Let's talk about poetry and politics of early Rome!

So, one of the classes I took this semester was the Poetry and Politics of Augustan Rome, or something like that (Ole Miss CLC 333). Basically, we read the Odes of Horace and The Aeneid by Vergil. Well, that's what we were SUPPOSED to do, but with the way my prof taught the class I more just skimmed the Aeneid rather than doing an in-depth reading. Bad, I know. At the end of the semester we had a paper due on the effectiveness of the two poets as propaganda artists for Augustus. The paper I wrote was entire crap and worth 25% of my grade. So, here I am, submitting for your pleasure and enlightnment, my paper. Keep in mind, I only had a few hours to put it together because I procrastinated until the last minute (but don't all seniors...or all students for that matter?). Professor Ajootian would freak if someone turned this in to her because she can't stand when people just B.S. their paper with quote after quote. It actually makes me kinda cringe that I did it, but come on, it was the LAST paper I had to do in college, I was not in the mood to actually kill it. I ended up with an A in the class so it's all good. Enjoy!

Love and Kisses,
KABO

Ancient P. R.̶  A Look at Octavian and His Poets

            In the early years of this millennium there was nothing but turmoil and war in the state of Rome.  Men pledged allegiance not to their empire but to their general; the generals in turn sent them out to their deaths in hopes of gaining power.  The assassination of Julius Caesar led to a series of wars that ultimately left his nephew as the last man standing and the self-appointed ruler of the Roman “democracy.”  Octavian, who later renamed himself Augustus, knew that in order to keep his dominion over the greatest empire the world had ever seen he had to convince the people that he was the best thing that had ever happened to them.  This turned out, in some ways, to not be as great a feat as many would have assumed because people were so happy to finally have a time of peace.  To keep this good will towards him, Augustus enlisted a group of the top poets of the time to act as his public relations, writing of how terrible things were before him and all the amazing things that he was doing to improve their lives even more. Two of these poets were Virgil and Horace, and although they did write of the glory of Rome and Augustus, they also made sure that their discontent with a one man rule was present.  This was achieved through ambiguities which lead to dual interpretations of their words.

            Vergil wrote his great epic poem, The Aeneid, in order to appease Augustus and put himself on the same literary page as the great Greek poet Homer.  Rather than write an epic of the glory of Augustus and his end to the civils wars, Vergil decided to write about the founding of Rome by Augustus’ ancestor Aeneas. This move allowed Vergil to speak more freely about how he felt while also giving Augustus something he could feel was positive about himself.  Augustus, through the Julian blood line, claimed to be descended from Aeneas and therefore Venus, something that he and his family was very proud of.  Vergil capitalized and expanded on this in his poem, “Virgil cements the connection between Aeneas and Augustus by creating a common ancestry for both. While stories of Aeneas as founding father or ancestor of Rome had been in circulation since at least the fifth century BCE, another Roman tradition, since before the fourth century, held that Rome's eponymous founder was Romulus, son of Mars and a Vestal virgin. According to the historian Livy, the Vestal virgin's name was Rhea Silvia, daughter of King Numitor, descendant of Aeneas. Virgil makes this familial connection explicit in the Aeneid” (Bell 17).  It is obvious, that as a tool for boosting Augustus’ reputation and popularity amoung the Roman people, Vergil knew what to say to make Augustus’ claim to power seem legitimate.  It also pleased Augustus to be related to the epic hero and therefore gave Vergil room to voice him opinions throughout the poem without Augustus having them censured.

One of the methods that Vergil employs to appease Augustus is, “the transferal topos. Virgil uses this rhetorical trope of transferal, translatio studii et imperii or the transferal of culture and empire, to weave strands of contemporary Roman history into his literary tapestry of ancient wars, legendary heroes, and mythical gods; translatio functions through his hero Aeneas, who serves as the vehicle for transmitting the culture of Troy to Rome. In using the translatio topos, Virgil draws certain parallels between his fictional hero and the princeps Augustus, transforming his Greek sources to achieve one of his many political aims-constructing a national identity for Rome as glorious and ancient as that of Greece” (Bell 11).  In other words, by writing of an epic past, Vergil is able to transfer and link that glory to his present Rome.  This technique was both common and honored in his time, “In his De Oratore, Cicero discusses how translatio (or metaphor) is used for linguistic adornment ["ornatum"] and dignity ["dignitatem"]: "The ex planation is that when something that can scarcely be conveyed by the proper term is expressed metaphorically, the meaning we desire to convey is made clear by the resemblance of the thing that we have expressed by the word that does not belong" . . .  He then maintains that "if a thing has not got a proper name and designation of its own ...necessity compels one to borrow what one has not got from somewhere else" (Bell 13).  So, Vergil, who did not necessarily agree with everything was using the technique to make Augustus appear better than he really felt he was. Augustus though, could read the Aeneid, link it to himself, and feel that it glorified him through the translatio.  For example,

“[The] Aeneas as both the founder of the new and improved Troy and the living icon of Troy itself reflects Virgil's political agenda in drawing similarities between Aeneas and Augustus in their roles as founders of great civilizations. R.G.M. Nisbet refers to Aeneas as the "proto-type of Augustus, carrying the destiny of his nation on his shoulders" (378), just as Augustus, in his role as princeps, would lift up Rome from the ashes of the republic and into the glory of the Empire. As Aeneas constructs a new city based on the elements of two older civilizations, Augustus sought to create a new state politically, socially, and physically, based on a solid foundation of Roman tradition laid since the early days of the republic (Bell 16).”

Once again, Vergil shows his genius in writing.  He finds ways to stroke Augustus’ ego which allows him to have room to add the ambiguity that lets readers see that he probably wasn’t the biggest fan of Augustus.

            The main theme of his epic is that of the price of death in the journey for peace.  Vergil seems disgusted by the lives that are ruined and lost because of wars and politics and he comments on this many times in his poem.  A great inspiration for this was the reign of Augustus and the lives he stole; “No one who has studied the Aeneid in its historical aspect will, I think, deny that most of the conspicuous events of Vergil's lifetime have left some impress on the poem, and Octavian's cold-blooded slaughter of three hundred senators and knights at Perusia in 41 must have been known to Vergil. (Conway 200)

            One of the main things that Vergil does in opposition of Augustus is portray Aeneas as not that great of a guy.  He isn’t a hero that people can all love because he does so many things that seem horrible to readers.  So, despite the fact that he was the father to the first of the Roman blood line, and the fact that he saved a good number of his kinsmen when they escaped from Troy, it doesn’t seem like he is someone that Augustus should have been proud to be related to on a personal, moral level.  The first thing that makes people wonder about Aeneas is his uncontrollable passions that lead him to act in very stupid ways.  During the fall of Troy these passions lead him to want to basically be suicidal.  When he is transfixed by Cupid in Carthage, his uncontrolled love for Dido makes him want to give up his quest and just let the Trojans live with the Carthinians (which is very bad as they become Rome’s most hated enemy in its history). Vergil even concludes the poem with Aeneas in an uncontrolled rage that leads him to murder Turnus.  Self-control in Roman times was of the utmost importance, so modeling the “great ancestor” of Augustus as a man with no self-control was an offhanded way of saying that Augustus wasn’t from a good line, and that maybe it was even a genetic trait he had be passed on.

            The next way that Vergil really seems to frown upon the ‘hero’ Aeneas is with his lack of concern for death or hurting people.  In his escape from Troy he makes sure to help his father and son out of the city, but tells his wife to take up the rear of the party, which leads to her death.  He gets really upset when she dies, but then agrees with her shade to just move on with his life.  He then meets Dido and after a little persuasion also leaves her behind, which leads to her death.  He may have been struck by Cupid’s love potion, but it still comes off very callous that he could just walk away without the woman he had claimed to be in love with and may have possibly married.  Finally, he basically steals his final wife (second if he didn’t marry Dido, third if he did) from Turnus, who he goes ahead and kills at the very end of the poem after leading Turnus to believe that he would be spared. The rash actions and disregard for human emotions makes Aeneas someone who isn’t the best, or even traditional, hero.  Although this should have gone over poorly with Augustus, it seems he was just happy to have his lineage displayed to the entire world through Vergils poem.  Then again, Vergil did say certain things in order to stroke at Augustus, like when he, “[Lists the] heroes in chronological order, from the time of Romulus to Augustus (and thereby retain the linearity of the historical narrative) Anchises conflates time, telling Aeneas to gaze upon "the Romans that are yours," specifically Augustus Caesar, "son of a god, who will again establish a golden age in Latium amid fields once ruled by Saturn" Such a rhetorical strategy creates the literary illusion of a direct connection between Romulus, eponymous hero of the distant past, and Augustus, hero and leader of the present. It was no coincidence that Octavian had seriously considered taking on the name Romulus early in his career.' (Bell 19)

            The other poet, Horace, was even less of a fan of Octavian. In his younger years he fought against Octavian’s cause, though he claims he ran away from this battle. There has been debate about why Augustus would hire him as help to promote himself, but it turns out that it was Vergil who first introduced Horace to his mentor- “His poetry nonetheless brought him the friendship of the young Virgil, who introduced him to Maecenas, the minister of internal affairs for Octavian. At this time, the first years of the 30's, Octavian was struggling to maintain an insecure position in Italy against the threats of Sextus Pompey, master of the Western seas, and was rapidly changing his program along the lines already suggested. Whether Maecenas could see practical utility in gaining the support of a promising but bitter poet we do not know; but in the end, after a delay of nine months, he accepted Horace” (Starr 59). 

Horace, unlike his friend Vergil, did not write an epic for Augustus, but rather a series of odes.  In his compilation of poems, there is two tones that come out to which one can easily see his lack of enthusiasm for Augustus, “Perhaps the most complicated personality of the Augustan age, Horace could fluctuate between the frankest hedonism and the blackest pessimism; and scholars have long noted that even his praise of Augustus was marked by an under- tone of detachment. A recent work thus distinguishes in Horace's Roman odes between his sincerita, a quality genuinely present, and an autenticita, i. e., a deep spiritual commitment, which is lacking” (Starr 60).  Most of Horace’s poetry is so ambiguous that it is hard to understand at first what he is even trying to say, other than that everyone should live like a poet and make love and drink wine often.  He believed that people needed poetry to make bad things better and that’s why he says in 1.6 that he had decided to write love poetry.  It comes off like he was telling Romans that even though he was an Augustan poet he was really their poet, concerned with making them feel better as opposed to making Augustus look better. This poem is meant to be his response to others suggesting he write about the glories of Augustan Rome, he suggests right back that Darius should worry about writing the epic for Augustus because that’s what he likes to do and not what Horace himself enjoys.          

Though Horace never seemed to be Octavian’s biggest supporter, he also was able to backhandedly support Augustan’s opposition.  In ode 2.1, he warns his peer Asinius Pollio to be careful about questioning Imperial Rule vs. the Republic because it was dangerous for him.  He also points out that bringing up all the hurt from the civil wars did not help the people but rather just made them feel really bad by stirring up the feelings of loss they were all trying to put behind them. He then goes ahead and starts bringing up all of the horrors of war himself, emphasizing how horrible it all was for the people of Rome.  This move allows him to say how he feels in the guise of him warning others to not speak that way.

In his fourth book of his Odes though there are specific references to Augustus, though they aren’t what the ruler was probably looking for.  The reason for this being, “The praise of Augustus in the later Odes, thus, is of a conventional nature which reminds one of Ovid's mode of flattery;15 and the epistle to Augustus seems to have a flat air as if Horace were irritated at the command to compose it” (Starr 62). Aparently though, he did not write these because Augustus asked for them but rather out of respect for his patron.  It is thought that, “his reconciliation with Augustus and his eventual celebration of Roman themes were probably due, at least in part, to his affectionate loyalty to Maecenas and to the gentle pressure from the man who gave him literary independence” (Reckford 202).  In other words, the poems were just a purely political move by him to keep a man whom he care about happy with him.

            The Augustan poets had to tip-toe around a man who had the power to destroy their lives if they upset him.  This didn’t mean just physically, but emotionally and politically as well.  Though the two men didn’t seem to see eye to eye with Augustus, they knew that they had to do what they could to stay in his good graces. One of the main reasons for this is that, “A poet in Augustan Rome, as in republican Rome, required either independent means or a patron; there was no third way. He could not live off his sales; there were no royalties; there was no copyright; there were no chairs of literature and no Guggenheim Fellowships” (Reckford 200).  Basically, Augustus hired Maecenas who was their patron, if they upset Augustus, they risked losing their friend and means of survival. The men didn’t lose their sense of free thinking though, and found unique ways to say how they felt without getting under the skin of Augustus. Despite the obvious ambiguity and implied dissatisfaction with the loss of the democracy, the men also seem to have a genuine respect for the good things that Augustus did for Rome, such as end the civil wars, rebuild temples and public houses, and, of course, foster the expansion of the arts. There is a saying today that ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity,” so even if the two poets weren’t saying the best things about Augustus they were at least saying something that made people talk about the war general turned emperor.  A key part to keeping power is keeping people believing that you deserve the power, and Augustus did that by keeping his name on their tongues and their brains full of his “culture.”

Word Count- 2679

Works Cited

Bell, Kimberly. "Translatio" and the Constructs of a Roman Nation in Virgil's "Aeneid,"

Rocky Mountain Review, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. 11-24

Conway, R. Vergil and Octavian, The Classical Review, Vol. 46, No. 5 (Nov., 1932), pp.

199-202

Reckford, Kenneth. Horace and Maecenas, Transactions and Proceedings of the

American Philological Association, Vol. 90 (1959), pp. 195-208

Starr, Chester. Horace and Augustus, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 90, No. 1

(Jan., 1969), pp. 58-64

Final Chaucer paper- The Canterbury Tales

Hey my awesome readers! So, here is the final paper I submitted for my Chaucer class at Ole Miss. I recieved a 92 on it which, I'm not going to lie, I think is way better than I deserve. My prof says that I'm an excellent writer, great at making arguments, and basically kick ass minus some grammar issues. I threw this together in about three hours haha. At the end of the day though, I walked away from the class with an A and having read all of Chaucer's main works, which is pretty awesome I think. So, enjoy the paper if you feel like reading it, and just remember, once again, I have not gone back and fixed what he suggested because I'm lazy like that :)

Love and kisses,
KABO

Chaucer and Married Life

            Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories that serves as a frozen moment in time, an observation of the characters and practices that Chaucer saw about him when he was writing.  The brilliance of the work is the ambiguity that allows for people from all walks of life to be revealed to the audience without putting Chaucer himself at risk of offending any particular group.  From Chaucer’s early poems all the way to his Canterbury Tales, there is one topic that always seems to be on his mind- love.  A more interesting facet though is that love is not always present in his marriage stories, in fact, many times it seems absent and the root cause of the problems between characters in stories.  Love and marriage being separate spheres for life in Chaucer’s tales changes the idea of marriage from a fairy tale to an economic and political contract, one that does not always make people happy. 

            The crux of the matter for marriage and love seems to come from the Wife of Bath’s story.  In the prologue the Wife of Bath tells her audience about her love life before she gets to that of her tale.  For Alisoun, she started marrying men at the age of 12 and was never happy with her husbands.  She tells that they weren’t necessarily bad men, but rather that they just didn’t spark in her a love and passion which lead her to a life of sorrow as their wife.  Finally, at the age of forty she meets a man half her age and decides to marry for love, already having enough money from her dead husbands to support herself.  The start of the marriage turns out to be sad, as her husband constantly tells her that wives and women are evil and she gets fed up with his verbal and physical abuse. Her story with him ends in love once he realized that striking her was wrong and that he needed to love her back in order to have a happy marriage.

The actual story that the Wife of Bath tells is about women wanting power and control over their husbands, making power a commodity that both parties strive for.  The idea of power being equal, mimicking the last marriage of the Wife of Bath, is repeated by the Franklin’s tale,

“The Franklyn takes as donnees the notions of Christian marriage and courtly love: the husband is to take no "maistrye" against the wife's will, and is to have "soverayntee" only in name; the wife on her part will be his "humble trewe wyf." In moments of duress both partners agree to exercise patience. Thus the husband is to be servant in love and lord in marriage, and the result is to be "joy, ease, and prosperity" (V, 804). The compromise preserves nominal "maistrye" for the husband, satisfies the Wife of Bath's demand that sovereignty go to the woman” (Howard 226).

Chaucer, with most of his tales not involving love in marriage, seems to say that power is the commodity that all strive for in marriage. When love is present though, as it was for Alisoun and Jenkin, power no longer becomes an issues and the couple can be happy.

            In Chaucer’s tales one of the main thing he points out that men want is a young wife.  For the men, young wives seem to bring back the youth they lost in making names for themselves and ensures the chances that they will have multiple heirs, as well as providing that someone is capable of the energy running a household full of children calls for.  The first time a young wife is introduced to the audience is in the Miller’s Tale, with young Alison.  Having been married off to someone she didn’t love, the eighteen year old decides to play around with multiple men’s hearts and tricks her husband into looking like a fool while she had an affair on him with a young student. The carpenter though that he had power over the young Alison, but in his ignorance she was able to steal that power from him and get what she wanted.  The tale is hilarious, but when looked at from an economic point of view it is very sad how their marriage is nothing but a game of seizing control from one another rather than doing as the Wife of Bath did with Jenkin and working things out to respect and love one another.

            The next tale in which a young woman is married to a man for her looks rather than for love is the case of January and May.  January at sixty years old decides that he should get married because he’s tired of being a bachelor and is finally ready to settle down with someone so that he can have an heir to his estate.  He thinks long and hard about whom he wants, even telling his friends that his potential wife had better be no older than twenty, as an old wife would be nothing but trouble for him.  One day he decides that the young girl May is the most beautiful maiden around and picks her to be his wife.  He constantly tells her that he loves her, but any reader can see there is no real connection between the two of them and they live a life of a contractual relationship rather than one of the heart. Like Alison, May eventually deceives her husband in order to have an affair with his employee Damian.  The God Pluto returns sight to January so that he can see his wife’s deception, but Pluto’s wife Proserpina allows May to have an answer to what January saw and is able to get out of his ill will. The interesting thing about this scene from the Merchant’s tale is that in one swell move Chaucer showed the economics of two relationships swaying back and forth.  On one hand, January, who was so jealous and protective of May is still deceived and she is able to find love with another right in front of his eyes, then convinces him he didn’t see what he thought he saw. On the other, the goddess Proserpina is able to regain some of the power she lost when, as mythology tells, Pluto tricked her into eating the pomegranates and therefore forced her into becoming his wife and spending half the year with him. Chaucer seems to say with these tales that no matter what your station in life, from workman to knight to god, if there is not a pure love between a husband and a wife then the marriage will never be anything more than trying to one-over the other in a search for control. Or, “Control is theft, as he sees it, whether in the state, the market place, or the bedroom. An authoritarian relationship begets distortions in both parties to it” (Murtaugh 477).

            Finally, in the Clerk’s Tale, the character Griselda is constantly toyed with by her husband to make sure that she was loyal to him.  He gets her pregnant and takes away both of her children, then waits for her to say a bad word about him to prove that she is a horrible wife.  After many years he even tells her that he is going to remarry and brings her long-lost daughter home as his “bride-to-be.”  When Griselda stays completely faithful to him even up unto that point he finally decides to believe that she is true to him and gives up trying to trick her so that they could live happily ever after. This tale is especially scary for people to read, as it is about a man who psychologically tortures his wife in order to assert his power over her, and in no way can it be viewed as a story about true love. Chaucer seems to be trying to relate ideas about marriage that were common in his time,  

            “The Middle Ages delighted (as children still delight) in stories that exemplify a

single human quality, like valor, or tyranny, or fortitude. In such cases, the settled rule (for which neither Chaucer nor the Clerk was responsible) was to show to what lengths this quality may conceivably go. Hence, in tales of this kind, there can be no question of conflict of duties, no problem as to the point at which excess of goodness becomes evil. It is, then, absurd to censure a fourteenth-century Clerk for telling (or Chaucer for making him tell) a story which exemplifies in this hyperbolical way the virtue of fortitude under affliction. Whether Griselda could have put an end to her woes, or ought to have put an end to them, by refusing to obey her husband's commands is parum ad rem. We are to look at her trials as inevitable, and to pity her accordingly, and wonder at her endurance” (Kittredge 2-3).

It seems that Chaucer was trying to say that women were really powerless to their husband’s will and many times had to deal with injustices quietly for fear of their lives.  In this instance, the power game is a game of life or death, it is a woman having to give up everything that makes her her in order to please a man who sees her as nothing more than a possession. In the end she may get her children back and her husband’s respect, but it is hard to say that it is just because of everything she went through.

            In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales he approaches the idea of marriage in place of his earlier poems of love.  It seems that all the women in his stories long for the freedom that the Tercel Eagle from the Parliament of the Fowls had in taking a step back and asking to be given a choice of whom to marry based on love rather than station or money or beauty or any other such trivial matters.  His early poems were all dream visions, searching for what every person longs for- their soul mate and a life of happiness. The Canterbury Tales on the other hand is a compilation of stories by everyday people, it is about the reality of the world, the sad truth that love does not always conquer and many people end up in unhappy relationships because marriage was really about economics rather than feelings.

Manipulation, the Covert Game of Criseyde

So, the next instillation of my essays is the one I did for my Chaucer class on Troilus and Criseyde which is Chaucer's great epic poem. I received a 95 on this paper because my prof said it was so well written, BUT he said the argument is a silent argument (means that the paper is about what is not said rather than what is said) and that's not good. There are some mistakes, but once again, I'm too lazy to go back and fix them. Hope you like it! 

Manipulation, the Covert Game of Criseyde

            Chaucer wrote his poem, Troilus and Criseyde, in an attempt to join the ranks of other great epic poets, toiling endlessly on it so that it would be his only true “masterpiece” (Pearsall 170). Homer was, and still is, one of the greatest poets to have ever lived. It took 700 years for another writer to finally find himself on a level playing field with the ancient great- Virgil, with his poem The Aeneid.  Homer wrote of the siege of Troy in the Trojan War, as well as the journey home of the warrior Odysseus; Virgil looked at the other side and wrote of the few Trojans who escaped the collapse of their city and set about to found a new race (the Romans).  When Chaucer sat down to compose his great epic he borrowed from a poem by Benoit de Sainte-Maure, as well as Boccaccio’s Filostrato.  These poems helped outline for him his own great epic poem, and following in his idol’s footsteps, his story was set during the Trojan War (Pearsall 169). Upon first reading this epic, many people see the character of Pandarus as being a very obvious manipulator, playing with people for fun.  A thorough examination of the poem though brings to light a somewhat subtle manipulator- Criseyde.  Criseyde, usually portrayed as a victim, seems to have the upper hand throughout the entire poem, and therefore, Chaucer was not just writing a story about Troy but of the power of a sneaky woman.   

            The most important aspect of Criseyde’s personality and manipulation comes from her genealogy.  Her father was the seer who ran from Troy when he learned that it was to be destroyed by the Greeks (Book 1, lines 64-70).  Chaucer leads the reader to believe during the entire story that Criseyde was an innocent victim left behind to pay for the sins of her father, not even knowing why he left, but that isn’t the case. Criseyde admits in book IV, lines 1407-1414, that she knew her father was leaving because of a vision the gods gave him of the fall of the city (Roberts 96). This comes from a very important passage in which Criseyde and Troilus are planning a way for her to return to the city after she is surrendered to the Greeks. On one hand, it shows her outright plan to manipulate her father, proving without a doubt that she is a manipulative person when she wants to be. On the other hand, it also suggests that she may have always known her fate because, “To what episode is Criseyde referring in the last three lines? It is quite clear that the "text" referred to must be the oracle which lead Calchas to believe that Troy was doomed. But when did Calchas visit Delphi? No mention has previously been made of the visit- except such a hint as may possibly be inherent in the phrase "Apollo Delphicus” (Roberts 94).  In other words, the reader only knows a small fraction of the information concerning the gods warning to her father to flee Troy.  The importance of what is not said is that he very well could have informed his daughter of her fate, which would mean her entire relationship with Troilus was false because she knew it would end as it did. What is a better way of receiving a warm welcome from the Greeks than leaving behind a broken-hearted Trojan prince, the brother of the sworn enemy of King Agamemnon?

The God of Love and Fortune are the only gods who seem to be highly remarked on in the poem, but anyone familiar with classical mythology and Greek history know that the cause of the Trojan war was the Apple of Discourse, in which Paris chose Venus as the “fairest” of the goddesses, leaving Hera and Athena to have strong feelings of hatred for the Trojans because it was their prince, Paris, who was bribed into picking Venus, over either of them. It is interesting that Eros/Cupid would chose to play games with a Trojan prince during wartime when both his parents (Aphrodite and Ares) were on the side of the Trojans. That being said though, it could be argued, that if Criseyde’s father had told her that she was fated to manipulate Troilus she may have specifically been at the temple so that she was the one he saw when the God of Love struck him in the eyes with his arrow (Book 1, lines 208-209). The fact that she looked as if to say, “What, may I nat stonden here?” makes it seem that she was really there to be seen, waiting for his eyes to find her and drink her figure in (Book 1, line 292).  For any other woman there would be no way to connect her actions to the plans of the gods and fate, but the daughter of a seer means that she was privy to knowledge others did not have. Chaucer tells us that she knew her father’s reasoning for leaving the city, she may have talked him down to Troilus, but since she ended up never returning to Troy it is easy to believe that there was a larger scheme behind her actions throughout the entire poem.

As the scene progresses, Criseyde also seems to make comments that counteract each other, hinting that she has known her fate and knows that she is about to hurt a man who loves her.  This idea comes from when she is promising and reassuring Troilus that she will return to him after a period of ten days with the Greeks. The first thing that should have jumped out to him that she was manipulating him was the fact that she was using Juno (Hera) as her witness. There is a problem in this for two reasons. The first reason is that Juno hated the Trojans with a fiery passion and would never have punished someone who hurt a Trojan, especially Paris’ brother.  The second reason that swearing on Juno was a stupid thing is that Juno was the goddess of marriage and family, she hated adulterers, and since Criseyde and Troilus had an affair she would not have been one to support their “love.” Apparently, the arrows from Cupid’s bow made Troilus’ brain hazy and he didn’t realize that her reassurance was nothing but empty promises, based off of swearing to a goddess who wanted to see the Trojans destroyed. The other reason that these passages show her manipulation, and enforce my idea that she knew all along what she was doing, is that she says, “Whoso wol han life, he life moot lete” (Book IV, line 1585). In other words, “She has already devoted two stanzas (11. 1534-1547) to swearing that she will return, and now she, so notoriously and fatally " slydynge of corage," exhorts Troilus to be master of his fate,” but, “the audience already knows that Troilus is doomed to "losse of lyf" (IV, 2t7), and any persuasion, no matter from whom, that he can master Fortune is tinged with tragic irony” ( Evans 586).  Another great representation of the idea that Criseyde is a manipulator is explained by Cook-

Joly calls attention to the fact that, on the point of leaving Troy, she had all her precious possessions packed, "and," says the poet, "all her gowns put up; she clothed and decked her person with the richest garments she had", and these the poet then proceeds to describe, in terms which might well set any feminine heart a-flutter. This, be it remembered, is the morning after the night spent in tears and moans with Troilus. Could anything more clearly paint the character of the woman? However, says the poet, "the damsel thinks she will die when obliged to part from him whom she so loves and holds dear;" but he has already assured us that she will be calmed in time, and will soon forget. "If now she has sorrow, then she will have joy. Her love will soon turn to one whom she has never seen." To which, in the extremity of his indignation, the poet adds: "Grief does not last long with a woman; she weeps with one eye, and laughs with the other. They soon change their fancy; and the wisest of them is enough of a fool (Cook 535)

Why would Criseyde have packed her and half of her father’s belongings if she meant to return to Troy? The “scheme” to use her father’s greed for his own possessions is really a scheme to give him back half of his goods in the guise of a plan to trick him. Rather than her father being a poor traitor to his people, he is now a somewhat wealthy immigrant in the Greek camp.  The Trojans all hated her father for abandoning them, but the manipulation by Criseyde allows her father to regain some of what he left behind without anyone stopping the goods from leaving the city, a plan she could have only come up with if he had given her foreknowledge of the situation. All of her actions regarding her departure from Troy hint at the fact that she has been manipulating everyone from the start.

Criseyde may have been the innocent victim and Pandarus the real manipulator of the poem, but that is hard to believe when, as the poem draws towards the end, she slips up and seems to give away her true intentions in many different ways. It can not be forgotten that she was a widow, and much like the character of the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales, was probably raised to know how to manipulate men and be married.  This idea can be seen when Troilus tells her that he will die without her and fears she will marry a Greek from the insistence of her father (Book IV, lines 1464-1498).  Whether it was foreshadowed knowledge that she meet Troilus and manipulate him or really just a matter of fate, she still played her cards right and had a prince of Troy willing to abandon his family and country to be with her, or die if he lose her.  Criseyde even seems to try and manipulate the readers into thinking that she was a victim, her long inner monologues really just devices to sway people into feeling that she had no control of her own life and was just a pawn to be played by men and gods, when in reality she was really the one playing the game. There is a saying that nice girls finish last (just like the nice guys), and Criseyde did not finish last in the least, she had a prince fall in love with her which would have kept her safe if Troy had been the victor, and she found a Greek warrior to love and protect her when she was sure Troy would lose, “Her wit and governance never deserted her, apparently. She can pretend to her agonizing lover that she has no idea what he seeks of her, and afterwards is ready to deal with Diomede in the same way; she does not scruple to speak to Troilus of her own dissimulation, and she is quite capable of telling Diomede, that, save for her dead husband, other love, so helpe me now Pallas, Ther in myn herte nis, ne ever was” (Cook 544). In the end, the only victim seems to be Troilus, first as a victim of punishment for making fun of the God of Love and falling in love, and then for falling in love with a woman who would leave him alone and destroyed in the end, even giving a present from him to her new husband.

Works Cited

Benson, Larry. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. 471-586.

Cook, Albert. "The Character of Criseyde." PMLA. 22.3 (1907): 531-547.

Evans, Lawrence. "A Biblical Allusion in Troilus and Criseyde." Modern Language Notes. 74.7

(1959): 584-587.

Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. 168-177

Roberts, P. "Notes on Troilus and Criseyde, IV, 1397-1414." Modern Language Notes. 57.2

(1942): 92-97.

All about Isis :)

So, I've been working all semester on a paper about Isis and it's finally due in about an hour and a half. I've just now finished putting the finishing touches on it and am uploading it here for your viewing pleasure. Remember, if you read it and use any ideas from it you HAVE TO CITE IT! I worked somewhat hard on this and I hate the idea of only my prof getting to read this, so maybe a few of you out there in internet land will enjoy what I did. This paper only scratches the surface of an amazing topic and honestly had I known more about Isis before I started the project I would have only worked on her influence on Christianity because I find it super fascinating. I wasn't able to really even say anything about it in the paper, but if you want to do anything interesting I would totally suggest looking into it as a topic for either religion or Egyptology.The pictures and footnotes didn't copy right so I'll try to go back later and fix that all up, but for now I'm going to take an hour nap before class. Oh, not sure why part of it was double spaced and part of it not, but since you aren't grading me like Prof Ajootian is I think it should be fine.

Love and kisses,
Kabo

Isis: The People’s Goddess- A Model For All Women

    Today in societies all over the world, women are exposed to different ideas of what it means to be perfect. In America, many females look at celebrities and think that to be a model woman a girl must be in great shape, have perfect hair, do a plethora of charity work, adopt children from third-world countries, and so on.  In ancient Egypt the celebrities of the time were the gods and goddesses.  The example of a perfect woman came from Isis, the mother goddess, and in at least my opinion, a much more wholesome character.  Isis was one of the few goddesses who was depicted in a human form rather than being associated with an animal, making her easier to relate to and aspire to be like (Lesko 170).  As the queen of their gods she held a high rank of respect in Egyptian society and her compassion for her followers made her easy to love as well.  Of all the goddesses her personality is also the most developed, this is owing to her stories being written down starting in the New Kingdom (Lesko 175).  Isis was, for many reasons, the perfect woman.  She was a devoted wife, and protective mother, a powerful healer, and a kind being; attributes that spoke to Egyptian women as ideal model of how they should behave.
Isis the Wife
    The first role of Isis is her role as sister-wife of Osiris. The earliest references to her are from the Pyramid texts (Old Kingdom, ca. 2686-2181 B.C.E,) in which it is described that she foresaw her husband’s death by the hands of their brother Seth and she wept about it (Hart 80). The first outlined account that exists of the mythology of Isis comes from the 1st century BCE historian Plutarch which he wrote while traveling outside of his homeland of Greece (much of what we know about Isis today is pieced together from this outline and other references from the Pyramid texts, the Book of the Dead, and other funerary memorials) (Armour 54).  According to the story, Osiris had left Isis in charge of Egypt while he ventured out to neighboring lands to teach people about civilization and law (Armour 55).  His brother Seth was jealous of him and conspired against him, building an elaborately decorated casket to Osiris’ exact measurements (Armour 56). Once Osiris returned to Egypt, Seth threw a welcome home banquet for him and said that whomever fit inside the coffin could have it (Armour 56). When Osiris stepped into the box, Seth and his co-conspirators slammed it shut, nailed it closed, and poured hot lead around it so that Osiris would suffocate (Armour 56).  The party attendees then threw the chest into the Nile River, happy to be rid of the god they were all so jealous of (Armour 56). After Osiris’ death Isis was very distraught and went in search of his body, knowing he was dead before anyone was able to tell her the news (Armour 56)#. According to legend, the town she was in when she realized he was gone from that time on was called Koptos, which means The City of Mourning (Armour 56). After a long time she found the cask that he had been shut in in a tamarisk tree and brought it back to Egypt and hid it in the marshes of the delta with her and Horus (Armour 57). One night on a hunting trip the evil Seth saw the special box that he had made and knew that Isis had found her husband, which got him very angry. He opened it and tore Osiris into fourteen pieces and threw them into the Nile so that the crocodiles would eat them (Armour 63). Crocodiles were lovers of Isis, though, and so out of respect for her they left him alone.  Isis was said to have traveled in a boat made of papyrus and since the crocodiles loved her they did not attack her boat, this story lead to the belief that anyone who sailed a papyrus boat would be safe from crocodile attacks (Armour 63). Isis, out of love for her husband once again went out and searched for his dead body, finding all the pieces but his penis which she made a substitute for and magically put him back together in the Temple of Abydos so that he could finish his journey to the afterlife#. She then used her magic wings to help him on his journey through death (Armour 64, Hart 80)#. This is why she is often thought of as a guardian of the dead and the most famous depiction of her funerary roles is found in the tomb of King Tut (Lesko 177).The Egyptians were touched by this incredible devotion to her husband and moved by her persistence to keep him safe even after death (Hart 80)#.  The story of Isis as a wife was one of her greatest roles, making her the pillar of family for the Egyptians. The significance of the story in mythological aspects is that it helped to define the divinity of the pharaohs of Egypt; the dead pharaoh becoming Osiris, ruler of the afterlife, and the new pharaoh taking his place being as Horus, divine king of Egypt (Donalson 3). The first temples to Isis were found alongside her husband’s temple at Abydos and Min at Coptos in the Middle and New Kingdoms (Quirke 67).
    Isis is credited with the institution of marriage and appealed greatly to lonely women (Lesko 186). There were charms created for women in the Middle Kingdom so that they could love their husbands like Isis loved Osiris or to do the opposite and make her hate her husband like Isis hated Seth (Lesko 179). Centuries later, in Rome, betrothed couples celebrated in her temples, crediting her with bringing morality to the people (Lesko 195).  Widows felt connected with Isis in regards to the struggle of a woman raising a son alone, she gave them hope through her persistence to do the best for her son and the memory of her husband (Lesko186).
    Isis is sometimes depicted as an old woman; images meant to signify her wisdom as well as her being as widow without a husband by her side (Lesko 177).   The ancient Egyptians, during the time of the Ptolemies’ rule, pitied Isis for being lonely after the death of her husband so they gave her a new companion, Arensnuphis (Donalson 10, Lesko 185).  He was a minor, obscure God and, like Osiris, was greatly overshadowed by Isis.
Isis the Mother
    Isis the mother is her most important role for the Egyptian monarchs and the Egyptian people as a whole, as it is their link to the pharaoh’s divinity.  Isis is the mother of Horus and Horus is supposed to be embodied in the living pharaohs of Egypt (Hart 80).  The ruler gains this divinity by drinking the breast milk of Isis and this image is found often in Egyptian art (Hart 80)#. After Osiris is killed by his brother Seth, Isis runs off to hide in the marshes of the delta and protect their son Horus from his uncle (Hart 80).  Her protection of Horus is part of the reason that she was so protective of all children, coming to their aide when they were sick, caring for them as if they were her son Horus themselves (Hart 81).  Isis brought her son up in secret so that one day he would be able to avenge the death of his father and take his rightful place on the throne (Hart 81)#.  They go to court to fight over the rights but Seth throws a fit and refuses to continue with Isis present so the proceedings are moved to an island that she is supposed to be banned from.  Isis is too clever though and disguises herself as an old lady first to get across the water and then as a knockout beauty to trick Seth into agreeing with her sob story of her son losing his inheritance after his father’s death. The judges hear that he has agreed that Isis’ son had been wronged and have to agree with Isis rather than sympathizing with Seth (Hart 82). She then further discredits him to the other judges though an elaborate scheme to prove he was sexually attacking her son, eventually leading him to admit defeat (Hart 82).  The final way that Isis went above and beyond for Horus was when she tricked her father Ra into revealing his secret name to her by making a snake from his saliva and earth and having it bite him.  She refuses to cure him from the pain until he gives her his name, which he eventually does, and which she gives to her son Horus, giving him power no other god had (Hart 82).  As a mother Isis was as devoted as she could possibly be, saving her son from death and providing him with everything he deserved.  During antiquity, many people lost their mothers due to disease or childbirth, so for them (Egyptians and later other followers of Isis), Isis became a sort of pseudo-mother, a figure to watch out for her followers as she watched out for Horus (Lesko 186). For Egyptian women Isis was a model of the love that they should show their own children each and every day.
    The role of Isis as a mother reach beyond just normal mother and child relations, but into the world of fertility as well. Isis may have been linked to the fertility goddess Min as she was honored with him at the temple of Horus from the 18th dynasty in Nubia (Lesko 169).   The gestation period of women was set according to the Egyptians by Isis, tying her role of fertility to her role of a mother, a role that starts in the womb (Lesko 198). Part of the story of Seth killing Osiris is to show the dangers of the desert (represented by Seth) and the vital need for Isis to bring about rebirth and give eternal life to the deceased (Lesko 164). Her tears over her husband revived the Nile each year, bringing life to the people (Witt 15). Like a good mother, Isis was always protecting her followers. She had a pair of magical wings that both shielded people in their journey to death and could turn into sails to help ships at sea (Witt 17,19). Another way that she protected them and tapped into her motherly fertility magic was by inventing the grinding of corn into flour and spinning of thread into cloth (Witt 16). Through these skills women were able to provide food and clothes and blankets for their families, keeping them healthy and happy. For Egyptians therefore, Isis not only showed the women how to be the best mothers but also helped them to be mothers themselves through fertility and life sustaining crops that allowed them to feed and clothe their children.
Isis the Healer
    Isis became “Great of Magic” by learning her father’s secret name (Lesko 177). This is one of her most famous epithets as it pronounces her extreme skill in healing and the magical arts. The famous story of Isis’s magic is that of her and the scorpions-  Isis was supposedly guarded by seven scorpions when she was hiding Horus in the marshlands of the delta.  She stopped one day to find rest but was turned away by a woman who was scared of the scorpions.  Isis politely left and found somewhere else to stay the night. Her scorpion guardians were not happy with how she had been treated though and they decided to put all their venom together into one of their stingers and then that scorpion went back and attacked the son of the rude housewife who had turned away the queen of the gods. The boy became very ill and his mother ran frantically through town trying to find someone who could cure him. Isis heard the woman and agreed to help her son by pulling the poison out of him (Lesko 181-182).  This story was not only one in which her magical powers of healing were displayed but also her immense compassion for every person, even those who had scorned her. It is also the reason that ancient Egyptians used barley bread to draw out poison while uttering her name in hopes that she would show a victim the same compassion she showed the boy the scorpion had stung (Lesko 182).
    Isis’ magic was represented in different ways. The amulet called the tyet, or the knot of Isis, was supposed to be a representation of a bloody sanitary napkin of Isis’ (Lesko 179)#. Her blood was sacred and menstruation was supposed to be credited for female creativity and power (Lesko 179). Her blood was so powerful in fact that it was discussed in spell 156 of the Book of the Dead (Middle Kingdom) to protect the dead and found in mummies (Lesko 179)#.   Followers of Isis were promised everlasting life and flocked to her temples for cures to their ailments, much like the Greek followers of Apollo (Lesko 193). Her magical powers to cure her devotees as well as her actions of guarding of the dead made Isis a deity to admire. Egyptian women could only hope to learn her skills with healing and gain the same protective instincts that their mother deity possessed.
Isis the feminist
    One of the best reasons that Isis would have been a model for ancient Egyptian woman is that she was one of the world’s first feminists, promoting the idea of female empowerment and equality among the sexes. Isis, as described earlier was the mother of the pharaoh of Egypt, but more than that, her name in hieroglyphics was written with the symbol that represents the throne of Egypt (Hart 79).  The word, aset, translates as throne or Isis, and in many of her depictions a throne actually sits upon her head (Lesko 156)#. The significance of this image is that it shows the power she had in the monarchy, her role was important in the kingship and transmission of power.  Her early temples were originally coupled with those of her husband’s but in the 4th century B.C.E. two grand temples were erected to honor her alone, one at Philae (the most famous)# and the other at Behbeit (the “most impressive”), representing both Upper and Lower Egypt (Quirke 68).  The movement of her away from her husband shows that over time she was developing as a more powerful deity to the Egyptians and the fact that she was a woman had no bearing over their devotion to her and her powers.  By the twenty-first dynasty in Giza, Isis was honored with a temple near the base of the Great Pyramid which lead to her becoming the Mistress of the Pyramids, protector of some of Egypt’s most famous and grand monuments of the dead (Lesko 178).
    In the New Kingdom Isis appropriated the attributes of the solar goddess Hathor, the sun disk and cows horns, which were ancient, sacred symbols of power (Lesko 175).  A famous example of her taking on Hathor’s attributes is found in the tomb of Nefertari, wife of Rameses II in a giant mural of Isis bringing the queen to the afterlife (Donalson 8)#. Records from the Memphite cemetery at the end of the eighteenth dynasty show that Isis had also replaced Hathor as Lady of the Beautiful West (Lesko 175).  Her accumulation of other gods’ and goddesses’ attributes both shows how she evolved over the years but also shows that the role of women in society was growing stronger.    
    Priestess positions were formed for her cult during the Roman times, though before that women had always had roles in the cult as Kanephoroi (basket-bearers) (Bowden 165).  Second century Roman priestesses of Isis were called  pastophoros and would have served anywhere from a one year position to a lifelong career (Donalson 57). As the years went on Isis became the only deity for many of her followers because she was such a universal goddess, called Isis Panthea (“All-God”) (Lesko 191, Donalson 11). Priests in her cult had no problem with the idea of a female as being the all powerful goddess of the world, showing their acceptance of women as equals, which essentially made power equal for men and women (Lesko 198).  A woman who followed Isis was taught that the perfect woman not only was a fabulous mother, wife, and healer, but was also strong and could take charge.
Isis outside of Egypt
    As the decades went by in ancient Egypt, immigration in and out of the country meant that many ideas and theories were exchanged among peoples of the Mediterranean.  The Greeks linked Isis to Demeter (Bowden 156). She was also linked to Apollo (for her healing skills), Hera (for being the queen goddess), Artemis (for her powers over childbirth and virginity), Athena (for her wisdom), Gea (for being the mother of nature), Venus (for her beauty and being the goddess of love)- she was “all things to men” (Witt 20). Because of this diversity many people were able to embrace her as if she were their native goddess and she rapidly spread across the world. Waterfront communities also credited Isis with being the Mistress of the Seas and had an important festival for her in March to ask her for protection at the start of the sailing season (Lesko 187). It was her qualities of a rescuer of those at sea, Isis Pelagia, that linked her to the famous Pharos lighthouse in Alexandria (Donalson 4). It was the sailors and merchants who were the first to spread her word because of the protection with which they felt she provided them. In the 1st century B.C.E., Herodotus considered Egyptian religion to be one of the sources of religious understanding for the Greeks (Bowden 159) and Diodorus claims an Egyptian origin for the mystery cults of the Greeks (Bowden 159). The ability of Isis to overcome destiny made her especially popular to the greater world outside of Egypt (Lesko 181).
    Greek immigrants in Egypt liked the Egyptian gods over their own because they gave them hope for an afterlife. Isis, being a protector of the dead, was highly sought after because of this (Lesko 185). A cult for Isis was built in Athens by Egyptians who lived there in the 4th century and priests were actually brought from Egypt to work at them (Bowden 160, 165).  She was fused with Asiatic Artemis and was honored in a mystery cult so much of the devotional rites have been lost in time due to the loss of secrets held by members (Lesko 187). Though much was lost, it is known that there were facets of the original cult from Isis that were kept, like the professional priesthood, using water from the Nile in special rites, public processions, sleeping overnight in the temples, and so on (Lesko 187).
    Isis became popular among the Romans at first simply because she was popular among the Greeks, though not all  were happy with her presence and their attempts at sabotage did not succeed in ruining her (Lesko 192).  During the years of 59 to 48 B.C.E. there were five proposals brought to the Roman Senate to tear down the temples and statues of the cult of Isis but in the end she was worshiped will into the common era (Moehring 293). Her cult reached Italy in the 2nd century BCE (Bowden 161).  Her cult was brought to Carthage, Spain, the Rhine Valley, and Britain by the Phoenician merchants (Lesko 187). Her cult was brought from Delos to Campania in Italy during the Roman Republic starting with the slaves but it eventually grew to include many people, all the way up to high officials (Lesko 190). Over time even some Roman emperors became initiates in Isis’ cult and built temples to honor her (Lesko 193). Temples built in Rome followed the traditional Egyptian style of closed walls, a very strange architectural form for Romans and Greeks who were used to more open temples (Donalson 93).  Emperor Caligula dedicated a famous and large temple (later called the Iseum Campense) to Isis in 37 C.E., and then, following his Egyptian predecessors, used her to claim divinity for himself (Donalson 96, Lesko 193). Another reason that the Romans embraced her cult was that it helped them to rule in Egypt after the fall of Cleopatra, giving the emperor the title of pharaoh and Horus (Donalson 10).
    For Egyptians, Isis was a model woman, someone who earned the respect that the gods demanded.  She loved her followers and protected them throughout their lives.  The women and men were so devoted to her that they were able to spread her word throughout the world and make her popular amongst many nations.  Before anyone knew it, Isis was a common goddess of the world and a model for all women (and men) to follow.  With how popular she became, so popular in fact that her cult was a large influence as well as a threat to emerging Christianity, I find it hard to believe as well as painfully sad that she seems to be forgotten in modern times.  Her image was even a great inspiration for Donatello’s Virgin, though most don’t know well enough to make the connection (Stefaniak 92) The appeal to her followers was that she taught the basic rules of respect and love and this day in age those tenants need to be remembered by all.

Conclusion
    Isis was the longest surviving deity of the Egyptian religion, outlasting her husband Osiris and other gods (Lesko 156).  She was a woman whom Egyptians loved and wanted to be like; records even indicate that Cleopatra aspired to be like Isis (Witt 19). Her influence is still felt today, though most people do not realize it, because of the immense influence her cult had on the formation of Christianity and other religions (Witt 15). Her cult did not discriminate racially or ethnically, she did not persecute based on prudery of sex, she did not allow for a quarrel between science and religion; Isis was about love, she was about the good and the beautiful, her cult promoted peace and patience and forgiveness (Witt 22-23).  The deeper I have gone in my studies of Isis the more apparent it is that she was the model for a perfect woman. She was strong and devoted and honest and compassionate and smart.  The qualities that the Egyptians loved in Isis are the qualities that every person should aspire to have, whether male or female.

Bibliography

Articles

Magness, J. 2001. “The Cults of Isis and Kore at Samaria-Sebaste in the Hellenistic and     Roman Periods,” The Harvard Theological Review 94: 157-177

Moehring, H. 1959. “ The Persecution of the Jews and the Adherents of the Isis Cult at     Rome
    A.D. 19,” Novum Testamentum 3: 293-304.

Stefaniak, J.  2006. “The Ancient Theology of Donatello's "Virgin" in the Santo, Artibus et     Historiae 27: 89-110.

Books

Armour, R. 2001. Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt, Cairo.

Bowden, H. 2010. Mystery Cults of the Ancient World, London.

Donaldson, M. 2003. The Cult of Isis in the Roman Empire, Lewiston.

Cott, J. 1994. Isis and Osiris, New York.

Hart, G. 2005. The Routledge Dictionary of Eqyptian Gods and Goddesses, New     York.

Lesko, B. 1999. The Great Goddesses of Egypt, Norman.

Quirke, S. 1995. Ancient Egyptian Religion, New York.

Robins, G. 2008. The Art of Ancient Egypt, Cambridge.

Witt, R. 1997. Isis in the Ancient World, Ithaca.

Chaucer and the dream-vision

So, I'm just going to state that it really annoys me when I work on a paper, turn it in, and get it back and that's it. Like it seems so unfair to dedicate hours of time to have one person read something and that's that. I've decided to upload my latest essay on Chaucer here so that maybe a few more people can read it and I'll get more of a sense of accomplishment. Now, I only made an 87 on it, but to be honest I'm not surprised as I really didn't put much effort into the paper. Maybe I'll work harder on the next one. But here ya'll go, feel free to borrow my sources if you write a similar paper! Don't forget though, if you read this and get ideas for your own paper YOU HAVE TO CITE ME! I may not be some kick ass phd or anything but if you don't it's called plagerism (duh!). PS- I know there are errors, but I didn't feel like fixing them so yeah...

Chaucer, the Dreamer

            What is a dream?  The question can be answered two ways. The first being that a dream is the subconscious stories that the brain tells itself while in REM sleep.  The second being that a dream is one’s goals, his or her aspirations for his or her life. The father of modern English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer, was a dreamer, in both sense of the word.  He was a man from modest upbringings who eventually lived a life with respect from the kings and courts of his time.  Over the course of his life he dabbled in different occupations, finding the most recognition from his talent in writing.  Through his poems it is obvious to see that Chaucer was both a dreamer in the sense that he had a lavish imagination and a dreamer of bigger and better things for his life.  The aspects of Chaucer as the dreamer are found in his original pieces, the Book of the Duchess and the House of Fame.

            Chaucer’s early poetry followed the Romance of the Rose and started with a dream of Chaucer’s in which he entered a world where the mythological, biblical, and historical realms all resided in one place. By going into a dream Chaucer was able to lose restraints that the ‘real’ world put on him as well as hide behind the idea that it was ‘just a dream.’ There was a freedom his poems gained because, “Objectivity has its home in the waking life. Dreams welcome unreason” (Hacking 245).   His dreams allowed him to meet up with characters from mythology without being called a heretic or blasphemous in a time of strong Catholic presence in the world.  He was not saying that he believed any of these characters to be alive, but rather he was just dreaming of the myths and histories of people from a long dead civilization, a civilization that was still highly revered in his time.  The dream made it safe, and references to a higher God continued that idea of safety.  Another way that Chaucer used the dream sequence to ‘stay safe’ was by telling the story of the death of Blanche as a dream where her real name is never used, neither is John of Gaunt’s.  The knight and his lost lady are meant as symbols for the real couple, but having them as ‘just characters in a dream’ kept Chaucer somewhat safe had the poem been ill received. The dream sequence allowed Chaucer to criticize and analyze the world around him, from high ranking officials to his own rise to fame, in a manner that was less than offensive, and normal for his time.  Later in his career, when he started working on the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer still kept with the idea of a tale within a tale; that is to say, it wasn’t a story about his life but rather about stories that other people told each other.  The framework of literature was not as it is today, where one speaks as though what they tell of is real, but rather it was written as stories not to be believed as entirely true, though moral and social insights are to be had from hearing what was being said.

            The telling of dreams was not a new fade to Chaucer’s era, but rather a common habit of mankind throughout history.  Chaucer, as a writer seems to bring up a lot of classical references both from history and mythology, so it would be safe to assume that he was aware of the way that the ancient Greeks felt about dreams.  Essentially, they thought that some dreams were significant and other were just silly, and the important ones were the ones in which a dreamer experienced the gods, “The significant dreams have some objective character, and help foretell the future. But the insignificant dreams mean nothing; they merely reflect personal concerns of the dreamer. In a significant dream a god, or goddess, or some other significant other, stands at the head of the dreamer, and the dream is enacted by this other, who speaks to the dreamer” (Hacking 249).  This point seems to be vital to understanding Chaucer as a writer and his views on the dream sequence that he invoked, that is, that he always had at least one Greek deity, as well as referenced to God the Father, in his dream sequences, meaning that he believed them to be serious and wanted others to take them in such a way.

            One of the major placed in history that holds stories of dreams is in fact the Bible, and Chaucer uses this idea to give himself and his stories credibility.  His questioning of the source of dreams at the beginning of the House of Fame reminds readers of the different stories of the Bible in which dreams are used by God to transmit important messages.  The most important message arguably being when Joseph is approached in his sleep and told that his bride to be is with child, but not just any child, the Holy Child.  Joseph’s acceptance of the dream as being a reality, as a true message of God, saved Mary from a most certain death that should have become a woman who was pregnant before her wedding night.  Chaucer uses the House of Fame to ask the hard questions and go by faith, like Joseph did, to the answers, “Chaucer's dream-tellings are full of philosophical speculation-said to be strongly influenced by Boethius-about the nature of truth and objectivity. What can one believe? The senses? Dreams? (A question posed within a dream?) Books? Revelation? Books in dreams? Written-down revelations that are dreamt? Revelations gained by reading a book in a dream?” (Hacking 250).  Chaucer even has references to the idea of Joseph and dream interpretation, ideas that he borrowed from peers of his, “After learning from Machaut the trick of making extended comparisons . . . it seems that Chaucer set about with youthful unrestraint, gleefully tying together the tails of exempla, one after another. So he proceeds: The dream was so mysterious that not even Joseph nor Macrobius could have explained it . . . The husband's grief could not be alleviated by Ovid, Orpheus, Daedalus,  Hypocrates, or Galen” (Harrison 435). Stories older than that though are found in the Bible, like the Book of Daniel which is almost entirely concerned with dreams (Hacking 249).    Daniels stories are possibly, “derived from a much older Sumerian tradition that starts around 4200 years ago. Dreams played a central role in Sumerian civilization . . . If there is some truth in this account, then Daniel, the most dream-filled book of the Hebrew Bible, may in part be an attempt to establish authority by recalling an ancient tradition in which the place of the dream is central to its significance”  (Hacking 249).  If the Bible borrowed story telling to give itself authority then it only makes sense that Chaucer was borrowing the dream sequence for the same reason, he wanted respect and people to listen, something that he later would no longer need to follow when he wrote his Canterbury Tales.

            It is this strong tradition of telling dreams that probably influenced Chaucer to explore expressing himself poetically through a dream sequence, “The reliance on Ovid, Guillaume de Lorris, Guillaume de Machaut, and Jean Froissart shows a reading of their poetry not simply for motifs but for a range of aesthetic possibilities. The borrowings of diction and incidents point toward Chaucer's critical understanding of his predecessors and his preconceiving their works within his own” (Edwards 190).  When comparing Chaucer to his predecessors, especially the book The Romance of the Rose, it is obvious that Chaucer was borrowing much of what was written before him, but with his own personal flair that made it special and timeless. All of his poems are written following the dream sequence except for his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, in which he took the ‘road less traveled by’ and showed his true genius and skill as an artist of words. His career started out as a dream to make a name for himself by using the dream sequence, and ended with him soaring about his contemporaries and becoming the father of the English literary tradition.

            When Chaucer first started writing, the device of the dream sequence was a major poetic form and it is only natural that Chaucer started his career following it.  It can only be imagined that he had big ideas for what he would write and dreams about how people would receive him.  Though Chaucer did borrow his style and stories from other writers of his time at the start of his career it can only be said that as he realized his own talent he was able to become more brazen and daring, qualities that lead him to stray from the dream sequence and write the Canterbury Tales in his own unique way, finally releasing the voice that was apparent all along.

             

Works Cited

Edwards, Robert. "The Book of the Duchess and the Beginnings of Chaucer's Narrative." New Literary History. 13.2 (1982): 189-204.

Hacking, Ian. "Dreams in Place." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 59.3 (2001): 245-260.

Harrison, Benjamin. "Medieval Rhetoric in the Book of the Duchesse." PMLA. 49.2 (1934): 428-         442.

Out of Ink

So I'm getting a little frustrated with how much ink I have used in a semester and a half. I'm once again almost out of black ink which isn't good because I have a research paper due tomorrow plus two stories that I need to print out for my writing class. No, they aren't my stories but the people whose stories they are didn't print them out but rather emailed them to us so now I have to use my own ink to print them, 20 pages total! Um that is not cool people! Why did I have to spend 16 dollars printing out my last story so that there would be enough copies but they aren't printing out their own and letting the costs fall to each of their classmates?

Other than that frustration life has been upside down for me. I don't think I have been talking about it, but lately I have just been completely messed up physically. I've been having migranes or just severe headaches that keep me up and no matter what I take wont go away. Because of them my sleep has been totally messed up. I basically have been sleeping every other day. With the lack of sleep and then extreme sleep my eating habits have been off and so I'm not eating enough which is just making me weaker and more tired and it's basically a vicious cycle that I can't get away from.

Tonight I have to write an entire 10 page paper for my Egyptian art and architecture class but luckily I have a ton of notes and feel really good about it. It acually may be a little short but it's just a first draft that is due so that isn't too big of a deal, plus even if I killed it she would probably want more added to it so it's not a big deal to me to not produce something perfect. That being said though, there's still a great chance I wont get it done in time to get to bed at a decent hour, and even if I did I probably wouldn't be able to sleep so just shoot me.

On Friday I basically have to do a ton of research and write a paper for my Chaucer class, as well as do the reading for this week and the tests for this week and the weeks I just never did. This weekend I also need to read the articles that I found for my biology project and write up the report. My partner has done nothing for it other than say that I'm awesome for having done the research. This is why I hate research projects that you have to work on with other people! Someone always gets stuck doing most of the work and honestly I really don't have the time to do so much for a one credit class! Oh and at some point I need to study for that field test in English because somehow April just came out of nowhere and now the exam I have to pass in order to graduate is in a week and I haven't even begun to study for it! Just shoot me!

Love and Kisses,
KABO

The Third Time is NOT the Charm!!!!

So I'm doing my Chaucer homework (it's 8:45 now, this is due at 11:55, so not tooooo bad on the procrastinating right?) and it's on the general prologue of the Canterbury Tales. This happens to be the THIRD time I've read the general prologue for an Ole Miss class and let me tell you, it SUCKS. Like not that Chaucer sucks because, hello, he's the father of English Literature, I just mean reading it again sucks. I wish I could just skip it but I have to reread it and take notes and then take a ccrq on in (that's crazy close reading quiz in case you had no idea, and if you had no idea that means you are either really lucky that you're teachers weren't so strict on your reading habits or you just really didn't have that great of an education, I'm not quite sure).

So this is going to be a totally fun blog because I'm going to walk you through my homework tonight. Basically I have to respond to comments from my classmates online and so far that many people haven't posted a topic. I responded to posts on the introduction to the Friar already and now I'm going to read on until I get to another person someone has analyzed on the discussion board. BTW if you were wondering, I wrote mine on the Knight and his Squire. So far nobody has felt the need to say anything about it. I kind of think that Steven will comment seeing as he usually comments my posts, as well as Patsy because even though we don't know each other there is bad blood between us, but that's a post for another time, well maybe just after I finish this homework, I'm not sure. But yeah, after every post I post on there I'll update you on how my night is going. So let's do this- 8:53 pm

9:03:So I lost my pen but not really, it was just hidden near my notebook. I read a line and it made me wonder if Chaucer came up with the idea about that phrase about getting off your high horse so I called my dad and asked him if he knew if that was the origin. He googled it, which I guess I could have done but I was being lazy, apparently it was just an idea that was around in the middle ages, but he was really annoying me because he was calling Chaucer "Chowser" or something like that, I really can't stand when people pronounce things wrong, unless they are pronouncing it the way I say it then it's okay, which is totally like hypocritical or whatever but at least I can admit to that right.

9:22: So I read the intro to the Merchant (as mentioned above) but no comments on it so I moved on to the Clerk from Oxford's paragraph. It was short and there was a post on the discussion board so I popped on to see what it said. Basically it was Hannah just repeating what Chaucer wrote. Ummm people, this is a discussion board, use your brain and come up with and idea about what Chaucer wrote, not a summary! So that's annoying, like do the homework right already! I also commented on a new post that someone put up about the Knight, telling them, good job regurgitating Chaucer but what do you think he was saying. I shudder to think this is a 400 level class and people are this oblivious or just lazy! So, back to the Clerk post, well freaking Patsy commented on it, what a shock, she turned it into something about God that has nothing to do with anything to do with Chaucer. I don't care if this is the Bible Belt, don't make up references to God that don't exist. Basically this is what she posted, "Hi, Hannah. While I was reading about the Clerk, I was reminded how we can have a "head' knowledge of God without having Him in our heart"  The intro about the Clerk is that he's basically a guy who spends all his money on books and learning (aka any college student in the world right now from what I can tell!). The only mention of a religious tone is when he says the Clerk prays for the souls of people who help him out financially. Please someone explain to me as to how that has anything to do with the Clerk having God in his heart (that is of course me assuming Patsy was even thinking about reading it into the character, I seriously wouldn't be surprised though if she accidentally read the bible and was commenting on it, she's not the brightest crayon in the box). I now promise you that she will either ignore the question I asked her about expanding what she said and making it make sense or she'll come back with one of her famous ignorant attempts at a jab and just prove over and over that she has no idea what she is talking about. Okay, 9:33 and back to my homework.


10:20: Okay so I read six more intros with three people having posted on the last, concerning the Wife of Bath. Luckily it seems that people actually understand this character and there weren't any really stupid comments, so yeah that was exciting. I also commented back on someone who posted about the nun, which I read earlier. She got EVERYTHING wrong and I feel kind of bad correcting her but honestly how is she going to learn if nobody says anything to her? Like she said that she didn't understand why the nun wasn't wearing her rosary on her neck...umm that's because it isn't jewelery darling! I hate when people wear their rosary as if it were, it's a holy object not a fashion accessory! Scapulas go on the necks to protect you, not rosary. End of story. Okay, so time is quickly going by, better get back to the g.p 10:25.

10:51: So I only read the next two and only commented on one of the two posts. You aren't going to believe this, but Patsy actually found a way to follow the assignment and intigrate the Bible in her post in a way that was totally academic! I feel like a proud mother who just saw her kid learn how to write her own name or something! It almost makes up for the comment that annoyed me earlier in the night. Sadly though, since Patsy decided to use her brain Hannah decided it was time to do a shout out to God with her reply, "The ploughman is also a great example of what we should be doing as believers.  Planting seeds and preaching the Gospel.  Jesus said, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few."  (Matthew 9:37)" Dear Hannah- this isn't a religious class, it's ENGLISH 405, not everyone would agree with your interpretation of what God wants people to do, let alone if there even is a God! Seriously, even if I said that to her she wouldn't listen, her and Patsy are basically lost causes I think (even though I'm happy about Patsy's post I know it really doesn't mean she's changed her ways). Oh and I totally took longer to get to writing this because the dogs wanted out but of course it's raining outside so I have to wipe them off when they get in. I have to say my golden Rufus is just a precious little sweetheart. He knows that when he comes inside and is wet he has to sit on his towel and wait for me to wipe his paws off. Thank God because honestly wrestling a wet/muddy 80lb dog is never my idea of a good time! Okay, less than an hour left till the window closes. Technically I've responded enough to be done but I'm an overachiever, that's why I have a 100% in the class right now while others are holding on by the skin of their teeth. 10:59

11:36: Well I'm all done, thank God! That only took forever! Thanks for coming along the ride with me. Now I can't leave you totally on that note, I have to let you know what happened with Patsy. Remember earlier when I said I was highly doubtful she'd answer my questions for her, well get this, she replied and HOLD THE PRESSES!!! Apparently asking questions means that you don't understand something AND apparently I've changed my name- "It's evident that you didn't understand what I was saying, Kristen." Like I said earlier, but later than the first earlier, I knew there was really no hope for her. I hope she fails the class.

Love and Kisses,
KABO