the Odyssey only half of which
Pope translated himself, leaving the rest to be translated by William Broome and Eliaph Fenton.
In 1725, Pope published an edition of Shakespeare which was denounced by Lewis Theobald, an
able editor of Shakespeare’s works, but disliked by Pope as a pedant, or perhaps envied for his accurate
learning. Pope hit back, selecting Theobald as the hero of The Dunciad which is a great onslaught on the
‘Dunces’ of his time. It is a mock-heroic poem in which the bad writers of the day are shown to participate
in a number of degrading and indecorous contests, the victor being declared successor to the empire of
Dullness. In a later edition, The New Dunciad, published in 1743, Pope deposed Theobald and put in his
place Colley Cibber, a dramatist who had criticized a play produced by the Scribblers club that had been
floated by Pope.
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 Influenced by the philosophy of Bolingbroke, Pope wrote a series of moral and philosophical poems
- An Essay on Man and Moral Essays (1733-34). The Essay on Man had a very ambitious object, being no
less than to “Vindicate the ways of God to Man.” The work contained several inconsistencies but at the same
time contributed more sayings to the English language than any other poem of the century. Epigrams like;
“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan ‘The proper study of mankind is man”; or “An honest man’s
the noblest work of God”; “A little learning is a dangerous thing”; “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”;
“To err is human ,to forgive divine”;—form the very basis of the poem’s structure.
The later years of Pope’s literary life produced some of his best works. His Satires and Epistles
displayed his keen observation of the characters of men and women. His famous satire An Epistle to Dr
Arbuthnot appeared in 1735 and his last satire The New Dunciad was published in 1743 which also closed
his literary career. The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot contains Pope’s defence of satire, his estimate of himself and
the portrait of Addison (here called Atticus), with whom he had fallen out earlier over a couple of
misunderstandings. Lesson 3 will be devoted to this poem.
To conclude, the three poems in which Pope is emphatically the spokesman of his age are The Rape
of the Lock, picturing its frivolities; the Dunciad unveiling its squalor; the Essay on Man, echoing its
philosophy. His own attitude towards literature is nicely expressed by Pope in the Essay on Criticism.
10.5.1 Style
Pope’s reputation as a poet has undergone several fluctuations down the ages. His reputation at the
time of his death was immense. His mastery of the heroic couplet, which he put to many uses, made all other
forms of verse redundant. The heroic couplet, which Pope wrote his poetry in, is a traditional form for
English poetry commonly used for epic and narrative poetry. It refers to poems constructed from a sequence
of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines.
A typical couplet line is ten syllables long, with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. The
pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one is called iambic; because there are normally five
stresses in each line, the metre is called pentameter. Each couplet -that is, each set of two lines -is “sealed”
by an end-rhyme, with the sound repetition usually involving only the final stressed syllable. The iambic
pentameter couplet came to be called “heroic” because by the middle of the seventeenth century it was
regarded as the “proper” form for dealing with “heroic” subjects-deeds of high accomplishment and matters
of public interest and admiration-”proper” because it appeared to fit fairly unobtrusively the prose rhythms
of the English language (long considered to be basically iambic) and because the five- stress line seemed
most often to provide dignity and distance without intruding too much on formality or aloofness.
The neat epigrammatic style of Pope brought him many admirers besides enriching the English
language. No one could dress up a commonplace sentiment or humdrum thought in finer clothes than Pope.
Epigrams like: ‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God’ or ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’
have passed into the common speech of men. Of his work as a whole it may be said that he was a master of
literary mosaic who fitted each word cunningly in its proper place to form a whole. Although he lacked the
easy breadth and vigour of Dryden in his satirical verses, yet, he excelled his predecessor in exquisite finish
achieved through his choice of words. Pope’s poetic diction has attracted both admirers and critics. In his
own times, critics opined that his artificial style was inadequate to do justice to natural beauty This was
especially true of his descriptive poem Windsor Forest where he avoided using familiar words lest they
lowered the dignity of his verse. For instance, he calls the fish ‘scaly breed’ and the gun ‘a tube’, thus
exposing the absurdity of his false poetic diction. It was Pope’s Homer that received the strongest criticism
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in the Romantic Age. Wordsworth and Coleridge found Pope’s cool and polished style as inadequate to the
needs of poetry. Though Coleridge found “the almost faultless position and choice of words in Pope’s
original compositions, particularly in his Satires and Moral Essays!’, he joined the others in condemning
Pope’s Homer which they regarded as the “main source of our pseudo-poetic diction.”
Pope was the chief of living satirists in verse, as Swift was easily the greatest master of prose. He
once wrote to Swift “I know nothing that moves strongly but Satire and those who are ashamed of nothing
else, are so of being ridiculous.” Satire came naturally to Pope. The morbid sensitivity of his disposition
caused him to pick up quarrels with many people like John Dennis, a miscellaneous new writer and Ambrose
Philips, a pastoral writer and many more whom he satirized in his verses. It also led him to lose friends like
Addison whom he satirized in his Epistle to Dr. A-rbuthnot. Pope’s fame had created many envious foes who
often ran him down. He never forgot the words of those who had maligned him and was determined to take
revenge when the right time came. Theobald, who had criticized his edition of Shakespeare, was ridiculed
by him in The Dunciad and later Colley Cibber met the same fate as he had made fun of a play produced by
Pope’s club. You will read more about Pope’s satirical style when you study the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’m
Lesson 3.
The mock-heroic style of Pope creates abundant humour in his works. He mingles the trivial with
the grand. With the witty use of his knowledge of the epics and the manners of the society of his times he
successfully creates bathos or anti-climax leading to humour. The Rape of the Lock is perhaps the best
example of a mock-heroic poem that is replete with wit, humour and irony. You will read more about Pope’s
satirical and ironical style when you study The Rape of the Lock in lesson 2
Check Your Progress 3
(i) Explain the form in which Pope wrote his poems.
10.6 SUMMING UP
In this lesson, we gave you in briefly, the main features of Pope’s age, a complete biographical
sketch as well as a bird’s eye view of his works. These facts will help you immensely when you read two of
his major works in the next two lessons. Do remember to keep your eyes open for Pope’s use of the heroic
couplet in his poems.
10.7 GLOSSARY
Acclaim - praise enthusiastically and publicly.
Bathos - (especially in a literary work) an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in
mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.
Epigram - remark expressing an idea in a clever and amusing way.
Luminary - a person who inspires or influences others, especially one prominent in a particular sphere.
Precocious - having developed certain abilities or inclinations at an earlier age than is usual or expected.
10.8 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1. Discuss Pope as a representative poet of the Augustan Age.
2. Comment on poeh’c style of Alexander Pope.

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10.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Answer 1
(i) Because during this period the imitation of classical models became a common phenomenon.
Answer 2
(i) T.B. of the bone had caused a curvature in his spine so that his height was only 4 feet 6 inches. He
was also humpbacked. He also had a weak constitution and suffered from severe headaches.
Answer 3
(i) The heroic couplet consisting of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines.
10.10 SUGGESTED READINGS
(1) ‘Pope’ by Brean S. Hammond.
(2) ‘Alexander Pope’ by Jasmine Gooneratne.

*****

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 LESSON-11
RAPE OF THE LOCK

STRUCTURE
11.1 INTRODUCTION
11.2 OBJECTIVES
11.3 PICTURE OF SOCIETY
11.4 GENRE OF MOCK EPIC/HEROIC
11.5 CANTO 1
11.6 CANTO 2
11.7 CANTO 3
11.8 CANTO 4
11.9 CANTO 5
11.10 CHARACTERS
11.11 SUMMING UP
11.12 GLOSSARY
11.13 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
11.14 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
11.15 SUGGESTED READINGS
11.1 INTRODUCTION
“The Rape of the Lock” is one of the most famous English literature examples of the mock-epic
poems. Published in its first version in 1712, when Pope was only 23 years of age, the poem established his
reputation as a poet and is his most frequently studied work. The inspiration of the poem was an actual
incident which took place during Pope’s time, amongst his acquaintances. Robert Lord Petre cut off a lock
of Arabella Fermore’s hair. As a result, the families of both these people fell into strife. John Caryll, a
member of the same circle of prominent Roman Catholics asked Pope to write a light poem that would put
this episode into a humorous perspective and reconcile the two families. The poem was originally published
in a shorter version which Pope later revised. In the later version he added the “machinery”, which was the
retinue of supernaturals who influence the action as well as the moral of the tale. Therefore, The Rape of the
Lock\s a humorous indictment of the vanities and idleness of 18th century high society. Pope intended to cool
the hot tempers by his verses, and to encourage his friends to laugh at their own folly. Through this poem
Pope presented the artificial age at its best.
11.2 OBJECTIVES
In the previous lesson we gave you a picture of the life, age and works of Pope. In this lesson we will
be taking up one of his most famous poems, “Rape of the Lock”. We will begin by providing a comprehensive
background to the poem as well as the essential features of Pope’s mock epic or mock heroic style, in which
this poem has been written. We will also be talking about how this poem gives us a peep into 18th century
society and the various levels of meaning at which the poem can be read. A brief introduction to the various

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characters present in the poem will also be given. To help you to understand the poem thoroughly, we are
going to give you a detailed summary as well as a critical analysis of all the five cantos which constitute the
poem. So let’s begin.
11.3 PICTURE OF SOCIETY
The Rape of the Lock is a delicate, cynical and witty poem. It embodies not only the peculiar flavour
of Pope’s genius, but the light tone and shifting colours of his time as well. As an expression of the artificial
life of the age of its parties, cards, toilets, lap-dogs, tea-drinking, snuff taking and other idle vanities, The
Rape of the Lock is as perfect an expression as Tamburtain by Marlowe which reflects the boundless ambition
of the Elizabethans. In its blending of mock-heroic satire, and delicate fancy, this exquisite specimen of
filigree work, as Hazlitt called it, remains unmatched. We cannot emphasize enough the capacity and power
of Pope as a delineator of social manners of his age.
Even though Pope, Addison, Steele, Swift, Fielding all depicted the social conditions of their time
in their works, it was Pope’s success in Rape of the Lock that he drew the picture of the society of his times
so admirably well and in such a fine satirical vein. It is a social satire and the purpose of the poem as Pope
himself declared was “to laugh at the little unguarded foibles and weaknesses of the female sex through
Belinda.” To quote the very pertinent criticism of Leslie Stephen. “The Poem Rape of the Lock \s in effect a
satire upon feminine frivolity. It continues the strain of mocking hoops and patches and their wearers, which
supplied Addison and his colleagues with materials for many issues of the Spectators. It is taken for granted
that a woman is a fool. With Pope this tone becomes harsher and the merciless satirist begins to show
himself.”
Pope knew the fashionable life of ladies more intimately than Addison and in the Rape of the Lock
he has satirically presented it. Elwin rightly says that in Rape of the Lock the “World of fashion is displayed
in its most gorgeous and attractive hues and everywhere the emptiness is visible beneath the outward splendor.
The beauty of Belinda, the details of her toilet, her troops of admirers are all set forth with unrivalled Grace
and fascination and all bear the impress of vanity and vexation.” Hugh Walker sums up the social aspect of
the Rape of the Lock when he says, “Raillery of fashions and the vanities of Beaux and Belles is the staple
of the “Rape of the Lock “The poem directs our attention to both the ladies and fops of the times. The
fashionable ladies like Belinda used to get up very late in the day. Their maids waited in an ante-chamber.
They indulged in dressing, making up their faces with cosmetics, paints, perfumes and jewels.
The ladies drove in gilt coaches or in sedan chairs. A pleasure trip on the Thames and delightful
social meeting at the Hampton Court were pleasurable diversions to break the monotony of theatres and
balls. Drinking, gambling, playing cards, love making and coquetry were the little activities with which the
ladies of the day kept themselves socially engaged.
The young gallants of the time were equally busy with gay frivolities and fashions. Chivalry was
extinct as is shown when the Baron rudely cuts a lock of hair from Belinda’s hair. In fact the young men
lounged about fashionably in their wide-skirted coats and high-heeled shoes, flaunting their snuffboxes and
their Malacca canes, during that time.
The moral of the poem presented in the speech by Clarissa in the fifth Canto is that young ladies
should not care as much for attractiveness and beauty as for virtues. Beauty without virtue is useless. Virtue
alone can bring happiness.

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Check Your Progress 1
(i) How does Pope present the society of his time through his poem?
(ii) How did the ladies and young men keep themselves occupied?
11.4 GENRE OF MOCK EPIC/HEROIC
The poem is perhaps the most outstanding example in the English language of the genre of mock-
epic. The epic had long been considered one of the most serious of literary forms. It had been applied, in the
classical period, to the lofty subject matter of love and war, and more recently by Milton, to the intricacies
of the Christian faith. The strategy of Pope’s mock-epic is not to mock the form itself, but to mock his
society in its very failure to rise to epic standards, exposing its pettiness by casting it against the grandeur of
the traditional epic subjects and the bravery and fortitude of epic heroes. Pope’s mock-heroic treatment in
The Rape of the Lock underscores the ridiculousness of a society in which values have lost all proportion,
and the trivial is handled with the gravity and solemnity that ought to be accorded to truly important issues.
The society on display in this poem is one that fails to distinguish between things that matter and things that
do not. The poem mocks the men it portrays by showing them as unworthy of a form that suited a more
heroic culture. Thus the mock-epic resembles the epic in that its central concerns are serious and often
moral, but the fact that the approach must now be satirical rather than earnest is symptomatic of how far the
culture has fallen.
Pope’s use of the mock-epic genre is intricate and exhaustive. The Rape of the Lock is a poem in
which every element of the contemporary scene conjures up some image from epic tradition or the classical
world view, and the pieces are wrought together with a cleverness and expertise that makes the poem surprising
and delightful. Pope’s transformations are numerous, striking, and loaded with moral implications. The
great battles of epic times become bouts of gambling and flirtatious tiffs. The great, if capricious, Greek and
Roman gods are converted into a relatively undifferentiated army of basically ineffectual spirit. Cosmetics,
clothing, and jewelry substitute for armor and weapons, and the rituals of religious sacrifice are transplanted
to the dressing room and the altar of love.
Running true to the literary forms of the eighteenth century English Poetry, Alexander Pope presented
a parody of the heroic style and made it into a comical poem. “It would be almost true to say” observes
Holden “that in this heroic comical poem it is the comical part which most appeals to us, as the heroic part
did to our ancestors.”
“The true genius of the mock heroic lies “as Prof Courthope says, “in travestying the serious epic in
bringing all the leading features of the epic-machinery, lofty incident, character and style to the exaltation of
a trivial subject. The subject must no doubt have a moral bearing but the satire ought not be too apparent”
The theme of the Rape of the Lock is the cutting off a lock of a lady’s hair. The subject is too trivial and too
low to find any epical treatment. What is there to be heroically about the cutting off of a lady’s hair and yet
Pope gives to this absurdly ludicrous subject the dignity and exaltation of an epic treatment. Let us look at
some of these similarities. Like an epic poet who makes an invocation to some Gods or Goddesses in the
very beginning of the poem, Pope too invokes the muse and proposes his theme.
“ What dire offence from amorous causes springs What mighty contests rise from trivial things ?”
Following the convention of an epic which must have some peculiar passion as its distinguishing
features, coquetry may be regarded as the reigning passion of the Rape of the Lock. Similarly an epic must
contain many episodes. Pope has introduced in this poem several episodes such as the episode of the game
of Ombre which is the prelude to the central action.
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 Supernatural machinery is introduced in epic poetry. But instead of the Gods and Goddesses of
Homer and Virgil and the angels and the devils of Dante and Milton, Pope has introduced the gnomes and
sylphs of the Rosicrucian system. This light militia of the lower sky’ is more appropriate to a mock heroic
poem and Pope has achieved this triumph in his art. Then an epic should have combats and battles. The
battle in the fifth Canto of the Rape of the Lock is a very lively example of the heroic style in the mock-
heroic vein.
The description of weapons in the poem is also in the mock-heroic way. The petticoat of Belinda is
called “the sevenfold fence” stiff with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.” Here petticoat is indirectly
compared to the shield of Ajax in Iliad.
It was a common feature of the epics to present the visits of spirits to subterranean regions. In Rape
of the Lock Umbriel goes on a visit to the cave of Spleen. His journey to that place is described like Satan’s
journey in Paradise Lost from the depths of hell to the newly created world.
Having examined the different aspects of the mock-heroic in the poem let us now see how Pope has
made a parody of the heroic style in poetry. Pope knew that the use of counsel and sometimes tea. The irony
comes in the description of the beaux with their wide- skirted coats and high-heeled shoes, their snuff-boxes
and Malacca canes and the belles with their petticoats, tweezers-cases and patches, their fans and their
billet-down. A reading of the poem recreates for us the dead age of the Augustans.
Check Your Progress 2
(i) Discuss two mock-heroic elements of the poem.
11.5 CANTO 1
To the mind of a discerning reader, the opening passage of The Rape of the Lock, tells a tale whereby
a guardian angel cautions its protégé of an impending danger. The scene of the poem begins with a normal
activity filled day for the heroine Belinda. While everyone awakens and goes about their household chores,
Belinda still sleeps. She dreams about a handsome youth revealing some secrets to her. Her guardian sylph
named Ariel has actually sent her this dream to warn her that “some dread event” is going to befall her that
day, though nothing more specific can be foretold. Belinda, however, is cautioned to “beware of man”. Soon
she wakes up to the licking tongue of her lapdog called Shock. She sees a love letter - a “ billet-doux’ and
soon she has all but forgotten the dream.
The last passage of the Canto deals with the elaborate ritual of Belinda’s dressing. The unseen
sylphs assist her in this ritual. She is described as a ‘heavenly image” or a goddess. The various accessories,
the dress, the cosmetics, “the various offerings of the world” are lovingly placed on her and the entire
process is made out to be something akin to the ritualized arming of a hero.
On closer scrutiny, however, we are made aware of the fact that the poet’s real idea behind the
introduction of the conventional epic subject of love and war with an invocation to the Muse thrown in, is to
present the poem in a satirical or a mock -heroic style. In this context, however, it should be noted that the
seriousness of the traditional epic topics suffers a diminishment. On one hand we have the example of
Menelaus’ fury over Paris’ snatching away of Helen or the quarrel with Agamemnon over Briseis and on the
other hand these are compared to trivial instances in the poem. Although the first paragraph refers to “mighty
contests these arise merely from trivial incidents. They are “merely flirtations and card games” rather than
the great battles of the Greek traditions.

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 The mock heroic style dwells on juxtaposing epic characteristics with lowly human characters and
thus we have “daring souls” in “little Men” or “such rage in softest Bosoms”.. Perhaps the reason behind the
mock heroic style is to create a satire both by elevating and ridiculing the subjects in one breath so that the
misplaced values of the age and society could be exposed. It is a gentle reminder to society not to lay undue
emphasis on trivial matters. As mentioned before there are supernatural powers that influence the action
from behind the scenes. Since Belinda’s traits are most akin to the airy sylphs who in their lifetimes were
“Light Coquettes”, it is left to these sylphs to protect, guide and mentor her. By a few deft sketches, Pope
manages to reveal the empty show of social demeanor that women of that age possessed. This included an
obsession with superficial pomp and grandeur as suggested by the “joy in gilded chariots” or even frivolities
as suggested by “love of ombre” a card game. Another central concern of the women was the “protection of
chastity”. They followed social convention in their social interaction not on the basis of some abstract moral
principles but more on the demands of the social etiquette of those times.
Pope employs the supernatural sylphs to critique the social situation as well as to keep the satire
light, and also to keep and justify Belinda’s stance from too severe a judgment. We do not view Belinda’s
female foibles too harshly because she has been trained by the conventions of society to act in this way. The
phrase “wigs with wigs, with sword knots strive”, points to the absurd exhibitions of pride and ostentation
which the young lords of that time showed while vying for the attention of the ladies, in the last verse of the
Canto Belinda’s coquettishness has been shown to have receded to make way for a powerful figure, no less
than a male hero of an epic poem. Her morning routine has been ritualized as a hero’s preparation before
battle. Her reflection becomes the image of a goddess, while her maid is the “inferior priestess”. Her “combs,
pins, puffs, powders, patches” become the weapons. Thus the canto ends with the transformation of the
coquette- like Belinda into an epic hero and this establishes the mock -heroic motifs that occur throughout
the poem.
11.6 CANTO 2
In Canto 2 we are told that after completing her toilet, Belinda, sets out for a boating trip, accompanied
by her entourage of ladies and gentleman. Her unrivaled beauty is so splendid that she seems to be the most
striking person around. The “sparkling Cross” that she wears on her “white breast”, her “lively looks” and
her easy grace attract a number of admiring lovers, who sit around her. Her crowning glory, however, are the
“two locks which graceful hung” on her “ivory neck”. Pope describes these locks as devices to capture and
ensnare anyone’s heart.
Then we are told that one of the people on the boat, a Baron, Lord Petre who is sitting near Belinda
and is also her ardent admirer, particularly of her locks and covets them for his collection. He is determined
to steal Belinda’s locks of hair and devices ways and means of getting them - whether by “Fraud or Force”.
The poet tells us that to achieve his end, the Baron had risen early that morning and had offered ardent
prayers at the “alter of love” for success in his endeavor. He had even built a fire, and had thrown into it “all
the trophies of his former loves”. These included gives of his former lovers as well as well as their love
letters. The Gods did heed his prayers but we are told that they granted only half of it.
The boat carrying Belinda glides along, with every one enjoying themselves - everyone that is
except Ariel - the Sylph. He is worried because he knows that some calamity would fall Belinda. He therefore
calls upon his army of sylphs and addresses them in the same way in which a General would address his
army. He reminds them of their duties, some of which are to guide the “Planets thro’ the boundless Sky” and
to “catch the shooting stars by the Night”. “Guarding the British Throne” and presiding “o’er the human
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Race” are also part of their duties - and then Ariel reminds them that “Our humble Province is to tend the
fair” i.e. to look after the welfare of the ladies. Then he allots separate duties to each of the fairies and elves
and spirits and assigns the duty of watching over Belinda’s locks to Crispissa. He undertakes to protect
Shock - the dog. He deputes fifty Sylphs to guard the all important petticoats of the Lady. The sylphs are
threatened with dire consequences if they would fail in their duties. The sylphs quickly rush to their assigned
posts to fulfill their duty.
As we have discussed this poem was being written to reconcile two warring families and therefore
Belinda’s character represents Arabella Fermor the lady of one of the warring families. Pope has shown high
regard for her beauty so that his poem would achieve and hasten the desired result of reconciliation.
In this Canto, Pope uses a lot of military imagery to heighten the mock - heroic elements of the
poem. Belinda’s physical appearance and beauty is compared to a trap meant to ensnare enemies. Her seven
petticoats are compared to a fortified wall meant to keep out the enemy. Then the Baron and his sacrifices of
trivial things like love letters and gloves are compared to the epic tradition of sacrificing to the gods before
an important battle or journey. Thus Pope’s satiric manipulation of the epic tradition is visible.
There is a lot of sexual allegory also present in this Canto. The “rape” of Belinda’s hair alludes to a
more explicit sexual conquest with words like “ravish”, “betray” and “rape” being used. “Breach of chastity”,
“breaking of china” all point in this direction. Therefore one can say that the rape of the lock stands for a
threat to her chastity-a more serious event than just the mere theft of the curl.
Thus we see that Pope criticizes the society of his time which values appearances and many
insignificant matters over a more moral lifestyle.
11.7 CANTO 3
Canto 3 begins with the description of Hampton Court which is situated on the bank of the river
Thames. The boat carrying Belinda arrives there, and the ladies and gentlemen disembark to enjoy the
pleasures of court life. The noblemen engage in discussions about home and abroad, “speaks the glory of the
British Queen and one describes a charming Indian scene”. It may be noted here that “British” and “Indian”
evoke the British Empire. Apart from the serious discussions, they indulge in the idle gossip as well while
“Snuff or Fan supply each Pause of Chat”
Belinda sits down to play cards - a game called Ombre. Here again Pope builds up a picture of a
great battle by using imagery like “three Bands prepare in Arms to join” and “troops being sent to combat on
the velvet plain.” Belinda plays her hand just as a general would deploy his army, “now more to war her
stable Matedors”, and “both the armies to Belinda yield.” By comparing a trivial card game to a battle, Pope
again succeeds in his epic parody. On winning the hand Belinda “fills with shouts the sky”. Pope describes
the card game that is being played in such details and with such seriousness of purpose, that it is at once
suggestive of the mock heroic. The reader is at once made aware of the energy and passion which was once
applied to serious warfare—now being diluted on insignificant matters, such as a card game.
Then begins the ritual of serving coffee, during which the Baron starts devising his strategy to cut
off Belinda’s locks. A lady by the name of Clarissa gives him a pair of scissors with which to cut off the
locks. Now the sylphs try furiously to prevent this “disaster” from taking place. They blow on her hair to
take it out of the Baron’s reach, they tug on Belinda’s earrings to make her turn around and Ariel even gains
entry into her brain to warn her! However, he is surprised to find “an earthly lover lurking at her heart”. The
implication here is that secretly she wants to be violated. Now the battle seems all but lost. The Baron dips

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off the lock of hair along with a sylph who has wrapped itself around it to protect it. The sylph too is cut into
two, though being a spirit it is quickly restored. The Baron manages to get one lock instead of both that he
coveted. Belinda’s “screams of horror rend the affrighted Skies”, in true mock heroic style Belinda’s screams
are compared to the laments of women who cry at their husband’s death.
In this Canto, Belinda is again presented as an epic heroine and the metaphor of the card game as a
battle is further extended. Belinda “burns to encounter two adventurous Knights”. This is juxtaposition to
the heroic battle of Troy in The Iliad. Thus Pope elevates this trivial card game, by a skillful use of words, to
the status of an epic struggle. The act of arming the Baron with a pair of scissors by Clarissa is also a parody
of the serious ritual of handing over weapons to the warriors.
Therefore, in Canto 3, we see how Pope presents his social criticism with a deft use of words. He
presents the petty squabbles of the aristocracy and creates parallel with magnificent battles, to bring out the
ridiculousness of the age. Comparisons like Queen Anne “dost sometimes counsel take - and sometimes tea”
or “Not louder shrieks to pitying heavens are cast/when husbands, or when lapdogs breath their last”, or
even when he talks about the interactions that take place at the Court. Idle gossip is juxtaposed with criminal
trials and executions. The use of the heroic couplet serves Pope’s purpose completely.
11.8 CANTO 4
Canto 4 is devoted to Belinda’s “Rage, resentment and despair” at the loss of her lock of hair. Her
anxiety is compared to “Kings in Battle seized alive” or scorned virgins or “tyrants fierce that unrelenting
die”. Again the mock seriousness of Pope is evident as he parallels the two situations—one trivial and the
other serious. At this point the sylphs withdraw and a melancholy spirit named Unbriel takes over. He
descends to the netherworld; to the “cave of Spleen” (here the reference is to the eighteenth century belief
that the spleen was associated with passions). He meets with the Goddess of Spleen and enumerates many
acts that he has performed. These include raising a “Pimple on a beauteous face” or “rumpling Petticoats” or
“tumbling beds”. He manages to procure a bagful of “sighs Sobs and Passions and the War of Tongues”, as
well as sorrows, grief’s and tears. Laden with these “gifts” Umbriel goes to Belinda, and unleashes these
passions on her head. This adds fuel to an already vexed Belinda who now “burns with more than mortal
ire”. Belinda’s friend who is there with her to share her friend’s grief also adds fuel to the fire. She gives a
rousing speech about what the Baron would do with her lock of hair—including showing them to others for
their amusement. This would further endanger Belinda’s reputation and honour. Thaletris then requests her
own- beau Sir Plume to demand the lock of hair back from the Baron. Sir Plume does as he is told but the
Baron refuses to accede to the request. At this Umbriel again releases a vial of passions over Belinda causing
her to cry and lament her fate. She regrets not having heeded the Syiph’s warning or the evil omens. She
wishes that she had never seen the Hampton Court or even learnt to play cards. She laments the fact that now
there is only one lock hanging on her “snowy neck”
In this Canto we are again presented with mock heroic elements. Comparing Belinda’s grief at a
trivial event with the anguish of imprisoned kings, as also with women who lose their chastity or even their
husbands, Pope ridicules the moral temper of his age and seems to criticize a world that does not distinguish
between a mundane and a serious matter.
To take the mock heroic elements further, Umbriel”s journey to the cave of Spleen is compared to
Odysseus’ and Aeneas’ grand journeys made in The Odyssey and The Aeneid. The journey undertaken by
Umbriel further adds to Belinda’s grief rather than offer any succor- —unlike the journeys made by epic
heroes who went to the netherworlds to find guidance and solutions. Thalestris’ speech revolving around
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Belinda’s honour being affronted has also been compared to Achilles’ speech in The Iliad. Chivalry is also
mocked in this Canto, by alluding to the muddled speech made by Sir Plume to the Baron for restoring
Belinda’s locks.
By these comparisons with Greek mythology Pope ridicules the conventions of his time by cleverly
manipulating the epic genre.
11.9 CANTO 5
In Canto 5 we are told that Belinda and her friend Thalestris appeal to the Baron to return the lock
of hair, but all their pleas fall on deaf ears. The Baron remains unmoved. At this point Clarissa delivers a
long speech in which she questions all the people present as to why society places so much value on beauty
when it is not tempered with good sense. She laments the fact that men often call women angels and worship
them, but do not realize that Pope’s success lies in bringing all the formalities of the epic to the exaltation of
a trivial subject. The main characters of the poem are Belinda and Lord Petre. Belinda is represented by the
author as a perfectly beautiful, well-bred, modest and virtuous lady of fashion devoted to all the gay frivolities
and gaieties of society. The Baron Lord Petre is a young gallant in love with Belinda. He cuts off the lock of
Belinda’s hair and creates ill-feeling in her heart causing estrangement as the result of this incident. The
other minor characters of the poem like Thalestris, Clarissa, Sir Plume are more or less shadowy.
10.10 CHARACTERS
Let us quickly go over some of these characters so that you can grasp the poem more easily.
Belinda - Belinda is based on the historical Arabella Fermor, a member of Pope’s circle of prominent
Roman Catholics. Robert, Lord Petre (the Baron in the poem) had precipitated a rift between their two
families by snipping off a lock of her hair.
The Baron - This is the pseudonym for the historical Robert, Lord Petre, the young gentleman in
Pope’s social circle who offended Arabella Fermor and her family by cutting off a lock of her hair. In the
poem’s version of events, Arabella is known as Belinda.
Caryl - The historical basis for the Caryl character is John Caryll, a friend of Pope and of the two
families that had become estranged over the incident the poem relates. It was Caryll who suggested that
Pope encourage reconciliation by writing a humorous poem.
Goddess - The muse who, according to classical convention, inspires poets to write their verses
Shock - Belinda’s lapdog
Ariel - Belinda’s guardian sylph, who oversees an army of invisible protective deities
Umbriel - The chief gnome, who travels to the Cave of Spleen and returns with bundles of sighs and
tears to aggravate Belinda’s vexation
Brillante - The sylph who is assigned to guard Belinda’s earrings
Momentilla - The sylph who is assigned to guard Belinda’s watch
Crispissa - The sylph who is assigned to guard Belinda’s “fav’rite Lock”
Clarissa - A woman in attendance at the Hampton Court party. She lends the Baron the pair of
scissors with which he cuts Belinda’s hair, and later delivers a moralizing lecture.
Thalestris - Belinda’s friend, named for the Queen of the Amazons and representing the historical
Gertrude Morley, a friend of Pope’s and the wife of Sir George Browne (rendered as her “beau,” Sir Plume,
in the poem). She eggs Belinda on in her anger and demands that the lock be returned.
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 Sir Plume - Thalestris’s “beau,” who makes an ineffectual challenge to the Baron. He represents the
historical Sir George Browne, a member of Pope’s social circle.
11.11 SUMMING UP
In this lesson we provided you with a detailed and comprehensive summary, analysis and critical
commentary of Pope’s famous poem Rape of the Lock. We explained to you the essential features of the
mock epic/mock heroic style and pointed out in the poem how and where it has been used. We also talked
about the poem presenting a graphic picture of the fashions and frivolities of 18th century society. We would
like to stress upon you the fact that this lesson is in no way a substitute for reading the text of the poem.
Therefore, you must read the poem and then apply the knowledge gained from this lesson to enhance your
understanding of the text.
11.12 GLOSSARY
Capricious - given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behaviour.
Entourage - a group of people attending or surrounding an important person.
Gilt - covered thinly with gold leaf or gold paint.
Protégé - a person who is guided and supported by an older and more experience or influential
person.
Skewed - suddenly change direction or position.
Solemnity - the state or quality of being serious and dignified.
Sylph- an imaginary spirit of the air.
11.13 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1. Discuss ‘Pope of the Lock’ as a mock-epic poem.
2. Comment on the supernatural imagery as used in ‘Rape of the Lock’.
11.14 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Answer 1
(i) In a satirical vein, exposing the frivolities and artificialities of his age.
(ii) The ladies indulged in frivolous socializing, drinking, gambling and riding purposelessly in sedan
chairs. The men led equally purposeless lives flaunting their snuff boxes and canes.
Answer 2
(i) One epic element of the poem is the involvement of capricious divinities in the lives of mortals. All
of the following classic conventions appear in Pope’s poem as well: the ambiguous dream-warning
that goes unheeded; prayers that are answered only in part, or with different outcomes than anticipated;
a heavenly being’s renunciation of a human after pledging to protect her; mischievous plotting
between deities to exacerbate situations on earth. All of the manifestations of these in Pope’s poem
evoke the world of Greek and Roman gods who displayed malice as often as benevolence, and a
susceptibility to flattery and favoritism. A second mock-heroic element is the description of games
and trivial altercations in terms of warfare. First the card game, then the cutting of the lock, and
finally the scuffle at the end, are all described with the high drama attending serious battles. Pope
displays his creative genius in the dexterity with which he makes every element of the scene

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 correspond to some recognizable epic convention. He turns everyday objects - a petticoat, a curl, a
pair of scissors, and a hairpin-into armor and weapons, and the allegory reflects on their real social
significance in new and interesting ways.
11.15 SUGGESTED READINGS
(1) ‘Alexander Pope: The Poet in the Poem’ – Dustin Griffin.
(2) ‘Pope’ – Brean S. Hammond.

*****

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 LESSON-12
AN EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT

STRUCTURE
12.1 INTRODUCTION
12.2 OBJECTIVES
12.2.1 THE GENRE OF THE LITERARY EPISTLE
12.2.2 GENESIS AND PUBLICATION OF THE POEM
12.2.3 WHO WAS DR. ARBUTHNOT?
12.2.4 SOCIAL AND LITERARY MILIEU OF THE AUGUSTAN AGE
12.3 THEME AND STRUCTURE
12.4 PARAPHRASE AND CRITICAL COMMENTS
12.5 THE EPISTLE TO DR ARBUTHNOT AS A SATIRE IN VERSE
12.5.1 WHAT IS A VERSE-SATIRE?
12.5.2 TYPES OF VERSE-SATIRE
12.5.3 POPE’S USE OF SATIRICAL DEVICES IN THE POEM
12.5.4 SOME SATIRIC PORTRAITS IN THE POEM:
12.6 IMAGERY
12.7 SUMMING UP
12.8 GLOSSARY
12.9 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
12.10 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
12.11 SUGGESTED READING
12.1 INTRODUCTION
Let us now take up a few issues that will make you understand the poem better.
12.2 OBJECTIVES
In the previous lesson you studied Alexander Pope’s famous poem The Rape of the Lock that was
written in the mock-epic style. In this lesson, it is our endeavor to familiarize you with an equally famous
poem by him, An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, written in the form of an epistle or letter. We will begin by giving
you a background to the genre of literary epistles, followed by the genesis and publication of Pope’s poem.
Then we will briefly touch upon the social and literary milieus of Pope’s age that had a bearing on the theme
and form of the poem. We will also discuss the type of imagery used by Pope and the satirical portraits he
has drawn of well known literary figures of his time whom he had fallen out with. We will also talk about the
autobiographical elements in the poem.
At the end of this lesson, you will have understood the ethos of the Augustan age as reflected in this
poem; why Pope used satire as a form of expression as well as gained an overarching understanding of
Pope’s personal development and his views.

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 12.2.1 The Genre of the Literary Epistles
The dictionary defines epistles as “a writing sent to one, a letter, especially a letter to an individual
or church from an apostle, as The Epistles of Paul” (Chamber’s Twentieth Century Dictionary). Whereas the
first half of the definition describes the epistle as being just an informal way of writing sent to an individual,
touching on personal matters, the second half tells us how the term epistle acquires a more universal meaning,
and conveys the formal aspect of letter-writing. This formal expression, whether addressed to a particular
person or to an institution, is concerned with public issues rather than personal ones. Moreover, unlike the
ordinary letter, the epistle is written in an elaborate style to develop an argument or a theme.
In the classical times, the word epistola was almost akin to an imperial decree. For instance the
Epistles of Paul represented the ‘imperial edicts’ that were responsible for the growth of Roman law. Such
papal letters, addressed to the whole church, carried on the epistolary tradition. The epistle became a means
of communication between the branches of the church rather than between individuals. Much later, epistles
came to be regarded as literature. The ten books of Symmaclus’s Epistoiae and Cicero’s letters constitute the
literary epistles.
Verse-epistles originated with Ovid and Horace and deal with two subjects: the moral and the romantic,
the former associated with Horace’s Epistles and the latter with Ovid’s Heroides. The Ovidian type was
more popular in the middle ages. One of the early examples of Ovidian epistle in England was Samuel
Daniel’s Letter to Lucy. During the Renaissance and after, it was the Horatian model that was followed by
poets like Petrarch and Ariosto. In England, Johnson was perhaps the first to use the mode in his works The
Forest and Underwoods. The verse-epistle was also use by Vaughan, Congreve and Dryden. Dryden’s Epistle
to Congreve and to the Duchess of Ormond are highly esteemed for their grace.
It was Swift who developed the epistle as a vehicle for satire in his work Drapers Letters. Thereafter,
it was used by Pope in his Moral Essays (1731-35), An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735), Epistle to Augustus
(1737). He was perhaps the most successful practitioner of this form.
The verse-epistle fell into disuse after Pope and was revived by the Romantic poets in the first half
of the nineteenth century. Keats’s Epistles to Charles Clarke, and Shelley’s Letter to Marie Gisborne are
two examples of the revived form. In the later part of the nineteenth century, the mode of verse-epistles was
not favored much. In the twentieth century, Auden’s Letter to Lord Byron and Louis Mac niece’s Letters
from Iceland showed a renewed interest in this literary form of writing.
12.2.2 Genesis and Publication of the Poem
The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot is a verse-satire written in the form of a letter by Alexander Pope to his
friend and physician Dr. Arbuthnot. In July, 1734, Arbuthnot wrote to Pope telling him that he had a terminal
illness. He also cautioned Pope in his letter not to write satiric attacks on certain powerful individuals. In his
response, Pope indicated to Arbuthnot his motives for writing his Satire, and in another letter, he told the
doctor that he was going to address one of his epistles to him.
The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot was actually a compilation of a series of fragments Pope had composed
and published over a period of twenty years -”a Sort of bill of Complaints, begun many years since, and
drawn up by snatches, as the several Occasions offered” -is how he phrased it in his ADVERTISEMENT at
the start of the poem. This statement is corroborated by the fact that although his mother, Editha, had died in
1733, in the poem published in 1735, Pope talks of nursing his old mother. The lines on his mother were
obviously written before her death and included in the poem later on. He also stated at another place that his

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satire was “written piecemeal over many years and which I have now made haste to put together.” The poem
was completed in September and Pope wrote to Dr. Arbuthnot describing his poem as “the best Memorial
that I can leave, both of my Friendship to you and of my own Character being such as you need not be
ashamed of that Friendship.” Arbuthnot died on 27tn February, 1735, two months after the publication of
Pope’s poem.
Pope wrote the poem to pay a loving tribute to his dear friend and doctor, Arbuthnot, who had
nursed Pope through “this long disease, my life”, as Pope put it, and who was now himself suffering. However,
Pope’s immediate provocation for writing this poem was the publication of two works: Verses Addressed to
the Imitator of Horace written jointly by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Hervey, and an Epistle to a
Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court authored by Lord Hervey alone, and published in
1733, in which Pope became the victim of their bitter attacks on his person, morals, poems and family. The
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot was first published as a folio of twenty-four pages in January, 1735, under the title
An Epistle from Mr. Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot. It appeared in Pope’s Works the same year. During Pope’s
lifetime, it was included among his Moral Essays (1733-34). In 1751, after his death, it was published at the
beginning of his Imitations of Horace and retiled Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, being the Prologue to the Satire.
12.2.3 Who was Dr. Arbuthnot?
Dr. John Arbuthnot was born in Scotland in 1667. He was a physician, a scientist and an admirable
writer. He was a Tory in politics, just like Pope, and wrote political pamphlets the best known of them being:
The Art of Political Lying and the pamphlets that were later collected under the title The History of John
Bull, popularizing the name John Boll that was adopted as representing a patriotic Englishman. In 1700, he
published an Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning that won him the high reputation as a man
of Science and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Being a distinguished doctor of medicine, he
was made the royal physician to Queen Ann and her daughter Princess Caroline. He was a member of the
“Martinus Scribierus Club,” along with Pope, Jonathan Swift and John Gay, and wrote the greater part of
The Memories of Martinus Scribierus, published in 1741. He collaborated with Pope and Gay in the production
of a farcical play Three Hours After Marriage.
It was in 1712 that Pope first made acquaintance of Arbuthnot, Gay and Swift. Arbuthnot became
Pope’s personal physician, a close friend and mentor. In the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, Pope assigns him the
persona of a patient listener and prudent adviser. He is depicted as a sensible man who dissuades the poet
from being rash and impatient in his satirical attacks on others. He died in February, 1735, eight weeks after
the publication of the epistle that Pope had addressed to him.
12.2.4 Social and Literary Milieu of the Augustan Age
The characteristics of an age are more faithfully reflected in its imaginative literature then in its
formal histories and chronicles. This holds true in the case of Pope’s works, especially The Rape of the Lock
and An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot; which are a true reflection of the social and literary atmosphere of the
Augustan Age.
Lesson 1 introduced you to some features of the Augustan or Neo-classical Age in which Pope lived
and worked. Just to refresh your memory, the age of Dryden and Pope is called Augustan because it is
regarded as the golden age of English literature just as the age of the Roman King, Augustus, was the golden
age of Latin Literature (the times of Virgil and Horace). In both ages, a critical spirit prevailed with more
attention being paid to correctness and neatness of expression than to the creative and imaginative impulses.

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The writers of both ages depended on powerful patrons for their survival. The Augustan literature is a
literature of common sense which consisted in giving known things an agreeable turn. This is best expressed
by Pope in the following couplet:
True wit is Nature to advantage dress’d,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.
The age of Pope was also called the Neoclassical Age because the poets and critics of the age
regarded the works of the writers of classical antiquity as the best models and the ultimate standards of
literary taste to be followed. Pope himself confirmed this view in his Essay on Criticism in the following
line:
Learn hence for ancient rules to just esteem,
To copy Nature is to copy them.
In Lesson 2, you must have had a fairly clear picture of the society of those times, especially the
high society, with its follies and foibles in Pope’s mock-heroic epic The Rape of the Lock.
In this lesson, we will look at two features of Pope’s times that influenced his work -the character of
political strife in those days, and the political relations of men of letters. It was a time of political strife and
uncertainty. Patriotism had given way to intense party feeling. The whole nation was divided for a time into
Hanoverians and Jacobites. As the succession to the crown was doubtful and political failure meant loss of
property, banishment or even death, politicians played fiercely and unscrupulously. There was no force of
public opinion to keep them in check. In short, there was loss of principles among statesmen. They even
turned forgers and frauds. Drunkenness was very common among the fine gentlemen of the town as well as
among the men occupying the highest positions in the state.
Men of letters were admitted into the inner circles of intrigues of these unscrupulous politicians.
Almost all writers could be bought. Even the best of them, with few exceptions, were in the pay or service of
one political party or the other. Queen Ann’s statesmen paid their principal literary champion with social
privileges and honourable public appointments in return for writings extolling their worth. Hence, men of
letters were directly infected by the low political morality of the times and the character of their poetry also
suffered. Literature became the handmaid of politics and of statecraft and lacked a high and sustained
imagination. Pope, who minutely observed the low morality of the statesmen, and the inferior output of the
literary men, mounted a sharp and telling satirical attack on both in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
Two more features worth a mention are: marriages during the times were based on a business
proposition to gain a good settlement. Both Dryden and Addison had sought advancement by connecting
themselves with noble families only to face domestic unhappiness. Secondly, life was not considered safe
those days. Apart from dangers from the desperadoes of the streets, men of letters were in’ danger of revenge
from the poets and politicians they had satirized and vilified in their works. Pope too was threatened by
Ambrose Philips (a poet he had antagonized) who had hung up a rod in Button’s Coffee-House which Pope
frequented, to signal that Pope deserved to be beaten with a rod. Consequently, Pope always carried pistols
for his safety and was accompanied by a large dog on his walks at Twickenham.
Check Your Progress 1
(i) What do you understand by an epistle?
(ii) Who was Dr. Arbuthnot

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12.3 THEME AND STRUCTURE
An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot is primarily designed to give a befitting reply to all those critics who
tried to run down Pope’s works and malign his name. In the ADVERTISEMENT preceding the poem, Pope
himself calls it a “Bill of Complaint” or his grievances against some persons. He specifically mentions two
“Persons of Rank and Fortune” who attacked not only “my writings.... But my Person, Morals, and Family.”
These two were Lady Mary Wortley Montague and John, Lord Hervey who ridiculed Pope in their works.
Lady Mary even went to the extent of saying that Pope’s work was monstrous and that Pope himself was a
monster with a body that explicated the evil within. Pope’s poem is a retaliatory response to both Lady Mary
and Lord Hervey whom he addresses and satirizes as Sappho and Sporus, respectively, in his poem.
Pope’s aim in writing the poem is also to remember the ailing Arbuthnot who had helped him “thro’
this long, disease, my life” and now was himself in need of comfort. The poem comes as an affectionate
tribute to the doctor for whose sake he has hastily “put the last hand to this Epistle,” by compiling the
fragments he had written over several years. By making the doctor a persona of his poem, Pope also highlights
the high qualities the doctor is endowed with -patience, sensible nature, honesty, kindness etc.
The poet also pays rich tributes to many writers of repute and eminent politicians of his times by
mentioning their names -Walsh, Gay, Congreve, Granville, Garth etc. - who had praised his works and had
encouraged him to write.
The satirical work is used by Pope to ridicule the professional hacks who wrote mostly panegyrics
for their rich patrons, whom, he exposes like Bufo and Bubo (Bub Dodington and Earl of Halifax) who
patronized scribblers to support their pretence of being learned men. Pope lashes out at those poets and
critics of his times who malign the names of good men and innocent women through their defamatory
writings, as well as used is poem to expose critics and authors who wrote adverse comments on his own
poetry. Some of these critics are shown as being interested only in technical matters such as punctuation and
use of metre in -his works, rather than appreciating their beauty. He specifically mentions Bentley, and
Lewis Theobald, whose only claim to fame is not any works of merit of their own but only their associations
with great writers like Milton and Shakespeare whose works they have edited.
The poem carries an-attack on Addison with whom he was friendly in the beginning but later fell
out. He calls “Atticus”, a Roman gentleman who is said to have believed in the ideals of moderation and
impartiality. But after paying this compliment, Pope runs down Addison as a poet who neither has the
magnanimity to praise the work of others nor the inclination to help out his fellow-poets in any way.
An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot is considered as a condensed autobiography of Pope. It traces the whole
course and pattern of Pope’s life, his motives and reasons for being a poet, and, above all, how he has been
forced to change from being a poet of simple pastorals and descriptive poems to one of satire. It is also an
exercise in self-defense and presents a public view of his best self. In defense of his own character, in the
final section of the poem, Pope portrays himself as a virtuous man, full of forgiveness towards his foes, full
of love, nursing his old mother and asking Heaven’s blessings for his friend. This shows him furthest removed
from the conception of a satirist as a malevolent man.
As regards the structure of the poem, Pope himself said the poem was a compilation of “snatches”
or character-sketches he had written at different times and on different occasions.
But in spite of the fragmentary manner of its composition, the poem comes out as a coherent and
unified whole. Every passage sits neatly in its place; there is no break or discontinuity.

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 The entire poem begins and proceeds very logically. It begins with Pope showing his irritation with
the poetasters and scribblers who chase him everywhere. He then goes on to explain why he became a poet.
Poetry came naturally to him and some of the best literary men of the time encouraged him to write. As a
poet, his behavior is unimpeachable unlike Atticus whose behavior towards his fellow-poets is unpardonable.
This is automatically followed by a passage that gives a satiric portrait of Atticus or Addison. After declaring
that he wants no publicity or homage from other poets, nor patronage from anybody, he draws a satirical
portrait of the false patron of Arts Bufo/Bubo or Bubb Dodington and Earl of Halifax, who know nothing
about Art or their responsibilities towards poets but who only seek credit for being patrons of poets. Next,
Pope gives an account of what harm mischievous poets can do to the worthy names of men and women
through their slanders and libels. This is substantiated by a satirical sketch of Sporus or Lord Hervey which
is full of invective and biting sarcasm. A self- portrait of Pope himself follows next in which he pays a tribute
to his virtuous self. Finally, he concludes by giving ideal portraits of his parents and wishing Arbuthnot the
best of happiness in life. The poem ends as it began, with the return of the poet to his home. His is the
speaker the persona, of the poem from first to last and this lends continuity to the poem, and keeps it firmly
rooted in place.
Pope uses every device of persuasive rhetoric in the poem such as reasonable argument and emotional
appeals, subtly suggestive imagery, and superbly controlled shifts in tone and style. The poem expresses a
span of emotions: anger, contempt, amusement, sarcasm, mock self-pity, hatred, affection, gratitude and
tenderness.
The poem is less an epistle than a dialogue between Pope and Arbuthnot who is not introduced until
line seventy-five. Once he comes in, he is imagined as interrupting Pope and asking a question or offering a
suggestion or making a comment to which then Pope replies resuming the letter. The poem is also similar to
a dramatic monologue where a single speaker talks to an unseen listener whose questions he anticipates and
answers. The drama, in the opening of the poem, involves Pope’s rushing into his home and telling his
servant to shut the door to all intruders. Pope also dramatically reports the actions of the poetasters who
chase him everywhere in his mansion and garden, in the church, on his boat and in his carriage, seeking an
audience with him to help promote them and their writings.
To conclude, the structure of the poem shows such a continuity and logical flow that a reader,
unaware of its genesis, cannot come to know of its fragmentary nature. It is for this reason that Pope’s verses
have been likened to polished fragments cunningly fitted in to form’ a whole, and remarkable for their
workmanship.
Check Your Progress 2
(i) What was the immediate provocation for Pope to write An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot?
(ii) Mention two important features that lend continuity to the poem.
12.4 PARAPHRASE AND CRITICAL COMMENTS
Let us now take up the poem for a comprehensive study. The poem is preceded by an Advertisement
(an announcement or a public notice), in which Pope lists the reasons for his writing the epistle. He announces
that two influential persons had slandered him and his work in the past and needed to be rebuffed: At the
same time, he needs to clear his name and present a true picture about himself to the public. He declares that
he is addressing the epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot whom he mentions as “a learned and candid Friend,” and on
whose advice he is not naming any of his detractors. The latter part is not very accurate as Pope mentions by
name many of his critics like Ambrose Philips, Bentley, Cibber Theobald etc.
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 By dedicating the poem to Arbuthnot, Pope is only doing the right thing by his friend who had
always seen him through hard times, both in his illnesses and in his poetic career. He even makes him a
persona in his poem.
The opening lines set the colloquial tone of the poem. Pope asks his faithful gardener and servant,
John, to shut the house door and tell the visitors that Pope is sick or dead. In other words, he is not at home
to anybody. The opening is effective as it has a dramatic quality about it and builds up suspense as to why
Pope has rushed back fatigued and wants the door to be shut.
The next few passages unravel the mystery. It is the mad scribblers and poetasters he is trying to
avoid meeting. They are chasing him everywhere- in his carriage, on his boat, at his house, in his garden and
even at the church - like mad dogs and mad men, to seek his opinion and suggestions regarding their literary
works. The lines show Pope’s contempt for such poetasters.
Pope also tells us how he and his poems have been held responsible for anything and everything that
goes wrong:
Arthur, whose giddy Son neglects the Laws
Imputes to me and my damn’d works the cause:
Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope,
And curses Wit and Poetry and Pope.
(lines 23-26)
These lines which reduce his original argument to an absurdity have been included to evoke laughter.
Next, Pope addresses Arbuthnot, a friend as well as his physician. Note how he compliments him:
Friend to my life (which did not you prolong,
The World had wanted many an idle song
(lines 27-28)
The poet considers the visits of several poetasters to be an affliction and asks Arbuthnot for a
remedy to cure him of this plague:
Seiz’d and ty;’d down to judge, how wretched I!
Who can’t be silent, and who will not lye.
(lines 33-34)
Pope finds himself in a dilemma which he cannot resolve. He can neither be rude to these poets nor
pretend to admire their bad writings. He can only advise them, like Horace had done, to wait for nine years
before publishing their poems, which is a hint to them that their works are not worth publishing. They all
ignore his advice and go ahead with the publishing.
Commenting cynically on the favour-seekers, Pope says that strangers send him plays to commend
for stage production. If he forwards a play and it is rejected, the author insists that he will have it printed
anyway. Thereafter, he asks Pope to use his influence with the bookseller, Lintot, to sell his printed work. If
Pope suggests revision, the author suggests that the poet should make the necessary revisions for him for
which he will share his profits with him. This greatly annoys Pope.

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 The poet thinks that every conceited poetaster develops ass’s ears like king Midas did for wrongly
judging the best poet among gods. Just as the queen could not keep the secret to herself and divulged it, Pope
too can find relief only by divulging the secret to each foolish poet that “he is an Ass,” and then he can sleep
easy like the queen. Pope is actually hinting at the folly of King George II in appointing Cibber as the poet-
laureate of England whom Pope had ridiculed in his satirical poem Dunciad by making him the hero. At this
point Arbuthnot interposes and requests the poet to exercise restraint lest he should offend the king or the
queen or other important people.
Pope then talks of the mediocre playwrights whose plays are laughed at by their audiences as being
absurd. Still the playwrights shamelessly begin their next venture like the spider which starts spinning its
next web when the first is destroyed. The spider-image is very appropriate in describing those writers who,
like the spider sitting at the centre of its flimsy web, feel very smug and important to have produced their
unsubstantial plays.
Next come all those bad writers who flatter Pope to get him to help them. Pope is amused at the way
they compare his nose to Ovid’s, his stature to Horace’s, his one shoulder that is higher than the other to that
of Alexander the great, or the holding his head in his hand’ like Virgil did when he had a headache. The
flatterers do not realize that they are actually highlighting his deformities by comparing them with those of
the great ancient poets. He humorously comments that when he will die, perhaps they will say he even died
like Homer, who had died 3000 years ago. The passage excites our laughter by exposing the foolishness of
the flatterers.
From line 1 to 124, Pope has vividly painted the literary society of his times when inferior poets had
to churn out poems to please friends or patrons, and earn money to keep body and soul together. They had no
self-respect and craved only name and fame and money even though it meant stooping to flattery and bribery.
Then the poet gives the reason why he became a poet. He says he has written poetry since childhood:
As yet a Child, nor yet a Fool to fame,
I lisp’d in Numbers, for the Numbers came.
(Lines 127-128)
He says a poetic career was a natural choice for which he did not have to go against his father’s
wishes. He also wrote poems to comfort friends, and to help him go through his life that is like a “long
Disease.” He also wrote it for Arbuthnot who helped him to bear the sufferings of life.
Then Pope gives a long list of eminent people who had encouraged him to write, like Granville,
Walsh, Swift to name only a few. By mentioning the names of these learned men, Pope not only records his
grateful thanks to them but also establishes his own literary credentials.
Pope also records his anger at minor poets like Dennis and Gildon who had criticized him. Whereas
Pope is ready to accept criticism from serious critics with humility, it is the minor critics like Bentley and
Theobald who annoy him. He pokes fun at the two whose only claim to fame is that they have edited the
works of great writers like Milton and Shakespeare, respectively. He calls them mere “Word-Catchers” who
miss the greatness of a poem by their misplaced attention to trifles like punctuation and metre in the poem.
Both Bentley and Theobald had criticized Pope’s edition of Shakespeare.
Then Pope mentions Ambrose Philips (who had written some pastorals to compete with those of
Pope’s Pastorals), and ridicules him thus:

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 The Bard whom pilf’red Pastorals renoun,
Who turns a Persian Tale for half a crown,
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.
(Lines 179-182)
He accuses Philips of stealing Spenser’s verses and writing for small sums of money like “half a
crown” which was the sum charged by prostitutes those days, and for striving very hard to produce even a
few lines of poetry as ideas did not come to him easily.
Then Pope mentions the poets whose work shows the barrenness of their talent. What they wrote is
not poetry but “prose run mode” The poets protest at this remark and say that if Pope can criticize them he
would not spare even Addison. This gives Pope an opening to begin his criticism of Addison.
Lines 193-214, which form one sentence of 22 lines, contain Pope’s famous satiric portrait of Addison
whom he calls Atticus. Addison is complimented for his ability to live, write and converse with ease and to
inspire other writers. But then very subtly, Pope starts exposing Addison’s faults. Addison is said to be
jealous of anyone who displays genius and talent. Addison subtly hints at the fault of such poets without
openly attacking their work and thus the others, taking a cue from him, also sneer at the work of his rival
poets:
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.
The poet ends the portrait with two rhetorical questions:
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?
(lines 213-214)
People laugh at contradictory qualities in a man but if the man happens to be a great writer like
Addison, they can only feel sad.
It has been aptly said that the Atticus passage is at once a masterpiece of Pope’s skill as a poet and
his mean disposition as a man. It unites the most exquisite finish of sarcastic expression with the venomous
malignity of personal rancor.
Pope then speaks about the wide popularity of his works and says that he has removed himself from
the society of patron-seekers and members of literary cliques. He directs his satire at the rich patrons who
pretend to patronize writers without carrying out their responsibilities towards them when the writers are
alive. He quotes the example of Dryden who kept away from patrons. “Bufo” or the Earl of Halifax ignored
Dryden when he was alive but-offered to pay his funeral expenses when Dryden died:
But still the Great have kindness in reserve,
He help’d to bury whom he help’d to starve.
(lines 147-148)
Thus Pope exposes the hypocrisy and falsity of the rich patrons who show pretence for learning and
taste, and patronize only the inferior poets whose worthless panegyrics make them puff up with importance,
but who neglect the genuine poets like Dryden. However, Pope finds one advantage in their practice. They
take away the poetasters off Pope’s back. Pope hopes they will continue to attract bad poets to them:
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 May ev’ry Bavious have his Bufo still.
(lines 2500
Here Pope pays a tribute to John Gay, one of his dearest friends, who was neglected by patrons
during his life. He supplies the dead poet with an epitaph and a miniature funeral oration.
The poet shows his longing for solitude and serenity. He wants to lead a simple life, meet up with his
friends and read books he likes.
Pope then talks about the malicious writers who write mischievous lies about innocent men and
women. Pope can tolerate the simple critics who mean no harm but he is deadly against the slanderous
critics who spoil the reputation of others. No honest man, he says, need fear his “lash” as his satire is
directed against the immoral. Note how he asserts his concern with the “Moral” in life and in his poetry:
A Lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.
(lines 303-304)
One such dishonest man to feel the lash of his words is Sporus. The Sporus passage is yet another
one where Pope mounts a scathing and virulent attack on John Lord Hervey who had criticized him in one of
his compositions. In this passage Arbuthnot also joins Pope to run down Sporus, calling him “mere white
curd of Ass’s milk” a mere “butterfly” on whom no effort or time should be wasted. Pope uses a profusion of
animal insect imagery to describe the effeminate, dual and the dangerous nature of Lord Hervey (here called
Sporus). He calls him a spaniel, a toad at the ear of Eve, a serpent, a bug, an amphibious thing in order to
expose the baseness of his nature and to strip Hervey of ail dignity. Pope’s utter disgust with Hervey makes
the description an abusive one.
In lines 334 to 380, the poet indulges in self-praise. He says he hates to flatter and would not flatter
even a king either in his poems or in his prose:
That Flatt’ry ev’n to Kings, he held a shame,
And thought a Lye in verse or Prose the same.
(lines 338-339)
The ‘he’ in the entire passage is Pope talking of himself in the third person.
Pope says that now he has turned from writing fanciful poems to serious poems with a moral purpose:
That not in Fancy’s maze he wander’d long,
But soop’d to Truth, and moraliz’d his song.
(lines 340-341)
He praises himself some more when he discloses how he has been civil and forgiving even to his
detractors like Dennis, Theobald and Cibber, who had slandered him for a long time. He helped Dennis in
his distress, went calling on Theobald and even shared a drink with Colley Cibber. In these self-laudatory
lines Pope shows himself in a very good light as against those who had antagonized him. His defense of his
parents is perhaps the high point of the poem. He calls his father a true Christian and his mother a lady above
reproach. While his father is dead, he hopes to serve his mother for a long time. He concludes his poem with
wishing Dr. Arbuthnot good cheer, happiness and wealth.

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 The poem presents a miniature verse-autobiography of Pope in which he records his beginnings as
a poet, the people who helped him in the initial stages of his poetic career and the people who denounced
him and forced his pen to satirical writings. He records his views on good poets and bad as also on what
makes a good critic. He lists his virtues and idealizes his parents, and ends by wishing a happy life to Dr.
Arbuthnot to whom he has dedicated this epistle. The poem also faithfully represents the literary society of
his times and the relationship of literary men to their rich patrons, the same as the Rape of the Lock mirrors
the follies and foibles of the high society in that age. Little wonder then that Pope has been called the most
representative poet of the Augustan Age.
12.5 AN EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT AS A SATIRE IN VERSE
To understand the poem as a satire and Pope as a satirist, we must first know what a satire is. We
must also know the different types of satire and the satiric devices employed by Pope in this poem.
12.5.1 What is a Verse-Satire?
Verse-satire, like most other forms of poetry, had an ancient origin. Lucilius, Horace, Juvenal and
Persius were famous Roman satirists. A verse-satire can be defined as a poem of medium length, having no
plot, in which a writer, speaking in his own person, ridicules folly, condemns vice and recommends virtue.
It is a flexible form of poetry and can contain personal reflection, philosophical meditation, anecdotes,
ridicule used either to entertain or to attack, and moral denunciation on a heroic or mock-heroic level. As
there is no plot in formal satire, there is scope for the satirist to depict his own personality.
12.5.2 Types of Verse-Satire
The Renaissance critics differentiated between two kinds of formal satire with their knowledge of
the works of two main Roman poets, namely, Horace and Juvenal. Horace wrote genial, laughing, urbane
satire that was closely related to comedy. The Horatian kind of satire employed a discursive style and
concentrated its attack on folly rather than on vice. Horace, in his satires tried to persuade with witty ridicule
and laughed us into truth. Thus, Horatian satire employed ridicule rather than rage as a means of attack
Juvenal wrote tragically satire in which extremes of injustices were attacked. He excelled in writing
severe, harsh and lashing satire which was caustic or corrosive in nature. Juvenalian satire attempted to
chastise with fierce and savage denunciations. It had almost no laughter. It used lofty and rhetorical style
and provoked our indignation and horror.
Pope in his works is closer to Horace than to Juvenal, although he makes use of Juvenalian mode at
times. The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot \s largely a Horatian satire in mood, temper and tone. Most of the
satirical lines in the poem create humour. From the first line to line 192, the poem is a Horatian satire in
which Pope ridicules the poetasters who come seeking his help with their literary trash. The lines are replete
with comic passages. One of the most comic passages is when Pope mocks at his flatterers who compare his
infirmities to those of the great ancient poets. With tongue -in-cheek he suggests that when he dies, perhaps
these flatterers will say that he has died like Homer who had died three thousand years ago!
Pope’s advice to hack poets, not to publish their poems for nine years, echoes the advice given by
Horace to inferior poets in his Ars Poetica. The lines describing the insensitiveness of Codrus to ridicule, is
another allusion to Horace as explained by Pope in a note. Yet again, following the Horatian Mode, Pope
adopts the device of assuming the persona of the hero. In a self-portrait, he attributes many moral excellences
to himself. However, Pope also uses Juvenalian satire in his poem. Three of the best known passages,
dealing with Atticus, Bufo and Sporus, are corrosive in their effect, specially the portrayal of Sporus (Lord
Harvey) which is a glaring example of invective or vituperation.
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 12.5.3 Pope’s Use of Satirical Devices In the Poem
The satiric devices employed by Pope in the poem are: the introduction of an adversary in this case
Dr. Arbuthnot, who interrupts the speaker at various places to give him suggestions or to criticize the speaker’s
motives. Pope also uses Arbuthnot to represent the questions that he anticipates as rising within the reader’s
mind. This device imparts a dramatic quality to the poem as also places both sides of the picture before the
reader.
Pope also uses the device of antithesis in his satire. In the main three satirical portrayals in the
poem—Atticus, Bufo and Sporus— Pope creates his antiselves to project himself as a perfect poet and a
perfect man. Atticus is a great poet like himself but he is a man who is envious of rivals and desperate for
praise, whereas Pope is neither. Bufo is shown as taking advantage of the poetasters but caring nothing for
them whereas Pope does not encourage the foolish poetasters. Sporus has a weak constitution like Pope but
he is a corrupt satirist and a scandalmonger which Pope is not. Pope also uses degrading imagery, related
with animals and insects to strip the persons he is attacking of all self-respect.
12.5.4 Some Satiric Portraits in the Poem
By nature, Pope was a man who nursed grievances against people who had offended him, especially
by criticizing him or his works, and he often expressed his resentment through his satires. An Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot is largely prompted by personal grudges he had against his contemporaries like Addison, Dennis,
Bentley, Theobald, Ambrose Philips, Lord Hervey, Lady Mary Montague and a host of others. In the following
discussion, we will see how he fell out with and ridiculed some of the above mentioned people.
A word here why Pope chose satire as his mode of expression will not be out of place. In a letter to
Swift Pope wrote, “I know nothing that moves strongly but Satire, and those who are ashamed of nothing
else, are so of being ridiculed.” In a letter to Dr. Arbuthnot Pope clearly summed up his theory of satire: “But
General Satire in Times of General Vice has no force, and is no Punishment: People have ceas’d to be
ashamed of it when so many are joined with them; and it’s only by hunting one or two from the Herd that any
examples can be made.” It is for this reason that Pope singles out individuals and argues that he needs to
write particular satire because people like Atticus, Bufo and Sporus exist.
Portrait of Joseph Addison as Atticus
Pope became acquainted with Addison, a famous essayist and dramatist of his times, when he himself
had become famous after the publication of his early poems the Pastorals, Windsor Forest and The Rape of
the Lock. The two met on several occasions at Twickenham, where meetings of “Scribierus Club” were held,
and at the Button’s Coffee-House. Addison was not too favourably disposed towards Pope because on an
earlier occasion his advice to Pope to let the smaller “delicious version” of The Rape of the Lock be as it was,
had been rejected by Pope who thought perhaps Addison was jealous of his poem, and went ahead to add the
Rosicrucian and machinery of sylphs and gnomes as also the game of cards in his enhanced version. On
another occasion, when Addison’s play Cato, for which Pope had written the prologue, was criticized by
Dennis, Pope came to Addison’s defense and published a pamphlet against Dennis. Addison neither showed
signs of his gratitude to Pope nor even his approval of Pope’s action which greatly upset Pope. The last straw
came when Pope had begun work on his version of Homer. To his dismay he found that a translation of the
First Book of Homer’s Iliad had been produced by Tickell, a member of Addison’s little “Senate” which was
a circle of literary friends meeting at the Button’s Coffee-house. With his suspicious nature, Pope easily
persuaded himself that it was a wicked conspiracy against him and that Addison had either written the

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version himself or Tickell had written it at his behest. These grievances made Pope write a satirical character-
sketch of Addison in 1715, which he sent to him and which was subsequently published as part of the Epistle
to Dr. Arbuthnot in 1735, in which Addison has been given the name Atticus by Pope. Incidentally, Atticus
was a Roman gentlemen who upheld the ideals of moderation and impartiality. By calling Addison as Atticus,
Pope pays him a compliment which he soon demolishes in the lines following the compliment.
Portrait of Bufo
Bubb Dodington and Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, together have been satirized by Pope as
Bufo (Latin-for toad) and Bubo (Latin for owl). In Bufo, Pope attacks the tasteless patrons of the arts. The
word Bufo is also similar to the French word “buffoon” meaning a puffed up fool. Pope puns on this meaning
when he describes him as “full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill” where “quill” means a pen of a hired
poet. Thus Bufo feels Important at his praise from any poet wielding a pen. These poets pay tributes to him
as their patron just as in ancient times Maecenas had been Horace’s patron. Dodington’s library has busts of
dead poets and a headless statue of Pindar (an ancient Greek poet).
Those who call on Bufo come pretending to get his judgment of their poems. Actually they come to
seek his help in getting them a position or to get asked by Bufo to free wine and dinner. When these patrons,
who are only pretenders to learning and taste, become economical in their old age, they reward the visiting
poets only with wine or words of praise or sometimes a recital of their own compositions which to hear is an
ordeal for the poets. Great poets like Dryden avoid patrons like Bufo. Bufo never helped Dryden while he
was alive, in fact Pope accuses Bufo who “helped to starve” Dryden. After Dryden’s death, Bufo “helped to
bury him” by contributing to the lavish funeral Dryden was given. This episode shows that Bufo and Bubo
and all such superficial rich patrons are comfortable in the company of flattering minor poets or the great
dead poets but never great living poets, since these would show Bufo up as the literary fraud he was.
Pope concludes by praying that every poet, no matter how worthless, should have some rich lord as
his patron. Every inferior poet of the category of Bavius (an inferior poet also mentioned in line 99) should
have a patron of the likes of Dodington and Halifax: “May ev’ry Bavius have his Bufo still” (line 250),
which will be a blessing in disguise for Pope as he will then be well rid of these poetasters.
Pope thus holds the vain and empty-headed patrons like Bufo to ridicule. Aristocrats like Bufo
degrade the literary atmosphere by encouraging mediocre poets and neglecting the genuine poets.
Portrait of Sporus or Lord Hervey
John, Lord Hervey was the son of the Earl of Bristol and was a man of letters. He was made Lord
Chamberlain by Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister of England. His intimacy with Queen Caroline gave
him considerable political importance. Sporus, the name Pope gives him in the poem was a boy at the court
of the Roman Emperor Nero who is said to have been in love with the boy. Sporus, therefore, represents an
effeminate man who is soft and ineffective. By using this name, Pope’s intention is to degrade Hervey and to
strip him of his dignity and greatness.
In his Imitations of Horace, published in 1733, Pope had ridiculed Hervey for some unknown reasons,
calling him “Lord Fanny.” Hervey took his revenge by writing a joint attack with Lady Mary in a poem.
Verses Addressed to the Imitator of Horace and writing a solo poem, An Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from
a Nobleman at Hampton Court which showed Pope in a poor light.

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 In all other places in the poem where Dr. Arbuthnot interrupts the poet in disagreement with some
point or the other, in the passage on Sporus, he interposes to agree. To him Sporus is simply a “thing of silk”,
a “mere white curd of ass’s milk,” on whom no effort or time should be wasted by the poet because it would
amount to breaking a “Butterfly upon a wheel.” Pope calls Sporus a gilded bug whom he would like to flap
to expose his real character. Keeping his effeminate appearance in mind, Pope calls him a “painted child of
Dirt that stinks and Stings” and also an insect whose “buzz” annoys everyone and is to be shunned by all. He
is like a well-bred dog that does not bite. He is a puppet in the hands of his puppeteer-an obvious dig at Lord
Hervey toeing the line of Walpole in political matters, and always poisoning the ears of eve (here Queen
Caroline) like a toad (Satan goes in the guise of a toad to tempt eve in Milton’s Paradise Lost), with lies and
mischievous words.
Sporus’s ambivalent sexuality is also subtly ridiculed by Pope in the words: “all seesaw between
that and this” or “now Master, now Miss.” Sporus can act either part—the male or the female. The same idea
is expressed in the words “Amphibious thing” (frog etc. who can live both in water and on land) and “one
vile Antithesis” who “Now trips a Lady, and now struts a lord.”
Pope concludes by drawing a parallel between Sporus and Eve’s tempter who, according to the
Jewish tradition, was no ordinary snake but Satan with the face of an angel but the body of a reptile. It is for
these reasons Pope tell Arbuthnot that he must swat this butterfly. The Sporus-passage has the greatest
concentration of animal images in the poems. Words like dirt, filth, froth, venom, thin white curd of ass’s
milk have been used by Pope to describe Lord Hervey. From a speciously attractive, almost non-existent
being at the beginning of the passage, Sporus progresses to a filthy, abhorrent creature—a toad which is
spitting froth and venom towards the end.
However, critics like Johnson thought of Pope’s portrait of Sporus as a mean piece of writing.
Apparently the passage shows Pope’s unfair spite against those he disliked. His digs at Hervey’s sexual
impotence were unfounded as Hervey married and had many children.
Ambrose Philips
Pope also embroiled himself with Philips who had written some pastoral verses which seemed to
challenge comparison with Pope’s Pastorals. As Addison praised Philips pastorals, it was taken by Pope as
a depreciation of himself. This led to his bitter antipathy to Philips.
Pope openly names Ambrose Philips in the poem and attacks his pastorals as having been lifted
from somebody else’ work (Spenser’s). Philips had written a book called Persian Tales for a small sum of
money which Pope mentions as “half a crown” thus mocking Philips
for charging a sum that was the prostitutes’ customary charge those days. Pope further thanks Philips
by saying that he “Just writes to make his barrenness appear, And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines
a year,” hinting that Philips’ writing is forced and not free flowing creativity and also that his literary output
is meager and produced after much labour as he lacks ideas.
Lady Mary Montague
In a satirical manner, Pope ridicules many other writers of his age who had antagonized him, like
Lady Mary Montagu who had derisively laughed at Pope’s amorous advances to her. Pope always remembered
this and took revenge, in his Imitations of Horace by called her Sappho (a Greek poetess of an immoral
character who drowned herself for unrequited love). Lady Mary retaliated by writing jointly with Lord
Hervey, as has already been mentioned in the preceding pages, a satirical composition in which she runs
down both Pope’s physique and his work. Pope in this poem again begins by calling her Sappho but is cut
short by Arbuthnot who cautions him from saying anything further about her.
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Check Your Progress 3
(i) Who were the two Roman Satirists whose mode of satires Pope followed in his satires?
(ii) Who are the real persons behind the assumed names of Atticus and Sporus whom Pope satirizes in
the poem?
12.6 IMAGERY
Pope’s imagery in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot is not only vivid and apt but also helps to generate
humour. Animal imagery is the most abundant in the poem. It comprises all references to animals, worms,
bugs and insects. At the very opening of the poem Pope compares the hordes of poetasters, who pester him
for an audience, to swarms of insects who enter every nook and cranny of his house and gardens. He also
compares them with a pack of mad dogs or mad men let loose from a Mad house—the Bedlam, all because
the Dog-star has appeared in the sky which is said to produce such tendencies in the minds of the living
beings. The reference is also to the recital of poetry by poets in the ancient times when the Dog-star was in
ascendance.
Pope then talks of Midas, the king who grew asses’ ears as a punishment from the gods because he
had wrongly judged Pan as a better poet than Apollo. In fact, comparing Midas to King George II, whose
noblemen at the court were responsible for the lowering of literary standards by appointing undeserving
poets as Poet Laureates, Pope is hinting at the selection of Cibber to the post, whom he had ridiculed by
making him the hero in his work Dunciad.
Taking the Midas lore further, Pope says that just as the queen was the first to know of her husband’s
ears and could not keep the secret to herself, he too must speak out the truth to every foolish poet that “he’s
an ass” (line 80), where “ass’ is taken as a symbol of stupidity.
The same image is used in the Sporus-passage in which Sporus (Lord Hervey) is called the white
curd of ass’s milk, thereby emphasizing Hervey’s weak and sickly body.
The Sporus-passage is replete with animal and insect imagery. Sporus has been called a “butterfly”,
(an effeminate man wearing colourful clothes); a “bug” with “gilded wings” (a superficial fellow) whom
Pope should swat and expose; an insect whose “buzz” (talking) is irritating to people: a “well-bred Spaniel”
(a breed of dog) who can only muzzle but must not bite (denoting Hervey’s impotency); an “Amphibious
thing” (indicating Hervey’s dual nature);
“Eve’s tempter’ (Satan in the guise of a toad) showing how Hervey is poisoning the Queen’s ears
against people he does not like; or Satan himself with an angel’s face but a snake’s body conveying that
Hervey combines in himself beauty and evil, he is charming but dangerous at the same time.
There are more instances of the use of animal imagery in the poem like when Pope says that he
cannot “toady” to even royalty like Lord Hervey does but must swoop like a falcon (bird) on its prey; or
when he refuses to be a London lapdog (lines 225-226) like the poetasters who carry their dull verses from
one person to another.
Pope compares the scribblers or mediocre poets who write hastily and, therefore, carelessly, to meet
a deadline, to spiders. If like the spiders web their web (poem) breaks (is rejected), they quickly spin another
(poem). Unmindful of their dirty work (bad poems), they rule supreme in their webs made of flimsy substance
(weak nature of the poem).

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 Pope also uses the -work “mite” for Theobald and Bentley who consider themselves important for
having edited the works of Shakespeare and Milton, respectively. Pope first puns on their self-importance or
“might” and then their insignificance, in the work “mite” (an insect) in line 162; “And ‘ twere a sin to rob
them of their mite.” Here Pope inflates just to deflate. He also compares the two editors to “grubs” and
“worms” (line 170). Thus animal imagery is the most predominant imagery in the poem.
Check Your Progress 4
(i) Name the two major animal images used by Pope most frequently in the poem.
12.7 SUMMING UP
In this lesson we have taken up Alexander Pope’s very famous poem An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot for
detailed study. We began by explaining what an epistle was and who Arbuthnot was. We also spoke about
the theme, structure and age of the poem. We have also provided you with an explanation of the poem and
pointed out the imagery present in it. Pope’s use of satire has been explained and some of the main satiric
portraits have been explained to you.
12.8 GLOSSARY
Abhorrent - inspiring disgust and loathing Barren- too poor to produce much or any vegetation.
Epistle - poem or other literary work in the form of a letter or series of letters.
Juvenalion - in literature, any bitter and ironic criticism of contemporary persons and institutions
that is filled with personal invective, angry moral indignation, and pessimism
Panegyrics - a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something.
Papal - relating to a pope or to the papacy.
Terminal - forming or situated at the end or extremity of something.
12.9 TERMINAL QUESTIONS
1. Analyze the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnotas a satire.
2. Discuss the animal imagery in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
3. What makes the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot autobiographical?
12.10 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
Answer 1
(i) Epistle means a letter. Over the ages the term has come to denote formal letters which, though
addressed to a particular person, are concerned with public rather than personal matters.
(ii) Dr. Arbuthnot was a distinguished doctor of medicine in Pope’s time. He was a scientist and a writer
as well. He was Pope’s friend, mentor and personal physician.
Answer 2
(i) It was the publication of two works, one jointly written by Lady Mary Montague and Lord Hervey,
and the other authored by Lord Hervey alone, in which they had criticized Pope, his person, morals
and friends.
(ii) The presence of the poet from first to last, and the logical flow of the sequences in the poem.
Answer 3
(i) Horace and Juvenal.
(ii) Joseph Addison and John, Lord Hervey.
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Answer 4
(i) Those of an ass and a dog.
12.11 SUGGESTED READINGS
1. Hammond, Brean S. Pope. Sussex: the Harvester Press, 1986.
2. Gooneratne, Yasmine. Alexander Pope. London: Cambridge University Press 1976.
3. Griffin, Dustin H., Alexander Pope. The Poet in the Poems. Princeton: Princeton University Press
1978.
4. Weinbrot, Howard D. Alexander Pope and the Traditions of Formal Verse Satire. Princeton:
Princeton University Press 1982.

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 ASSIGNMENTS
Attempt any four questions all questions carry equal marks.
1. Discuss Chaucer as the representative poet of Fourteenth Century. 5
2. Comment on John Donne as a Meta Physical poet illustrating from the poems prescribed in your
syllabus. 5
3. Write a note on Milton’s Grand style in Paradise Lost Book-I 5
4. Discuss ‘Rape of the Lock’ as a Mock Heroic Poem. 5
5. Give Features of 14the century poetry. 5
6. Give a detailed note on Meta physical poetry and its features. 5

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 CONTENTS
SR.NO. TOPIC PAGE NO.
COURSE INTRODUCTION
UNIT-I
LESSON-1 CHAUCER: AGE, LIFE AND WORKS 4
LESSON-2 PROLOGUE TO THE CANTERBURY TALE 14
LESSON-3 NUN’S PRIEST’S TALE 25
UNIT-II
LESSON-4 JOHN DONNE: AGE, LIFE AND WORKS 34
LESSON-5 DONNE’S POETRY-I 42
LESSON-6 DONNE’S POETRY-II 53
UNIT-III
LESSON-7 JOHN MILTON : AGE, LIFE AND WORKS 63
LESSON-8 “L’ALLEGRO” AND “LYCIDAS” 72
LESSON-9 PARADISE LOST BOOK-I 82
UNIT-IV
LESSON-10 ALEXANDER POPE: AGE, LIFE AND WORKS 99
LESSON-11 RAPE OF THE LOCK 107
LESSON-12 AN EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT 117

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M.A. English Semester-I Course : II

Poetry From Chaucer to Pope

Lessons 1- 12
Revised by: Dr. Neera Singh
Prof. Neelima Kawar

International Centre for Distance Education & Open Learning

Himachal Pradesh University, Gyan Path
Summer Hill, Shimla - 171005

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