Archive for April, 2009

THE GREAT WORKS

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

The Seventeenth Century is without a doubt my favorite period in English literary history. English history took a rather maverick direction in this century and produced some of the greatest literary, philosophical, and theological movements in human history. This century belongs to the three greats: John Donne, John Milton, and John Dryden. What a dynamic trio! At the same time, England, in its quiet way, experienced the equivalent of the French Revolution–but without the bloodshed and chaos. In the middle of this century the English rebelled against their king Charles I (1625-49) and executed him. During this period too England saw the triumph of one of the truly great cultural world views in human history: Puritanism.

Before the Puritans, however was John Donne.

To many historians Donne is an enigma: in his early years his poems satirize Elizabethan notions of platonic love and he wrote bold, almost harsh love poems that were scandalous for his age. Later in life, however, I am convinced that he had a born again experience, and, with Jesus Christ as his savior, he wrote some of the most inspired poems in the English language.

Donne wrote refreshingly new poetry. His literary style is peculiarly his own, especially in the songs and sonnets. Almost every poem has a unique stanza-pattern, never used before and never repeated. These stanzas are often nicely adjusted t o the rhetoric of the units they form. Moreover, the rhythm of the lines has little of the cliches so abundantly exemplified by English poetry during Donne’s youth and maturity. The exceptionally easy-going movement of “Go and Catch a Falling Star” serves to underscore its simplicity and honesty.

Go and Catch a Falling Star
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me=2 0
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true, and fair.
If thou find’st one, let me know;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet.
Yet do not; I would not go
Though at next door we might meet.
Though at next door we might meet.
And last till you write your letter.
Yet she
Will be,
False, ere I come, to two or three.

Great Works / Great Authors – Part 6

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

“Meditation XVII” is one of a number of short essays that Donne wrote while recovering from a serious illness. In what ways is it a Christian document?

Meditation XVII
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a man or of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. . . . If a man carry tr easure in bullion or in a wedge of gold and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine and be of no use to him; but his bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me, if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

“Meditation XVII” achieves both unity and diversity by stating a single theme and giving several variations of that theme.

Love is an emotion that could be said to be almost as old as humanity itself, and t he pursuit thereof has been defined in many ways throughout the ages. Perhaps the most vivid of these feelings is documented in love poetry, and through this poetry each era of a society can be analyzed as to its principles and values of love and, subsequently, relationships between men and women. For the seventeenth-century poet, John Donne, his writings reveal the integrity of his love as a force of nature, and as a passion for his God. How different things are today! Hemingway, for instance, uses a similar situation in A FAREWELL TO ARMS but his grief stricken character stares hopelessly into a forlorn fire at the end of his novel. Donne’s belief in a sovereign God is sorely needed in this contemporary world!

Great Works / Great Authors – Part 5

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

“Holy Sonnet XIV” by John Donne reflects some of the same language in the Book of Jeremiah

Holy Sonnet XIV
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I lov e you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

As I read Donne I think about ho w my God never agrees with my “flesh.” He never puts my discomfort before His purposes! Donne no doubt felt the same hand of God that I have, and Isaiah (“Woe is me a man of unclean lips!” Isaiah 6.) (J. P. Stobaugh, BRITISH LITERATURE (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishers, 2005)

Great Works / Great Authors – Part 4

Monday, April 27th, 2009

As this author prepared this curriculum, I struggled over whether to include John Donne. Donne, like Chaucer, wrote absolutely inspired poetry/prose. On the other hand, there are certain works that go beyond good taste and literature and wander into vulgarity or worse. Today, with all the sexual temptations that surround us, it is vital that the Christian discern what is art and what is trash. The Bible has a great deal to say about the arts, and it also gives a detailed description of a particular artist and his ministry .. Bezalel appears to be Moses’ minister of the arts. His grandfather Hur held up Moses’ arms during the battle with the Amalekites and obviously was one of Moses’ trusted aides (Exodus 17:8-13; 24:14). Read about Bezalel in Exodus 31:1-11.

Identify the Christian themes in this sonnet (below).

Holy Sonnet X
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swellst thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

I love to compare and contrast this poem to the Book of Job (J. P. Stobaugh, BRITISH LITERATURE (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishers, 2005)

Great Works / Great Authors – Part 3

Friday, April 24th, 2009

The seventeenth century is without a doubt my favorite period in English literary history. English history took a rather maverick direction in this century and produced some of the greatest literary, philosophical, and theological movements in human history. This century belongs to three great Johns: John Donne, John Milton, and John Dryden. What a dynamic trio! At the same time, England, in its quiet way, experienced the equivalent of the French Revolution – but without the bloodshed and chaos. In the middle off this century, the English rebelled against their king Charles I (1625-49) and executed him. During this period, too, England saw the triumph of one of the truly great cultural worldviews in human history: Puritanism.

Donne wrote refreshingly new poetry. His literary style is peculiarly his own, especially in the songs and sonnets. Almost every poem has a unique stanza pattern, never used before and never repeated. These stanzas are often nicely adjusted to the rhetoric of the units they form. Moreover, the rhythm of the lines has little of the clichés so abundantly exemplified by English poetry during Donne’s youth and maturity. The exceptionally easygoing movement of “Go and Catch a Falling Star” serves to underscore its simplicity and honesty.

Go and Catch a Falling Star

Go and catch a falling star, a
Get with child a mandrake root, b
Tell me where all past years are, a
Or who cleft the devil’s foot, b
Teach me to hear mermaids singing, c
Or to keep off envy’s stinging, c
And find ; d
What wind d
Serves to advance an honest mind. d

If thou be’st born to strange sights, d
Things invisible to see, e
Ride ten thousand days and nights f
Till age snow white hairs on thee; e
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me f
All strange wonders that befell thee, f
And swear g
Nowhere g
Lives a woman true, and fair. ; g

If thou find’st one, let me know; h
Such a pilgrimage were sweet. i
Yet do not; I would not go h
Though at next door we might meet. j
Though at next door we might meet. j
And last till you write your letter. k
Yet she l
Will be, l
False, ere I come, to two or three. l

Compare and contrast John Donne’s style to earlier Elizabethan writers like William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Edmund Spenser. Think about theme, tone, rhyme, meter, and subject matter. (J. P. Stobaugh, BRITISH LITERATURE (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishers, 2005)

Great Works / Great Authors – Part 2

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Most of us today are quite comfortable in talking about ourselves. Indeed, having “an identity crisis” is rather common. But, in Elizabethan Francis Bacon’s day, it was unusual to talk about oneself so much. Yet, Bacon does so with reckless abandon. The following is an excerpt from his ESSAYS.

An ant is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd thing in an orchard or garden. And certainly men that are great lovers of themselves waste the public. Divide with reason between self-love and society; and be so true to thyself, as thou be not false to others; specially to thy king and country. It is a poor centre of a man’s actions, himself. It is right earth. For that only stands fast upon his own centre; whereas all things that have affinity with the heavens move upon the centre of another, which they benefit. The referring of all to a man’s self is more tolerable in a sovereign prince; because themselves are not only themselves but their good and evil is at the peril of the public fortune. But it is a desperate evil in a servant to a prince, or a citizen in a republic. For whatsoever affairs pass such a man’s hands, he crooke th them to his own ends; which must needs be often eccentric to the ends of his master or state. Therefore let princes, or states, choose such servants as have not this mark; except they mean their service should be made but the accessory. That which maketh the effect more pernicious is that all proportion is lost. It were disproportion enough for the servant’s good to be preferred before the master’s; but yet it is a greater extreme, when a little good of the servant shall carry things against a great good of the master’s. And yet that is the case of bad officers, treasurers, ambassadors, generals, and other false and corrupt servants; which set a bias upon their bowl, of their own petty ends and envies, to the overthrow of their master’s great and important affairs. And for the most part, the good such servants receive is after the model of their own fortune; but the hurt they sell for that good is after the model of their master’s fortune. And certainly it is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs; and yet these men many times hold credit with their masters, because their study is but to please them and profit themselves; and for either respect they will abandon the good of their affairs. Wisdom for a man’s self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing. It is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house somewhat before it fall. It is the wisdom of the fox,20that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him. It is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they could devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says of Pompey) are sui amantes, sine rivali [lovers of themselves without a rival] are many times unfortunate. And whereas they have all their times sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings they sought by their self-wisdom to have pinioned.

Read Bacon and reflect on our own culture’s penchant to navel gaze!

Great Works / Great Authors

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Most British anthologies, unfortunately, emphasize Shakespeare to the exclusion of others. One overlooked writer is Ben Jonson.

His contemporaries characterized Ben Jonson as “a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others.” He gave evidence of his narcissism by publishing his collected works in 1616 – an unpreecedented event. But he had reason to boast. Jonson – a friend of Shaakespeare, Marlowe, Raleigh, Bacon, and John Donne – was a great writter in his own right. Many think that he was the greatest English writer of the Elizabethan period. Period. Better than Shakespeare or Marlowe or anyone else (JP Stobaugh, BRITISH LITERATURE (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2005)).

Everyone read’s Jonson’s elegy for William Shakespeare–and it is great. But my favorite is Jonson’s poem for his deceased son.

On My First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.
Seven years tho’ wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ’scap’d world’s and flesh’s rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say, “Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.”
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

The Noble Nature
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night –
It was the plant and flower of Light
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.

Beautiful!

Great Literature – Part 4

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

The problem of evil in Western thought is a real one. The problem of evil arises (1) from the loss of a sense of God’s presence in the face of evil or suffering and (2) from an apparent conflict between the language used to describe God (e.g., all powerful, all good, and all wise) and that used to describe the world as being characterized by evil and suffering. The solution proffered by the Book of Job is that of evoking such a sense of awe around the created universe that, discovering in this way a renewed sense of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, one accepts both evil and good and contents himself verbally by acknowledging a final incomprehensibility. The issue is God’s omnipotence vs. God’s impotence, God’s sovereignty vs. God’s incompetence. Do Job’s conclusions satisfy you? Why or why not?

This sort of question is at the heart of Shakespeare’s MACBETH.

Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s best tragedies, is the story of how a man’s debility first brought him puissance, and then destruction. We meet one of the greatest heroes in Western literature – Banquoo – and one of the most diabolical villains – Lady Macbeth – whose chicanery would rival the most malevolent Walt Disney miscreant. The story is based on historical fact: Holinshed’s Chronicles recounts a similar story of Scottish treachery.

Here are some of the Bible application questions in my text (J. P. Stobaugh, BRITISH LITERATURE (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2005).

Biblical Application
A. Banquo is one of the most tragic figures in this play. He is loyal, innocent, and loving. But Macbeth and especially Lady Macbeth know that he must die. Why? In a two-page essay, compare and contrast him to Jonathan, son of Saul and good friend to David.

B. Macbeth and his wife weave their evil plots as if there is no judgment for their actions. They are sadly mistaken. William Willimon, Chaplain to Duke University and an ordained Methodist preacher, tells of a congregant who said to him one day,

When I look at the God of Abraham, I feel I’m=2 0near a real God, not the sort of dignified businesslike, Rotary Club God we chatter about here on Sunday mornings. . . . Abraham’s God could blow a man to bits, give and then take a child, ask for everything from a person and then want more. I want to know that God.

Do you live your life as if there are no consequences? Explain.

C. In Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide to Six Shakespeare Plays, Peter J. Leithart says:

Shakespeare shares the opinion, reflected in different ways in both ancient paganism and in Christianity, that one can lead a good life only in a community, only as he shares that life with others. Christianity teaches that God is One and Three, both a Person and a society of Persons. Man, made in God’s image, reflects that image fully only when he lives in close communion with his fellows, for it is not good for man to be alone. . . . Sin separates human beings.

Macbeth powerfully portrays this process. As Macbeth gives in to sin, he becomes increasingly isolated. Give evidence of this process in the text and illustrate its unfolding in a two- or three-page essay.

Great Literature – Part 3

Monday, April 20th, 2009

My students read SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, author unknown.

No one knows who the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was. All we know is that he was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer – although his alliterative stylle would have been considered barbaric to Chaucer. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1360 – 1400) is a Middle English alliterative romancee written by an anonymous West Midlands poet also credited with The Pearl, Patience, and Purity or Cleanness. The protagonist, Sir Gawain, survives two tests: a challenge, which he alone of King Arthur’s knights accepts, to behead the fearsome Green Knight, and a temptation to commit adultery with the wife of Lord Bertilak – in reality the Green Knight – in whose castle he stays en en route to the chapel. Critics have long complimented its intricate and well-written poetry and its superb portrait of Gawain, an ideal knight who remains fallibly human.

In light of the ambivalence and subjectivity which so flippantly rules our culture, it is refreshing, and informative, to read something like SIR GAWAIN.

May I make one last suggestion: use J. R. R. Tolkein’s translation.

Great Literature – Part 2

Friday, April 17th, 2009

I met Venerable Bede at Harvard Unniversity.

In the winter of 1976, I was sitting in a drafty Harvard Yard building listening to Dr. Williams lecture on a miracle described by the Venerable Bede. Williams was notorious for his criticism of miracles – supernatural hocus-pocus, he called it. But Professor Williamss was sick and needed a miracle. He knew it, too. As he lectured on Venerable Bede, he reached a point in his lecture where he paused and looked out the window at Widener Library. We all sat and waited. “You know,” he finally said, still looking out the frosted window, “I used to laugh at people who believed in miracles.” In good nature, we all laughed with him. “But, now, it is not funny. I need a miracle. I have cancer. And now, laugh at me too, because now I believe in miracles, too.” Funny, isn’t it? We find it easier to believe in a miracle when things are bad. For most of us, the greatest miracle was the day Christ came into our hearts. The Venerable Bede thought that miracles were a natural part of history. Bede was not afraid to admi t that he, himself, needed a miracle. Are you willing to admit to Him that you need a miracle?

The earliest and most important writer of prose was the Venerable Bede, a contemporary of the author of Beowulf. Bede (also spelled Baeda, or Beda; 672/673–735), Anglo-Saxon theologian, hisstorian, and chronologist, is best known today for his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), a source vital to the history of the Anglo-Saxon people’s conversion to Christianity. A brilliant man and a devoted Christian, Bede wrote the first extant English history. Many students will find it difficult to read the entire History. Those who persevere, however, will be blessed by the gentle, committed Christian who understood history better than many know.

Read Philippians 3:1-13. When is loss gain? When we surrender our control and our search for security in tangible things, we discover that trusting in God and God’s design is ultimately more satisfying. As a historian, Bede understood and firmly believed that human history was always reconstructed from evidence. B ede understood, and modern historians understand, that history cannot be re-created – only reinterpreted. But Paul is telling us, and Bedee understood, that salvation is out of history. That it is really something new. Something is created that was not here. A new birth. And that is worth more than all the knowledge, money, or prestige in the whole world. What do you want more than anything else in the whole world? To win the World Cup? To be rich? Handsome? To receive a full academic scholarship to Harvard University? What does Paul and the poet Caedmon tell you is of inestimable worth?

If you have not already done so, read Bede’s ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. If you can’t read the whole thing, then at least read his chapter “Caedmon’s Song,” a beautiful story. (Based on James P. Stobaugh, BRITISH LITERATURE (Nashbille, TN: B&H, 2005).