Literature of the English Restoration offers the example of a number of writers who wrote for a courtly audience: literary production, particularly in learned imitation of classical models, was part of the court culture of King Charles II. The fact of a shared model explains the remarkable similarities between “The Imperfect Enjoyment” by the Earl of Rochester and “The Disappointment” by Aphra Behn—remarkable only because readers are surprised to read one poem about male sexual impotence from the late seventeenth century, let alone two examples of this genre by well-known courtly writers. In fact, Richard Quaintance presents ten more examples by lesser-known poets as he defines the literary sub-genre of the neo-Classical “imperfect enjoyment poem,” written in imitation of Roman poems on the same subject, which is shared by Rochester and Behn (Quaintance 190). Since Rochester and Behn are working along such closely similar lines in terms of the artistic models that their own poems aim to imitate, it is therefore fair to ask the question: what are the main differences in their compositional technique within this tightly-defined literary sub-genre of the neo-Classical “imperfect enjoyment poem”? By examining features of each poem in turn—including form (including this sub-genre they share), but also narrative voice and tone—with some examination of the secondary critical literature on both Rochester and Behn, I hope to demonstrate that there are distinct differences in compositional technique which involve the difference in sex between these two writers. But my conclusion will attempt to problematize the very notion of an authorial sex difference by raising the concept of gender, and in particular the aspect of “performativity”—... ... middle of paper ... ...1600-1830: Stress Points in the English Augustan Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Print. Staves, Susan. “Behn, Women, and Society.” The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn. Ed. Derek Hughes and Janet Todd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 12-28. Print. Thormählen, Marianne. Rochester: The Poems in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Print. Wilcoxon, Reba. “Pornography, Obscenity, and Rochester’s ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’.” Restoration and Eighteenth Century. Spec. issue of Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 15.3 (1975) : 375-90. JSTOR. Web. 10 Feb 2011. Zeitz, Lisa M. and Thoms, Peter. “Power, Gender and Identity in Aphra Behn’s ‘The Disappointment’.” Restoration and Eighteenth Century. Spec. issue of Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 37.3 (1997) : 501-16. JSTOR. Web. 10 Feb 2011.
Rochester's poetry has been denounced by many as obscene and immoral. Samuel Johnson condemned his work and said that he lived and wrote "with an avowed contempt of decency and order, a total disregard to every moral, and a resolute denial of every religious observation." However, he is not without his admirers. Hazlitt respected his work, and remarked that "his contempt for everything that others respect almost amounts to sublimity". It is true that Rochester's work contains voluminous amounts of obscene language and metaphor. But this is not without reason, and does not mean his poetry is a light hearted and rude collection by a man who cared greatly for a debauched lifestyle. Frequently, the poetry contains an often very dark view of life in the Court (despite Rochester's active participation in the courtly way of living), and some extremely clever and appropriate satire on King Charles II and the members of his court. The obscenity could be viewed as simply that - obscenity for the sake of it, but this may not be the case. There seems to be underlying feelings beneath the surface of the language, which reflect a dissatisfied soul observing the events around him. The question of the success of his ribaldry is one that requires a good deal of thought, as it is not always the bawdy poems that convey best the satire that Rochester aims for.
Everett, Nicholas From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamiltong. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 17-20. JSTOR. 2
Raffel, Burton. and Alexandra H. Olsen Poems and Prose from the Old English, (Yale University Press)Robert Bjork and John Niles,
1) Frith, Wendy, "Sex, smallpox and seraglios: a monument to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu," Femininity and Masculinity in the Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture ed. Gill Perry and Michael Rossington, (Manchester University Press, 1994), 99-122.
Johnson, Claudia L. “’Not at All What a Man Should Be!’: Remaking English Manhood in Emma.” Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. 191-203.
Comparing The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd. and the stark contrast of the treatment of an identical theme, that of love within the framework of pastoral life. I intend to look at each poem separately to give my interpretation of the poet's intentions and then discuss their techniques and how the chosen techniques affect the portal of an identical theme. The poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love appears to be about the Elizabethan courtly ideal of living with the barest necessities, like.
The anxiety of barbarism can be seen plainly in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, as clearly it was in England’s society. The “nation's inability to tolerate the Stuart
Throughout Aphra Behn’s short novel, her interest in the abolitionist agenda comes off as tepid at best. While reading Oroonoko, it is difficult to say if the author is against the institution of slavery as a whole, or just against the enslavement of a specimen as beautiful and noble as Oroonoko. Much of the slave’s eponymous story is spent waxing poetic about Oroonoko’s appearance and dignity instead of demonstrating the inherent evils of the inhumane commodification of other human beings.
Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 34, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring, 1994), pp. 341-356 Published by: Rice University http://www.jstor.org/stable/450905
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1c. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print. The.
Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” Nineteenth Century Literature March 1966: 102-106. Jstor. On-line. 10 Nov. 2002.
Country house poetry is a sub-genre of Renaissance poetry and was first written during the seventeenth century. It was closely linked to patronage poetry, in which poets (sometimes outrageously) flattered patrons in order to gain sponsorship and status. At this time, many houses were built in the countryside as a display of wealth, and as a retreat for the courtier when overwhelmed by the court and city life. Country houses were not, originally, just large houses in the country in which rich people lived. Essentially they were power houses - the houses of a ruling class. As such they could work at the local level of a manor house, the house of a squire who was a little king in his village and ran the county. They could work at a local and national level as the seat of a landowner who was also a member of parliament. Basically, people did not live in country houses unless they either possessed power, or, by setting up in a country house, were making a bid to possess it. Country house poems generally consisted of complimentary descriptions of the said country house and its surrounding area which often contained pastoral detail, and praised cultivated nature. The purpose of the central part of this essay is to assess the effectiveness of Renaissance 'country house' poetry as social criticism.
Otis Wheeler describes how the surge in sentimental dramas was a direct reaction to the coarse comedies of the Restoration wherein man was depicted as ridiculous and nonsensical. In contrast “the drama of sensibility” was a display of the infinite promise of man. In this way the beginnings of the Cult of Sensibility is inextricably linked to the birth of Romanticism, yet where Romanticism preferred the superfluous and exaggerated the Cult of Sensibility preferred the delicate, softer emotions that would bring people together in harmony. As such it is fair to say that although these two styles were borne of a similar distaste for the neoclassical, they developed into very different types of drama. Romanticism created antagonistic protagonists, such as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.
Historically speaking, the cultural limitations of women in the sixteenth century were very strong. Publicly, women had no life, and characteristics within the home were expected to mirror that of a servant: patience, silence, and obedience, to name a few. However, this essay will rely solely on evidence from the text, Twelfth Night, to examine the ways the female characters, specifically Olivia, both abides by, and defies the gender roles presented.