In this conclusion of his series on Dante, Dr. White follows the poet as he moves upward through the spheres of heaven. Dante contrasts the cosmic order –– the perfection in which God dwells –– with the earthly order that, in reality, tends toward disorder and the failure of man. Dr. White brings several passages to life with his dramatic reading, culminating in Dante being tested on his faith by none other than St. Peter himself who, perhaps prophetically, rails against the corruption of the future Church.
Sonnets were the most popular verse form of the Renaissance. If a poet wanted to prove himself, he wrote sonnets. It is a rigid form, only 14 lines with set rhyming patterns. Almost all sonnets are love poems. Why this strict form for love poetry? It is the recognition that the nature of love must be disciplined. The emotions may be sincere but they need discipline. Poets did not just write one love sonnet, they wrote dozens, even hundreds to show the different forms of their love. Shakespeare wrote 153 sonnets: the first 126 are about platonic love, and sonnets 127 – 151 were addressed to “the dark lady.” He wrote his sonnets early in his career, from 1592-1595. The English form is known as the Shakespearean sonnet. Sonnet 18 Shall I compare these to a summer’s day? is one of his best-known. He begins expressing doubt that he can adequately do justice. He compares his love to the beauty of nature; but everything in nature fades. Beauty can change. But his love is outside of nature, outside of time. As long as men have breath and eyes to read this poem, your beauty will live on. Beauty is eternal.
Sonnet 73 The time of year thou mayest in me behold is about the ageing or appearance of ageing of the poet. The feeling is of melancholy. Each of the three quatrain deals with a different image. The first quartet is time set to nature, the season of autumn: the yellow leaves. But there are leaves, then none, then few. This is illogical. He is fighting time by disrupting time. Autumn moves to winter, the boughs shake against the cold. And now the branches are bare like the ruined churches of the land. In the second quatrain the unit of time is compressed, from the seasons to the span of a day. Time is getting shorter, day moving into night, into twilight. Death’s second self is nighttime, a form of death. In the third quatrain time compresses again, to the brining down of a fire, just a short time now. The glowing embers give way to the gray ashes, which finally extinguishes the fire. That which gave the fire life consumes it. The couplet at the end concludes that time is short; I am going to go, love me now before your attention turns elsewhere.
The Canterbury Tales is an unfinished work. The story has a beginning and an end, but chunks of the middle are missing, much like the image of an unfinished cathedral that takes generations to complete. Chaucer did this deliberately. Chaucer set for himself an enormous task to tell the tales of all 29 pilgrims in the story. They were to tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two tales on the way back then vote on the best tale. But the pilgrimage is a one-way pilgrimage. There is no return trip. To understand these tales, think of the pilgrimage to the cathedral of St. Thomas a Becket as an image of the final destination of all pilgrims; our pilgrimage to eternity. Chaucer included all walks of life among his pilgrims, from the lowest to the highest, including himself. The poet is also a pilgrim. There are two types of pilgrims on this trip: the true pilgrim who wishes to make the spiritual journey to the great shrine, and the palmer who rides along simply for the adventure. The first two tales tell of these two ways: The Knight’s Tale tells of God’ order, The Miller’s Tale tells the worldly way.
Hamlet is the most problematic of the many plays written by Shakespeare also, one of his most popular. Intense. The play was written at a time of profound religious tension, thus audiences easily related. It is a revenge play in the Roman tradition, a form the English were well versed: gaudy, bloody and highly rhetorical rather than poetic. Blood spilled all over the stage. Shakespeare uses this form sparingly and with some artistic care: the blinding of King Lear, for example. When he needs a moment like this, he will use it. It is believed that Shakespeare used a previous version of Hamlet, a story based on a historical event. Shakespeare was tapping into a popular story and writing his own version. It had all the earmarks of being a hit. The reason this play is the longest of his plays is he revised it season after season; adding new material, reshaping it. It is a four-hour play. Hamlet too is the first work of the modern world. Hamlet studied at the University of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther began his attack on the Church. Hamlet thus became a modern man, rejecting God and His Church, and began a life of doubt.
The pilgrims assembled come from all sections of medieval life: the knight class (fighters), the priest class (prayer) and the working class. Before the trip begins, the pilgrim (Chaucer) talks to all of the pilgrims as a prologue to their tale later in the story. He describes in detail about each of them: their clothing, their manner of speech, their table manners. These descriptions give us a good external view of them, but only the exterior. We must learn to look past the externals. In each of the tales that are included, the tale matches the teller. He begins with the member in the group with the highest social standing, the knight, and the first of the tales that will be told. And he concludes with the parson, who will tell the last story. It is his story that leads the pilgrims to Canterbury. Good literature has two purposes: to entertain and to teach. The Canterbury Tales is tales within a tale. We are amused, shocked, provoked to thought, and moved by the tales. We are entertained. We are also taught virtue, humility, and the dark side of man. We are educated; we extract a kernel of knowledge from each story.
